What is evil?

[KaiLee]

evil (adj.)
Old English yfel (Kentish evel) "bad, vicious, ill, wicked," from Proto-Germanic *ubilaz (cognates: Old Saxon ubil, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch evel, Dutch euvel, Old High German ubil, German übel, Gothic ubils), from PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- (cognates: Hittite huwapp- "evil").

"In OE., as in all the other early Teut. langs., exc. Scandinavian, this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement" [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm, crime, misfortune, disease (n.). The meaning "extreme moral wickedness" was in Old English, but did not become the main sense until 18c. Related: Evilly. Evil eye (Latin oculus malus) was Old English eage yfel. Evilchild is attested as an English surname from 13c.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=evil

Not particularly helpful, except to note it is more of an action than a thing.

This defining of evil is something I have struggled with. Once in my life I truly believed I'd been touched by evil. However, decades later I found myself offering compassion to the human who embodied that evil. That human was dying and stated to me they were having dreams of going to hell. The action of that human had been evil throughout life. The being ... No, I don't think so.
When I look at that humans' life, I note their horrific personal history. Their experience of being touched by evil. Could it be a parasite? I'm not convinced. Too many touched by evil don't become infected.
The level of 'infection' is countered with circumstance, temperament, compassionate experience, intelligence etc etc.
I decided to tackle this from another perspective. What is good? Well that's easy. The Truth is the ultimate good. As in; know thyself, the truth shall set you free. Could that mean evil is a lie?
The Truth is not of 3D reality. Does that mean evil is only of this realm? Well my experience of I AM says there is absolutely no evil outside 3D reality.

I've recently been exploring the idea of evil being a symptom of 3D reality. The absence of acknowledgement of the Truth of ourselves. But the human striving for that something is still there. Could a lot of evil be misplaced effort? Focused on this reality for feelings of fullness, power, freedom?
Yes, there are the others who are fully aware of the truth and still choose evil action. Even create evil for their own purposes. And yes, there are experiences in the psychic realm that are considered evil. But I'm starting to suspect the psychic realm is far closer to this reality than the reality of Truth.
So... Is evil us? Our sickness shining through? Passed through the generations. Gathering strength as it ages. If that is true then there is hope. Because the Truth always wins. Truth shines brightest when evil takes its toll on the human soul.

Anyway, teach me something.

[GoodETxSG]

Dark = Complete Absence of Light
Evil = Complete Absence of Love
To put it as simply as possible... I think Einstine put it in similar terms in a college class according legend.

The Psychopath's I have met/worked with in my life time have demonstrated a complete vacuum of Love/Compassion that is for certain...

[joeecho]

Evil is a perception in which even the perceiver is suspect.

[Hawkwind]

For starts, I think these are questions that each of us has to answer for ourselves, and the answers change over time. I'm happy to share my current thoughts on the subject, but calling it "teaching" seems fairly presumptuous. I wouldn't go so far as to say that evil only exists in 3D reality, but it doesn't exist beyond dualistic states of consciousness. So, regardless of how we choose to define it, the means to transcend it is to dissolve that which separates us from I AM (unity consciousness/ God /the universe/ Atman- whatever you want to call it), and that which separates us is the ego.

As for being touched by evil. There are psychic entities (and/or ego defense mechanisms) which attempt to draw us into negative emotional states. The practice of being mindful, however, helps us resist such attacks.

[bearcow]

Michael Bay

[GK76]

My take:

Imagine a sliding scale, good to the far left, evil to the far right (duality), then there is also neutral in the middle (people seem to miss this bit, this makes polarity).

'You' judge your actions based on that scale, others also believe they have the right to judge your actions too. What funny creatures we have incarnated into, it's almost as if there is a rogue computer programme running the bio-electric robot.

To you, your action/inaction may be a good deed, but it may annoy someone who is affected by that action/inaction, they will think it is evil. Effectively you have an action which can be, and is, both good and evil depending on the point of view (point of you).
Good and evil is ego judgement (that little rascal), it's worthless as it keeps us in the distraction created by duality.

Don't judge your actions or get caught up in the drama of others, just sit in the neutral singularity (or as close as we can get to it in this form) and just watch the drama unfold as day-after-day the others around you don't get the cosmic joke.

The majority of people are busy being distracted, they see the duality and pride themselves on their position within the scale. They rarely see the middle road, because there is no drama there, and the ego abhors boredom.

With meditation - you don't meditate, it happens to you. You remain neutral in the singularity of beingness (hint, hint). No taxing thoughts from the left logical side and no whining mewling from the right emotional side, just a still mind (neutral).

Left - Middle - Right
Good - Neutral - Evil
Male - Hermaphrodite - Female
ELectricity - ISness - RAdiation
Morning - Noon - Night
Masculine - Balance - Feminine

...and many more.

