Quote:
Originally Posted by chaotic13
Earlier this week I posted a thread about this in the Psychotherapy Forum. My thoughts have kind of spun off from a specific issue that has been really troubling me, but I can’t seem to approach it directly with my T … into something much deeper. So I thought I would bring the deeper discussion here for people who reflect on this stuff a lot and have opinions.
Like many people, I seem to get stuck in a perpetual self-loathing cycle that has some really wondrous parts and some very harmful parts. At the moment I seem to be coming out of the very harmful part. And I wanted to explore the spiritual side of it and the duality that seems to exist not just within me but within humans.
The words I’ve written to describe myself over the past few weeks have been… a beast, a spawn of Satan, a cancer cell in the body of God. However, as I’ve expressed these things at the very same time, I was also expressing a genuine concern about Being these things, a desire to be something other than evil, a sense that I have an important positive contributions to make, a belief that deep inside I am connected to an incredibly powerful positive energy that is telling me that I am no evil, I am one of the infinite ways that GOD manifests itself in the universe. I avoid using a gender specific pronoun here not to make GOD an object. My vision of GOD at the moment is of something that is formless and not limited to some patriarchal/matriarchal concept.
Anyway, today I can’t help but wonder…How can I be truly evil, if I am feeling ashamed and guilty for being evil? If I were truly evil or just an animal, without cognition or an inherently righteous (GOOD) soul, I wouldn’t care if I were evil? But I do care? At least sometimes I care. J Does the fact that I care mean I am inherently GOOD? If so, why when I feel deep instinctual things I’m considered to be EVIL or entertaining unrighteous thoughts? I am EVIL again?
What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe that mankind’s true nature is inherently evil? If you don’t believe that we are inherently evil, why do you think we are often taught that some of our deep human needs or at least our instinctual drive to meet these needs is evil? Of course one deep need I’m referring to is sexual or physical connection, but there are others (at least I think there are). I guess I am just wondering is there REALLY a GOOD and EVIL or is this just a concept that mankind has developed?
(I get that maybe my negative self image was something given to me by others in childhood--this post isn't intended to be about abuse and its effects.) It about the concept of GOOD and EVIL and if this is a concept limited to man.
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Good and Evil are polarized moral concepts, they are made up by humans. I think that empathy should be used when deciding on actions. By empathizing how your action will affect others you can make an informed choice. If you cannot feel empathy, then you need to rely on the moral codes that have evolved over time...
I would concentrate on trying to forget good and evil.. every action is based on a complex structure of contexts.. therefore very few actions can be judged the same... by using simple childish black and white concepts like good and evil I think we are robbing ourselves of what it is to be a fully (as full as possible given the limits) developed human.