[Discipline][Love I][Love II][Religion][Grace I][Grace II]

The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest of all theological problems.

Four conclusions can be drawn concerning its nature:

Firstly, evil is real, it is not the figment of the primitive religious mind. There really are people and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy goodness insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do so not with conscious malice, but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil – indeed, seeking to avoid such awareness. They hate awareness since it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness.

Secondly, evil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme. Ordinary laziness is passive failure to love. Theirs being a manifestation of nonlove, still, they are not evil. Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action possible to protect their own laziness, so to preserve the integrity of the sick self. Rather than nurturing others, they will actually destroy others in their cause. As the integrity of the sick self is threatened by the spiritual health around them they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. It is the exercise of pure political power – that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion – in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purposes of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is nonlove; evil is antilove.

Thirdly, the existence of evil is inevitable, at least at this stage of human evolution. As entropy on the one hand, and evolutionary flow of love on the other, are opposing forces, it is only natural that they will be relatively in balance in most people, while a few at the one extreme will manifest almost pure love, and a few at the other extreme pure entropy or evil. It then is only natural that the extremes will be locked in combat.

Lastly, while entropy is an enormous force, in its extreme form of human evil it is strangely ineffective as a social force. For every soul it destroys – and there are many – it is instrumental in the salvation of others. Unwittingly, evil serves as a beacon to warn others away from its own shoals. While our personal involvement in the fight against evil in the world is one of the ways we grow.

The Evolution of Consciousness

Evil people resist awareness of their own condition. A mark of the spiritually advanced on the other hand is their awareness of their own laziness. Therefore an essential part of our discipline is the development of an awareness of our responsibility and our power of choice. That is the capacity of awareness we assign to that portion of the mind we call the conscious or consciousness.

In fact, we can define spiritual growth as the growth or evolution of consciousness.

The word ‘conscious’ is defined as “to know with”. To know with what?

We know that the unconscious is the possessor of extraordinary knowledge. It knows more than ‘we’ – the conscious self – know.

Thus, is it not so that, to become conscious is to know the unconscious?

Evolution of consciousness can be considered as the process with which the conscious mind comes into synchrony with the unconscious, enlarging the conscious into the realm of the unconscious.

But how does the unconscious possess this knowledge which we have not yet consciously learned?

Again, the question is so basic that it has no scientific answer. If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you will find it inside of you. The interface between God and man is at least in part the interface between our unconscious and our conscious mind.

To put it plainly, our unconscious is God. God within us. We are part of God all the time. God has been with us all along, is now, and always will be.

Is this not the nature of the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, which resides in us all?

To understand this, consider God as being a large rhizome or an incredibly large and rich hidden root system which nourishes the tiny plant of consciousness sprouting visibly from it.

The “collective unconscious” then is God, and the personal unconscious is the interface between us and god. Being this interface, it is inevitable that the personal unconscious should be a place of some turmoil, the scene of some struggle between God’s will and the will of the individual. It is because our conscious self resists our unconscious wisdom that we become mentally ill. It is precisely because our consciousness is disordered that conflict occurs between it and the unconscious that seeks to heal it.

Since the unconscious is God all along, we may further define the goal of spiritual growth to be the attainment of godhood by the conscious self. It is for the individual to become totally, wholly God. The point is to become one with God, while preserving consciousness.

If the bud of consciousness that grows from the rhizome of the unconscious God can become itself God, then God will have assumed a new life form. This is the meaning of our individual existence. We are born so that we can become a conscious individual, as a conscious individual, a new life-form of God.

The conscious is the executive part of our total being. Were we to become all-unconscious, we would become like the newborn infant, one with God but incapable of any action that makes the presence of God felt in the world. Unlike the goal of entering Nirvana, the returning to the infant state, without ego boundaries, the philosophy here is towards the development of a mature, conscious ego which can become the ego of God.

If as adults, capable of making independent choices that influence the world, we can identify our mature free will with that of God, then God will have assumed through our conscious ego a new and potent life form. We will have become God’s agent, Her arm so to speak, and therefore part of Her.

And insofar as we might then through our conscious decisions be able to influence the world according to Her will, our lives will have become the agents of God’s grace. We ourselves will have become one form of the grace of God, working on Her behalf among mankind, creating love where love did not exist, pulling our fellow creatures up to our own level of awareness, pushing the plane of human evolution forward.

The Nature of Power

Power is a much misunderstood subject, mainly because there are two kinds—political and spiritual.

Political power is the capacity to coerce others, overtly or covertly, to do one’s will. This capacity resides in a position, such as a kingship or presidency, or else in money.

It does not necessarily reside in the person who occupies the position or possesses the money. Consequently, political power on its own is unrelated to goodness or wisdom. Very stupid and very evil people have walked as kings upon this earth.

Spiritual power on the other hand, resides entirely within the individual and has nothing to do with the capacity to coerce others. People of great spiritual power may be wealthy and may upon occasion occupy political leadership, but they are as likely to be poor or lacking in political authority.

Then, what is the capacity of spiritual power if not the capacity to coerce?

It is the capacity to make decisions with maximum awareness. It is consciousness.