TPTW by way of events and news control love to keep us stuck in this duality thinking and avoid the neutral:

GOOD - EVIL (if you are not with us, you're against us)
Order - Chaos
Axis - Allies
Democrat - Republican
Christianity - Islam
Respect - Fear
War - Peace (one constantly awaits the other, I'll choose neither, thanks)
East - West
Democracy - Communism
White race - Black race (yes, it's a thing, who'd have thought?)
MSM - Alternative media (this one always makes me laugh)
Football team 1 vs. Football team 2
Pepsi - Coke (strange but true)

Is it a wave? Is it a particle? Is it a wave? Is it a particle? Yes, it's both and you are the reason either exists!

It seems the evidence of duality (polarity) is everywhere. Let's get the message we have left ourselves in this weird little creation of ours. There are many more messages to find if we approach life from a neutral perspective, the trouble is we just don't take the time to watch for them because we are so caught up in the drama of duality!

Back to the point - evil is nothing more than a word. It can only affect you if you define it and seek it through judgement. Or something like that, thought giving it life/energy and stuff... and other words of no real consequence, blah, blah, blah (I get bored with language, it's so restrictive).

Make of it what you will, this is just a perspective from this point of awareness.

[joeecho]

Just to clarify..................

[ghostrider]

evil - live ... Evil spelled backwards is Live ... the ptb lie , spread fear , and disinformation to keep earth mankind from really living his/her life to the fullest ... therefore Evil to me is that which keeps one from living a full rich life , evolving as creation would have us do ... just like a small tree , grounded to earth , no two are the same , yet they all reach for the light and provide so many things for nature ...

[delfine]

Posted by ghostrider (here)
evil - live ... Evil spelled backwards is Live ... the ptb lie , spread fear , and disinformation to keep earth mankind from really living his/her life to the fullest ... therefore Evil to me is that which keeps one from living a full rich life , evolving as creation would have us do ... just like a small tree , grounded to earth , no two are the same , yet they all reach for the light and provide so many things for nature ...

Evil spelled backwards is Live.....and? What does that prove? Ergo spelled backwards is Ogre...So what.

[ParakeetMGP]

It does look to me like trying to get the "Antonym" of the word "Live" to be "Evil" By re-arranging the spelling in reverse. I'm no expert on how the English language got its origin's. But the Templar Knights at such time was always using codes (I am trying to be learning about lately).

[yelik]

I think we need evil to understand good, we need good to understand evil, a sort of balance, but it's the nature of man. I think the we are currently biased towards evil since many leaders exhibit psychopathic tendencies. Not enough people are demanding change so we are not yet capable of pure good.

Unfortunately having a society of pure good may well expose the human race to threats from less friendly entities from our universe.

[Pam]

Evil is total service to self. I perceive a spectrum where service to self is at the far left and service to others on the far right. Although all of us practice service to self to some degree. when it is done exclusively, that is evil. Thinking about it in these terms takes judgement out of it to a degree.

[KaiLee]

I was thinking about the etymological definition. Isn't it strange that evil as a type of entity only came into being in modern times!

[Hogswitch]

Evil is somebody else's idea of what you shouldn't do or your idea of what they shouldn't do. Beyond that it has no reality. The rules of the game we're playing are negotiable.

Hog.

[donk]

To me evil is a conscious decision where the choice is made to knowingly remorsely harm another. The actor/chooser may not necessarily see the act as evil.

Beings that feed off my energy are "evil" to me, whether they realize it or not. I don't consider myself evil for eating this salmon, but would imagine I am evil from the salmon's perspective (were he able to empathize with me).

It's relative. And to realize that, and not take it personally, is key to living with little-to-no fear, which I find extraordinarily empowering.

[Rich]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qYr31BLAzFc

[Robin]

Posted by ParakeetMGP (here)
It does look to me like trying to get the "Antonym" of the word "Live" to be "Evil" By re-arranging the spelling in reverse. I'm no expert on how the English language got its origin's. But the Templar Knights at such time was always using codes (I am trying to be learning about lately).

Posted by KaiLee (here)
I was thinking about the etymological definition. Isn't it strange that evil as a type of entity only came into being in modern times!

How do you define modern...?

'Evil" has been around since the genetic manipulation of human thousands of year ago, and that's only on this planet. "Evil" pervades the whole universe.

As ParakeetMGP has stated, evil is live backwards, which is not an accident. It is simply an archetypal mindset that focuses on Satanic principles. It's focusing on the physical over the spiritual and being in disharmony with Natural Law. It means consciously and willfully imposing harm on other sentient beings through the use of coercion, manipulation, deceit, and violence. It means stealing the natural rights away from a sovereign being. Instead of seeing "evil" as a label for a type of individual, try thinking of it as a way of being that anybody can express through their actions.

