Date: 20 Jul 2004
From: Barry Snyder <barrymartin@att.net
Subject: A few thoughts on good and evil
Dear Jean,
Maybe this will be helpful in this ongoing dialogue.
Love,
Barry Martin Snyder
There is nothing inherently good or evil at the absolute level. It is the act of judgment which makes anything so. Any attempt to avoid one in favor of the other, gives power to the illusion of duality which throws the mind and soul into conflict and suffering. In fact when painful, distorted images arise within or without, there is a profound opportunity to witness whether one is able to simply be with "what is" without reaction or engagement of ego coping mechanisms. That does not mean that there is no pain or feeling, it simply means there is no judgement, attachment or identification associated with the experience. The experience floats through the clear sky of being without travail or suffering.
God contains all possibilities in creation, all that we deem good and evil at the relative level. Only we judge them as such, a creative action with results in duality and distortion. To deny or avoid any part of this creation is to engage in separation. The bible is clear about what caused the "Fall"....eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we have a reaction, it is easy to turn away and thus not avoid what is going on within and without. A great pitfall on the path is to separate from what we call shadow and evil under the spiritual principle of not wanting to give power to such things.
At a deeper level this is often a strategic effort by the spiritual ego to stay in power by deflecting awareness from the unfinished business within which is being evoked by the experience. When we have faced all the inner and outer demons and open our heart to receive whatever arises there is nothing left but love and compassion. All fear and judgment are gone. This is the end of the road, a place that many of the great ones come to. As Christ Jesus came to on the cross, the total compassion of “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” He could only see a lost and sleeping soul, and he had no judgment, only love and compassion.
If we attach or identify with any end of a polarity, we create duality and thus continue the illusion of separation. Beyond this veil, there is no need for a discussion of what to do about any outer appearances on the stage of the world. They simply are as they are. God evolving into greater levels of self realization in mysterious ways beyond our comprehension. Witnessing from this state of unified being, the appearance of duality literally dissolves and the Oneness alchemically emerges from the fragmented polarities now embraced as one. This is a powerful act of healing and re-unifying that one in the enlightened state is capable of. Conflicts and struggle simply dissolve in the face of this illumined consciousness. And from this perspective, the response that also arises must be from beyond separation and duality. It arises empty and free of a self sense that sees things as good or evil, right or wrong.
The Hsin Hsin Ming by Sengstan, speaks so clearly to this...
The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached.
No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.
From: Barry Snyder <barrymartin@att.net>
Date: 17 Aug 2002
Subject: Not Giving Power to the World of Appearances
Dear Jean,
I watch you walking the fine edge, attempting to present the facts of the nearly incredible horrors of what we as humans create in the separated ego/personality identified state. On one hand it is true what we energize grows and thus we do not want to energize the fear, pain and distortion that is bubbling to the surface nearly everywhere these days. Yet, the shadow must be faced, brought to consciousness for it to be transformed. You handle dealing with this in a way that inspires me.
I would like to add a few thoughts of how I have come to work with this delicate balance. First of all, it is not what we focus on that is energized, but what we "deem" as our truth, our reality. All the distortion we see is but the result of the illusion of separation and denies our inherent divinity. Therefore it is only relatively real and ultimately based in illusion. So, it ultimately has no power, as Jesus Christ demonstrated when he said, "Satan, behind me", or stopped the stoning of the Magdalene with one spoken sentence, cast out demons etc.
Yet as he did, we cannot ignore "evil" for it is destroying life (God as imminent) and is the symptom and doorway to the resolution of our mass forgetting. It is the pain which confronting the shadow evokes that can shatter our separate ego and open our heart. What I witness in myself and so many others is the ease in which the "spiritual ego" can grasp a spiritual concept like, "What you focus on you energize" to avoid facing the realities of the human experience, and our interconnectedness to all beings on this planet.
I have found it easy to sit in bliss and look at it all and say it is illusion. Yet when I sit and read what is going on in the Middle East for example, see film footage etcetera, it once again shatters the subtle shields around my heart and evokes a deep sadness and grief for the suffering and destruction of life on this planet. And it is this process of facing the shadow that arouses deeper levels of embodied love, and the passion to serve through the remembrance that their pain and suffering is mine.
I am brought back to the reality that my brother and sister are in my keeping, and that I must keep turning to the One and asking how I might assist this planet in shifting into the New Heaven and New Earth that is unfolding in the very midst of this growing chaos.
Maybe the most powerful truth I have found is that when I can simultaneously stand in my divinity and hold the ultimate truth of the lack of power and reality of war, hatred, eco-destruction which is being perpetrated by sleeping souls, while also completely standing in my humanness and feel all the feelings that this evokes, something magic happens. My consciousness penetrates to the energetic depths of where these patterns of distortion lie within the collective human psyche for I am one with all of it.
By being willing to face it all, feel it all, go through the sadness, grief and horror, the hopelessness and continually give it up to God/One/All That Is, I form the bridge for spirit to fully penetrate it all, a conduit for transmutation. As I do this I can feel the shifts in my own bodies and chakras and that of the planet. Often as I do this I receive certain illuminations, or insights which as I acknowledge them are seeded into the collective unconscious as energetic seeds of transmutation destined to assist in the healing and transformation of whatever it is that is the issue.
At other times I am called to concrete physical actions. This I experience as the alchemy of the Christ consciousness, where we unify our human and spiritual natures. It is a delicate dance, and I find myself falling to one side or the other at times, and always there is a spiraling into greater and greater levels of realization of the totality of our destiny....... to know ourselves as the Christ, which is the state of being in which the human fully knows itself as God and God fully knows itself as human.
With love,
Barry Martin
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