Does evil exist? So many people don’t believe in evil anymore. “Good and evil is just a story made up by religion,” they may say. Why then do most of the movies in our culture show the forces of good and evil waging war? Why do the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, Star Wars, or shows like Stranger Things strike such a deep chord in the human psyche?
I define evil in the human being as simply unconscious actions coming from fear, which open the doors to cruelty in self and the other. Evil in the world I define as the force that wants to tear down and destroy love and life. Greed, lust for power, cruelty, and oppression in all its twisted forms, are all evil.
There are many questions that live inside the human soul. What is truly happening in our society right now? Why do we rape, murder, wage war, and torture each other? Why are we killing each other, other species, and the earth? Why is there so much cruelty on the road when we drive? Why is there so much hatred online? When did human cruelty become so commonplace? What is the force that is possessing the soul of humanity? These questions are part of the heart’s natural response to the presence of evil in our world.
We cannot plead innocent ignorance to the evil forces at play in our world. After all, they are reflecting what is happening inside our own soul. Through understanding everything in our own soul we become forces for understanding, compassion, and liberation for all others. We must know demonic possession. We must understand the divisive energy of our culture intimately to understand the evils of our time. When we have empathy and understanding for great evil, we can truly operate for the good. When we know the enemy with a compassionate heart, we are best equipped for the battle. And in this battle even evil has a place in our world and needs to be embraced as the giver of freedom that it is. Without evil we become slaves of the good. We must have evil in order to have the freedom to choose good. So evil is necessary in this world. Acting from evil is not necessary and simply promotes more suffering.
This Dark Age
In this dark age of materialism we find ourselves in, so many don’t even believe there is a soul. In the 1800s and earlier, when the Romantic poets, like Wordsworth and Keats, held the world with their heart-centered poetry, an atheist was someone who didn’t believe in a monotheistic god. However, everyone believed in the soul of nature. It wasn’t until the age of reason, or as I like to call it, the age of ignorant stupidity, that we stopped believing in our inherent connection to nature and all that is. Stepping away from our direct relationship from nature, we lost our connection our heart. The heart is the great discerner of good and evil. Whatever we believe nowadays, the Truth is that we are torn between the forces of good and evil, just as we have always been. There’s a war being waged in the spiritual world over the soul of humanity. Part of the way the evil forces try to win the war is by denying the existence of evil. This way evil can hide in shadows or even in plain sight.
As singer and songwriter Bob Dylan sang, “Yes, you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” It’s clear who our culture is serving. Just look around – our culture is an embodiment of evil. Look at children growing up and notice how much cruel bullying happens inside the play yard. Look at all the mass shootings in our world. How do we treat the homeless or the transgender people? How do we treat autistic or developmentally disabled people? Look at the way we’ve treated people of the first nations or indigenous peoples all over the world. The list of cruelty that exists on earth is nearly unimaginable to an open-hearted, innocent person: childhood sex trafficking, satanic ritual sexual abuse, ostracism of gay, transgender, and all sorts of “nonconforming” individuals. I would have never imagined as a child that this would be the world we live in today. What happened to all our hopes and dreams for humanity? Is this all we’ve come to?
Cruelty Is What Rules Our Fallen Culture
We look back at the times of Nazi Germany, as if we are morally above that. Nazi Germany was obvious evil. Our times are possessed by subtle evil, which hides in every corner of our society. We can see it in the way the commercial advertising industry bombards and rapes our attention. It’s underneath our bank structures, and hidden inside the guidelines of our marriages and families. It’s there in the exploitation of the culture at work. We can feel it in the school systems and in the government and politics. We will be trapped in evil’s terrible grips until we grow up and face the facts that not only does evil exist, it is also possessing our culture. The human race is like a pack of lemmings hurtling to our own destruction by following the course of evil.
Where is Evil Located?
Is evil outside of us or inside of us? The answer to this question is an emphatic yes! Evil is both outside and inside of us. I do not subscribe to a specific religion or creed. The Christians had a good clear vantage point on evil, among many of the religions. In the Bible, Romans chapter 12, Jesus was quoted as saying, “Do not be overcome by evil. But overcome evil with good.” The goodness that we must overcome evil with is the goodness in our nature. We were planted with a seed of deep goodness; each and every one of us. We are free to water that seed. We are free to take on a desire for power and to dominate others and succumb to the forces of evil. We get to make this free choice to follow the goodness in our nature or be tempted by the “Dark Side of the Force,” as they say in the Star Wars movies.
Dealing With Evil on the Inside
When you don’t divide against yourself, you leave no space for evil. Evil only comes after self-abandonment. When you stay solidly home in all your feelings, there’s no place for evil to enter. You’ve sealed the doorway for it, with your own self-love. When you embrace your fears as soon as you are aware of them, you set up a process in motion that keeps you deeply connected to your heart. If you fall prey to evil in a moment, that’s okay. Just pick yourself back up, love yourself, love your fear and close the gap in your heart where evil crept inside.
