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hey Leo here or Ashlyn org and in this episode I'm gonna be talking about what is the devil understanding the mechanics of evil [Music] you I need to issue a warning right off the bat which is that this episode may offend and disturb you I've gotten death threats in the past for speaking about some of the material that needs to be covered here today on this topic and that's for good reason because here we are stabbing the ego right in the heart this is not what most people want most people's lives are in fact designed around never understanding what is meant to be understood here so be careful but also get excited because if something is that deeply offensive and disturbing it also probably means that there's a lot of growth to be had there if you become conscious of it what I want to help you do in this episode is to reconcile evil once and for all in your life so that you understand what it is and why it is at the biggest picture possible in the most holistic way very few people in life have done this so what we're gonna be doing in this episode is answering some age-old philosophical and theological questions but in a practical way that have to do with morality and ethics and evil so questions like why is the devil we're gonna answer that what is evil we're gonna answer that why does evil exist and how is it created what's the mechanics of it we're gonna answer that we're gonna answer the question of if there is a benevolent God how could a benevolent God allow for evil to exist if God is all good and all-powerful then there's this paradox of evil that we have to contend with how do we explain that and we're gonna answer the question of how do you stop evil once and for all so those are our questions now this issue of reconciling evil it's important for two reasons one it's important for your peace of mind and your happiness because if there's a lot of evil around you in the world and it's happening to you and around you and you don't understand what it is or you misunderstand what it is then you're always gonna be perturbed how can you be happy how can you be at peace in a world while all this stuff is happening when you don't understand it and secondly and perhaps even more importantly is that if you misunderstand evil you will unwittingly create evil and that actually is the primary reason why there is so much evil in the world is simply because people have the wrong understanding of what it is they're by actually creating it so let's get started let's just get right into the heart of the issue which is what is the devil do you want to know do you really want to know are you sure you want to know it's you you are the devil it's as simple as that if you take away one thing from this episode well let it be this the devil is not some guy with horns and a pitchfork and a pointy tail and red skin that is a metaphor that is a metaphor from Christian mythology let's say but I don't even know if they talk about the appearance of the devil in in the Bible I don't think so that's just something that our culture has sort of come up with but that's a caricature that's a cartoon version of what the devil is that's a metaphor for what for you for the self for the ego evil is basically just selfishness which is the same thing as ignorance which is the same thing as unconsciousness now of course the devil works in sneaky and deceptive ways the devil uses illusion and sleight of hand so to this end of course the devil must deny that he is the devil because if the devil ever realized that he was the devil he would have to stop being the devil so fundamentally the mechanic of being a devil is that you behave like a devil while saying that you are good that's what the devil does actually that part of the Christian devil mythology is quite right in Christian mythology they always talk about the devil as being this sort of trickster character who promises you one thing and then gives you something else well that's exactly right the devil works through deception and not just deceiving you in the sense that there's some external agent like a guy with the pitchfork who deceives you that's not what we are talking about here I'm saying that you are the devil you deceived yourself and by that very deception you come into existence as a self and from that dynamic comes all the evil in the world that you know and love that we commonly recognize from history from all the history books torture rape murder war terrorism genocide racism slavery pedophilia whatever you name it every abuse imaginable what is that but selfishness that's what it is here's the thing about the self and about you is that you have to understand how you came into existence to really understand this topic and the problem is that most people think they came into existence by being born that is not how you came into existence most people think that they are a physical object like a human being is a physical object human being is not a physical object a human being is a concept you are a concept to understand this this again just regular old non duality so if you've heard me talk about this before then we're just gonna rehash it here but for those of you who are new and you know some people have heard it they still don't get it here's what non duality means is that you just have one substance out of which everything is made in this substance there is no distinction between a subject and an object a self and another these things don't exist yet it's all one then what happens is that let's say we want a self how do you get a self are you just born No when you're born you don't have a self you're alive but no self yet the self comes into existence when when a distinction is drawn between self and other in other words there are no objects in reality scientifically objectively speaking there's not a single object it's all one there are no boundaries but you can draw boundaries if you want to and then you can believe in those boundaries so what would happen if we drew a boundary imagine a white piece of paper we have a sharpie big fat black sharpie and we just draw a circle so as we're drawing a circle we're creating a boundary and then what we do is we tell ourselves up to everything inside the boundary is me is the self that's my identity and everything outside the boundary that's the environment that's the other that's reality that's God that's science that's the universe we have all these