Most people most of the time make decisions with little awareness of what they are doing. They take action with little understanding of their own motives and without beginning to know the ramifications of their choices. We are often most in the dark when we are certain, and most enlightened when we are the most confused.

What are we to do, adrift in a sea of ignorance?

Some are nihilistic and say, “Nothing”. They propose only that we should continue to drift, as if no course could possibly be charted in such a vast sea that would bring us to any true clarity or meaningful destination.

But others, sufficiently aware to know that they are lost, dare to hope that they can work themselves out of ignorance through developing even greater awareness.

They are correct, it is possible.

But such greater awareness does not come to them in a single blinding flash of enlightenment. It comes slowly, piece by piece and each piece must be worked for by the patient effort of study and observation of everything, including themselves.

They are humble students as the path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. If this path is followed long and earnestly enough, the pieces of knowledge will begin to fall into place. Gradually things begin to make sense. Gradually we can come to a deeper understanding of what our existence is all about.

And gradually we can come to a place where we actually know what we are doing. We can come to power.

The experience that comes from spiritual power is a joyful one. There is joy that comes from mastery. Indeed, there is no greater satisfaction than that of being an expert, of really knowing what we are doing. Those who have grown most spiritually are those who are the experts in living.

And there is yet a greater joy. That of communion with God. For when we truly know what we are doing, we are participating in the omniscience of God. With total awareness of the nature of a situation, our motives for acting upon it, and of the results and ramifications of our actions, we have attained that level of awareness that we normally expect only of God.

Our conscious self has succeeded in coming into alignment with the mind of God. We know with God.

Yet those who attain this stage are invariably possessed by a joyful humility. For they are aware that their unusual wisdom and power, the rhizome, their unconscious, is not theirs alone but all of mankind’s, all life’s, God’s. Aware of their intimate connectedness to God, they experience a surcease in loneliness. There is communion.

Joyful though it is, the experience of spiritual power is also terrifying. For the greater one’s awareness, the more difficult it is to take power. The decision whether to praise or punish a single child may have vast consequences.

It is easy to act with limited data and let the chips fall as they may. The more aware we are, the more data we must assimilate and integrate into our decision making. And the more we know the more complex our decisions become. Yet, the more we know, the more possible it becomes to indeed predict where the chips may fall.

Spiritual power is not simply awareness; it is the capacity to maintain one’s ability to still make decisions with greater and greater awareness.  And godlike power is to make decisions with absolute awareness.

But omniscience does not make decision making easier; it becomes even more difficult. To participate in God’s omniscience is also to participate in God’s agony.

Thus there is another problem with power, both political and spiritual: aloneness. There is no one above you to whom to pass the buck; no one to blame. Others may advise, but the decision is yours alone. You alone are responsible.

Fortunately in ones spiritual journey, as we outdistance our fellow humans, our relationship to God inevitably becomes correspondingly closer. In the communion of growing consciousness, of knowing with God, there is enough joy to sustain us.

Grace and Mental Illness

We live our lives in a real world. To live them well it is necessary that we come to understand the reality of the world as best we can.

But such understanding does not come easily. Many aspects of this reality and our relationship to the world are painful to us. We can understand them only through effort and suffering.

We ignore painful aspects of reality by thrusting certain unpleasant facts out of our awareness. We attempt to defend our ‘conscious’, our awareness, against reality.

If in our laziness and fear of suffering we massively defend our awareness, then it will come to pass that our understanding of the world will bear little or no relation to reality. Because our actions are based on our understanding, our behaviour will then become unrealistic. When this occurs to a sufficient degree our fellow citizens will recognize that we are “out of touch with reality”, and will deem us – to the extent of our actions – mentally ill even though we ourselves are most likely convinced of our sanity.

But long before matters have proceeded to this extreme, and we have been served notice of our illness by our fellow citizens, we are served notice by our unconscious of our maladjustment. Such notice is given by bad dreams, anxiety attacks, depression, and other symptoms.

Our omniscient unconscious knows the true score and attempt to help us by stimulating, through symptom formation, our conscious mind to the awareness that something is wrong.

In other words, the painful and unwanted symptoms of mental illness are manifestations of grace. They are the products of a “powerful force originating outside of consciousness which nurtures our spiritual growth”.

As is common with grace, most reject this gift and do not heed its message. They do this in a variety of ways, all of which represent an attempt to avoid the responsibility for their illness.

They try to ignore the symptoms, pretending that they are not really symptoms, that everyone gets “these little attacks from time to time”. They try to work around them, quitting jobs, stopping driving, moving to a new town, avoiding certain activities.

They attempt to rid themselves of the symptoms by painkillers, by little pills they’ve gotten from the doctor or by anaesthetizing themselves with alcohol or other drugs.

Even if they do accept the fact that they do have these symptoms, they will usually, in many subtle ways, blame the world outside them – uncaring relatives, false friends, greedy corporations, a sick society, and even fate – for their condition.

Only those few that accept responsibility for their symptoms, who realize that their symptoms are a manifestation of a disorder in their own soul, heed the message of the unconscious and accept its grace. They accept their own inadequacy and the pain of the work necessary to heal themselves.

