The Good and Evil in Man

There is also Good and Evil outside man, but ultimately that too is about the influence it has on man’s inner life. Whether you believe in God, Satan or extraterrestrials, that doesn’t matter for what man himself can do for his inner life. I want to indicate what we can do regardless of what is true or false outside of us. Whatever you believe in, you can apply this.

How does Good and Evil come into man?

We are formed according to what we experience. If we grow up with violence and hatred, chances are we will act accordingly. If we have loving, understanding parents, chances are we will raise our children that way. So the first thing to notice is that our own life experiences largely determine how we behave.

But this is not always the case. In the same family, one half of a twin can be sweet and kind while the other half can be criminal and harsh. A child of the Mafia can help people in need while a child of the Bankers can go over corpses. So apparently we are born with a certain character which can differ enormously from our parents, educators and environment.

What can we do ourselves?

Our inner resistance to one or the other determines whether we can deviate from our environment. If you are good inside but cannot resist the evil in the environment, you often join the evil anyway. If you are evil inside and unwilling to embrace the good in the environment, you hypocritically join in and continue to do evil.

As we get older, we also get wiser. In the first half of our lives, we are more at the mercy of our environment than in the second half. We are given opportunities in our mid-life to break out and change ourselves. This is not easy, because behavior is, after all, ingrained for many years by then. Being able and willing to resist also plays a big role here.

But our environment changes too!

We change, but so do others and our environment. Those surroundings can become more prosperous, but also poorer. Coming out of a disaster or war, you start building together. After building, we maintain and that requires different characters. At the end of a cycle there is breaking down and that is where wars begin. What happens in our inner lives when freedoms disappear?

European countries hated Germany for decades because of their role in the two world wars (you could also say it was one world war). How much evil crept into Europeans as a result of their hatred? How many generations did it take to phase out that hatred? And if the evil is then forgotten, can it be shown that the evil is still there?

How do we tell our stories?

Do we teach our children “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” or “turn the other cheek”? Or do we deepen awareness with a conversation about good and evil with the goal of enriching the inner self with good and seeing the evil but leaving it outside? How do you do that when more than half of your family has been exterminated by evil? Are you aware that there are people going through this right now?

Even if you are on the right side of history you can imagine innocent people being killed and their families can come to hate. The process of awareness is a long road of trial and error. We are not going to see it that the world can live in peace and human beings will only be good. You can really only take a few steps in awareness yourself.

How do you change?

You would think that you change by thinking differently and behaving differently. That intention is indeed important, but this is not actually how you can change substantially. You will have to go at a deeper level in your being to actually become more conscious. Deeper than the mental playing field, namely at the soul level. It is a spiritual journey.

This is also how you are programmed, the description you were given at birth. This is how your character is formed, especially during your first four years of life. This is how your being is connected to God and the unseen world. You must reach that deeper level in order to change substantially. This is also the mission to humanity. It’s purely individual and nowhere religious.

What you sow you will reap!

What happens when you enter a room and people are suddenly silent? You get an uneasy feeling. You sense that something is strange. The same when you step into a square where a big fight has just taken place. And you also sense what the atmosphere is like at a birthday party you just arrived at. Does it feel good or does it feel uncomfortable? Unconsciously you can go along with that energy present there.

Darkness is the absence of light. Evil is the absence of good. Evil is the absence of awareness and wisdom. Ignorance leads to evil in the extreme. Each person personally contributes to the energy in his environment. Do you radiate good or evil? Do you catch the good or the evil? Are you aware of this and what is your intention?

Know yourself!

Get to know yourself by asking questions. By doing so, you also help others know themselves. Be reserved with your opinions about others, the questions are for gaining insights. Good thrives in openness and wonder. The heart can heal and project the good being into the world. The personal return is a finer and healthier life.

by Nico Cost for GlobalSouth.co