different names for what the other is it includes of course human beings but it also includes physical objects the external world all that sort stuff inside the inside the circle is me the self now of course as soon as I do that there's a problem my entire existence is based on the creation of this boundary and the maintaining of this boundary see if someone comes along with an eraser tries to erase this line I will literally disappear that's what it means for you to be a concept I'm saying that you will disappear if the boundary of you and other is erased and you can erase it which is precisely why you fight so much to stay yourself which is precisely why you defend yourself you defend yourself image you not only defend yourself physically you defend yourself conceptually as well you defend all your ideas your beliefs various ideological systems that you have your notions of reality you defend various rights and values and ideals that you hold and of course you defend yourself physically and you just defend yourself from all sorts of forms of abuse from theft for rape for murder from from getting screwed over in a business deal from getting screwed over in a relationship for not getting the short end of the stick for getting the kind of food you want or I see it just goes on and on your entire life is about this to be alive is to be a thing which tries to survive as a self you could imagine it as though we take a water balloon and we fill it with water and now we have this water balloon that is you that's the self now of course the problem is that yes you do have a shape it's flexible but generally you have a certain kind of shape which makes it seem as though you're distinct from your environment but of course you're also very vulnerable to your environment as a self because this water balloon can be very easily punctured a pencil some scissors a knife some sharp coffee table corner could puncture this fragile membrane of the water balloon so does the water balloon have to do if it wants to survive as a water balloon cuz you see reality is a chaotic thing chaotic system there's a lot of variability there's a lot of chaos you can get burned you can get stabbed you can get frozen I mean you can get shot out into outer space all sorts of bad stuff could happen to you if if if you are dead set on staying yourself if you don't care about staying yourself then it's not a problem but if you care about maintaining this fixed configuration of matter and energy or whatever it is this water balloon if you want it to stay unpunctuality do and that's exactly what the self is about and that's exactly how the devil is created see the devil creates evil simply because it exists as a self and he needs to act to preserve itself and the easiest way to do that is to be extremely extremely extremely selfish because when you're extremely selfish what you'll do is you will take every single obstacle or threat to your existence in the environment and you will label it as being evil or bad and that's true from your point of view because if all you care about is self survival and your own persistence and your own reproduction and your own thriving and your own pleasure and happiness if you care about those things above everything else then you don't care what the truth of the matter is you don't care about non-duality what you care about is just maintaining your configuration and the best way to do that is to demonize those things which are really threatening to you so evil is the label or the concept that you invented in order to marginalize those things which are threatening to your existence so that you could justify to yourself eliminating those things without any self-reflection or any guilt see and this notion of evil you have is completely relative it's relative to you it's relative to your survival consider that if you had no self you literally would not see evil and that it literally would not exist this is a hard pill for people to swallow it's hard for people to wrap their minds around this I see this consistently by reading people's comments about these topics because they have this feeling that evil is some tangible property out in the world in the same way that length or weight or color like the color red is a property of the world they think that evil is a property of certain people or if certain situations or certain things that's not the case at all evil is a concept that was invented by the self by the devil so that he could be a devil without admitting to himself that he's the devil and when you understand that you immediately start to see why there are so many Devils in the world the devil is not out there the devil is in you when you get in touch and you become conscious of the devil within you and you recognize just how powerful of a force this is it's a force of nature which is very difficult to stop you will then appreciate and understand why other people are acting like Devils and you will not really blame them or condemn them for being Devils because you understand that you're also a devil and that there's really very little difference between you two this is something that nobody wants to admit because the whole point of having a self is to be selfish it's to have a self agenda it's to be very self biased to have a double-standard have you noticed that when other people act excessively selfishly you are very quick to call it evil and others around you are very quick to condemn that person for being so selfish but when they themselves or you that yourself are being selfish that's completely ignored ah that's not important let's not look at that let's point our finger at the one who is being a devil the one outside and that dynamic right there is exactly what the devil does that is how devilry works it works ass-backwards it's tricky it's deceptive it's the most counterintuitive thing ever think of the most evil thing you can imagine maybe slavery maybe genocide maybe torture and rape maybe war and notice that these things are not evil in an absolute sense they're only evil for you now this is where people stumble is they say well leo for me it's not just for me like nazis they're not just evil for me Nazis are evil for everybody terrorists are evil for everybody no they're not this notion of for you it's a much broader notion than you're thinking I don't just mean Nazis are evil for you in the sense that they can harm you physically and maybe they could even dismantle your entire country