At face value, the pursuit of the eradication of evil appears to be a noble and necessary cause. Evil, after all, is a destructive force, and a deadly one. However, any movement that seeks to completely eradicate evil will inevitably become evil. Why? Because evil cannot be completely eradicated. It can only be transmuted.
Sad that so few people are aware of Jesus' words in Aramaic. Or even such scriptures as the Gospels of John, Thomas and Mary Magdalene. At least some of the best-known scriptures have been translated by Neil Douglas-Klotz. The scripture "be you perfect as your heavenly father is perfect" is not how even most contemporary spiritual teachers interpret it, but many people still think it's about perfection.
This feels so important to me. As far as I can tell tell we tend to repress and then project our dark sides onto others, which makes it impossible to empathize with others because they now hold all the bad and we hold all the good. At the same time, each individual person knows that they aren't perfect, so we spent time trying to hide our dark sides from our self and from others. The energy we might use to grow and connect is spent hiding and blaming. In thinking about how we aim at wholeness, I think of Kristen Neff and her research on self-compassion. She claims that self-compassionate people-people who forgive themselves and show themselves empathy- are better able to recover and grow and less likely to burn out as caregivers.
Sad that so few people are aware of Jesus' words in Aramaic. Or even such scriptures as the Gospels of John, Thomas and Mary Magdalene. At least some of the best-known scriptures have been translated by Neil Douglas-Klotz. The scripture "be you perfect as your heavenly father is perfect" is not how even most contemporary spiritual teachers interpret it, but many people still think it's about perfection.
This feels so important to me. As far as I can tell tell we tend to repress and then project our dark sides onto others, which makes it impossible to empathize with others because they now hold all the bad and we hold all the good. At the same time, each individual person knows that they aren't perfect, so we spent time trying to hide our dark sides from our self and from others. The energy we might use to grow and connect is spent hiding and blaming. In thinking about how we aim at wholeness, I think of Kristen Neff and her research on self-compassion. She claims that self-compassionate people-people who forgive themselves and show themselves empathy- are better able to recover and grow and less likely to burn out as caregivers.