To Change Our Hearts

“No evil? What do we do with the rapists, pedophiles and serial killers?”

~ Susanne, A Survivor

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“Our notion of “evil” has strayed far from its roots. The Greek root “ev” is translated as “good,” and the Latin word “il” means “for not.” So “evil” was never originally thought to have a reality unto itself, but was understood as good that was absent. That seems very much like darkness being the absence of light. No wonder Carl Jung determined that our most important, inner work did not involve attacking shadows, but to bring forth the light of awareness and understanding. With the introduction of light, shadows and darkness fade into nothingness. “ The Dark Side of Grace, Afterword, by Ronald Chapman

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This long-term exploration of evil began as a result of correspondence with a real serial killer. The result was a fictional treatment, A Killer’s Grace, that is now followed by The Dark Side of Grace, all part of what has become The Chronicles of Grace Series. The killer, who was put to death for his crimes, told me I could use any of his writings as long as I did not disclose his identity. He did not want any further harm to come to the families of his victims.

However, it was his story that captured my attention. The man was diagnosed with sexual paraphiliac disorder, which is best explained as a negative reaction to his own testosterone. When he passed into puberty, he began his journey into increasing violence toward women. After he was caught, and his testosterone levels were medicated back to pre-pubescent levels, the violence ended. According to him, another result was that remorse arose in him. As long as his testosterone production stayed in place, he had no shame, no guilt, no regret. That allowed him to treat women as objects, and to harm them for his own pleasure. When his testosterone diminished, his humanity awakened.

“If all you do is call me evil and put me to death, you will fail to understand.

There are little boys in your neighborhoods who are going to harm your little girls.

That devastation is preventable, but we have to understand the cause.”

~ Anonymous Serial Killer

On some fundamental level, the only real difference between me, a reasonably upstanding member of society, and a serial killer, is my genetic and biological reaction to my own hormones. As we love to say in the rooms of recovery, “There but for the Grace of God go I.”

That is a change in perception, a change that alters our understanding of the problem, and our intentions and efforts for solutions.

With that thought, are you willing to look more deeply into this challenging exploration?

(As an aside, we will get to the matter of what to do with these difficult situations, but as my long-time mentor used to love to say, “If we don’t really understand the problem, we have no need for a solution, and it may be solutions are impossible because we don’t understand.” On another note, Brene Brown’s research proposes that as soon we judge someone or something, our curiosity and explorations cease, which assures no understanding, and thus no solutions.)

Seeing Through New Eyes

What if the men who destroyed the World Trade Center were guilty of a profound misunderstanding, a belief that they were best serving God through the attacks?

Did you know that a number of pedophile priests were they themselves perpetrated as boys, and that at a certain age range that sexual violation profoundly distorts arousal mechanisms in the identity? That would mean that the only sexually stimulating experience comes from activity with boys.

Not to be overly centered on men. What about a female client in recovery who was terribly abusive to her spouse and children, which was directly related to her addictions? She learned from an aunt that when she was still in the womb, her mother used to pound on her torso and scream, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” She came onto planet earth already traumatized.

Hurt people hurt people.

Violence begets violence.

What about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)? We now know that exposure to violence, or sexualization, or poverty, or hunger, or a whole host of maladies can profoundly undermine our development including significant effects on the structure and function of brain features and functions. One of the greatest predictors of life success in education, career and relationships is whether we are nurtured sufficiently, that the zip code into which we are born is a great predictor of whether not we are able to thrive.

How do we relate to those who are High Functioning Autistic at birth? They often can’t read emotions and are clueless of the effect they have on others. A long-time friend admits she has harmed others without knowing it because she does not know it. Of what is she guilty?

Or what are we to do with those who self-harm as a remedy for deep pain that does not resolve, where cutting or burning or damaging sex releases them from the demons, preventing them from suicide or harming others? Or the Vietnam Vet who came home with PTSD, became an addict, and unknowingly passed it on to his children, which makes the root cause that he was a decorated military man who got broken? Or narcissists, who hurt people routinely, and who are apparently a product of their genetics and early childhood development?

Surely the solution is not to merely call them evil, to judge them, then to punish them for so much that is beyond their obvious control.

The Power to Choose

But don’t we have free will? Aren’t we choosing?

Let’s be honest. Have you ever known better but failed to do better? Or have you ever been swept up in the passion of the moment and acted terribly, perhaps even unaware of what you’ve done until afterward?

Recent brain research indicates that our old brain often makes decisions unconsciously, beneath the threshold of our awareness, and then the new brain inserts itself to claim responsibility for the decisions. We think we made the decision, that we chose, but quite often that does not appear to be the case.

Evolutionary biologists suggest we need this “blindness to ourselves” so we can survive what is otherwise at times a really difficult reality.

Long ago, ancients realized that what we call evil is woven into and inseparable from the world. They called this a God, christening it Shiva the Destroyer.

To which my mentor observed, “Damn, if things didn’t break or fall apart, we’d be up to our ass in frogs. We need destruction just like we need gravity.”

A meteorologist friend commented, “We don’t get to have an oxygenated atmosphere without storms, tornadoes and hurricanes! The same weather phenomena that destroy are part of the creation of a breathable atmosphere.”

We are all swept up in what one artist calls a “wonderful entanglement.” Every single strand is connected to the whole. Just like we are. What we often see as ugly is inextricably part of everything we experience as beautiful.

