By Wes Annac, Editor, Culture of Awareness

I wrote the following for the 210th issue of The Culture of Awareness Weekly Newsletter, a paid weekly newsletter you can subscribe to for $11.11 a month.

Income from the newsletter helps me get by and ensures I can continue to offer free content on the blog, and every subscription is appreciated. The option to subscribe is given at the bottom of this post. 

To begin for this week – Dharma has different meanings in different religions but generally describes the same concept. According to Wikipedia, the religions which use this term include Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism.

Buddhists refer to it as ‘cosmic law and order’, and Sikhs define the word dharm as ‘the path of righteousness’.

Each of these religions offer guidance on how to live in alignment with dharma, and it’s a general term accompanied by various concepts – one of which we’ll explore here.

Alignment with dharma seems key to successful conscious living, and while there’s no concrete definition for the term, the teachings we’ll read here address something relevant to it: our perception of good and evil (specifically, the value of focusing on the good over the bad).

Optimism Goes a Long Way

As long as it doesn’t become an excuse to ignore the bad in life, optimism goes a long way. We can’t deny that there’s evil in the world, but we don’t have to focus nearly as much on it as people think.

The only reason we should focus on it at all is to expose it in the powers that be.

Other than that (and other than uprooting and healing our shadow self), we don’t need to feed the worst aspects of humanity by focusing all of our time and energy on them.

If you do, they’ll convince you life is nothing but misery. But if you go out of your way to see and feed the good, it’ll show up more and more in your life as if by magic.

It is magic – the magic of the Law of Attraction and your connection with a higher consciousness, which reminds you that you’re a spiritual being.

A Stormy Sea

Our first quote surprisingly comes from the bible.

In Isaiah 57:20, we’re told that “The heart of a wicked man is like a stormy sea.” ⁽¹⁾

Picture the heart of a wicked man. I define wickedness as being selfish, cruel, angry and nasty, and neither the mind nor the heart of the wicked is ever at peace.

They may experience occasional periods of peace and wonder why it isn’t a regular part of their life, but the moment their mind stirs them back into frustration, they abandon inner peace and go down their usual spiral.

When this happens, the mind and heart can be likened to a stormy mental/emotional sea because of the lack of peace, calm and equanimity. They experience constant frustration, but no matter how far down they fall, there’s always hope for recovery.

No Longer Noticing Evil

Benedicta Ward tells us of a man who let so much ‘goodness’ into his life that he ceased to notice evil altogether.

“Abba Ammonas advanced to the point where his goodness was so great, he took no notice of wickedness.” ⁽²⁾

Can you imagine the kind of enlightenment you’d have to experience to no longer notice evil at all?

I’m not enlightened, but some days I feel more evolved than others. Even on these days I can’t help but notice the bad in the world, and I don’t ignore it or focus so much on it that I fail to see the good.

I try to address it, and when it brings me down I try to remember that there’s good in the world. Even when I can’t find it in the world, I find it in meditative bliss.

Evil Lives in the World of Jiva

Sri Ramakrishna explains that evil exists only in the world of jiva, which is the individual ego-driven self who’s separate from the whole.

“You may ask, ‘How, then, can one explain misery and sin and unhappiness?’ The answer is that these apply only to the jiva. Brahman is unaffected by them. There is poison in a snake; but though others may die if bitten by it, the snake itself is unaffected by the poison.” ⁽³⁾

Source is unattached to the ways of the world, he tells us.

“There is no doubt that virtue and vice exist in the world; but God Himself is unattached to them. There may be good and bad smells in the air, but the air is not attached to them.” ⁽⁴⁾

Believing in the Good

The channeled entity ‘Seth’ likens faith in the good to spiritual abundance.

“Quite simply, a belief in the good without a belief in the evil, may seem highly unrealistic to you, This belief, however, is the best kind of insurance that you can have, both during physical life and afterward.

“It may outrage your intellect, and the evidence of your physical senses may shout that it is untrue, yet a belief in good without a belief in evil is actually highly realistic, since in physical life it will keep your body healthier, keep you psychologically free of many fears and mental difficulties, and bring you a feeling of ease and spontaneity in which the development of your abilities can be better fulfilled.” ⁽⁵⁾

The senses often lead us astray, and we let them mislead us when we focus more on the bad than the good.

 “I understand that the concept does indeed offend your intellect, and that your senses seem to deny it. Yet you should already realize that your senses tell you many things which are not true; and I tell you that your physical senses perceive a reality that is a result of your beliefs.” ⁽⁶⁾

(Continued in planetary healing segment; subscribe below to read the rest)

Sources:

(1) Isaiah 57:20

(2) Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. London and Oxford: Mowbray Books, 1981, 27.

(3) Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 102.

(4) Ibid., 246-7.

(5) Jane Robert, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. New York, etc.: Bantam Books, 1974, 183-4.

(6) Loc. Cit.