Good, Evil, and God

I believe that if one is truly on a spiritual journey, that as they go deeper into the unknown, more is known, as well as the depth and scope of the unknown becomes even larger. I have found that much of my spiritual journey has brought me face to face with various paradoxes in today's episode, rather than telling the story of one of my paranormal, supernatural or galactic encounters, I'm going to share with you the evolution within myself around the concepts of good, evil, and God.

You've entered into the world of alternate realities. Here, paradigms are shifted, minds are blown, and mills are lifted. Actual supernatural experiences are brought to life through storytelling by the people who experience them. Welcome to Adventures in mysticism with Leah Grant, where the esoteric is explored and consciousness is expanded. Visit AdventuresInMysticism.com, to further your spiritual development through layers, latest offerings. And now we continue with this episode's mystical adventure.

My early teachings about good evil and God began with being raised Catholic. Not only did my family faithfully go to church every Sunday, but I attended Catholic school, primary, middle and high school, which had the added bonus of being all girls. As I've realized, speaking with friends raised in various religions, each has their own relationship and understanding of good evil and God. That disparity alone is caused for wonder, how would a singular God judge and send to eternal damnation, someone who is taught, have a different version of God, and was never exposed to this real one. In any case, what I took away from the teachings I received in my youth was that if you did good things, you went to heaven. And if you did bad things, you went to hell. Heaven was this eternity of bliss, where you'd meet God, Jesus, the disciples, the angels and the righteous. Whereas Hell was a fiery pit of eternal damnation, run by Satan, and maybe some of the other Fallen Angels who went against God. Were you join criminals and sinners. The lesson was simple. Heaven equalled good, and hell equaled bad. You wanted to get one and avoid the other, to a child, and even as a young girl, these explanations seems simple and clear enough, and the threat of going to hell kept me from misbehaving on more than one occasion. However, as I got older, read and subsequently dissected Dante's Inferno in high school English class, I began to question the existence of Heaven and Hell, and I did so out loud in religious studies class, I knew my curiosity had been well received when I was allowed to take classes designed for the Jewish and non Catholic students at school next year. These courses, namely world religions, and philosophy, further fueled my inquisitiveness about who had really passed down the concept of good and evil. And beyond that, who defined what was good and evil. It wasn't really conceivable to me that one being feared and all powerful one would sit around and judge people as they died, wouldn't have been that powerful and full of energy have better things to do. More interesting and exciting ones like creating new worlds. I was taught that God and Catholicism and multiple gods and other religions communicated to those who followed them what was good and evil. And while there were often similar items among religions, there could be some huge disparities. For example, in many religions suicide is a sin. However, are in the Islam religion, killing yourself viewed as self sacrifice, while striving to serve God and fight evil is an instant ticket to the Muslim version of heaven. to Hebrews understanding what was right or wrong, the 10 commandments were given. The Bible states these spiritual laws were given to the Prophet Moses by the Lord. They have been adopted by Christians. The commandments include one, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me to that thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. Three, thou shall keep the Sabbath holy, For Honor thy father and mother. Five, Thou shalt not kill. Six, Thou shalt not commit adultery, seven, Thou shalt not steal, eight Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, nine, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife 10 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods. Reading these now, I'm pretty sure everyone on earth is going to hell, because I don't know anyone who hasn't broken at least one of these commandments.

Now, in Catholicism, you could go to confession and tell the priest what you did, say some prayers and do the assigned penance, and go back to life absolved of your sins. That seemed like a pretty good arrangement, like a get out of jail or get out of hell for free card. The older I got, though, the more odd it seemed to me that mortal men who denied themselves a life among the regular sending people, a priest would take on the role of God went in the confessional, and dole out punishments in exchange for sin absolution. But I'm no religious scholar. So what am I? Going back to the 10 commandments, the one that really confused me back in high school was Thou shalt not kill. However, during the Crusades, the church seemed fine killing all kinds of people. So were they not disregarding the commandments and doing evil for the church's game? This seemed worse to me than killing someone for a logical reason. And let me say that I don't really think there are almost any logical reasons for taking someone else's life, certainly not war, or because they won't convert to your religion. It's a paradox. Think about it. It's okay to kill people in war, or to punish them for very bad crimes, but not okay to just kill someone because you felt like it. And let's just say the commandment doesn't include if you were at war, isn't it mortal people who decide which wars we're going to fight and which ones we aren't? Because to me, it seems that those encouraging the war are the ones advocating for killing to happen. But again, perhaps I'm missing some important theological angle to this subject. So I'll move on.

