God is within every being. But it is not necessary that every being is good. The question that arises is how can every being have God, but not be good?
The answer: every being has God because every being is empowered, is ignited, is energized by the power of God. But every being is not good because this being has got its ego and this ego carries with it a mind, memory, an intellect or karmas of past lives and experiences… And because a being carries its own karmas, its mind, its intellect, it need not be good.
Why are there so many terrorists? Why are there so many thieves, gangsters and rapists? Because these people are experiencing the result of their karmas. The law of karma, being reformative, is reforming these people as they live and equating their karmas or these people are redeeming their karmas with circumstances, actions, pain, pleasure and all kinds of things.
Therefore, remember that everybody has God, but not everybody is good. Our challenge is not to see the ‘everybody’ who is not good, our challenge is to see beyond, and see the God that is within everybody. By seeing that God, our God will always be manifested.
So that means that ego is more powerful than the good that empowers a person.
There must have been one first life … the one lived without the karma of past lives … what made that life go bad? Ego?
Isn’t karma very inefficient? In the process of being ‘reformed’ by karma, these terrorists, thieves, gangsters and rapists are ruining the ordinary (or maybe good) lives of other people.
God is all that exists, the good and the bad… but your examples are rather simplistic.
Take Amma for example, a motivating speaker/spiritualist from India with millions of world followers who spends much of donations she gets to help the poor, but will not speak against her own “cast system” that benefits the very few. Is she good or bad?
What seems is that when God manifested us human beings, He gave us a free will to choose. At that time, we didn’t have any past karmas or past actions because we were new, just manifested, but we did have a free will to choose and intellect to decide between this or that. Probably, these choices in the first life created the positive and negative cause and effects that created the continuity of the future world.
The problem with our vision of karma and thinking that it is inefficient is because we don’t realize that karma is not a law of just this lifetime, but a law of previous lifetimes too. That is what karma is supposed to be, and therefore when we say that karma is ruining the lives of other people, it is actually not doing so. It is only equating the negative karma of other people, which has already been a burden on them. If today something bad happens to a good person, it should be because this so-called good person has a negative karma due to their past actions; therefore, when something bad happens to us, the law of karma encourages us to welcome the bad thing because what actually happens is that the bad effect of karma is nullifying our negative karma, which in turn will be giving us a clean slate for our future life.
everything is karma. Not responsible for the mess created in the middle east either? The problem is that the political-war machine can only be stopped the day individuals comprehend that war is racket. Conflicts are thus the responsibility of everyone.
War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General. The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier (free available on the net)
or. there exist only nature and that includes the spiritual realms, and there is no overlord, no dictum by which we pertain to the rather spurious notion of good and evil. These are dualistic things, and even the universe being composed entirely of polarity/duality is Not composed of opposites in the extreme and without middles and variation of said polarity.
Why can’t God be both the God of good and evil? Why do we have to say: when we do good, that is God working through us, but when we do evil, that is us acting of our own ego-driven will?
Who are we to understand the true nature of good and evil? Who are we to look up at God and say to him: this is the prescription for good behavior. Adhere to it lest you are not our God!
There are roughly 4,000 religions in the world; each one has its own prescription for what counts as good and what counts as evil. Do you really think any one in particular has it right? Do you really think any one is special enough to say that God chose to reveal true morality to it and lie to the rest?
God is a being beyond our comprehension. He is beyond good and evil. The extent to which any man can appreciate good and evil will still fall within human limitations, and it is folly to believe that we have a firm grasp on anything absolute and universal in the sphere or morality.
All religions are good, and no religion is bad because all religions promote the fact that there is a God. The truth is that there is one God. Different religions view God from their perspective, and therefore, it looks like there are so many Gods, but the power is one and that power is in everybody; hence, the power called God is both of good and evil. He is the producer and director of this film called life. Therefore, He is the hero as much as He is the villain. It is for us to be able to perceive that everything is God. He is both the cause and the effect – the effect being the universe and the cause being the power Himself or God. It is for us to make the mind silent and calm, without letting it wander to think aimlessly, and introspect on the truth about God. Then we will realize the truth.
As i said in some other thread, pleading for right thing does not entail that the argument would become watertight also by default.
To make a perfect pleading, one has to know how to argue besides knowing the very details on the case in the hand. Otherwise, even pleading for the truth, the case would not able to withstand the probing counters for long.