if you let them there's more to it than that cuz your sense of evil for me doesn't just include you personally it includes your family your social circle your country your tribe it includes all your ideas includes your entire identity it includes all your values of justice goodness and liberty and beauty and truth and love includes all that so in that sense Nazis are evil for you because they go against the things that you hold as most dear but Nazis are not evil to themselves and terrorists are not evil to themselves and there are many people who support terrorists doing what they do why is that is it because they're also evil no it's because they have a different agenda that's the difference it's a difference of agenda not a difference of any kind of physical properties or characteristics you have to start to see that everyone in the world is acting basically the same they're acting in a self biased manner to accomplish their own agenda that's what 99.999% of people in the world are up to and that's why we have so much people in the world it's really just as simple as that the problem is that you don't want to admit it you do dozens of evil things every single day but you're ignorant of them evil is ignorance and of course you're gonna deny it because the first thing the devil does when he comes into existence is that he says that he is good he is true he has to play that game on himself in order to feel like he's real like he's solid now I hear you saying well Leo but your ik waiting me with Nazis I'm not see and I'm better than a Nazi why are you trying to put us on the same playing field precisely because what the devil needs to do to maintain himself as a devil is to is to skew the playing field see what the ego likes to do is it likes to make very fine distinctions and it says well but I'm not as bad as a rapist and I'm not as bad as a terrorist and not as bad as a Nazi and that's exactly what perpetuates the evil and the blindness within you which will cause you to create more evil see it's true that different people have different degrees of ignorance and unconsciousness and selfishness not everybody is equally selfish and it manifests in many different ways but the very important point to understand is that there's no fundamental difference between you and a Nazi or a terrorist or whoever you hate there's no difference at all it's just a difference of circumstance it's a difference of degree and really the difference is much smaller than you think a Nazi is maybe 1% conscious you are maybe 2% conscious that's the difference the difference is 1% consciousness that's what most people don't understand and there's a lot of room for growth there on that scale huge room for growth see the devil is really good at ignoring the collateral damage that he causes people think that evil happens through diabolical planning usually it doesn't sometimes it does but usually it doesn't usually it just happens well like this let me give you an example this example is the Iraq war this is a very good example if you ask most Americans what's the most evil thing you can think of one of the things they might cite as an example is 9/11 and they might say well 9/11 is one of the most evil acts perpetrated upon the American pub like in the last 50 years let's say since the Nazis perhaps since the concentration camps okay and how many people died in September 11th two and a half thousand people roughly speaking okay after 9/11 george w bush holds a famous news conference where he talks about the axis of evil in the axis of evil who does he call out Iran Iraq and North Korea then shortly after we invade Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction and although there's no connection whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11 still the public is in this sort of combative mood and we want to be tough on terrorists and dictators and evildoers evildoers that's a very popular quote for george w evildoers and how does he frame this war he frames the war as us fighting good evil so we're the good guys they're the bad guys we are making the world safer we're fighting for freedom we're fighting for democracy we're fighting for enlightenment or fighting for American values all that's good in the world and I say this as an American I'm American citizen so very interesting right then we go to war with Iraq and what happens a lot of people died how many let's pull it up here's my phone I'm gonna go to google and type in casualties of the Iraq war and I'm gonna click on the first thing that comes up which is a Wikipedia page cattle these are the Iraq war and I'll quote you a little bit of it here's what it says various scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq war are estimated up to 1 million Iraqis died as a result of the conflict during this time another study published in 2011 estimated it's approximate that it's approximately half a million Iraqis another newspaper who has been calculating these valise tallies called the Iraqi Body Count project found that a hundred and seventy four thousand Iraqis were killed and of those approximately 120 thousand were civilian non-combatants so Americans were pissed off when we lost two and a thousand people and yet then we invade a country who had nothing to do with that and we kill at least 120,000 civilian non-combatants and how do we justify it well we ignore it this figure is virtually never cited in the news or in mainstream culture never brought up in fact the Defense Department doesn't even bother keeping accurate count of the casualties that's not something they're interested in you see we keep very accurate count of our own casualties and granted is easier to keep count of your own casualties than those of the opposite side but still there is a sort of willful ignorance there for good reason because if you were fully conscious of what you were doing when you were waging this war from the highest level then you could not wage this war see because this is just the committing of evil that's what it is but it gets even sneakier than this see now let me take my own responsibility for this because I'm an American citizen I pay US taxes I pay over $100,000 in taxes every single year where does that money go to the federal government to fund our defense industry to fund these wars the Iraq war is estimated to have cost at least a trillion taxpayer dollars and that's a very conservative estimate some estimates put it at 2 3 or