Berserk
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Re: Channeling Agendas: A Reply to Roger
Reply #97 - Mar 12th, 2005 at 3:59pm
THERE IS INDEED A GOOD VS. EVIL POLARITY
The existence of a good vs. evil polarity is clearly relevant to my case for the hidden agendas of channeling. This post replies to the responses to Lucy's post "There is no good vs. evil polarity."
A. The Reality of Evil: 1. One poster views evil as an illusion "in the grand scheme of things." I challenge him to explain the difference that would be created in our earthly experience if evil were real rather than illusory. If there is no difference, then the word "illusion" becomes a vacuous concept. "Evil" can be defined as "an act intended to harm without adequately compensating the victim with a positive benefit."
2. Of ciourse, one can opt for a counterintuitive ploy and insist that if one's life stinks, we chose to create it that way. This ploy seems absurd when we consider child abuse cases that mangle the child's emotions to the point of making him psychotic, suicidal, or criminal in mentality. It seems even more absurd when we consider the fixation at the age of onset that afflicted the two victims of demonic possession investigated by Peck:
"During the exorcism, one patient, when the healthy self was free to speak, gave the most poignant expression of fixation I have ever heard: 'I haven't learned anything these past 20 years. I'm really just 12 years old. How can I possibly function after the exorcism? I'm way too young to be married and have children. How can I have sex and be a parent when I'm only 12?' After the exorcism, the other patient, whose possession began at age 5, had to deal in intensive psychotherapy with all manner of 5-year-old fears, misconceptions, issues, and transferences ("People of the Lie," 191)."
It seems highly contrived to try to fit such pointless suffering within the channeling scheme that only good exists (e.g. as per Seth and ACIM).
3. Other posters embrace the view channeled by Elias and shared by Monroe that there is no good or evil, right or wrong; there is only experience. Thse posters argue that evil is merely the product of earthly belief systems. If this is so, then why not view love as nothing more than a culturally conditioned restraint created by the human herd instinct? Why not harm others if this makes you feel fulfilled, unique, powerful, and happy, and you think you can get away with it? No wonder there is solid sociological research that is devastating to moral relativism. By several statistically measurable criteria, people who reject absolute truth and embrace moral relativism are much more likely to harm others and engage in criminal behavior (For more details see p. 2 of this post.)
4. The view that evil is merely the product of earthly belief systems is refuted by the fact that the beliefs of victims (especially young children) often play no role in their possession by gradual demonic stealth. This view is also refuted by the lethal nature of demonic evil. Robert Bruce is as New Age as they come. Based on much experience with exorcism, he insists on the reality of nonhuman demons with varying degrees of malevolent power. In "Psychic Self-Defense," he shares his acquaintance with a Catholic priest who was called to perform an exorcism for a tormented family, but was unable to prevent the powerful entity from causing the parents' sudden deaths.
Similarly, in "Hostage to the Devil," Malachi Martin reports the tragic demise of a young athletic priest. This priest had already performed an exorcism, and so, was called in to handle a particularly virulent possession case. The demon took his life the moment he stood at the victim's bed. A more mature and experienced exorcist had to be summoned to complete the exorcism.
5. According to Martin, what convinces the skeptic at an exorcism is not the supernaturally lowered temperature in the room, the entity's unnerving clairvoyance, the teleportation of objects, or even the scratching of hellish messages by an unseen hand on the victim's skin. No, what convinces the skeptic is the palpable searing presence of pure hatred. To define "evil" as "the absence of love" is short-sighted because it ignores the destructive energy that makes evil present.
B. As applied to morals, the term "absolute" means "definitely real, not relative."
1. The assumption that there are no moral absolutes often leads to contradictory positions. Many argue that ethical relativism is good because it promotes tolerance of certain cultural practices that Americans deem strange. But this argument is inconsistent with relativism because it assume that there is at least one absolute--tolerance. Besides, in the ordinary language of the real world, to tolerate the conflicting viewpoints of others implies that they have a right to their values, despite the fact that some of them are wrong. Real tolerance presumes that someone is right and someone is wrong, and this implicitly denies moral relativism.
2. Several months ago, one poster offered this argument against the reality of evil. All of us have been reincarnated countless times. During these incarnations, we have all committed every imaginable sin or crime at one time or another. Therefore, there is no evil. This argument concedes that evil might exist if just a few of us occasionally committed crimes or other hurtful acts. To get rid of evil, all we have to do is expand our resume of cruelty over several lives and get everyone else to develop a similar dastardly resume! We're all guilty; so none of us are guilty. This is absurd. If one act of cruelty is wrong, then countless acts of cruelty are even more heinous.
