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SOPHIA OF WISDOM III - EMAILS - MCKINNON
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THE LIBRARY OF SOPHIA OF WISDOM III
THE SOPHIA OF ALL SOPHIA OF WISDOMS
AKA
CAROLINE E. KENNEDY________________________
MAR 17, 2007
RE: THE NATURE OF EVIL BY JAMES MCKINNON (METATRON)
The Nature of Evil
Culdee philosophers came to see that evil isn't some active power, force or thing, but rather absence of power, force or thing.
God, The One, The Good, The Beautiful is self subsistent. Like the One in arithmetic doesn't need the two, three or four to subsist, because it isn't contingent on any other number, God has no need of anything to subsist.
On the other hand, the two, three, four, and so forth, are necessarily contingent on the existence of the One. In the same way all that exists is contingent on God.
Evil can only be said to exist relative to something. It is never self subsistent and always contingent. It is contingent on whatever it is relative to. The relation evil has with things is absence. In general it is absence of the Good, but in particular it is the absence of something that perfects the thing to which it is relative.
Examples might be sins like murder, theft, adultery, coveting and so forth. Each one can be shown to have its basis in a lack. Generally the lack is ignorance, or the absence of knowledge. In general the perpetrator is doing something we are all doing all the time. He is attempting to attain or maintain a degree of happiness. The murderer thinks that he will attain greater happiness by killing another person for revenge, gain or something else. The thief thinks he will attain greater happiness through easy gain. They are ignorant of the fact that they are not the owner of either the other person or any other temporal thing. They have no true control over people or things. They don't even have true control over their own body, or possessions. Their bodies will become sick despite their desire for them to be well, and they will die despite wanting to live. Their possessions will wilt and wither, crack and leak and they inevitably won't be able to stop the entropy.
The truth is that the murderer or thief's happiness is dependent on his knowledge that he has no ownership of temporal things, and that what is best for him is to make progress in improving what truly is his, his character and his mind. His happiness then is dependent his virtue, and on promoting the happiness of all, so harming another won't bring him happiness, but it will undermine his efforts at happiness.
So, ignorance, which is of course by definition an absence, is the evil. It isn't something; it's the absence of something.
Is the person who is the victim of the ignorance of the criminal really being harmed?
If the victim is ignorant of what he really is, he will doubtless believe so, but the fact is that he is being trained and what he is experiencing is for his good. (Seneca once wrote that we should pity people who have no trials or tribulations because the gods have not found them worthy of training.) If the victim is killed he should rejoice, for now he will get a brief rest before he will want to return for more training. If he lives, he should rejoice, for he is getting more training.
When I train to fight in tournaments I suffer pain, and bruising, and attacks and assaults, but I go to the gym to become good at fighting and win tournaments, not to have a comfortable time. I understand that the hurts I suffer aren't an evil, but rather a good. Our suffering is because we are ignorant. We are ignorant of the nature of this place and why we are here, and that we didn't come here for a vacation.
We suffer when we lose something, money, friends, wife, son, brother, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, car, house, limb, reputation, job, civil rights, bodily freedom. We suffer because we, in our ignorance, refuse to admit that none of those things were ever truly ours in the first place and since they have a temporal nature they must necessarily eventually come to an end. They are the property of The One. If we weren't ignorant, and we had the strength to admit the truth about the things we say belong to us, that they really don't belong to us, we wouldn't see their loss as suffering. If we weren't ignorant we would keep our mind in resonance with the One and be at peace. We would seek to conform our will to that of the One. ("Not my will, but thine be done.") We would seek only our true Good, The Good.
I know all of this is hard to accept. We have a powerful attachment to justice, and a powerful attachment to whatever we hold dear. It hurts a lot when we experience what we see as injustice, or lose what we hold dear. It seems outrageous to suggest that we can gain enough strength to have perfect peace of mind despite all of these apparently horrible things happening around us, but that's the point of why we're here.
When we can be at peace despite everything the world throws our way, then we will know the architect and we will be free.
Entropy which is inherent in what are called natural evils is the increasing lack of organization in a closed system, or rather the lack of the divine will and creativity. It is divine will and reason that causes things in a closed system to increase in organization, and lack of divine will and reason that allows things to degrade.
The One allows this exchange so that we can experience love and strife and subsequently grow. The only things that are truly ours are our will and reason and the subsequent ability to choose to attain to true happiness through virtue, and unity with the One.
So, if we stop thinking of the things of the world as ours and stop trying to attend to them as though they belong to us, and instead attend to what is ours we can attain that perfect Good and from our perfected vantage evil will no longer be found.
The upshot is that evil is something perceived by us, or particular creatures, who see everything from a relative perspective. We see the world in terms of this thing and that thing. Since these things are relative to each other and the relation of one thing to another in the closed system of the two things is often detrimental for one or the other, we perceive the detriment as evil.
However, from the true vantage point, the vantage point of the One, which is the only truly real vantage point, everything is working nicely and all is Good. Of course The One is naturally omnipotent or all powerful and all powerful is an absolute.
People often discuss omnipotence, or all powerfulness, as though that means that God is more powerful than anything else or God is so powerful he can do anything, but these are not what All Powerful is.
All Powerful means that God has all power absolutely, from the light of all the Suns in the Universe to the fleeting thought of a chipmunk, everything that can be said to participate of power in any way is God's. Not only is all power Gods, God is All. God is absolutely self-subsistent, absolutely non-contingent.
We perceive evil because we, "see through a glass darkly." We see a thing from a relative perspective, so evil is very real to us, but when our vision is resonant with the vision of the One, there will be no evil to be found, and therein we will find perfect Peace, The Good, The Beautiful.
Homage to my blessed teachers, Epictetus, Eriugena, Seneca, Cassian and Columcille.
Written by James McKinnon
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