Shadow Dance by David Richo

Author:David Richo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

6

Our Shadow Displayed

EVIL AND THE ENEMY

It is useless to deny that evil exists; we must frankly face its existence and refuse participation.

—JANE E. HARRISON

Evil is that which disrupts or destroys the flow of life, freedom, or human dignity. Evil is the shadow egocentricity that takes advantage of the rights of others. We might say it is an attack on others’ right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The happiness we pursue is the expression of our deepest needs, values, passions, and wishes. To use our nowfamiliar terms: evil is a deliberate violation of positive shadow potential.

The proclivity toward evil is not an inherent badness in us. It is what our shadow looks like when it is kept repressed and then explodes into conscious activity. The repression is maintained by fear. We are afraid to face or show what might be ugly or cause us to lose our friends, reputation, approval, or persona. Evil is what fear looks like after we’ve repressed our negative shadow for a long time. A puppy kept muzzled and blindfolded in a narrow pen for a year would not become a very friendly dog.

Human beings are essentially good. Some human motives and actions are good; some are evil; some partake of both. The luminous Self coexists with the dark shadow in the same way that good and evil coexist in humanity. The Self does not contain evil but is coincident with it, as physical things do not contain a shadow but coincide with one.

We cannot eliminate evil, only acknowledge it in ourselves and in the world and then deal with it. The bad news is that there is no idealized future day when evil will be ended. The good news is that the entire source of love, wisdom, and healing power is available today. The fullest opportunity for enlightenment is totally present in this very moment. Freedom from evil is not to be found on another planet or in a sweet by-and-by. Evil is a part of life, the negative shadow part of it. The wish for the end of the shadow leads to dualistic conceptions of the afterlife: heaven means no shadow, hell means no light.

There is no freedom from evil, but there is freedom to face it and not to act in accord with its rules. Evil triumphs when we join it or when we change for the worse because of it. When we go on loving, no matter what hand life or people deal us, the Self triumphs. In that moment, goodness is real and so are we. In Faust, Mephistopheles says: “I am a part of that power which always wills the evil and always works out the good.”

Evil is one-sidedness. It results when one element of the psyche, such as greed, takes over and pushes away another possibility, such as generosity. Evil is that which makes wholeness impossible. Everything is meant to serve our wholeness in its own limited way. Greed, for instance, can serve it by adjusting itself down to healthy self-provision.

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