What is Evil? by Dorothy J. Titus In the introduction to the book Fear No Evil: The Pathwork® Method of Transforming the Lower Self, Donovan Thesenga asks, "You are not an evil person. I am not an evil person. Yet evil exists in the world. Where does it come from?" The evil that we see in the world is committed by human beings. But if we are not evil, then who is? Is evil only found in a few people like Adolph Hitler or Idi Amin? Evil exists in all human beings in different degrees. If we think of evil as a continuum, traits like pettiness, egocentricity and jealousy exist on the low end, while acts like torture, terrorism and genocide are on the high end. Most of us would find ourselves somewhere on the low end of that continuum. The Pathwork® suggests that at birth, we each bring into this life two aspects: the Higher Self and the Lower Self. The Higher Self is that divine spark, the essence of love and truth that lives at the very core of each human being. The Lower Self is the negative part that rejects love, that hates, that is cruel and wants to stay separate from others. The Lower Self is where our personal evil comes from. In our early years, we discover that the Lower Self is not acceptable. We are chastised and punished for being selfish, disobedient, mean and cruel. We quickly learn that part of us is unacceptable. We make a choice to hide the unacceptable part and build a "mask" self that is designed to please those we are dependent on. All of us are familiar with the mask, although we may not be aware of it. You feel awful, sick; yet when someone asks how you are, you reply, "I'm fine." That's the mask. Its sole purpose is to control what others think about us. It serves to hide the lower self not only from others, but from us as well. We try to pretend we don't have a lower self, and whatever we push into our unconscious becomes stronger. The Pathwork Guide, the spiritual source of the Pathwork material, says that there are three stages of evil. The first stage is numbness toward ourselves. In this stage, we are unaware of what is going on within us. We don't see our Lower Self nor take responsibility when we act it out. We believe our mask. Something goes wrong, and we blame others. The second stage is numbness toward others. If we are numb to ourselves, we no longer understand why we act as we do. If we find our own behavior incomprehensible, we will not understand the behavior of others. What we don't understand, we fear. So in the same way that we numbed out to ourselves, we now numb out to others. We become detached. We no longer feel their pain. Empathy is impossible. The third stage of evil is active cruelty. When we are numb to others' pain, then cruelty is easy. For this reason, the line between stage two and three is very thin. Most of us have had at least some experiences with this: The parent who cannot stand to listen to his or her child cry any more, numbs out to the child's pain, and lashes out at the child. The busy commuter who walks past the homeless person begging on the street as if he isn't there. Each thought of hate, of separation, of egoism, of injustice, of discrimination, of wanting more for oneself than for one's neighbor, in short, each thought that breaks God's laws, is a building block in that enormous spiritual structure -- war. (Lecture #12) Whenever any of us gives in to the Lower Self, we contribute to the reservoir of evil in the world. That reservoir is what produces war, mass torture, genocide. Thus it is very important that each of us tackle the evil that is in us. We avoid this work because we are afraid to see the magnitude of the Lower Self. But the solution is not as difficult as we fear: When evil is understood to be intrinsically a divine energy flow, momentarily distorted due to specific wrong ideas, concepts, and imperfections, then it is no longer rejected in its essence. (Lecture #184) It is possible to move from numbness to consciousness and then to self-responsibility. Therein lies not only our own healing but the healing of our world. If only a small part of humankind sowed the seeds of peace, wars would not exist, in spite of a few unscrupulous politicians (Lecture #12). There are specific steps in this work: First we must make conscious whatever is in us: the mask, the Lower Self and the Higher Self. We must align with the Higher Self and commit to transforming the Lower Self. The next step is to drop the mask, to get real in all aspects of our lives. This is challenging. We have believed since early childhood that parts of us are not acceptable. Now we have to risk all the consequences we feared then and, in some part of our psyche, still fear. At first, it may seem our fears are justified for when we drop the mask, the Lower Self will emerge. I used to think of it as the "Pandora Box Syndrome." Whenever I uncovered a major Lower Self trait, it would take over my life for two weeks as I watched, apparently helpless to change it. This is actually a good thing. When we truly feel the pain our Lower Self causes us and others, we are more motivated to change. To change, we make other changes, sometimes in how we act and sometimes in our attitudes. Instead of blaming others, we see how we contributed to a painful situation. As we begin to understand ourselves, we have insight into others. With insight comes empathy and the ability to truly connect with other people. Our numbness departs. We can feel all of our feelings as well as those of others. We are truly alive. When we are truly alive, we add beauty and love to the universal reservoir for this planet. We help our world move away from war, away from evil. This creates wars on this earth - your unrecognized hatred, your unrecognized selfishness, your unrecognized lack of love, and so on. Once you control this -- it does not mean you have to be completely purified, but you control it, you are aware of it -- even if only less than one-tenth of the entire human population will reach that stage, I assure you, war will be impossible. (Lecture #23) Dottie Titus is a Pathwork Helper who helps people identify with their Godself. She offers workshops on abundance, death and dying, and on using disease to heal the spiritual self. She can be reached at (612) 522-4545 or e-mail DottieT@aol.com. Copyright (c) 2002 Dottie Titus |
||
|
|
|
