GOODNESS VS. EVIL

“I have a wonderful spirit teacher who talks to me and he asked me, ‘Tell me, what is goodness?’ The first thing that popped into my head was chocolate, but I knew that was not what he was looking for! So I said, ’I guess goodness would be something that encourages the innate spirituality within us, something that would cause us to be in tune with the God self of us.'

                He said, ‘What would that do?’ I replied, ‘I guess being in tune with our God self would sustain that goodness so that our spirituality would be usable, not something we would know in theory, but something we would practice. So anything that would sustain, encourage, and feed into the human innate spirituality that we all have would be goodness.’ He accepted that, which I thought was rather nice of him!

                Then he said to me, ‘If that is goodness, then what do you perceive evil to be?’ Well, there he had me because I tend not to think of things as being evil. I had to think about that. It occurred to me that perhaps evil would be anything contrary to the flow of life because life flows. Life is constantly becoming itself, expressing its love, its peace, and its movement. I would think if there is a thing called evil, then perhaps it would be anything that blocked that flow or caused that flow to become narrow and small, so that a person couldn't feel the flow.

                The interesting thing is that most people see the negative side of something before they see the positive side, although there are a few people who see the glass half full as opposed to half empty.... I think we all tend to look for something that we need to worry about or concern ourselves with. In truth, if we are spiritually centered… there would be a positive atmosphere in our mind.

                Our intent, our thoughts, our words, and our actions affect first our individual life. What we think affects what we do, what we see, how we react, how we interact with people. We all tend to think that is as far as our thinking goes. We think our little world is just us, but it is not. The influence of our thoughts does not stop with us.

What is the next layer out from us? Isn't it our family, the people we live with, people we are related to, or our friends? It is the family unit that surrounds us. How we think, what our belief system is, has a profound effect on the people around us because we are constantly exchanging energy among each other all of the time. Sometimes we are aware of it and sometimes we are not. Even if we are not aware of it, that doesn't change the fact that that exchange is taking place.

Haven't you had it happen? You could be in a good mood, and you meet somebody in a bad mood. You might say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ And the person responds in a negative way, ‘Oh, you don't want to know. I'll tell you. I had this happen to me.’ The first thing you are thinking is, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Or it could be the other way around. Sometimes you are feeling down, and somebody comes along and says, ‘Hi, how are you? Gee, you are looking great.’ By the time the person gets through, you think, ‘I am alright, you know.’

  We exchange energies. In this exchange we give out little portions of ourselves in what we believe and in what governs our lives. Also we take in little pieces from the people with whom we are living or are closely associated. That energy combines, creating a bigger family energy.

The next layer beyond the family unit would go into society, into your neighborhood, or into your community. In society the exchange of energy is more extended in terms of how you affect people and how they affect you.

The community goes out into the county, into the state, and into the country. What has happened is that the world is affected by the energy that you generate, that it I generate, that everyone generates and we feed into this large energy pool and that comprises the events that happen in the physical world.

The first place that our energy and the energy of others affect us is in our thinking and in our emotional nature. That is part of us that responds or reacts to someone being in a bad mood or someone being in a good mood, as the case may be. It is that part of us that interacts in the immediacy of the relationship.

The energy starts out on the mental plane. Your thoughts affect and are being affected by the mental plane. You learn something new. You teach somebody something. You are exchanging ideas all of the time. You teach people constantly, even when you don't know you are teaching them.

     Then the energy goes into the emotional plane. On that plane you can get upset or happy with what is going on around you, with how other people are interacting with you, even with how animals interact with you. Animals respond to your energy and you respond to them.

…The last place the energy goes is on the physical plane. We don't realize that everything in the physical world is a result of what we are thinking and feeling. What we are doing is reaching into the unmanifest and pooling energy from it. With our creative thought ability we are creating events that are going to happen. I know that none of you here think, ‘All right, I am going to create an event over in Iraq.’  We don't do that. But we do feel the energy of the earth plane into any event that is going on. If we believe in negative things, if we expect war, if we expect accidents, if we expect sickness, if we expect any kind of negative thing, what we are doing is creating and building on that creation until we have produced whatever negative condition needs that energy at the time.

We have to be so mindful of our spiritual work. I know some of you might say, ‘I don't think I have any particular spiritual work.’ Are you alive? Are you breathing? If you are, you have spiritual work. You are living your spiritual intent every moment of your life. Whether you recognize it as that or not, doesn't change it. Because we are spiritual beings, it is impossible for us not to live our spiritual intent. We occupy a body and have a mind, but the bottom line is that we are spirit.”

09/20/2026 Blog. THE CONTINUING JOURNEY OF SPIRITUAL DISCOVERY, Part 2, Pg. 9-12. Copyright 2016 Sacred Garden Fellowship. All rights reserved. To buy this booklet, please contact: sherry@sacredgardenfellowship.org