“Everything belongs.”

~ Richard Rohr

What Can We Do?

First, we need to tell the truth, as seen so well by Richard Rohr.

“Pain and suffering that are not transformed are projected.”

Rohr means that until we heal our own wounds, we will inflict them in some fashion: upon others, upon ourselves, upon the world. We become the ripple effect, either knowingly or unknowingly.

We need to see that we are complicit. That does not mean that those who harm us are not complicit, nor are we to overlook or ignore their behavior. Instead, we must turn within to heal ourselves. Admittedly, we may have to first appropriately defend ourselves from further harm. In the best of all worlds, we would minimize our contributions to the damage. To be clear, we must take appropriate action with those who harm us or others, yet that action needs ideally to come from our healed selves not our harmed selves.

How then can we proceed?

The ultimate responsibility is not to guilt ourselves for our sins of omission or commission.

Rather, to be “able to respond” appropriately based on understanding.

After we can imagine, or even see, that we are swept up in things often beyond our awareness or control, even when we are being victimized, or when it is biological or physiological, that we somehow have a part in things, then we can turn to healing.

Healed people heal people.

Healing is often a long-term proposition. We may need spiritual guidance, therapy, trauma treatment, or support groups. Some of us will need complementary medical interventions to remedy some effects in us. Some of us will find somatic practices to be very helpful including yoga, Tai Chi, massage, meditation, or Reiki. Very likely we will need an approach or structure to facilitate our healing, for example the Twelve Steps, or a practice community like Shambhala, or a guide like The Artist’s Way.

Throughout it all we may need anger, or grief, or depression. As one therapist says, “Angering, or grieving, or depressing” is an active process, something we may need to engage that which seems incomprehensible or injurious.

As we heal inwardly, layer upon layer that may stretch across the whole of our life, our actions will increasingly come from understanding and compassion, making us far less likely to contribute to the ripple effects of violence, and less frequently to act out our inner frustrations with loved ones, in the workplace, in traffic, and even in our online interactions.

When we do act out of our own healing or healed selves, there will be an increase in non-judgment. The result will be action that is more discerning, involves greater wisdom, and seeks fairness rather than retribution.

Tiny actions fueled by awareness will produce tiny ripples through which the world gets healed as we get healed. One messy interaction at a time, inexorably we can play our part in the greater healing.

Seeing True in Reality and In Practice™

Now give some thought to a person in your life where you are unable or unwilling to let them off the hook of your judgment or condemnation. If you want the biggest benefit, select the one that is most painful or most intractable. If that is too much to consider, pick someone that is more in the realm of possibility.

Setting aside what they have done that has resulted in your injury or woundedness:

· Have I somehow contributed to it?

· Are there similar instances in my history?

· Is this part of a larger pattern for me?

· Do I somehow place myself in a position of being harmed?

· Regardless of these, how is it I continue to bear this injury?

· What is it within me that I would need to release in order to let it go?

· How might I assure that I’m no longer at risk as I go forward?

· What within me needs to become conscious?

Now turning attention to living as a healed person, not without the historical event and wounding, but as one who has healed:

· What actions toward myself will most secure this healing?

· What needs to be done about this person, if anything?

· How might I now live in a way that relieves me of further risk?

· What can I do in the world that practices and promotes this change in me?

· Is there a way to be active in a greater healing of the world?

In all things give thanks. Every experience is evidence of the degree of our own healing. Every step for us is reflected in the world in which we walk.

What if evil is in the eye of the beholder, just like beauty?

What if the solution to evil lies in seeing through new eyes?

Then through new understanding, who will we be?

In the end, what is a healed world?

A Glimpse of a Healed Future

One common question arises after we have moved past fault-finding and the need to punish, and after we struggle our way into understanding how to act in ways that no longer propagate our injuries into the world.

What is it like to no longer experience wrongdoing?

One master teacher says of this state that we “see relationships,” often in ways no one has before seen. Let’s translate that differently. We find ourselves understanding. Somehow everything fits, and everyone makes sense.

Because of this, compassion is our watchword. Everyone and every situation is as good as it can be in that time, place and situation. Not that it can’t be improved going forward. Not that we should not make every possible effort to be and do better. Yet, we gain a deep appreciation for how things need to be in that moment.

Our hearts are broken open, which enlarges us. Our souls are revealed, which brings forth potentials unimagined. We become capable of thought, feeling, and action that formerly eluded us. It’s not so much a matter of choice, or an extension of will, rather that somehow a means and power find us.

Ever so slowly, these give way to love. Not a warm fuzzy feeling, but a profound appreciation. And non-judgment emerges as a way of seeing the world. With time, and practice, we will laugh more at the same time that we experience the pains of the world more greatly.

Regardless, every day will be a repetitive practice of letting go, over and over and over again, releasing every thought that arises in judgment or fault-finding. Through this we finally begin to find our way into the Self-realization of which Maslow wrote. Not a greater expression of worldliness and ego, but the emergence of the Soul, and through the Soul’s Journey Home, the realization of heaven on earth.

“It is a long, painful but wonderful journey, this journey of increasing consciousness, always at the expense of some aspect of self-conceit … the Work comes as successive releases from conceit.”

~ Maurice Nicoll

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”