In college, I took a philosophy class, again, it was a fascinating course. It required a paper that needed to knock the socks off the philosophy, teacher, in order to get an A. He was a fun professor in the classroom, but very serious about being able to distinguish between philosophers and argue your points in your essays. For our final paper, he asks us to use philosophy to challenge one of our long held personal beliefs. We needed to choose something that would stretch us, and then to find both proof for and against it. Among the philosophers we'd studied. This assignment seemed like the perfect time to tackle a really big question. I've been silently asking for years, does God really exist? And so that became the topic of my paper. I found the five proofs of God's existence by Thomas Aquinas, and unproved them with information from other sources and philosophers thereby disproving God's existence. I got an A plus. And the teacher suggested I switched to being a philosophy major or go into law. Law. Ah, no. And while philosophy was really fascinating, much of it seemed like semantics and just looking at things from different perspectives. And I was practical. Besides teaching. What does one do with a philosophy degree? I did not want to live in my parents house after college graduation. So I stuck with pursuing my communications degree. Even though I had impressed by Professor, I, personally, despite hours of research, still did not have a definitive answer. The exercise of writing the paper showed me that any of our beliefs only have the weight in which we give them. If I wanted to believe in God, I could certainly find many, many reasons why a Supreme Being exists. And if I didn't want to believe in God, I could find just as many reasons why he doesn't. Internally I felt like something bigger, smarter, and more omniscient than humans must have created us. But I wasn't even sure I had the brainpower to conceive what that might be. It seemed unlikely that it was a man in the sky who were white robes and had a long white beard. But I could be wrong.

Back then, I hadn't crossed paths with anyone who was discussing the cross section between science and spirituality. So you either had faith and believed, or you didn't. After college, I dated an atheist. It is often said that we learn who we are by seeing the reflection of what we are not. This man provided that for me, spending time with him listening to him. I knew I believed in a higher power. Having experienced all the supernatural that I have, much of it has felt light and given me a nice feeling. Some has definitely felt heavy, creepy, or not right and left me with a dark feeling was all of the light, good, and all the heavy bow. If I had a strict view of the world, I might say that, but I don't. I think we live in a lot of murkiness, where things are not all one thing or another, but a mixture, not just of the two options, but of everything in between and combined. I think of myself, mostly I choose to do things that would be considered good. But sometimes I have made choices people would consider bad. When I look at the capital sins. These are the seven sins that the Catholics believe lead to other sins, and they are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, vengeance, and sloth. I can't help to wonder how many things we have created in today's world that promote committing these sins. Social media promotes pride and vanity and envy, massive online retailers and all you can eat buffets promote gluttony, by having every imaginable thing available to buy or eat. Porn promotes lust, streaming services, and unlimited Channel TV promotes sloth. And I could go on our modern life is designed as a sin factory. So we're just not leave good and evil. If all that promotes committing sins is evil. And it seems to me we live in a pretty evil world. Some actually do postulate that the Earth is actually hell. Given the amount of struggle and strife people endure, I understand how they've come to that conclusion. Throw in reincarnation, and you've got eternal damnation to come back and live here over and over experiencing suffering. And for those who appear not to be suffering, and yet living this Highlife, they are sitting as they amassed wealth exhibiting greed, lounging around on yachts drinking copious amounts of champagne displaying sloth and gluttony. And many cheat on their spouses. I guess that's last and get plastic surgery to look fabulous. Ooh, there's entity. And again, I could go on. Yet someone else besides ourselves to find these good and bad, evil and sinful traits. The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous are often tracted envied sometimes even worse. worshipped by the common folk, which would go against the commandment. Just look at how many followers the Kardashians have. Their follower numbers definitely exceed the congregation of most churches. However, are they maybe not really suffering? Fashion icon Kate Spade, comedian Robin Williams, singer Chester Bennington, just to name a few committed suicide. They seem to have it all. And yet, it wasn't enough to stick around for what am I for former spiritual teachers believe that heaven and hell are both here on Earth. And we can choose which one we live in at any given time based on our actions and thoughts. I don't know what I think about that. As you may have noticed, I have lots of questions around good, evil and God, which do not have clear answers. Perhaps there are some things we are not meant to know until we die. Or perhaps the game of life is to figure it all out. I feel like it may be a combination of the two. So until I die, I'm going to keep exploring, keep expanding, keep being inquisitive. Keep studying, keep learning, and keep growing. There is so much more I could share and explore about these topics with you, though right now I'm curious what questions you are asking yourself about these topics. Visit my youtube channel adventures in mysticism. I put your questions and explorations in the comments of this episode. And while you're there, please subscribe.

Thank you for tuning in today. Until the next episode. Remember that your spiritual journey is a supernatural adventure in and of itself. Enjoy the unfolding and embrace the unknown.