even 4 trillion when you take into account all the ancillary costs the interest rates and the all the collateral damage that's been done that needs to be repaired and all the disabled veterans and that need to be taken care of for fifty years into the future dealing with post-traumatic stress dealing with amputations dealing with all this sort of stuff you see so enormous cost and I funded that because on American citizen I funded evil if you're an American citizen you funded evil if you do business with America through trade you also funded evil you see if your country was part of the coalition that I made in Iraq which included the UK Australia and like a couple dozen other countries they sent in very small numbers of troops but nevertheless you participated in that evil and see if your taxpayer in those countries you also fun to this evil and yet you don't think of it as such do you how much time in the last ten years have you thought have you spent thinking about this very very little of course and that's precisely how evil gets created you don't understand you're creating it because you're deeply deeply ignorant and you're in denial about it and it's not pleasant to talk about these things at the dinner table or on TV or even in the news even the news doesn't cover this stuff really it's extremely biased it's extremely selfish as you would expect because not only is there an individual ego there's a collective ego the entire nation of America is an ego structure in a sense really and it fights to preserve itself it's selfish it's got a self by sky self agenda of course it does as as every other nation as does every other tribe every sports team every corporation every family every couple it works like this but also the individual contributes to it and there's an interplay between the individual and the collective so that was one example here's a for you that a lot of people are in denial about smartphones do you own a smartphone if you do if you own an iPhone for example this is not an iPhone but if you own an iPhone and I mean I assume that the same basic manufacturing principles apply to any phone not just the iPhone but they're manufactured in China using very cheap labour making these people work in factories for 60 80 hours a week many of them are under miserable conditions some of them are work to death they actually have to install nets under the windows and in the staircases of these factories because people will jump out and commit suicide because of the miserable conditions in which they manufacture these phones it's just a very tedious process very robotic process mind-numbing life numbing and yet you go out there and buy a new phone every year and you love your phone and you just obliviously text away on your phone not realizing that that purchase created that evil see and what is that that's just ignorance that's just selfishness you want your phone even when I tell you this you're still gonna keep using your phone it doesn't matter you're gonna continue to use it because you have a double standard because that's what the eeo is about and that's how evil is committed what I'm telling you that fundamentally there's no difference between the Iraq war between the iPhone between a lot of other stuff like that between Wall Street and between Nazis and terrorists there's really very little difference when you look at the fundamentals of it when you look at the mechanics of it the content is different but otherwise no you're just kidding yourself evil has a function the function of ego of evil is to serve the ego it's a concept that the ego created so that you can point to something out there and call it evil and never have to really self reflect about your relationship to that thing you never have to adopt the perspective of that person or of that ideology you have to never you never have to step in that person's shoes and to really experience their suffering because when you call something evil that immediately puts up a barrier it's sort of a deliberate blindness so that you can go and exterminate that thing guilt-free have you noticed that nobody that you consider evil considers themselves to be evil not Hitler not racists not slave owners not dictators not murderers they don't think of themselves as evil why is this an accident no that's this mechanism working perfectly what people don't understand is that evil is a tool of the self which is used against the other so yourself uses evil projects it onto other because you don't want that evil to come towards you you want to keep it at arm's distance and of course that that other has the exact opposite perspective or at least they can which is why for example Hitler didn't consider himself to be evil Hitler considered and choose to be evil and he was very convinced of that now people will say well Leo but that's because Hitler was so deluded and he was so evil that he lost all sense of right and wrong no actually Hitler didn't lose sense of right and wrong his mechanism was functioning perfectly he was being selfish and he was using the concept of evil exactly how the self needs to use it that's why it exists for that purpose and you're also using that mechanism now to demonize him and to demonize whoever else you like to demonize the point of you demonizing them is so that you can maintain yourself that's the point that's it so when you see yourself doing it and you try to stop yourself from doing it and you see how difficult that is you will immediately understand Hitler and racists and slave owners and dictators and terrorists and all them the question is how deeply do you see it within yourself the core function of the concept of evil is to provide cover for self biased behavior and to stop self reflection because the devil only exists by virtue of the fact that he doesn't self reflect if he fully self reflected he would stop existing because upon full self reflection you realize that there is no self and that's a a rude realization let's talk about some of the characteristics of the devil we already mentioned the devil works through trickery and self-deception but this cannot be overemphasized just how tricky and sneaky this is as soon as the devil comes into existence the first thing he does is he flips the script on everything he calls up down he calls left right he calls right wrong and wrong right he calls good evil and evil good and most importantly he calls truth falsehood and falsehood truth why does he do this