The reality can be surprising.

I grew up in an atheist family. I remember my mother mentioning

God only once, when I was sick. According to her I had got the

measles, because I was so evil and God was punishing me.

My father occasionally lectured us about the foolishness of religions. And I agreed with him. I have never felt a desire or a need to pray.

In my inner dialogues as adolescent I was sometimes pondering of the concept of God. I ended up not denying God's existence, but saw that this entity transcends my understanding and therefore I cannot form any picture internally of God. Therefore He cannot be an object of  belief for me either.

I also drew the conclusion that if God is the embodiment of

Truth, he cannot expect from me more than I function according to what I understand to be true, even if that meant denial of God.

The irony is that when I at age 16 had my first conscious awakening shift, I hadn't consciously felt any desire to merge with God. After this awakening I saw and felt that there is subtle deep intelligence permeating and beyond everything. It is responsible for evolution and also for the inner growth and evolution of us humans. My trying to become something or being something disturbs the workings of this intelligence in me. If I try to become something my conscious awareness cannot stay in tune with this deep intelligence beyond all manifest nature.

I also saw that life or this deep intelligence accepts me just as I am with all my defects. Trying to be or become something means denial and non-acceptance of what is. I think this applies also to trying to get enlightened.

The basis for growth and real transformation is in accepting and then gradually penetrating what is, not by putting your attention elsewhere.

Just be present and observe your deep motives, emotions, and energetic states as sincerely and as truthfully as you can, even if it might feel painful. Don't avoid feeling painful and heavy emotions. This avoidance is most potent in creating suffering and stagnation.

Relaxing meditation like TM is good as it helps you to connect consciously to the more subtle levels of your consciousness.

Deep relaxed breathing is useful in helping us to become more aware of

suppressed unpleasant emotions and sensations. Lightly favour observing the feelings and bodily sensations instead of thoughts and ideas.The deep breathing gives also the stamina and energy for doing this.Avoid excuses and using consciously your intelligence to defensive purposes.
Inner growth and evolution is that simple. Sudden leaps to a higher level of awareness will appear on its own, when you are ready.

Belief in God is not a necessity and in some cases can become an obstacle too.

 

Our need to idealize another person as holy is born of our desire to cut out of ourselves the parts we find disturbing. Then we cannot accept ourselves as we are with all our flaws and with the parts that don't fit into the ideal, we want ourselves to be.

When things are like this we may have a need idealize  a guru or an idol, whom we perceive to materialize our ideal; something that however isn't real and never can be, but we desperately want it to be.

There are people who are willing to dress up as as holy, pure beings, having a mask that is made up of our own escape of our reality. These people adopt the role of a guru and create to themselves a façade that is a reflection of our ideals. In their holiness they are however halves. They have hidden the other side of themselves. They are beings who have a strong need to be worshipped and to be seen above others. The holy guru's sickness cannot be seen in public situations, where he is sheltered by his psychological power over people, and shows only the other side of himself.

This kind of construction is inherently unstable and has a lot of inner tensions in it so there will appear cracks. But, no problem, soon we will find a new object of idealization. Until hopefully one day we see through this mechanism and start to observe and study who we really are in totality with all parts included.

The existence of these kind of gurus is similar to that of whores. They are created out of our desperate need to fullfill the emptiness created by our disowned parts with something high and beautiful.

 

Morals connects us to the world of values and forms a basis to relationships with others.

Being ethical is in its essence having a dialogue between good and bad, where these two try to understand themselves through each other.

Actions shouldn't be labelled as good or bad independent of the context where they appear. The border between good and bad shouldn't either be seen primarily between people, but inside oneself. Awareness of the good keeps up warmth and will to live, awareness of the evil or the weaknesses helps to keep you humble. In this way being human maintains its totality and dynamics. When we can see how good and bad are connected to each other, the good cannot change either to defenceless self-destruction or self-satisfied totalitarian behaviour and the evil cannot get realized in a blind and subconscious way.