It really doesn't need to get more complicated than that...

[Frank V]

Posted by SamwiseTheBrave (here)
As ParakeetMGP has stated, evil is live backwards, which is not an accident.

Sorry Sam, but that is not correct. The English language is a Germanic language, and the word "evil" comes from the German word "Eufel" (pronounced in English as "oifel"), which means the same thing. This is also where the word "devil" comes from, by abridging the pronoun to a single letter and including that as part of the noun, which is something that occurs in many languages with pronouns.

• in German: das eufel -> der Teufel (pronounced in English as "toifel")
• in English: the evil -> the devil

In Dutch, we have the word "euvel" (pronounced in English more or less as "uh'vuh'l", with a longer sounding first syllable), which can mean anything from "a mishap" to "a catastrophe". The Dutch word for "devil" is "duivel" (pronounced in English somewhat like "duh'vuh'l", again with a longer sounding first syllable). Dutch is also a Germanic language and still sits closer to German than English.

That all said, it is not easy to describe evil, because it is a multidimensional concept. At the grander scale of things, there is no such thing as evil because everything in existence has its place in existence. Below that, there are multiple layers at which evil can manifest, and in different guises. Here on Earth, evil is considered "that which causes harm to others", and that may not necessarily be so narrow as "service to self". Lots of people commit acts of evil every day in service (or shall we say, servitude) to someone else. I therefore think that it's wiser to state that "service to self" is one of the causes of evil, rather than that it would be evil itself.

Beings who are service-to-self-oriented tend to commit evil acts, but in that particular case, one could posit that they are so oriented because they don't know any better. Without trying to toe the Christian party line here, this was, at least in part, what Yeshua (Jesus) felt, which is why he emphasized that forgiveness is important - "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they are doing." Proponents of this theory - and this includes Bill Ryan himself - argue that if these people/beings become aware of what they are doing, and of how there is greater glory to be found in doing things the service-to-other way, then they would cease committing their acts of evil. So then in essence, all it takes for these beings/people to stop doing evil is to become more enlightened. They are the fallen ones, who lost their knowledge of what love is.

On the other hand, there are also beings out in the multiverse who strive for absolute chaos. Not because they would have fallen - at least, not in the sense that people generally think - but rather because they are the equivalent of what we call sociopaths - as we know, sociopathy is quite prevalent in the human society here on Earth, but Earth is not the only place where there are sociopaths. These souls have no empathy, but they do have Free Will, and they exercise their Free Will to the fullest, given that they are not hindered by compassion or love. Sociopathic beings may or may not have a system of ethics - quite different from our own - but this is optional and only depends on whether they act alone or within an organized structure. Those who strive for chaos don't necessarily exist in organized structures as they hate any kind of order. But of course, on the other hand, given that they don't have any love (and thus respect) within them, they are opportunistic and they may simply use the organized structure insofar as it helps them get to where they want to go.

This strive for absolute chaos, devoid of any ethics other than "I am the God of my own existence so I can do whatever I want", is the very tenet of Satanism.

[Frank V]

Posted by peterpam (here)
Evil is total service to self. I perceive a spectrum where service to self is at the far left and service to others on the far right. [...]

Politically, you have that backwards. :-)

On the political horizon - which is outdated, because political orientation is actually two-dimensional (with a North-South axis representing authoritarianism versus libertarianism) - the far left is communism, where all resources are considered the property of the state, and thus of every citizen in the nation. Ideally, according to communism, the resources would be distributed equally among everyone, so as to provide for the best possible consensus.

From that same point of view, the far right is a corporatist fascist system with unbridled capitalism, in which the individual entity comes first, and it is then believed that the cooperation between self-serving individual entities will provide for the best opportunities for everyone. This, of course, is also false, as we can see on the TV news and in the papers every day. :-)

[ghostrider]

Posted by delfine (here)

Posted by ghostrider (here)
evil - live ... Evil spelled backwards is Live ... the ptb lie , spread fear , and disinformation to keep earth mankind from really living his/her life to the fullest ... therefore Evil to me is that which keeps one from living a full rich life , evolving as creation would have us do ... just like a small tree , grounded to earth , no two are the same , yet they all reach for the light and provide so many things for nature ...

Evil spelled backwards is Live.....and? What does that prove? Ergo spelled backwards is Ogre...So what.

not proving anything , just using the nature of opposites , and I noticed the spelling and how if your living your life , not hurting yourself or others , and your a free person , using common sense , you can't be doing Evil your just living ... the ptb use Evil as a means of control , everyone wants to do good basically and everyone stays away from Evil , calling something Evil will influence actions ...