None of us really knows another person's motivations. I feel that this is simply not a decision we can make very effectively as humans. It may seem repellent to some that a person not 'pay' for what they have done in an 'eye for an eye' fashion. However, that does not seem to be the message of forgiveness to me.

The story of Rose Mapendo which I posted above shows that great adversity can be a motivator toward good, for some. It doesn't mean the experience of prison and torture was good, but it means that sometimes the human spirit can rise above it.

This person, Rose, a genocide survivor, has a special ability to understand the needs of refugees, because she has been one. So, each of us, who has been through adversity, has the choice to bring a light into the situation for others.

Maybe not everyone can do this. But that is why some people are called heroes. Every one of us has the potential to be heroes, like Rose. Every one of us has some 'area of expertise' like Rose.

What do we teach our children? To go out and help make the world a better place.  It seems to me...that is all about love. Some people may be shocked that Rose would name her children after her oppressors. But think, now, after this generation, perhaps the name will be a better one than it was before. That is love.

love, blink

I guess even setting aside the implications of the various cosmologies it seems like there's so many variables in play that it's very tough to predict what might happen in an individual case Blink.

Setting aside the above it's perhaps too a lot about language and meaning too Alan. A wholly egocentric being may out of attachment to the physical after death refuse to move on from this reality. This apparently results in a slow loss of energy and eventual death - or attempts to parasitically leech energy from others to survive.

They may also as you say reside in (actually create) a domain that amounts to a hell - as a result of their beliefs, or of the vibe they are drawn to.

Others may move on, but after an initially pleasant afterlife experience suffer a difficult life review (which is often cast as  judgement, but from the ACIM perspective is more of a process) - or less so if there are ameliorating aspects to the person so they feel less guilt.

What I'm getting at is that it's easy for us to be talking of the same events, but attributing different meanings to them.

Is it a case of God sitting in judgement, or is it a natural process driven by the nature of mind? Does God assign punishment, or do we create it ourselves and God allow us the free will to do so? Is it a biblical/orthodox Christian hell to which people are 'condemned', or is it a self created reality the result again of mind? Does God refuse survival for the truly evil, or is it just that they will not move on to an environment that allows survival? Or is it that by having nothing of spiritual value they are not allowed to survive, or that they just have nothing to of reality to save? Is the whole creation of God, or of ego but with God operating within it? Is it a case of remaining wherever forever, or it just a case that it takes long time for some of us to release very strongly held beliefs in separation and aggression? Is it a case of our having to find our own way back to God/Spirit by changing our view, or is it a matter of God bringing the 'good' to their just reward?

Could it even be that elements of many of these dimensions are in play all at once?

I guess the only point I'm trying to make here is that language is very limited, and different use of words can (perhaps unintentionally) imply very different scenarios when the substance of the situation is largely the same. Easy to end up debating over perceived differences that in some ways don't amount to much....

Cricket said:
Rather appropriate for this thread - the guy who wrote "Amazing Grace", John Newton, was a slave trader who continued to trade in slaves for 40 years after the storm that initially got him thinking on the subject of grace.
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ah, thank u Cricket. this illustrates my point precisely that we can find examples in history of brutes who go through a transformation due to the suffering they have brought upon others. because what they dish out returns to them. I'm thinking Newton must have beat the bodies of the slaves. this act alone would bring their suffering home to him, for what you do to another (or the many) you only do to yourself in the end. life is nothing but a boomarang. the pain and suffering caused by his actions would cause this bottoming out and eventually he would crash out of his belief system, which is like an ego death. the appropriate moment for the ineffiable moment of saving grace to descend.  a moment of oh god, I have been so wrong, thought/pain.

a humility situation sets up transformation factor.  You can also read Monroe in Ultimate Journeys, that he gives grace a new name for our century..Excom. short for Executive Committee.

I think that's funny. love Monroe, he's so darn inventive. Also Bruce mentions in his books going through a belief system crash, so intense that he thought he was dying. or going crazy..I mean, which is worse, going crazy, or dying? I can tell Bruce tries to put words around what he was feeling, and it's impossible to describe such experiences really.

one other fellow was a real brute, to everyone he met in life. Dannion Brinkley, went thru an NDE and a complete personality transformation, to the point, where he lost his wife, as she didn't know who he was anymore, he was so transformed by this power which is there, which I call grace that causes transformation of the self. A former mean guy is now filled with love for humanity, writing books, doing what he can to help out people. amazing story.

