[ethereal]

Thanks for the replies everyone

Originally Posted by Adam

I would like to add one more conclusion, for your approval: Evil is a perception of the ego, based on how it observes suffering. When you do evil, you perceive that you are causing others to suffer. When others do evil to you, you perceive them increasing your suffering. If you quit observing the suffering, then evil goes away... but it is awfully hard to stop observing something that is right in your face.

Good thing you brought up the topic, there's a lot of good vs. evil going on, especially on this forum reflections of the spiritual warrior archetype.

Some thoughts of mine:

I agree that good and evil, pleasure and pain are both perceptions of the ego. It seems like there are two ways of reducing suffering:

1) to do "good" for people so that they are at a place where their desires are met - often temporary
2) to remove the duality between pleasure and pain - more permanent

I like Nisargadatta Maharaj's explanation that there is no good or evil, happiness or suffering -- only what is necessary and unnecessary. This would help explain the workings of suffering in order to repay karmic debts. In that case, most of what we call "evil" goes under unnecessary, since it ties you down with even more negative karma to transcend, though this depends on the situation, i.e. triage.

Perfect Peace (level of consciousness just below Enlightenment) is unconditional love for your entire environment... When the ego experiences evil, it becomes harder to love the source of that suffering, whether it be yourself or someone/thing else. Anger is a reaction made only while unconscious... While being angry forms a habit of anger, it is very easy to defeat anger by being conscious. Fear is a logical process caused by lack of understanding... Anger causes suffering directly, but usually in small amounts.

Some great points!

A quote about anger by Dr. Hawkins:
"You can be angry because you love and you’re devoted. You care about life. That’s different from anger as where you live."

I think that's a huge distinction that many people aren't making; they think some negative thought, or get irritated by something, and then they start feeling guilty about it, like "I wasn't supposed to do that, now I'll attract even more negativity," or "This anger isn't good, I should stop that." This often just represses the anger and emotions into the unconscious, so that while it doesn't seem to consciously bother people, the problem still remains unsolved at its core, and can have negative consequences.

Underlying many of these so-called "negative" emotions is Love; the key is to recognize that, and stay in Love, rather than get carried away by anger, fear, guilt, or desire. When this occurs, Love becomes the background and "equilibrium" state of being, so that negativity is spontaneously allowed when necessary but doesn't come up when unnecessary.

Fear rarely causes suffering directly, except that it brings suffering directly to your consciousness, causing you to observe much more evil than you normally would.

Ergo, fear, more than anger, is the enemy to peace. I would argue that fear is the greatest enemy to peace. It is certainly the greatest enemy of liberty, which is a prerequisite to peace.

Indeed, fear is more deep-seated and repressed into the unconscious more often than anger. We try to ignore what we fear so much that we unconsciously avoid it and forget that we are the ones projecting fear into the world in the first place. Thus, the way out is hidden by our own minds and so it seems like there's no solution!

The reason why people say to "conquer your fears" is that it forces you to confront that unconscious projection mechanism in your mind and see that it is fallacious and false. However, it isn't the action itself that conquers the fear, but weakening/removing that association in our minds. This would explain why sometimes we do what we fear over and over again, but the fear still remains, why hypnotism works, and why proper understanding removes fear permanently.

Wow, another long post; like Akashic noted, I've been thinking about these things a lot, perhaps too much for my own good I think I'm addicted to that "aha!" feeling, as probably many of you guys are also