because he must because the thing that is most threatening to the devil is the truth with a capital T because the truth the capital T is God and God is everything God is indiscriminate God is without boundaries God is infinite which leaves no room for Devils so the devil's in trouble whenever the truth is around so what the devil must do his game is to always be moving away from truth but at the same time claiming that his falsehood and his ignorance is actually the real truth it's an ingenious strategy for self survival and that's exactly what you do that's exactly what people do and nowhere is this more clear than in religion because you see spirituality true spirituality is the path to ultimate truth this means the eradication of the devil now for the devil this is a problem so of course how does the devil deal with the biggest existential threat that he has in society which is spirituality he takes it and subverts it corrupts it and turns it into a tool for deepening his ignorance and that's exactly what religion is for billions of people on the planet it's exactly that it's a corruption of true spirituality and mysticism to the point where the original mystics and founders of these religions quote-unquote founders because mystics don't find religions it's their followers who do they're ignorant followers see they are demonized the very founders ideas and principles are all demonized and turned upside down by the devil when the devil gets ahold of this stuff which is why it's brilliant you see because you can go and pretend to be spiritual by being religious and that makes you feel like you've got the truth now and you can go preach and you can go convert people and you can go talk to people about your beliefs and about how much you believe in God and how much you believe in goodness and morality and truth and helping people and how much you believe in Jesus or the Buddha or whoever else without understanding that in so doing you're actually being the devil see the devil has possessed you so thoroughly and it's also possessed all our social institutions so thoroughly that people are born into this stuffed bait they don't even know what hit them it's so sneaky and they will deny it to the very last breath of course as they must because the devil can never admit that he's the devil see the devil thinks that he is separate from God that's fundamentally what that distinction of self is if there is no boundary between self and other then that means everything is one everything's non-dual but as we know from Christian mythology what did Satan or Lucifer do what's his story he's like the fallen angel he renounced the love of God and he wanted to be in power himself see he wasn't happy with God being all-powerful he wanted to desert his own power he wanted to rule in his own domain but how can the devil rule in his own domain when everything is one domain in some way the devil needs to create his own domain which is like a bubble within the larger domain so he does that by doing the separation but the only way separation had happen is if he forgets that he actually is God from the very beginning so he has to separate himself from God and then to maintain that he has to constantly lie and deceive not only others but himself another characteristic of this devil is that he's massively arrogant he has to be because he has to feel like he knows when in fact he does not wishes why the devil uses ideology as one of his favorite tools any kind of ideology is basically devilry this includes religious ideology political ideology economic theology capitalism vers communism liberals versus conservatives religious people versus atheists atheists are also devils agnostics or Devils scientists are devil it doesn't like it doesn't matter what your ideology is the content of the ideology is irrelevant the point of an ideology is to create an identity out of ideas and concepts and also another characteristic that's closely related to this is that the devil loves to feel like he possesses the truth exclusively so when the devil grabs hold of this truth he really believes it it's because he believes it so much and it's because he thinks that his truth is the best truth that he then goes out preaches converts and kills or threatens anyone who who doesn't accept his truth see it's brilliant it's just brilliant in its design how it all works another characteristic of the devil is that he's outwardly oriented materialistic and very pragmatic why is that well again because if the devil ever self reflects he's dead so what he has to do is he has to spend virtually all of his time in life orienting outward rather than inward so that means the devil is preoccupied with sex money parties alcohol drugs internet TV having a career pursuing success earning lots of money on Wall Street getting a nice house getting lots of cars getting girls getting guys and it just goes on and on and on like this the devil uses addiction and distraction to keep himself constantly looking away from the truth that he doesn't actually exist and he thinks he's gonna win this game but in the end he always loses this game because hey it only lasts 7080 years maybe 90 years tops then you're dead that water balloon that you are it's gonna burst because the [ __ ] the truth always overpowers falsehood see so the devil's gonna lose it's only a question of how long until he loses and will he recognize what he's doing and open up some room for redemption to see the devil if he really wants to the devil can always turn inwards and realize that he's being a devil and he can say you know what I'm tired of this [ __ ] I don't want to rule over my own domain let me just surrender to God and if he does that he becomes God the boundary between God and the devil is paper-thin in fact it's actually non-existent from God's perspective from the devil's perspective it's it's likely oh god what is god there's no God from the devil Strika of course there's no God or the opposite of course there is a God but what you hold as the God is not really God it's just ideas you have it's ideology the beauty of ideology is that it's a perfect place holder for God if you got ideology whether it's science atheism agnosticism theism whatever it is doesn't matter it's not God by definition because it's limited and so it's the perfect self-deception this reminds me of a TV show I used to watch on HBO it's a long time ago most you probably don't remember it wasn't a very popular