Dealing With Evil on the Outside
Most of us see evil only on the outside and not on the inside. We identify ourselves as good. We look at the outer world, and see all the corruption and greed, or whomever opposes us, and say we are not like that. And, perhaps we aren’t. But the potential for evil exists inside all our souls. Look closely, and you will find your potential is limitless. The potential for evil is part of this limitless potential. When someone outside of you is embodying evil, stand in truth and love. Meet them with both empathy and fierceness. Do not allow their evil to run you or the situation. Remember, do not judge them. Simply discern the evil they are coming from, and attempt to bring them back to the light of truth and love. Some people need to wander in darkness to learn. It hurts our heart to watch this, but we can’t control another’s path.
Subtle Evil
When we believe in the mind and thought over feelings and intuition, we engage in subtle evil. When we dismiss others’ perspectives without empathy, and we take a power position over them, we engage in subtle evil. When we believe in and embrace materialism, and deny the spirit and energy, we again engage in subtle evil. It’s okay to believe whatever we believe; however, when we deny the experiences of others because we put our beliefs in front of them, we are engaging in an act that darkens our heart and soul with evil.
How Evil Possesses the Human Soul
Evil possesses the human soul through unconscious fear. When we are afraid and we go unconscious to the fear, or deny the fear in any way, we open up a portal for evil to come into our heart and soul. Evil starts off with a small act of self-betrayal, when we don’t accept our feelings or our experience. Next, we often build some kind of story for how we are wrong or how another person is wrong. We gather evidence to convince ourselves that this story is true. We spin ourselves into the protagonist role typically, when we vilify the others. Or, we may cast ourselves as the villain if we are internalizing the story that we are evil, and thus become evil toward ourselves.
Evil often masquerades as good. Just like in the Crusades, or in the conquest of the Americas, and in many of the great evils that have existed on earth, the vast majority of people taken over by evil believe they are acting on behalf of good. They have spun narratives with themselves as the hero, similar to suicide bombers or soldiers fighting for some corrupt war.
In the name of God, so many atrocities have been committed. Jihad, where people are attacking other peoples in the name of Allah or any God, is a fall of the true commitment. The real holy war or Jihad is the one we fight everyday within our soul. By opening our heart and soul to who we truly are, and what we are here to do, we become a holy warrior for the true good.
There Are No Evil People
There are evil forces which possess people. By realizing that all people have inherent goodness in them, we give up on no one and leave no one behind. In this way, we do not box anyone in and we stay open hearted to everyone, no matter what they have done. This doesn’t mean we allow people who have killed and raped into our home or our bed. It just means, we don’t wall ourselves off from anyone; we keep an open heart and mind to everyone, while doing whatever we want.
How Evil Spreads
Evil spreads through judgments in our minds, cruelty in our actions, and condemnations of ourselves and others. Evil infects us through the mind. It poisons our thoughts and consumes our whole hearts and souls through this pattern of negative thinking. If you can catch the negative thinking and rid yourself of all beliefs that you or anyone else are bad, you can stop it from possessing your mind.
When we are possessed by evil, we must realize it’s okay. It’s a part of life. We can not dwell in the house of the good and not know evil. We must know the enemy. We must understand the mindset and what drives a person to rape, torture, and murder. When we understand the subtle little evil we are all capable of falling into, it’s easier to empathize with the greater evil acts.
Rape, torture and murder, are aspects of the human experience. We want to understand this through empathy of what it is like to be a rapist, torturer, and murderer. If judging and condemning these actions would have ended it, we would be free of them already. Given that they still exist in our society, we need to understand them and learn from the many lessons they have for us. I’m not saying we need rape, torture, and murder to continue. In fact, I’m saying the opposite. Let’s learn everything we can from these horrendous and evil patterns of experience so we can end them for humanity. We must see the innocent child beneath the most barbaric mass murderer. When we extend our empathic heart to even people who have committed the most heinous of crimes, we can extend our love to everyone and everything. Nothing is left out of our love.
Facing Evil
By facing evil, and looking it in the eyes with the heart of compassion for any who have been possessed by evil forces, we become agents of the good. When we serve the beings of light and love with all our hearts, and allow no place for evil to enter our heart, we hold true to our values and everything we do becomes a force for good. Let’s end the denial of evil and choose to be good. In the words of my own song “Choose Love,” “Choose love, choose life! Choose to feel and open your heart.”
If you like this article there’s many more we have available. Turn Poison into Love is also about evil’s impact. Please join us in taking a stand against evil and supporting the good that is fundamental to human nature.
If these words resonate for you, join the revolution. Take an active role in Heart-Centered Revolutions mission to forge a world that works. Join us on social media. You can attend workshops and online classes… We have more articles to read on our website and there are several books and options for individual and group work to bring these principles into your everyday life. If you’d like to connect with me, I’m on Facebook at Heart-Centered Revolutions and you can contact me here.
Tell us what you thought about this article. Like us on Facebook and share your thoughts.
Continue your exploration of heart-centered principles with a new article on our blog every weekday. For more on how to bring heart-centered principles into your everyday life, we have a collection of books covering an assortment of topics. We also offer in-person workshops. Register for them here.
If these words and ideas truly resonate with you and make your soul sing, visit us online and join the revolution!
Heart-Centered Revolutions is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to forging a world that works for everyone. We can’t do it alone – we need you!
