The choice that man has to pursue the good (God) or lower self (Evil)....

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Emanuel Swedenborg has explained how it is that from God only comes the Good and

not the Evil in the world. Often people believe that how could God allow evil to

happen in the world.

 

As God Almighty has given human beings free will to choose their spiritual

direction, He cannot interfere with that free will. As we turn our free will to

God, Good results. As we turn our free will to the lower self, Evil results. It

is really that simple.... as all profound knowledge is when understood in its

simplicity.

 

Sometimes Shri Mataji is held responsible for the actions of her followers.

However, i have witnessed that She allows people to make their choices and gives

them their spiritual freedom. She has often used the idea of giving people

enough rope (spiritual liberty) so that if they do the wrong thing spiritually,

they eventually 'hang' themselves with that rope of spiritual liberty as well.

However, if people just make mistakes along their spiritual path, She also says

that you learn from them and do better next time. If in our free will we choose

to turn to God, little mistakes are ways we learn on our spiritual path. The

main thing is that we forgive ourselves and ask the Divine to forgive us and

move on and ever deeper in our wisdom, understanding and love of God.

 

The free will or spiritual liberty that God gave to human beings to choose God's

way or Our Lower Self's way can result in one of two choices. Choosing God's Way

or the good can result in spiritual life (the Spirit Within) and choosing the

way of our Lower Self can result in spiritual death (the death of the Spirit

Within).

 

Shri Mataji has come to help us to discover the Spirit Within so that we can

have Spiritual Life.

 

Violet

 

 

 

" 490. It is plain from the first chapter of Genesis that everything created by

God was good. It says there that 'God saw that it was good' (verses 10, 12, 18,

21, 25), and at the end 'God saw everything that He made, and behold, it was

very good' (verse 31). It is also plain from man's primeval state in paradise.

 

Evil, however, arose from man, as is plain from Adam's second* state, that is,

after the fall, by his being expelled from paradise. It is clear from these

facts that if free will in spiritual matters had not been given to man, God

Himself, and not man, would have been the cause of evil; in this case God would

have created both good and evil, and it is wicked even to think that God created

evil too.

 

The reason why God did not create evil, since He bestowed on man free will in

spiritual matters, and never puts any evil into his mind, is that He is good

itself, and in good God is omnipresent, continually urging and demanding to be

received. Even if He is not received, still He does not go away. For if He did,

man would instantly die, or rather dissolve into non-existence, since man gets

his life, and the continued existence of all he consists of, from God.

 

[2] Evil was not created by God but introduced by man, because man turns the

good which continually flows in from God into evil, by turning away from God and

turning towards himself. When this happens, the pleasure given by good remains,

but it now becomes the pleasure given by evil; for without an apparently similar

pleasure being left man would cease to live, since it is pleasure which makes up

the vital principle of his love. These two pleasures are still diametrically

opposed, though a person is unaware of this so long as he lives in the world.

 

After death, however, he will know this and indeed feel it plainly, for then the

pleasure given by the love of good is turned into heavenly blessedness, but the

pleasure given by the love of evil into the torments of hell. These arguments

prove that everyone is predestined to heaven, and no one to hell; but it is the

person who commits himself to hell by misusing his free will in spiritual

matters. As a result he embraces the ideas wafted from hell, since, as was said

above, everyone is held mid-way between heaven and hell, so that he can be in

equilibrium between good and evil, and consequently have free will in spiritual

matters " .

 

(http://theheavenlydoctrines.org/)