About Newton and Amazing Grace. the tune has become like a religious national anthem in history. the effects of that piece of work also will rebound unto this soul, for every person who sings it, or feels something by reading it; many, many people have been effected by this song, either subtly, or profoundly.
Newton is reaping those effects of a positive nature. that's what I meant, that he could be in a very good place, where he  has gotten off the wheel of incarnating, here where all the suffering is. so even if he is not a master, I still think he did a good job here, and he truly was a wretched person to hit others. how awful to suffer their pain and realize you are the biggest chump in the whole world.

something would have to prevent such a one from blowing his own brains out. something like Love, something like a blinding light, which was Brinkley's experience..and it salvages the soul.

here's something for Alan to think about. I have been thinking about you, and suffering right along with you concerning the holocaust. I'm not Jewish in this life, but I feel I was there, in two or three different bodies. have obsessed on it for years. I am at rest about it now.
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http://www.earthlypursuits.com/WLLDM/WLLDML.htm

Alan; no matter what they say, Justice is in the Universe. Nobody gets away with anything around here of a malicious nature; even though I tout amazing grace that comes from god, within us, still, in a sense, that grace is only available after the death of the self serving ego which is of the utmost anquish.
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From the link above: This is Letters from a dead man, and the Ebook is about a minister who died, and decided to try and help from the other side, it was during WWII.
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Quote:   That though evil is a necessity so long as good exists, though evil is the other pole of the magnet, yet it is the duty of those who desire to walk the White Road ever to do battle for the right. And this is no repudiation of the saying of the Christ, “Resist not evil.” A paradox, you say? Great wisdom is locked in paradoxes, for those who have the key. The existence of evil gives greater strength to good. This is the Kali Yuga, as the Hindoos say.
           That this war is an attempt of the personal evil forces to destroy mankind. A former attempt was made in Europe before the so-called Dark Ages, but the Renaissance followed and restored the balance.
           That man has in himself both the Christ principle and the demonic principle; that will is free, and that man can make his choice between them.
           That new races are born of revolutions and wars. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Hi Alan. Sounds like maybe there's actually not that much difference in what's being said by several here despite the differences in language. An older slightly more biblical usage (versus a more new agey one) perhaps tends somehow to trigger a whole panoply of associated assumptions in many of us as to what the writer means.

It's strange how in Monroe speak a single word (or sight, or smell) can be a 'rote' - it can trigger a whole view and associated set of assumptions which may have taken a lifetime to build. Trouble is these can go on to determine how we perceive what's said.

Your story about the guy who got burnt is very powerful, and a demo of how as both yourself and Alysia are saying profound change can occur in apparently very evil persons.

Illness or other suffering can be such a powerful opener (I've experienced this, albeit to a much lesser degree) - if severe enough it as Alysia says can tip us over the edge and into dropping all ego driven attempts to exerting control, and in the resulting space we drop back to  flow/true seeing.

Add the sort of extra normal experience (which may also be a result of this opening) he had and it's clear just how profound such an experience can be.

Buddhism is full of stories of bandits and the like who as a result of personal crises saw the error of their ways, and went on to become realised. Such people provided they commit to a path are regarded as very promising students. There's also a very definite view that it's almost impossible for an ordinary ego dominated person to judge how close to realisation a person is by the behaviours they manifest.

You can for example encounter a relatively benign person who seems well advanced, but who as a result of a wide range of minor ego issues has an enormous amount of work to do in many differing areas.

You can encounter another who seems a monster, but whose wrongdoing is the result of a single or very few but very dominant wrong views. So (only) for example - perhaps Hitler thought he was doing good, was wrong in his utter commitment to use of force and authority (that the end justified the means), but that this was his only major issue.

Realisation it's said can be a very long drawn out gradual process, or like the blow of a thunderbolt. Eckhardt Tolle as somebody has said before was a case of somebody driven to despair by the grasping of his ego mind, but who suddenly dropped it.

The result could be that a major life crisis that collapsed Hitler's single wrong belief could have set him free. Or not, perhaps he had many other issues too.

But you get the drift - this is another way our perception of others can be misleading. And by treating that person as a monster instead of with love we actually act to bring the very behaviour we fear into existence, because behaviours always reciprocate.....

I'm thinking Newton must have beat the bodies of the slaves. this act alone would bring their suffering home to him, for what you do to another (or the many) you only do to yourself in the end.

And there's another possibly relevant (to this thread) thing.  Newton apparently was no worse (but no better) than any other slave trader of the time.  When he had his life-changing experience with the storm, he wasn't instantly tranformed (as mentioned above, it was forty years later that he finally got out of his past ways), but apparently quite early on he made a point of making sure his men treated the captives less cruelly.

So it wasn't an over-night thing, but a slow, gradual change.  It may be that Hitler is slowing working his way up "over there", using what he's learning about what he did to learn more, building on that foundation and slowly, slowly, become someone new.

HI Amazing Grace i always call this little madeliene's hymn and it gives hope that one day she will be found God bless her and keep her in his love,i pray every night to God to guide little madeliene home.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1h4eUSAKyVA&feature=related

All of you please pray for madeleine every night as the power of prayer reachs out where it is most needed.

Love and God bless    love juditha

I agree with Deva there's something about writing stuff down that yields up more insight into whatever we are discussing. I guess that's why we interact.
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I don't follow this line of thought of sexual repression compared to facism, you might want to clarify how sexual repression leads to facism, which leads to being thrown into an oven while still breathing.
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I agree with your fluent logic on everything else. particularly I see the divine in mankind active, but I had to train my mind to look for the divine in every man by opening up to that possibility, I could be closed down and blocking the divine, to see that. and after all, we have to decide also, to define what divine means.
we use names for the Light. God, Atman, Higher Self, the labels are endless and confusing. better to be an agnostic than to be fooled by any other person's definition of what divine is.