show it's called carnival some of you might remember it that was an interesting show it only ran for about two seasons before they cancelled it but it was an interesting two seasons it was set in the Depression era in the United States and it followed these carnies or these ha like circus folk who would travel around the country they were the good guys and the bad guy was literally the devil this was a classic story of good versus evil so in this fictional sort of universe that they had they had various spiritual powers and what happened is that the Satan came to life and he reincarnated as a person and so this person comes and he has this mission Satan has this mission to take over the world with his devilry and then the protagonist was supposed to stop him but what I found really interesting is how they portrayed his devil so he's incarnated now as a human being and what job do you think the devil has of course he's an evangelical preacher the perfect role for Satan and every day he gets on the radio and he talks about the beauty of God and morality and about honesty and about truth and about justice and liberty and goodness and he's the most devout Christian you can ever imagine and through this he uses the radio to gather a larger and larger audience until he amasses millions of people who follow him and he is leading them all straight to hell that's what this show is about and the main protagonist is supposed to stop him what I loved about this show was that it showed that the writers had a keen intuitive sense of how the devil works see he works through these 180-degree reversals you might think that the devil because he's coming from falsehood that he wouldn't be so bold as to go out there and have anything to do with religion but actually exact opposite the devil is extremely bold he will look you straight in the face and tell you the exact opposite of what is true and he'll believe it and if you're not careful he'll make you believe it see and of course by he I mean you that's what you are the devil is not somebody else but you it's you it's ingenious it's the greatest mind [ __ ] ever which starts to answer the question of why there's so much evil in the world because nobody wants to acknowledge this nobody wants to patiently watch themselves being the devil the final characteristic of the devil is a lack of self-reflection which I already talked about but what's interesting is that the devil does self reflect in some way it's just that his self reflection is neurotic he has what's called neurotic self-consciousness so the devil will feel shame the devil can feel guilty the devil can make himself feel bad some people they don't think of themselves as good people they think of themselves as evil people and the people who think of those as evil people those people are oftentimes very evil ironically because that's a sort of neurotic self reflection you see true self reflection would involve you being conscious of your own self judgment yourself criticism and your guilt and your shame and not being reactive to it which most people are not conscious of they confuse these for honest self reflection but these things are not anything to do with truth these are just more tools the devil uses in order to trick himself on ever deeper layers now of course every double must deny what I'm saying here they must because if they admitted this and they really followed the breadcrumb trail it would lead to their demise which is why a lot of people hold this topic to be controversial and they will debate with me they'll say this and they'll say that and I'll have all these rebuttals but um just a game that's the devil's game he plays that game that's just ideology that's what ideology does is it it goes into arguments and debates and philosophy and ethics and all this it's a lot simple than that it just requires enormous self-honesty now the question arises how can a benevolent God allow for evil if God is as they say infinite and all-powerful and omniscient and all loving why the evil well of course this question is asked from the devil's perspective that's the problem with this question to God nothing is evil to the devil anything that threatens the devil that's what's evil so how does a benevolent infinite God allow for evil very simply God is everything God is infinite there's nothing that isn't God God has to be everything it's inevitable there are no boundaries than God which means that God must of course include every single boundary possible which of course includes the boundary view the boundary of me the boundary of your nation the boundary of your country the boundary of your family all these boundaries these are all what it means for God to be God so God is not separate from the devil if you think that that's only because your devil God is the devil duality is non duality from the perspective of non duality non-duality and do allottee are identical literally identical from the perspective of duality there's only duality that's the irony of this thing God in creating boundaries within itself creates also ignorant the infinite consciousness must also include infinite ignorant so God is playing this game with itself and that's what you are that's what's conscious of me right now that's what I am we're one but we think we're two that's how it works it's hard to wrap your mind around this else you actually experience it for yourself now some people might say but Leo isn't the devil bad no the devil isn't bad to think the devil is bad is being more of a devil make sure you're not confusing what I'm saying here as any kind of imperative for how you should behave I said nothing about whether you should or shouldn't fight Nazis whether you should or shouldn't lock up criminals or rapists and whether you should or shouldn't stop Devils that's not what we're discussing we're discussing the mechanics the really deep existential mechanics here how you then behave you're free to do whatever you want and a lot of people misinterpret that and they think that well leo what you're talking about here is moral relativism which means that we don't stop the Nazis when the tanks come rolling through our streets and then that's bad for everybody no that's only bad for you as a self-hating the devil and hating evil is just more evil people think they can stop evil by hating it by condemning it by criticizing it no you can't you just add more to it that's why we're focused not on actions because actions