Resisting Evil - Quareness Series 157th "Lecture".
Perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts for many of us today is that of "freedom". For quite some time there's been a growing tendency to believe that what's meant here is the ability to do/impose whatever one wants without restraint i.e. to act arbitrarily without regard to / respect for another's unique value, individual human rights and privacy. Maybe it's time now to redefine the concept more in line with what it was likely originally meant to be i.e. "autonomy".
If we do not resist the evil from without and within ourselves, we risk becoming an absorbed element of it. What would be a voluntary self-corruption and self-infection at the start could easily morph into the active spread of infection among other people and their involvement in its coordination. However, even those who may be passive externally can resist evil internally and whether succumbing or otherwise to fears and temptations can, through exercising their autonomy, turn away from it and repent.
The non-resistors, on the other hand, sooner or later arrive at the need to assure themselves that evil is not so bad and has some positive features that may even predominate. And when aversion subsides and evil is no longer experienced as such, acceptance imperceptibly becomes total and the soul itself is corrupted. It may be somewhat of a spiritual law that the non-resistor to evil is absorbed by it and becomes possessed.
We could say that evil is inherent in each of us and for some there's a passionate desire to unleash "the beast inside"...a gravitation that always strives to expand its field and to overtake us completely. And it's likely the case that the more unprincipled we are, the closer we are to this state and the more natural it is for us not to resist.
Indeed it's quite natural for evil passion, in the absence of resistance, to expand its dominance to fullness with its obsession drawing the soul on its own paths according to its own laws. Having rejected all that restrains and formulates, this non-resisting force becomes the power of great evil, and the end of this frenzy is the end of the psyche and/or bodily existence...insanity or death.
Such a spiritually defective state of enslavement to bad passion captivates in a prison of possessive and elaborate mental mechanisms that reign all-powerful in people's lives...seeing non-resistance as "will", instinctive scheming as "mind" and impulsive evil passion as "feelings". Wrapped in such anti-spiritual passions, those held captive can pronounce their nature in a corresponding anti-spiritual ideology through which a radically comprehensive "godlessness" may merge with their own sickness of the heart and moral depravity.
Spiritually healthy people can tend naturally to cause only irritation and anger in such poorly nourished souls, formenting in them an unhealthy love of power within which flashes of megalomania may inevitably alternate with outbursts of maniacal persecution.
Given today's rapidly increasing medical, political and societal pressures, this tendency towards succumbing to evil passion is likely to add to the cohort of non-resistors...to the potential detriment of our long term wellbeing. In order to encourage greater resistance we may need to delve deeper into the dehumanising implications of what's currently happening in our world.
Are people being set up as software platforms? For example are we being ushered toward obtaining a life-time subscription to an artificial immunity service, with ongoing boosters due to waning immunity? This could be where we are now heading unless we decline to participate. Already we see the human body being increasingly viewed as having the market potential of a natural resource e.g. as a data host. And this growing tendency to regard our bodies as an exploitable market may inevitably involve the desirability for the bio-techno entrepreneur class of replacing our default long-standing natural immunity with a fully artificial tool requiring a life-long "upgrade subscription".
Given that our understanding of the complexity of how everything in the body interacts is still very limited, our scientists in designing a solution to a particular problem (even with good intent) don't necessarily consider how that solution may impact us as a whole. Even though a new medical product say can only be as good or as faulty as the current overall state of the science, the measured outcomes are generally about the particular problem alone. But in reality we are whole organisms with all parts of the body interconnected and working together and any medical intervention in solving one issue could do so at the expense of creating another, to our overall detriment.
When scientists in trying to outsmart nature are not humble enough about how thoroughly they observe the outcome of their effort, they risk underestimating the complexity of the situation and others get to pay the price for their limited vision. Without total honesty about one's limitations and an acute awareness of the undermining desire to control and profit, science can turn into a conveyor belt that harms.
As humans we come largely pre-loaded with inbuilt "security alarms" and it's mostly as yet unknown what kind of long term effects may arise where any such are turned off...say by the application of current technologies. What we do know, however, is that it's the authoritarian, enforced, mandated, pressured approach to addressing our problems which more often than not prepares the ground for evil to flourish...hence the growing need to resist the "development" direction seemingly being set today.
In putting these few words together, I'm reminded of the wisdom of the long-standing golden rule which sets out that we do to others as we would have others do to us, and that what we do to others we do to ourselves. In an increasingly interconnected world we surely need to fully take on board both of these aspects, if we are to have any realistic chance of sustaining our species and advancing our civilisation.
May I also refer the reader back to my earlier..."A Short Spiritual Lesson"...of April, 2018 accessible via the navigation panels at top and bottom of this page, which might be of some relevant interest in this broad context.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
December, 2021.