Evil
From Elfi
Q&Rohaa for Luma group, by Rohaa (March 20, 2010)
Transcript by Yvonne
Our students were asking "Why does Evil exist?" Here's Rohaa's answer to them.
Contents |
Definition of evil
Rohaa: What is Evil? How would you define it?
Students: "Evil is the intent to destroy." - "Anything that causes harm."
Rohaa: So when you mowe the grass and chop off all those thousands of grass plants, you are evil?
Students: Well, no.
Rohaa: It matters to first have an idea what we mean by evil. On a deeper level, there is no good or bad. Life's like a multiple choice test, except they're all the right answer.
Especially the Christian religion has made up the concept of "evil" to make people afraid and to get them to do what they want. this gives them control, but cultures throughout the world and throughout time have dealt with evil things. That's why most ancient tribes had shamans. A big part of their job was (and still is) to watch out for evil spirits, to keep them from messing with their villagers, to make sure nothing interrupted the flow of things. So the idea of "evil" has been with us for a very long time. To the point where tribes and communities needed spiritual policemen to keep things orderly and to stay safe. In those cases, evil is often seen as something that makes people sick, that interferes with harmony. Which is arguably the same thing.
So we have two different definitions here, really. On one side, we have the idea that nothing is truly *wrong*, ever, and that people who want to mess with the darker side are entirely valid in doing so. On the other side, if someone harms you, you're likely to have a problem with that. In this larger sense, we are all here to have an experience.
A White Canvass
If everyone were using white paint on white canvasses, there wouldn't be all that much art made, because everything would be exactly the same. We need more tools, more language. If all we have to work with is white, we can’t be creative. We can’t express, or experience, or perceive beautiful things, because everything is white, all the time. Art doesn’t happen until you have some colour to work with. Now if you have just black paint on a black canvas, you have exactly the same problem. We don’t want to experience peace.
When we're not incarnated in a body, that is to say when we're between lives, we're all nice and peaceful. We choose to come here, to get the experience. If you watch a movie where everyone hugs each other all the time, there is no tension, no drama.... You'd walk out of the theatre after 10 minutes. You can’t have a hero if you don’t have a bad guy for him to fight and make the movie interesting.
We want colours. we want the differences, the way things interact. We want to see red and blue next to each other on a white canvas, with some black stripes perhaps and some green. If you stare at our metaphorical white painting on white canvas all day long, wouldn't you want to see colour?
I dont think we really are trying to get back to the bliss and happy picture.
Creating Possibilities
Having lots of different colours and shadings gives us opportunities and possibilities. You suddenly can paint a cow, or a house, or a beautiful mountain, or make something really abstract. Other people can look at it and say "oh, wow, I’ve never seen anything like that before, that touches me". It's a bit like that with life, too. when you’ve got it all figured out and you’ve experienced what you wanted to, you pack up your things and go on.
When you have experienced everything, then you find something new. It’s easy if you get black paint on your fingers and it stains everywhere and it’s hard to get off, to get frustrated and want the black paint to be gone, but without it, you wouldn't be able to make your painting, to create the things you want, to express what’s important to you.
With both sides of the palette, the possibilities are endless. That's how we grow and learn and become something more than animals or static floaty energy blobs. In fact, everyone who is here to make a difference and make the world a lighter place will have had past lives in which they were seriously dark and destructive. I recall a dozen past lives where I did horrible things, killed people, manipulated them, used very dark magic. I also recall dozens where I guided people, healed them, was the spiritual leader of huge communities and helped people live in peace and harmony. we want both sides.
What makes something alright?
Student: So we don't need to judge ourselves, if sometimes the dark side comes up? Sometimes we go to the light side, it's just life... It's just the way we have learned and grown and manifested our experience.
Another student: So overall , we will have to experience both sides to gather the experience we want as soul? But then ...where does that fit in as to what our purpose in life is here, now? Why are we here to help now?
Third student: So labeling something we did as "bad", is not the appropriate way to look at it?
