Delusions and the veil of evil.

The deluded mind of mankind sends forth a boasting, empty challenge to the Omniscient that if humanity were the Almighty, we would create a much better world than this. We would remove from earth devastating diseases, mental weakness, untamed emotions such as anger, greed, and lust; we would vanish natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and famines, we would eliminate despair, old age, and death. We would overcome the tragedies of life.

Mankind boasts that if we ruled the world we would create one that's free from all struggle, pain of travail, and we would live in a permanent state of bliss. 

We dream of our world being full of a variety of occupations with unlimited activity, all of which will lead to infinite pleasure. Good citizens would be materialized by Will from the ether, just as it was said God created the first man and woman. Further, all beings would go to Heaven and become Angels residing in eternal bliss, or we would make earth a utopian ideal.

Such a state of utopia is easy to imagine, for the soul is always whispering to man its native perfection, even while the ego engages him in gambling with the enticements of distorted earthly duality. An ideal existence of utopia is not for this realm or time. For humanity in this present stage of evolution, a life without difficulties, would be of little value. No lessons of growth would be learned, no compelling incentives to seek and to know Truth. 

Despite all this, the unresolved conundrum remains: Did evil have its origins in the plan of a benevolent Creator?

The Divine answered Isaiah: "I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside me. I girded thee (invested thee with my power and attributes) though thou has not known me...I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do these things." 

The rishis of India similarly perceived: "...Joy, sorrow, birth, death, fear, courage... These diverse states of being spring from Me alone as manifestations of my nature... I am the source of everything, from Me all creation emerges." 

Spirit alone is perfect. Everything in creation, being delimited, is imperfect. The very beginning of creation gave rise to the law of duality--light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood--the law of relativity necessary to divide the One into the many. By the storm of vibration, the Divine's thoughts of multiplicity brought forth the manifestation of the divine play. 

Spirit in its infinite consciousness differentiated (in thought only) between itself and creation, just as the varied images of a dream assume a semblance of reality in their relative existence as separate thoughts made of the one mind-self of the deamer's imagination.

To provide individuality and independence to thought images, Spirit had to employ a cosmic deception. Spirit permeated its creative desire with delusion, a grand measure described in Buddhist and Hindu scriptures as Maya (from the Sanskrit root, Ma, "to measure"). 

Delusion divides, measures out, the infinite forms into finite forms and forces. The working of cosmic delusion on these individualizations is called avidya, individual illusion or ignorance. Individualized selves now possessing human bodies and mind are given the power of free choice and independent action from the Creator.

In the bible, when the Holy Spirit is in tune with Christ (Truth) Consciousness, it creates goodness and beauty that draws all manifestation toward a symbiotic harmony and an ultimate oneness with God. 

Satan (from the Hebrew, literally "the adversary) pulls outward from God into entanglement with the delusive world of matter, employing the mayic cosmic delusion to diffuse, confuse, blind, and bind.

Satan is defined as an archangel that fell from heaven, a force fallen from grace of attunement with the Creative Vibration of God. Jesus said: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." (Luke 10:18) The divine cosmic vibration with its creative light became a divided force. 

The adversarial aspect asserts its independence and turns from God or TRUTH to ply its wiles in the grossest regions of duality, inversion, oppositional states, and mortality.

When we play into delusion, we suffer. We can bear witness to this manifesting or revealing itself all around us in today's world. 

May we learn to turn our faces back to our Creator, recognize mayic delusions, and heal our own internal adversaries. 

The Pocket Not Chosen

Two pockets emerged from a path of green felt,

Choices instantly wretched that I could not accept both 

And much time I took, as I knelt

Overlooking the possibilities of the journey 

To which my ball could sway; 

Eyeing the path of the easiest pouch 

To where the landing was moments away,

Then contemplating the other, as just as sure, 

And having perhaps the better trail,

Because it was bare and had no blur;

Though as for that rolling there 

Had chosen them just about the same,

And both that evening equally sat

On green felt two paths wanting a wander.

Oh, I favored the easiest that day!

Yet, knowing how play leads on to play,

I wondered if the other path would again come my way.

I mournfully tell this with a cry

And thoughts of time standing still,

Somehow my chosen path 

Did not choose I, and forced to ask, why?

I took the one most chosen,

Easiest on the eye, 

And that pocket taught me,

It's not the most traveled path that the ball must enter.