While I did for awhile see Hitler as being like a pawn once, and that things just got away from him, I also can see papers in front of him which required his signature before further implementation of further laws to make murder legal. yes, murder was legal then.
it  was his right to refuse to sign papers. he didn't refuse, and I wonder if he felt coerced to go with the tide? Of course everything cannot be put on him and we have to look at the larger picture that it is death itself that this world is about, even with the god like virtues we can see operating alongside the cruelty and selfishness ideals.

I have one more additional thought to add here to this topic: a teacher told me of this idea. she was quite human as well as virtuous.

I might add, because she did not repress her sexuality, she fell in love with a gay minister, and this expressed in an obe, interpreted by the other minister as a threat to his well being. our church fell apart, although "it was only natural to her." I stood beside her, and I also stood beside the gay minister. I saw nothing wrong going on here, which couldn't be resolved, and didn't take sides. I don't think you really know anything about the path of celibacy as a chosen path, is not the same as sexual repression as related to Victorian ideals.
I submit, monogamy, weather in gay relationships, or heterosexual is the wiser course to take. I also vouch for the oldest profession in the world, is needed and should be respected, because men confuse their sex drive with their aggressiveness and they need an outlet. for the average man I speak.

the true celibate has no such build up to release. The love of God, whatever that means to facist or agnostic, or guru, or whatever, takes care of the physical needs of this person. but then, you'd have to be there to understand.personal exploration into our own consciousness and reporting those experiences, here, or anywhere, is what Monroe and Bruce support, for like Deva and myself here, I think I can speak for all of us, that we teach the very thing we need to learn.

by sharing our insights, writing it down. I have great hopes for this century. I call it the shift in consciousness.

a borrowed term, but yet, so what? don't we borrow from everyone while we're growing and becoming?

I was going to report a glimmer Thelma gave me. the lady above. she said dark forces are merely the absence of light. they are let into ELS at certain points of history making. she said the dark seeks the dark, to strengthen the dark. what happens is the dark ends up destroying itself; in the end. this is because, even though the dark knows it cannot increase itself forever, it has it's function, it's job to do regardless, as each dark spark enjoys it's function, as a challenge, and thinks, therefore, what thinks, says "I am." the dark must invent problems and carry the energy forward of an invented problem.

the thing to take comfort in a world of duality..is Light increases faster than darkness. this is my belief, I have support in various places.
that's what we're in now, that speed up of Light. if you choose to believe, then you pull the light from the darkness, and say, let there be light. through what you choose to believe. for always there is choice between light or dark thoughts. it is a world of self determination in that sense. Hitler knew about self determination.
He was into the black arts. he chose that. he was into being powerful.
I do think you can lose your soul to choose darkness.

I spoke of amazing grace because, I believe ideally, that God's love is so powerful, it could even mend the greatest of the dark power driven souls. It is a wish. I know nothing but my own experiences. much of this might be blather.
In essence what Thelma taught is that even the dark forces were allowed to bring a higher balance into ELS.

For the good that happened during the Holocaust was that, the Jews were driven from their homeland, they were virtually homeless; after the Holocaust the need for to reestablish their homeland became obvious. this group of people were sacrifices to ELS. and they knew it before they came. they are heroes in that sense. For most of the civilized world we then could measure that man has two sides to his nature: one is power driven, the other is divine.
or we could say, there is the self serving ego in us.
on the other hand, there is Light in us, which speaks always for allowing and that means, there really is no reason to kill anything, except that the ego would make it's own design, such as "all blue eyed blondes are superior to brown eyed dark haired Jews."

The Jews are exceptionally intelligent people, and on the other hand, so can the gentile be brilliant the same. it has nothing to do with races as pertaining to the individual body and it's current DNA.
As far as skin color goes, a survey was taken of who does the most serial killing. the white race does.
so in a sense what Thelma said is somewhat true. the dark forces were here to unplug the negativity so we could move on into greater areas of positive action. but it doesn't mean God had anything to do with killing.  or wars. it means our egos created this world in joint contract.

so we could experience how we are able to make a world. it has many wonders in it, and beauty, and love, as well the other side of ugliness cannot be ignored or pushed away either. by focusing the mind on the power of creativity, together, we can help bring in the Light.

but you cannot focus in two directions at once. you must either focus on the Light, or focus on the dark. you cannot serve two masters.

sorry to take up all of cyberspace with words. I close reading from Letter from a Dead Man:
Examine yourselves dear children. Look for your faults. If you can find no fault in yourself, hang your harp on the nearest willow, for your progress is at an end.
man progresses through recognizing his faults, through transmuting them and transcending them. If you are perfect, this world is no place for you.
Beyond good and evil is where we are headed for eventually.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. but do not flirt with the devil to prove that you judge him not.
Yes, all men are your brothers, even bad men. Attend to your own affairs and leave the issue with God. This much to you, dera children of the world, from my vantage place above your passions.