So truth seekers have enemies then? Gees, who would have thunk it? Those living within the kingdom of heaven have to put up with evil doers who sow the weeds of untruth. Yet the Master says that those evil weeds must continue to exist along side the good wheat until the harvest lest the good ones get damaged. Is there punishment for the evil weed sower himself, or only his deeds? We’re not told in this parable, but we know that, “within every sin is concealed the seed of its own destruction.” (53:9.8)
Isn’t the lack of peace and the state of anxiety enough punishment? There is no “balance sheet” of justice as in the Book of Judgment taught me in my youth. The punishment of evil and of sin both lie within the mind and the vicissitudes suffered by a lack of faith and love response just as the rewards for faith and love are similar in how the mind is thusly affected by these free will choices (both the punishment and the reward are but the responses experienced and the further effects of either choice upon future choices – there is no need for judge and jury to verify those results that are intrinsic and inevitable to both sets of choices made). So, yes there is “punishment” but it is not administered upon us by any third party or even God I do not think – all beings suffer to the degree they are not aligned with universe reality and spirit gravity….and that alignment is always up to the choice of every free will being in time and space.
And I know we are taught that all is recorded for our further education to come but God does not punish evil or the evil doer for evil does not exist in spirit-reality – its consequences are for education of self to assist in the shifting of the seat of identity – and such consequences are relentless and persist until better choices are made…..at least until so many consciously bad choices twist the self into reality irrelevance that we cannot perceive the better way any longer I think.
(1674.5) 149:5.3 “Much of man’s sorrow is born of the disappointment of his ambitions and the wounding of his pride. Although men owe a duty to themselves to make the best of their lives on earth, having thus sincerely exerted themselves, they should cheerfully accept their lot and exercise ingenuity in making the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s troubles take origin in the fear soil of his own natural heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pursues.’ ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, for it cannot rest, but its waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’
The lack of peace is designed to be the motivation FOR peace…..and not truly punishment I don’t think. God has no interest in punishments but for the voluntary pursuit of TB&G resulting in sublime joy. This is a self modulating and correcting process – the more aligned we are the better everything is and becomes and vice versa. We must pay attention to our outcomes and how those make us feel and thereby make better choices and align our behaviors with reality…and when the fruit comes, we may know it is by those better choices that they do so.
(1674.6) 149:5.4 “Seek not, then, for false peace and transient joy but rather for the assurance of faith and the sureties of divine sonship which yield composure, contentment, and supreme joy in the spirit.”
(1176.5) 107:0.5 It is the Adjuster who creates within man that unquenchable yearning and incessant longing to be like God, to attain Paradise, and there before the actual person of Deity to worship the infinite source of the divine gift.
I have wondered if this yearning diminishes over time by our refusal to respond to it? We are told in the parables that the kingdom is like the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price which seems to say it must be our heart’s desire, its greatest desire of all. What if it’s not? Is one who does not hear and respond to the whisper in their mortal life really to be an agondontor if they survive but did not yearn and seek and find prior to the rehabilitation and training worlds? Finaliter status is for all who eventually fuse but I wonder about the finaliter agondontor corps?
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
