Dear Professor Blasi,
There are many things I feel I forgot to say when you visited last. For instance, regarding "good" and "evil": for me, the thing about evil is that its just so pathetic, as in, you share a pathos with it, that you yourself knows what it is like to feel "evil" emotions and think "evil" thoughts. There is a shared connection between good and evil, good often finding evil worthy of sympathy, empathy and pity. Inside of me, there is even a grudging appreciation for the decadent beauty, the streamlined seduction involved in the webs of the wicked. I myself have spent many minutes of my life, marveling in awe at the sheer reach, the gargantuan breadth of evil. I have since just ceased to make a fuss about if a thing is "evil"; or rather, I try not to freak out about the waves of dark intent that break before me. I have to, I have to remain calm as society flings itself to pieces, and so I have come to understand evil as my neighbor.
Yes I like the good side and want to walk in that light as much as possible, but it doesn't mean that I don't also enjoy the shade once in a while, that I don't wave to my demon neighbors and respect Satan as a powerful entity that is within us all, but only so much as we give him room to breathe, speak, act in our minds and bodies. Isn't somebody, somewhere feeling and thinking all the dark things that you or I have also felt, that someone else might think is "evil"? And couldn't that person just as easily be you, right now, about something? Wouldn't you sympathize with that pain, even in a demon, and wish to help? Haven't you yourself acted, thought as demons might? And when evil may also hide inside good, curled and waiting forever to strike, who even knows anymore? And so, good may also wrap itself in evil like a spy. But mostly, good and evil balance out on the physical plane, like a yin yang, a wonderful symbol about the natural ebb and flow of everything balanced as well as the idea that a thing only begins to exist where it's opposite ends and is therefore born and shaped by its rival energy. If a soul only ever knew love and peace and never hate and pain, it would gain no insight into how much it should truly appreciate the value of positive feelings.
The first time I went to the psych ward I spoke at length with a pathological liar and sex addict about things like this. For me, the first rounds of antipsychotics were wreaking havoc, rendering me unable to walk. In my suffering, this conflicted man came to me with a newspaper clipping about a Cherokee Indian teaching her grandson:
"A fight is going on inside me," she says. "It is a terrible battle between two wolves. One is evil: he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good: he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too." The boy asks, "Which wolf will win?" The Cherokee woman replies, "The one you feed."
So, in reference to good and evil: can't every breath you take be used for good or evil? Couldn't one even praise both in one breath? Ascension lies in our ability to transcend things like, male and female, life and death, good and evil, by collapsing them, in dialectic fashion. Being able to sit calmly by and in good faith watch good turn evil only to turn good again is the core of Buddhist detachment. Being fine with things like enemies becoming friends, shadow turn to light is what life is all about. The Sun goes off with the Moon, light and shadow skip off hand in hand, inequity becomes strength and grace saves the faithful as the Universe plays both sides always, making a tapestry of time and our lives like living art for all eternity. Enjoying the differences, really appreciating all sides equally, walking as many miles in your shoes as in your enemy's, these things are the start of the path to the deep appreciation of the natural light and dark in all things.
In this way, one can begin to think of Death, but not from the vantage point of a living being. More like knowing spirits slip in and out of the physical and spiritual, or astral, plane all the time. A spirit knows that dying is just what happens when you leave this plane and go back to the spirit world. In a limited, materialistic approach, death of the physical body is the end of that person. "But reincarnation is, of course, a fact. We are soul extensions of our greater soul who keep reincarnating over and over again in the physical worlds, in our quest to realize our true identities as sons and daughters of Oneness. In reality there is no such thing as death. Death is an illusion of the negative-ego thought system. By definition, the ego is that thought system which is over-identified with matter. When we believe we are physical bodies rather than souls living in physical bodies, we then think death is real. Death is nothing more than a transformation from one state of consciousness to another. We have been taught to look at it as the ultimate terror when in reality it is the ultimate release and liberation. In this society we have it all backwards, as we do most things. The ultimate terror should be being born, not dying. As free spirits, when we are born we have come into a tiny baby's limited physical body and be at the mercy of our physical parents. Talk about scary!
Death allows us to be free from the illusion of form and to return to our spiritual home. Coming into incarnation is like donning a diving suit and then trying to get around under water in it. Death is the freedom from this most limited state of consciousness. We die all the time and it is something we are quite familiar with, as every death has a rebirth. Western wedicine tries to keep people alive at all costs. This materialistic identification is not always in line with the soul's purpose. People must realize that continuance of life in a physical body is not the highest possible goal. Cremation purifies the astral plane as well as prevents the poisoning of the Earth from disease-ridden bodies. Burning Sandalwood and having orange light help a soul to ascend as it passes. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says "Where you go when you die is determined by the last thought in your mind before death,". So in some ways, life is just a way to die thinking of God, so that you ascend to the highest level after your passing."
Quoted from "The Complete Ascension Manual" by Joshua David Stone, 1994, Sedona, Arizona
Here is one of my first entries as a blogger about this very thing:
http://www.kartoonzoo.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post.html
Here is another about opposites and paradox and the collapse:
http://www.kartoonzoo.blogspot.com/2013/01/at-most-basic-level-largest-challenge.html