are external actions are already deceptions of the devil the devil will feed you with ideas of like where but Nazis in tariffs we got to stop them all they're gonna threaten me yeah they're gonna threaten you that's the whole point you're so preoccupied with saving yourself that you will commit all manner of evil to do it which is the tragedy we have is the tragedy of the Commons everybody is afraid of everybody else and therefore everybody is perpetrating evil upon everybody else and that's the only reason evil exists so I'm not telling you that you need to be a goody two-shoes I'm not saying that devil is bad I'm not saying you should stop being a devil I just want you to become conscious of the fact that you are a devil without necessarily doing anything about it just become conscious just by the fact that you become conscious watch what happens then your behavior will start to change in very interesting ways okay let's take a quick intermission here don't go anywhere I'll be back in a second all right let's talk about how to stop evil what do you got to do there first you have to recognize very deeply that seeing evil in others does not solve evil but in fact creates the evil which you seek to stop the solution to evil is to see it within yourself to see that you're the devil it's very easy to see other people as Devils the hardest thing is to admit to yourself that you're the devil notice that trying to rid the world of evil only creates more evil that's the trap that's the trap that 99% of people do not understand thereby they go and create more evil condemning evil is antithetical the truth because in truth evil doesn't exist it's a concept it's a projection there are two facets to evil one is the facet of not doing evil yourself eliminating selfish actions in other words the other facet that people overlook is the seeing of evil in the world so if you want to stop doing evil actions you also have to stop seeing evil because in order to see evil you must project evil therefore you create evil this is where people get stuck they don't think they create evil by seeing it but of course you do because evil is a concept but most people don't realize that evil as a concept the truth is is that there could be no such thing as evil because everything is non-dual everything is one everything is infinitely interconnected so who are you calling evil whatever you call evil is actually you the question is do you realize it or not see when you see that everything is you and that there are no boundaries then it makes no more sense to call things evil because you'd be calling yourself evil and what's the point of attaching a label or a concept to something which is itself the label adds nothing to it the label only has a practical value if you somehow separate yourself from the other who you're attaching the label to then it does some kind of work but once you see through that then you don't need it to do that kind of work anymore the tragedy of evil is that in trying to stop it you create it this is very difficult for people to understand they tend to think like well but some stuff léo it really is even like the Nazis really are evil we need to stop them and in trying to stop the Nazis we don't create Nazis well actually you do actually do it's interesting actually because in World War two when the Allies were fighting the Nazis and the Americans were fighting the Nazis there was a whole propaganda ministry in the u.s. here and they made posters you can go google and look at some of those posters where they actually demonize Nazis drew them with like fangs literally like a demon why did they do that because creating this idea or this story of evil helps to rally people around your cause and then it's easier to get them to go do some kind of action and especially if the action you want them to do is to kill other human beings to bomb them to burn them to torture them to shoot them then you got to demonize them cuz you know what it turns out it turns out that human beings don't like killing other human beings when they see that that human being is just like them that creates way too much cognitive dissonance now the objection that comes up here is of course people say but Leo if we don't stop the Nazis then they're gonna come here and they're gonna take over and they're gonna kill us all and thence the world will be ruled by Nazis is that what you're advocating of course not what I'm advocating is understanding the mechanics of calling things evil and seeing evil in the world and co-creating evil with your mind if you want to stop the Nazis you can stop the Nazis without calling them evil you don't need to print posters of demon Nazis in order to fight Nazis but there is even a deeper point and this is one that people just do not want to hear which is that if Nazis roll through your town and they want to kill you and your family and destroy your nation then that might happen see the problem is that people are so focused on self defense being an ego that they lose sight of the truth the only tend to care about the truth when it serves them but see in this case usually what people will say is well if we have to fudge things you know fair to print some posters with Nazi demons on them that's okay that's just part and parcel of fighting the Nazis sometimes we got to do that we got to fudge the truth a little bit in order to survive to thrive to live to reproduce to maintain our values and my point is not that that's wrong or right my point is exactly that's what the ego does it defends itself at all costs regardless of truth it doesn't care about the truth it cares about survival and survival is falsehood but the problem is that you're so attached to survival that you can't see the value of truth for truths sake because you're asking the question from a perspective of the ego which only cares about survival so the ego is always going to ask well Lea what's the point of truth if it doesn't help me to survive and to thrive and what that is is that's exactly what the devil does it works in that way that's the mechanism of the devil maybe to access the truth you have to die maybe that's how reality works but you'll never know if all you care about is survival and what benefits the truth might bring you you'll never know because all you care about is survival you see the 22 here also notice that the desire to end evil is itself selfish the only reason you really care about stopping evil is because it