Rohaa: Say a lot of us got together and agreed that it'd be awesome to make a painting of a very sunny day with lots of bright lights reflecting off the trees, perhaps an ocean on a calm day with white foam on the waves. If all of us are trying to make this beautiful beach picture, so that all the other people could experience what that is like, and suddenly people came in and threw black and grey paint all over our sunny artwork..... we'd have a problem with that.
Student: So if I had children, what do I tell my children if they hurt another child?
Rohaa: You tell them "No, sweety, that's not ok." They're kids. Kids need rules. If you tell a kid it can do what it wants, tomorrow it'll be crossing the highway without watching and get itself killed. While on a larger level that's a perfectly ok experience, if that's your kid lying there hit by a truck.... you'd have a different opinion on matters.
The same with if it's your beautiful sunny painting that suddenly got a muddy footprint on it. So yes, there are dark things out there. There are very destructive things, slimy and gooy and with dark, black hearts who hurt people and make them sick and lie to them and steal their energy and if they mess with me or mine, I get rid of them. Because I’m here to make a certain type of artwork, and they're messing it up.
Resistance to Global Awakening
We as a world have had lots of dark stormy thundercloud types of paintings the last few thousand years. It seems as a whole, we've decided on a different type of painting this time. And as with any revolution, the ppl from the old guarde don’t like that the thing they know so well and got so good at will be changing. So they try to paint tornadoes in our sunny sky. There is resistance to the change, and to each of us awakening and stepping into power.
There is a silly idea out there that we should just sit back and watch things happen because there's no good or bad and things will happen perfectly anyway. So we might as well just lean back and not bother, not pay attention, because it'll be ok, right?
If we all sit back and watch and these dark evil things do the bulk of the painting, we'll still end up with an artwork and it'll still be beautiful, but if we get involved and do our own painting, express who *we* are on that big canvas and get some alive, vibrant colours in there, it'll be so much more interesting and then we can together create a huge artwork that'll be new and amazing and like nothing the world's seen before.
In doing this we care more deeply and intensely than most people out there. It's difficult to trust yourself enough to add your own views, your own paint and colours to that big painting. But we do it anyway. because we care about making this painting not just beautiful artwork, but something truly amazing. And that takes work. It also takes waking up. If you have a thousand people all scribbling on a painting without talking to each other or watching each other work, what happens?
How do you know you're doing the right thing with your life?
Student: How do we keep from getting distracted with life while we are trying to add our own colors to this painting? I just can't seem to get enough hours in the day to concentrate on what "I" want to contribute.
Rohaa: Your life *is* the colour. If those thousand people just put a little thing here, a little thing there, you'll end up with a pretty messy painting. Still beautiful, but probably not as pretty as it could be. If you get a thousand people all painting with white, your painting won’t be terribly interesting, either, but if each of these people knows who they are, what they're here for, and can add their own paint in harmony with the world and everyone else.... You might paint a tree and I might paint a bird to sit in it, and another might paint some sun to shine on the bird, and a fourth would add a deer grazing under the tree.
You're learning to wake up and find out who you really are, to do what scans (which is the same thing). If you are true to who you are, and I am true to who I am, we'll fit together perfectly. We'll have harmony. And you may use more yellows, and I might prefer blues, and maybe someone wants to play with red polkadots - but our pieces will fit and work towards this big painting we're all working on.
So it doesn’t matter what you do. Red polkadots aren’t any worse or better than yellow sunrays or white flowing robes or green dots. If you start scratching things all over the place without any sense of who you are, tho, you're probably not helping. A painting needs shadows or it doesn’t look like much. But I still don’t want a big black splotch in the middle of my tree or bird or sunray.
Play well together
Student: So...do you see this as "destiny" or we all chose pre-life to be here at the same time and "paint" together?
Rohaa: Yes, we wanted to play together. Effectively what we're doing at elfpath is saying "Ok, here's a paintbrush, here's lots of different colours you didn’t even know existed, here's how you find out who you are... Go make something pretty." And whatever you do, if it's true to who you are, will be perfect.
