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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

The seeds of Evil within every human heart

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We tend to look upon the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Lex Luthors, the Hannibal Lectors, of the world as embodiments, the foci, of Evil in the world. Toward them, we feel a sense of separateness, a sense of totally other.

In this misperception, we are informed by saints and philosophers, we not only delude ourselves but serve to strengthen latent Evil within. 

D.H. Lawrence: "This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten."

Robert Louis Stevenson: “All human beings ... are commingled out of good and evil.”

Daniel Handler: “People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

Christopher Hitchens: “As Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. [There is the case of] General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well… He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that.”

Carol Matas: “We are alive. We are human, with good and bad in us. That's all we know for sure.”

Albert Camus: To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Iris Chang: Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Mark Twain: "Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

Fanny Kemble: “The whole gamut of good and evil is in every human being, certain notes, from stronger original quality or most frequent use, appearing to form the whole character; but they are only the tones most often heard. The whole scale is in every soul, and the notes most seldom heard will on rare occasions make themselves audible.”

Austin O’Malley: “The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.”

Charles Spurgeon: "Beware of no one more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us."

Arthur Byron Cover: “Do not be dismayed to learn there is a bit of the devil in you. There is a bit of the devil in us all.”

Benjamin Whichcote: “In many cases, it is very hard to fix the bounds of Good and Evil, because these part, as Day and Night, which are separated by Twilight.”

Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology: New Paths in Psychology, 1912: "If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures."

Many labor under the misperception that "good people" have nothing in common with "bad people."

This view is encouraged by traditional religion with its claims of "believe this set of true doctrines, obey our infallible leader, pray these authorized prayers," and, magically, one is transformed into a "good person," such that, even God will be impressed.

We must expunge our minds of all such puerile views.

Morten Berthelsen, March 16, 2010: Danish artist dresses her baby as Hitler, exploring the meaning of evil. "We all have evil within us. Even small children are evil towards each other," Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan tells Haaretz as she explains why she chose to dress up her baby daughter as the most evil historical figures of the 20th century. "Even my daughter could end up ruling Denmark with an iron fist. The possibility is still there. You never know." In the controversial photo-series "Potency," Kleivan's daughter Faustina, then a few months old, depicts such infamous personalities as Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Chairman Mao, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Adolf Hitler. The aim is to illustrate just one thing: We all begin life the same. We all have every opportunity ahead of us. To do good, or inexplicable evil. "You need to be conscious that your actions have consequences that impact on your fellow human beings. The people I let my daughter portray didn't give a damn about the human cost, the casualties, their thoughts caused," Kleivan says. "The responsibility is yours alone. You can't throw it away - as a parent, as human beings - and say that you just followed orders."
 

I have learned that the authentically spiritual do not see themselves as superior and "separate" from the rest of humankind.

Jesus told a stroy about a man who thought he was good.

God, I thank thee that I am not as other men

Luke 18: 10-14: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
 
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
 
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
 
And Jesus said, I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
 

The truly spiritual meet with Evil on intimate terms, within their own deepest selves. They understand, as most yet do not, that Evil, like a cougar ready to spring, lies right at the door of the heart.

This potential toward selfishness, egocentrism, which is the root of Evil, lives as close neighbor, intimate enemy, within the volitional domain of each individual. It is our glory as human beings to think, to grow, to change, to choose!;but this sacred process, an ability to become something new, can suffer perversion, can be turned inward.

See this principle expressed in the allegorical story of Cain:

Genesis 4: 6-7, New Living Translation: “Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”

Bible commentators inform us that the Hebrew here supplies a pictorial metaphor of a "wild animal crouching at the door" of one's heart! In a moment, any person can choose wrongly, can slip over the line  into the domain, the insanity, of the Small Ego. This is what spiritual teachers, such as Eckhart Tolle, mean when they say that we must "stay present" to ourselves, our true selves.

There is a process of coming to know oneself famously called "the long dark night of the soul." It is the mandated introspection of every person who decides that the time has come to awaken to one's true self.

The great souls of history are ones who have seen what many do not. They have become aware of the essential oneness of all people. And the bonds that unite all are forged not only by a perception of human glory and light, but of man's frailty and dark side.

The truly spiritual are not deceived about others nor about themselves. Having descended to the depths of their own hearts, they see clearly what they are made of.

"How can you think of saying to your friend, 'Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,' when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye." (Matt. 7: 1-5, New Living Translation)

This clarity of spiritual vision offers spiritual persons a tolerance and compassion for all; because they see, beginning with their own hearts, that the potential for Evil is part of the human condition and that no one is exempt.