Gene wrote: We harbor bad motives and risk judgement without actualizing anything and Jesus second example was adultry – same scenario. I take it that this could be interpreted as potential evil, not residing in any absolute, it’s our invention/creation, if you can call it that?? Where is the potential hiding, in our material minds? am I getting off track?
Hey Gene, I’m not sure what you mean by absolute. Actually, I’m not sure what you’re referring to at all, but that has never stopped me from opining . . . hah! Are you saying that having an evil thought is the same as doing an evil action? I don’t think they’re the same, although one can certainly lead to the other, so there is danger in “harboring”. A fleeting evil thought as part of a mental exercise followed by a decision to abandon it is more like problem solving to me. If I take the evil thought and harbor it, or dwell on it and make plans around it . . . well that’s a bad thing. I think the midwayers explained that whole process in the mind of Judas as an example of how evil thinking can lead to evil doing. Jesus had hoped to help turn that around for him, but it didn’t work out. Evil is always only potential until someone makes a free-will decision to actuate it.
Where does it hide? It’s part of imperfection. It’s part of time and space prior to the appearance of the Supreme. Anything less than perfect is potentially evil. But evil is not sin. We choose evil a lot without fully realizing it. We eventually realize it because it doesn’t fit in with reality very well, it causes confusion, chaos and unhappiness if you keep trying to force an evil thing into reality. That’s called a mistake which can be corrected.
Correcting a mistake is part of our education, evolution and growth. It’s the beginning of wisdom. All we have to do is atone, get back in line with reality and God forgives our immature choosing. Think about it. Kids do stupid things that cause problems all the time. They don’t know enough sometimes to make wise decisions, but they learn. Parents correct them and forgive them. It’s okay. It’s not until you know something is wrong, or evil, then do it anyway that it becomes sin.
Concerning the “shalt not” thing. It’s like, you’ve been told, it’s been explained to you and you still choose to go the wrong way . . . that’s bad. It’s an attempt at educating someone. But in reality, people have to choose for themselves. They are free to go against the “shalt not” and many do. Sometimes that’s evil, sometimes it’s sin depending on the level of understanding. But even sin can be turned around, you can choose to go against reality until you become so miserable and unhappy with yourself you desire to change, then there are still mercy credits to heal that situation too, if it’s sincere.
But think about it. We cannot choose right from wrong unless we are capable of entertaining the wrong in our heads and play out the consequences before we act. It’s not that we blindly follow the rules of our divine parent who said “thou shalt not”, we have to understand it too, otherwise we’re doing God’s will out of fear of punishment rather than love. Love requires some kind of understanding of the one loved, it’s relational, a back and forth kind of thing, a constant changing and growing. There’s a sequence to that kind of growth. It may start out as fear, but it eventually is supposed to progress to reverence and then love. The goal for fusion with the Adjuster is to eventually have no room in your mind for even potential evil (see quote 132:3.8 below). There is only love in the mind, love of God (Adjuster), and this love inhibits the emergence of evil potentials in the mind.
149:6.6 The father naturally loves his child, but the child must develop his love for the father from the fear of what the father can do, through awe, dread, dependence, and reverence, to the appreciative and affectionate regard of love.
Here are some quotes that mention evil as potential in relation to imperfection, or distance from divinity. Quote 130:4.14 does a better job of explaining what I tried to say above:
54:01 Potential evil is time-existent in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values.
3:6.2 The will of God is divine truth, living love; therefore are the perfecting creations of the evolutionary universes characterized by goodness – nearness to divinity; by potential evil – remoteness from divinity.
105:6.4 But to attain perfection as an evolutionary (time-creative) experience implies something other-than-perfection as a point of departure. Thus arises imperfection in the evolutionary creations. And this is the origin of potential evil. Misadaptation, disharmony, and conflict, all these things are inherent in evolutionary growth, from physical universes to personal creatures.
111:6.2 On material levels man finds himself subservient to nature, while on spiritual levels he is triumphant over nature and over all things temporal and finite. Such a paradox is inseparable from temptation, potential evil, decisional errors, and when self becomes proud and arrogant, sin may evolve.
130:4.14 Potential evil is inherent in the necessary incompleteness of the revelation of God as a time-space-limited expression of infinity and eternity. The fact of the partial in the presence of the complete constitutes relativity of reality, creates necessity for intellectual choosing, and establishes value levels of spirit recognition and response. The incomplete and finite concept of the Infinite which is held by the temporal and limited creature mind is, in and of itself, potential evil. But the augmenting error of unjustified deficiency in reasonable spiritual rectification of these originally inherent intellectual disharmonies and spiritual insufficiencies, is equivalent to the realization of actual evil.
132:2.10 The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof. A shadow is only relatively real. Actual evil is not necessary as a personal experience. Potential evil acts equally well as a decision stimulus in the realms of moral progress on the lower levels of spiritual development. Evil becomes a reality of personal experience only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.
132:3.8 With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there comes into existence a perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally inhibits the possibility of the emergence of even the concept of potential evil. Such a God-knowing soul casts no shadow of doubting evil when functioning on such a high spirit level of divine goodness.