3. Bruce Moen offers a more intriguing defense of moral relativism. He suggests that the relativity of evil may make it illegitimate to think in terms of a good vs. evil polarity. Bruce offers this example of cultural relativism:
"If a young woman is walking down the street, not excorted by a male family member, wearing her hugger jeans and a tank top, [a western] observer..will have a different view of the good/ evil polarity than an observer in some middle eastern cultures. In western culture, she may attract smiles, in some middle eastern cultures she may attract rocks."
But the fact that cultures and individuals differ in certain moral PRACTICES does not imply that different cultures do not share common moral VALUES. For example, unlike most American women, some female South Sea islanders do not cover their breasts in public. But this hardly means that the latter do not value modesty. Doe to the climate, environmental conditions, and certain religious beliefs, they have in fact developed certain unique practices by which to manifest the transcultural value of modesty. Similarly, though cultures may differ about how they manifest such values as honesty, courage, and the preservation of life, they do not promote dishonesty, cowardice, or arbitrary killing.
4. In Bruce's FAQ section, some of his statements about hellish confinement might, if true, imply that there is no evil. He claims that in the Afterlife, "I, as a portion of The Consciousness, judge myself based on my beliefs and understanding of what is right and wrong," and adds, "No one forces anyone into such a `Hell' as punishment for their horrific acts...They are free to make a new choice and leave their Hell at any time." Graduation to Focus 27 seems possible as long as one obeys one rule: "No imposition of one will upon another (so Monroe in UJ 242)." Sp just imagine this rationalization for David Rader's BTK lifestyle of mass murder:
"Torturing and killing women give me an exhilarating sense of adventure and sexual gratification. When I die, I will dwell in a spirit plane where I can continue to torture women. I know how to beat the postmortem system. When I start to get victimized myself, I can leave this plane and relocate to Focus 27. All I have to do to stay there is refrain from imposing my will on others. I can view it as a kind of vacation until my next reincarnation. Then it's back to work--a fresh incarnation in which I can find more creative ways of torturing and killing women. But next time I won't get caught!"
D. This grotesque vision of life is impossible if the Christian view is correct that Pure Unconditional Love (PUL) operates as a moral absolute, indeed, the only absolute.
1. To grasp how this absolute establishes the good vs. evil polarity, we must first define "polarity." According to Webster, a polarity is "the condition of being positive or negative with respect to some reference point." Rightly understood, all virtues manifest love and are on the positive side of PUL because their opposites are on the negative side of PUL. Let me explain. Modesty, courage, and preservation of life can all be manifestations of PUL. The opposite of modesty is immodesty, which involves an egotism that is incompatible with PUL. Courage is another aspect of PUL. The opposite of courage is cowardice, which is caused by fear. But fear and love cannot coexist at the same time. The opposite of preservation of life is arbitrary killing, which cannot coexist with life-nurturing PUL.
2. Another aspect of the good/evil polarity emerges from a closer analysis of Pure Unconditional Love. The purity of this love implies a contrast with all the ways love can be contaminated by impurities. Love can be contaminated by manipulation, sexual exploitation, selfish agendas, and jealous vindictiveness. The unconditional dimension of PUL contrasts with all the conditions most of us attach to our love--the exclusion of our enemies from love's embrace, the presumption of mutual payoffs, the limited scope of our love, etc. How many of us live out Jesus' principle: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse yuu, pray for those who abuse you (Luke 6:28)?" These impurities and conditions that infect our love dwell on the "left" side of the PUL polarity.
3. More egregious acts must be located still further to the left of the PUL polarity. One poster believes in right and wrong, but not in good and evil. But human experience exposes a line that gets horribly crossed and cries out for a stronger term than "wrong." We need a word to distinguish mass murderers from someone who tries to be "nice" by lying about his opinion of a guy's ghastly tie!
Viewed this way, PUL is a state of being rather than an astral emotion that can be tapped by flawed people and projected out to those in need of retrieval. Not that strong positive emotion cannot be projected in the astral realm. It should rather be labelled "ecstasy", its normal designation in the academic analysis of spiritual experience.
4. It only makes sense to label PUL a moral absolute if it governs our postmortem progress. In my view, what this means is implicit in Bruce's observations in his online "Christianity" article:
"Some in these Hells are able to change their energetic make-up as a result of being in their Hell. That is what happened to the tour guide who was showing me around. He'd been living in a Thief's Hell for a very long time and had been stuck in several others throughout his existence."
These observations hint at the way PUL can serve as the only moral absolute that serves the good/ evil polarity. If graduation from lower planes is contingent on progress towards PUL, then PUL is the absolute that governs soul evolution. The retrieved souls are not simply busted out of their astral jail without regard to their progress. Unknown to the astral explorer, his guides have first identified who has made the most progress towards PUL. The principle of like attracts like governs the astral planes. Someone who remains a sadist at heart cannot simply play the game to survive in Focus 27 and beyond. His energetic make-up must first be transformed to the point of being spiritually compatible with his new associates on a higher plane. At least that is my perspective on how the universe works.
Don
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