Those who have faced their own mental illness, having accepted total responsibility for it, and made the necessary changes in themselves to overcome it, find themselves not only cured and free from the curses of their childhood and ancestry, but also find themselves living in a new and different world.

What were once loathsome barriers are now welcome challenges. Thoughts previously unwanted, become helpful insights; feelings previously disowned become sources of energy and guidance.

Even if they emerge without a belief in God, such successful patients still generally do so with a very real sense that they have been touched by grace.

Resistance to Grace

Albeit difficult, the path of spiritual growth is open to all.

But why then do so few choose to travel it?

The answer, once again, is in the realm of mystery. One can only assume that grace is available to everyone, that we are all cloaked in the love of God, no one less nobly than another. The only answer is that most of us choose not to heed the call of grace and to reject its assistance.

Christ’s assertion “Many are called, but few are chosen” can be translated to mean “All of us are called by and to grace, but few of us choose to listen to its call”.

The question, then, becomes: Why do most of us actually resist the call of grace?

It is our laziness, the original sin of entropy with which we have all been cursed. It is entropy that causes us to resist that force, to stay at the comfortable easy rung where we now are; or even to descend to less and less demanding forms of existence. It is only natural for us to shrink from the difficulty, the self-discipline required to genuinely love and to spiritually grow.

Another is the issue of power. For the call to grace is a call to a position of higher responsibility and power. For to experience one’s closeness to God is also to experience the obligation to be the agent of God’s power and love. The call to grace is a call of effortful caring, to a life of service and whatever sacrifice that is required. 

But for most people the fear that they might abuse the power is not the central issue in their resistance to grace. Most of us are like children or young adolescents; we believe that the freedom and power of adulthood is our due, but we have little taste for adult responsibility and self-discipline.

As much as we may feel oppressed by our parents – or by society or fate – we actually seem to need to have powers above us to blame for our condition. To rise to a position of such power that we have no one to blame except ourselves is a fearful state of affairs.

Most people want peace without the aloneness of power. And they want the self-confidence of adulthood without having to grow up.

Spiritual growth is inseparable from the process of psychological maturation. For the call to grace is a call to total adulthood, to assume peership with God.

The question we are left with, then, is not why people resist grace; the force of entropy makes it only natural that they should do so.

Rather, the question should be the opposite: How is it that few do heed a call that is so difficult? What distinguishes the few from the many?

Christ himself spoke of the unpredictability of grace: “Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it will go next”, so it is with the spirit. We do not know on whom She will next bestow Her life from heaven.

The Welcoming of Grace

And we are left again with paradox. We do not come to grace; grace comes to us.

Try as we might to obtain grace, it may yet elude us. We may seek it not, yet it will find us. Avidly we may desire spiritual life but then discover all manner of stumbling blocks in our way.

At the same time, it is true that grace is earned. While on one level we do choose whether or not to heed the call of grace, on another it seems clear that God is the one who does the choosing.

How do we resolve this paradox?

We don’t. We can merely prepare ourselves to be fertile ground, a welcoming place. By making ourselves into totally disciplined, wholly loving individuals, then, even though we may be ignorant of theology and give no thought to God, we will have prepared ourselves well for the coming of grace.

The paradox that we both choose grace and are chosen by grace, is the essence of serendipity, “the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for”.

Buddha found enlightenment only when he stopped seeking for it—when he let it come to him. On the other hand, who can doubt that enlightenment came to him precisely because he had devoted sixteen years of his life to seeking it? Sixteen years in preparation. By seeking and at the same time not seeking.

This is as it is with love: by loving, the reward of being loved, which we have not sought by our action of love, will find us. So it is with human love and so it is with God’s love.

And so serendipity is to assist us on our spiritual growth.

Lets not look at it as a gift, but as a learned capacity to recognize and utilize the gifts of grace which are given us from beyond the realms of our conscious will. With this capacity, we will find that our journey of spiritual growth is guided by the invisible hand and unimaginable wisdom of God with infinitely greater accuracy than that of which our unaided conscious will is capable.

So guided, the journey becomes ever faster.

Once we begin to perceive the reality of grace our understanding of ourselves and our conscious as meaningless and insignificant is shattered. The fact that there exist beyond ourselves and our conscious will a powerful force that nurtures our growth and evolution is enough to turn our notions of self-insignificance topsy-turvy. For the existence of such a force (once we perceive it) indicates with incontrovertible certainty that our human spiritual growth is of the utmost importance to something greater than ourselves. This something we call God.

The existence of grace being prima facie evidence not only of the reality of God but also of the reality that God’s will is devoted to the growth of the individual human spirit. What once seemed to have been a fairytale turns out to be the reality. We live our lives in the eye of God, at the centre of God’s vision, God’s concern.

The reality of grace indicates humanity to be at the centre of the universe. This time and space exists for us to travel through. The universe, this stepping-stone, has been laid down to prepare a way for us. But we ourselves must step across it, one by one. Through grace we are helped not to stumble and through grace we know that we are being welcomed.

What more can we ask for?

From a personal summary of M. Scott Peck’s

The Road Less Traveled (1978)