Student: So if we're strong enough in the light of who we are, then the big black splotch will not mess with us? We'll ward it off, or it will go elsewhere... to add to the painting?
Rohaa: Or you could say "cute little black spot. I can rework that bit of shadow to make my deer in the grass stand out much better."
It's not like you HAVE to paint a deer. It's ok too if you make a moose or a chicken or leave the spot open and go paint a flower somewhere else. You can do any of those and still be true to yourself. All the intuition says that we, all of us, are creating something very new here. So there are no fixed rules of "make this" or "make that", and no one can say what they painting will look like when it's done. Because we're all of us creating, adding new colours, new ideas, combining what we have to countless new possibilities. If not pretty, then at least interesting, different, alive, sparkling. The more people we can get to wake up and find their paintbrushes, the more of us can play together, and the more fun we'll have.
There is a video on google somewhere, it has 4 different artists working on the same painting at the same time and one may make a house, and another adds shades to that and a big appartment, the third makes the house into a big cat, the fourth gives the cat a bow.... It's amazing to watch, and the painting is constantly changing in style and content and colour. There is no finished project, just this constantly changing mesh of styles and ideas and preferences, with just 4 ppl painting together and none of them had a job. They all worked with what was there, added their own ideas, reworked things from other people if they wanted to. This is what I see our world painting doing, as well.
If I make that tree and you think it'd look awesome in blue and with big arms reaching up into the clouds, awesome. Paint it.
Watch this video.
Student: That is amazing... Different styles and view points, but they all use their own views and impressions for a common venture or view. Cconstantly changing and working off each others strokes of imagination. Amazing. True team work.
Rohaa: It really is.
Student: I'm starting to think it's silly for artists to "copyright" their work then.
Rohaa: Agreed.
In this metaphor, the idea that we should all love one another makes more sense, too. It doesn’t mean we all have to be pure and white and just use the same colour and never interfere with each other's work. It means we value and love the people painting alongside us, even if they paint something different, because they're part of the project too, and so very important to us.
And if you can teach them a few more techniques they can use in their painting, that's great. You're not telling them to use *your* technique, just giving them options they can use to express themselves better and make what they like. At the moment, most people can’t paint at all, and the ones who can either don’t have paint or brushes or have no idea where the canvas is. The people not painting are the ones who just sit and watch life go by. They are the ones who say "It'll all be ok anyway, I don’t have to get involved, there's no good or bad so it doesn’t matter." or the ones who're asleep and just go through the motions of work/eat/sleep.
Creation doesn't happen without change
I love how that video starts out with a white canvas, and it doesn’t become something till someone puts some colour on it and someone else plays with that. Clearly at some point they all have the idea of "hey we're painting a person" then someone says "Enough with the person, let’s make something else". This doesn’t happen if you're afraid to change anything, to use crazy wild colours, to break with tradition and what everyone else is doing.
You're not screwing it up as long as you foud that canvas, get some paint on your fingers and do what comes naturally to you. If at some point you pick up a proper brush, fun. But finger painting is fun, too.
Start creating yourself
It might be difficult to do this with art through Elfpath, but we can do it with writing. I'd really like to see a forum thread where effectively, we do what this video does. Someone writes a few lines, someone else makes something of it, a third gives it a wholly new twist and everyone just tries to have fun together and to write in harmony with the story - but not stuck to having to write a particular story
Student: Or we can post a blank image, and someone saves it, messes with the image uploads it, and someone takes it again and change it etc.
Rohaa: That could be another thread, love that idea too. Even more fun if everyone scans out where the story should go. Don’t make up mental reasons, just scribble down what scans, what images you get in alpha about it, etc. I'll bet it'll fit together amazingly. Good practise to fiddle with someone else's work even if you think your skills aren’t good enough to live up to standards.
Student: Everyone is an artist. everyone is creative. I dont think there is any "bad" artist, there is just "inexperienced" artists.
Rohaa: And the only way you can get experience is by going out and doing it. The most important thing is to have fun and play together.