At an emotional level, being ethical is about being able to enter into another person's experience, show empathy. It is also important for a person to be able to accept his or her own feelings and feelings of others. Feelings and emotions are never forbidden or wrong as intentions or actions can be.

"I Am Who I Am" This name that is given to God tells us what is most essential. If he IS, then even I have the right to be who I am . There is no need to hide even my weakest and darkest sides.

Accepting yourself as you are doesn't mean that everything you do is right. You have your own moral understanding of right and wrong and you just observe how much your behaviour differs from that understanding. Acceptance of yourself means that you have no need to make intellectual excuses, why what you did was actually the right thing to do, how the other one actually deserved it. Just calm observing of the difference between your understanding of right behaviour and your actual behaviour leads to improvement. Trying merely to control your behaviour, means non acceptance, and leads often to denial of your weaknesses and hiding them from yourself. In a similar way by just trying to control your eating gives often poor results. By being aware of your eating habits and how your diet makes you feel, without judgement, and also of what a healthy diet would be like, leads gradually, even if slowly, to real improvements. By merely controlling your eating you can get fast results in the beginning, but they don't usually last. Often the result of controlling is worsening of your condition.

You are not accepting yourself fully as you are, if your being good means polishing your self image and you are doing good things to get appreciation from others or even to feel superior to them. In these cases you are feeding the ego, the false-self, and that is not you. There is nothing to improve in your real self. You can only improve your understanding and your awareness and your skills.

When a person, as an object of idealization, is seen to be incomparably good, usually a moralistic way of seeing the world is there also. This is one of the big ethical paradoxes. Moralism usually cannot admit its own existence. Even if moralization can get expressed in many different forms, typical to it is projective dealing with problems. The own problems are seen outside, in something that is opposite to oneself.

Moralism can best be recognized by the methods it uses. The most common of them are fear mongering (intimidation), making people feel guilty, and abandonment

Real and lasting learning cannot be accomplished by moralistic means except when it creates rebellion and separation from the authorities.

Imagined or forced upon goodness is a prison to those who are under its spell. People become unable to learn new things and start to lose their individuality.

Using evil in disguise of good is a powerful tool to get oneself in a position of totalitarian power and a method which people with strong need to control others don't hesitate to use. This kind of evil can only be recognized by the methods that are used, because the ideas presented are often lofty, even noble and inspiring, with promises of a new era for humanity, if only you surrender whole heartedly to me or my ideas and start to proselytise the others also to those ideas. Actually the forcing and manipulative methods used are the evil, because the results created by these methods are devastating.

Usually a spiritual, or religious organization puts more emphasis on work done in the subjective inner domain than in political organizations, and that is what is good in them. Religious organizations also often get more powerful grip on people, because they tend to claim absolute authority in the name of God. In that way they are megalomaniac and less honest. The course of action an organization uses is essential, when evaluating it. In other words the path travelled is essential, not the lofty goal.

Seeing enemies or the problems to be outside belongs also to the tactics. Creating enemies and waging wars is an efficient method on a national level to turn the attention from domestic problems outside your country so you don't need to change any structures on the national level. Of course this is valid on individual level also. Instead of solving your problems, you act them out. Instead of facing your fears, you can feel strong and powerful by making others feel your fear instead. Actually that way you are spreading your own trauma, not solving it.

When the latest war in Iraq had just began, in a gathering I heard an old woman lamenting: Earlier she had seen good and evil fighting against each other in the wars.

But now in this war there was evil against evil. I think and I hope that there has happened a shift in the collective consciousness of humanity and most wars will be seen this way.

People with certain kind of personality structures are very much afraid of inner transformation and are easily tempted collectively to these kinds of solutions, when they feel insecure.

It is also important to understand that good and bad are relative concepts.

What is experienced as bad or evil in modern western society could have been beneficial in an ancient society. Even many of the cults with the above structures can be good in modern society , because they can help people to live those structures, and learn from the experiences. When the whole society is totalitarian, learning is much more difficult.

When you do something, very seldom the influence is only good, often some aspect of it is harmful also. Being ethical is kind of optimising the good and minimizing the bad.