Though, it is good to see that AIR is at least trying to plead his case this time. Good luck to him.
Because God is the title for Principle by which things work. When you are willingly doing “good”, you are willingly obeying that principle, thus "God (the good) working through you. But if you are trying to “buck the system”, do things that don’t work, you are not following that underlying principle, thus you are doing “evil” (the not-good).
The term “God” refers only to that which actually works, not to that which doesn’t work.
It merely takes a decent philosopher. Who are “we” to say there can be no such philosopher?
The “ego” is the “over-doing” of it. The essence is good, even of the ego. But it isn’t an “ego”/“pride” issue until it goes unrestrained. It is like the engine in your car. It is good. But an engine ungoverned (loose throttle) is not good.
The attempt was to get more people to firm up their “throttle” so as to not cross the rational line between being a fruitful (aka “sinless”) thing to being a fruitless (aka “sinful”) and dangerous thing. The “ego” is merely an expression for “overly self-concerned such as to make poor judgement calls” (“sinning”).
Am I responsible for what my ancestors did? No.
Am I responsible for what I do? Yes.
However, are we responsible for what we do? IMO, yes, we are. So while you yourself are not individually responsible for what your ancestors did, I believe that me, you, and our ancestors are responsible for what we did.
The I is responsible or the I, and the we responsible for the we.
Also, by responsible I don’t mean in some kind of guilt and punishment sense. In a “moral” sense, but truly in a causal sense. In that no one else is going to clean up our mess, so we better do it or else negative consequences will follow.
Whether you like it or not, you are responsible for the mess your ancestors made. The mess needs to be cleaned up regardless, or are you going to leave it for your children or their children or their children to clean up and to say the same, that they were not responsible for your additions to the mess; which they would be fully within their right to say so, yet would still be forced to face it and clean it or let it smother them into non-existence.
Whether or not others clean up the mess or are comfortable in their filth and comfortable climbing over the piles of debris littering the metaphorical landscape, what can you do except clean if it is in your nature to do so? And, resent the ones who refuse to help and only add to the mess and if you were to ever clean it completely only to have it get to just the same degree within a day or three before you’re ready to clean again, what would you do and how much would you resent them for it, the ungrateful multitude?
I am responsible for what my ancestors did so long as I and them are responsible together, and so once again I say “we” are responsible for the world that “we” live in. Therefore “we” are responsible for murder, rape, the destruction of our environment, and so on. I alone (the Ego) am not responsible for those things, but we are. In other words, I as a member of the human race am responsible for the human race. I as an Ego am responsible only for my Ego. The Ego is responsible for the Ego, and the all is responsible for the all.
I don’t even know if we are in disagreement about anything. I am not saying that the energy within me that pervades all things is NOT responsible for ALL THINGS. The Self (God, The All, etc.) is indeed, responsible for The Self, God, The All, etc. But my Ego isn’t. How can it be? An Ego has not the capacity to be responsible for everything.
As in if we get drunk we’ll get hungover. As in if we don’t take care of our own business someone will do it for us. As in if we don’t take full responsibility for our own lives, we will reap the negative consequences of our actions. That’s the only sense I mean it in.
I wasn’t aware that your ancestors could still physically clean up their mess. You saying that we are responsible for the world we live in is the same as saying we are responsible for what our ancestors did for it is the same world, just a little farther down the line.
I am saying that we are in disagreement while the illusion of agreeing might exist to those who think they perceive past the disagreeable aspect of it. Just the same, your ancestors are still responsible, if they exist still in spiritual form, but it would still require the living to clean up the physical world, not the dead and immaterial. They must also clean up their own portion of existence and eternity, something that we will also be responsible for upon our deaths.
Ego rarely does have responsibility for long. It demands more. It says, ‘I have done my part and will do no more,’ and certainly a healthy ego would be right in saying that it had done its part and would be right to not do anymore, but true responsibility would continue doing more whether it wanted to or not. Even if it were to give up, lose hope, lose sight of it all; would do the right thing even in the midst of such feelings and right itself. Would do so even without thinking about it just because it was part of its nature. Certainly, it is similar for ego, but ego perceives differently. Ego strokes itself too much, lords over others too much, demands tribute given to it.