Life couldn't have sustained, if a transformation at the border between good and bad where not possible.

Behind your own evil or weakness is the gate to the new . To this gate there is no other way than through embracing your weaknesses.

 

Good turning treacherously into bad is seen in the very everyday scenes.

It needs not be fetched from international scandals or terror attacks.

Especially those communities that traditionally keep up an idealized,

affectionate, and sacred image of themselves, are in the danger of

being taken prisoner by their shadow. They have to pass over a

number of things that do not fit their own public image or theory.

This risk is especially high in situations where the community isolates

itself, creates its own subculture and imagines that it has become free

of the bad, ugly, and filthy world. At the same time it becomes self-satisfied and secretive. As time goes on isolation distort the view of life and finally maybe the whole world-view. Paranoia gains ground in relation to the outer world. We are good and others are bad.

At the same time, members of the community close their eyes to the abuse that takes place in their own community. This kind of progress is

occasionally seen in religious sects and communities of the holy, but

every institution or organization is prone to the same risk when

they become withdrawn and turn inwards.

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Good turning into bad is very much closer to us and acts in very

insidious ways. Typical for it is that one tends not to notice it.

There are ideologies, institutions and aspirations that sincerely

see themselves as well-meaning and righteous, even though they might

accompany serious injustice, distorted use of power and violation of

human dignity. No single institution that identifies itself with the good is free of this risk.

The cleaner and the holier the facade is, the stronger the opposite

tends also to be realized. Because it cannot be shown or acknowledged,

it can grow in secret. The danger of the system is in its blindness.

It does not naturally accompany any mechanism that it could use to

gain valid information about itself which it could use to assess

and amend itself. Such systems easily start to exploit others.

The most systematic evil and the evil that has raged the most excessively in this world has almost without exception been connected to persons who have been raised to the status of a god or a saint.

 

There are two quite different energetic forms that can guide our thinking and actions.

First, there is a form of energy that can be called the force of evolution. This force is in charge, when we let the Self or the natural law flow through us and motivate our thinking and rational behavior. This force strengthens and nourishes life. When active, all feelings, also the so-called negative ones, function in a constructive way. Under the influence of this force we are truthful, honest and humble.

However, very often people tend to use their minds in the service of a different kind of energy. This energy could be called the dominator power. It is always based on some kind of forcing, manipulation, and/or secrecy. This power moves against something and therefore creates a counterforce. The dominator power is based on a need to create a desired impression instead of telling the truth to make people obey one's will and to be able to use their resources.

The force of evolution springs from the depths of collective consciousness.

Its functioning reminds that of gravity. It doesn't create a counterforce. On the contrary, true compassion and empathy appear under its influence.

On the other hand, dominator power is bound to ego. Self- centered behavior appears under its influence.

The quality of one's behavior differs a lot under the influence of these

two kinds of power:

Force of evolution: giving, unselfish, spiritual, accepting, flexible, fair, gentle, equal, free, sincere, humble, empathetic, truthful, and beautiful.

Dominator power: taking, greedy, selfish, religious, controlling, rigid, punishing, cruel, elitist, regulating, calculating, worshipping high position, abusive, manipulative, and grandiose.

A grandiose person promises a lot, but doesn't give much. Where dominator power governs there is no real love. This person uses his intelligence to create a convincing façade to hide his selfish endeavors, not for finding out his deep motives. Often, preaching for an (unattainable) ideal goal gives him a well functioning façade to hide behind. He is often abrupt and uncompromising in his comments. He projects the evil inside of himself to his fellow men and the outer world. He often proclaims positive thinking, because owning and becoming aware of his own darkness is too great a threat to his weak self-esteem. He is often a follower of a doctrine that aims to save the world.

When an individual allows the forces of evolution flow through himself, honesty results. He has no need to hide his weaknesses. He uses his mind and intelligence to seek Truth. He does not sacrifice Truth for money or attaining social respect and power. Generally, people feel comfortable and at ease in the presence of such a person.

Real love is humble. It doesn't promise anything, but gives a lot.