disturbs you and why does it disturb you because it threatens your ability to be an ego so really the reason that you are opposed to selfishness in others is because very ironically it tends to thwart your own selfishness and what you want to do is you want to reserve the right to be as selfish as you can possibly be therefore you need to preempt the selfishness of others it's because you want to be the biggest devil that you are afraid of Devils see the problem with being a devil is that you have competition yeah you see you're not the only devil if you were the only devil in town well you could feel great you just run around doing your devil stuff and no problem but the problem is of course is that there's always bigger Devils where does it end it seems like you can have infinite degrees of devil miss so be careful about misinterpreting everything I'm saying here as a demand that you be a good person the demand to be a good person plays into what the devil is doing the problem is not good versus evil the problem is the dichotomy the fact that you even drew a line between the two that's the problem people think that no Leo if I just go be good that will take care of the evil no I won't it won't cuz you're creating the dichotomy in doing that you're creating that Icona me you're literally creating it it's only after you see really deeply see what I'm talking about here that a solution to evil really presents itself human beings have been fighting evil for thousands of years have you ever wondered how come it hasn't been vanquished maybe it's because the way that human beings intuitively want to fight evil is by becoming good and they think that's gonna do it mm-hmm it's not gonna do it because the solution is deeply counterintuitive it's perhaps the most counterintuitive thing there is it's turning against yourself the solution to evil if you really care to stop it is to acknowledge that you are the devil yourself to deeply see that to see all the ways in which you do it and this is not something that you just admit in five minutes or from watching this episode this will require months and years of patience self observation seeing how you behave like a devil in an objective way without guilting yourself so that's step number one step number two is committing to truth for truth sake committing to consciousness for consciousnesses sake and setting that as your highest priority rather than your own pleasure or your own survival and step number three is surrendering to the truth even if it means the death of you and this means dropping all your opinions all your judgments and all your ideology about life and especially about good and evil and now you can really appreciate why nobody does this who on earth would take this deal up who on earth would pursue truth for true sake at the cost of the self if your very existence is at stake your ego is not [ __ ] around your very existence is at stake here even though the ego is conceptual it doesn't feel conceptual it feels physical so when you really understand what I'm saying here you will realize that this what I'm saying seems very idealistic perhaps to you / cisely because what you're being asked to do is to surrender everything pragmatic your entire life to truth without really knowing where that's gonna lead you and you have a lot to lose you have your whole life to lose here potentially in this bargain so of course you don't want to make this bargain you want to stay being a devil and I don't blame you 99.99999% of people on earth make the same choice but once you see this at least you'll understand why they make the choice and why you make the choice you see it's not about demonizing people I'm not here to demonize Devils I am just trying to expose the mechanics of how this works if you want you can eliminate all the world's evil simply by turning inward that's all that's required you don't need to fight Nazis or terrorist or any of that solve the problem of evil in yourself how do you solve this problem of evil is it by restraining yourself from having sex and stealing money and chasing houses and cars and this sort of stuff no not at all it's by erasing the self erase this boundary of the self that you have drawn and then what will happen is ego death you will realize the truth of no self that is enlightenment that is awakening once you awaken then you'll realize that nothing can be evil because you'll see that evil is just a projection a story in your mind and if that happens then of course the devil has been redeemed and has become God by surrendering yourself to truth that is the only way the devil can be purified of himself the devil doesn't have the power to purify himself because he's not real the devil must turn to the source the source is God turn to God's light God's light will purify you and burn the devil out of you now of course this sounds nicer than it actually feels in real life because don't forget that the devil here is you and now imagine that you are the vampire who is thrown out in the midday Sun and he's burned by the light the light burns you it's called zyou it pains you it's emotionally scarring it's difficult and as a vampire it's not easy to take to all your vampire friends you know what guys I am gonna go walk out during the midday Sun right in the middle of town square and I'm just gonna sit there and lounge around in the Sun so you know to vampires that doesn't work because that means their death but of course what the vampires don't realize is that if they actually did do that after the devil in them has been purified what remains is God and that's a really beautiful thing if you ever get to experience it now don't make the mistake of thinking that just because your post egodeath that now your body can't be armed so by going through this awakening you will eliminate evil forever in all the world but your body could still be harmed see people have this silly notion of what it means to eliminate evil in the world they think that to eliminate even the world what has to happen is we have to stop all the violence stop all the theft stop all the rape but see that stuff was never evil to eliminate evil in the world what has to happen to have to eliminate the concept of evil stop projecting it and also stop doing it you can easily well not that easily but you can stop doing a lot of it yourself once you become conscious enough but also you're gonna stop creating it by stopping seeing it now of course people say well Lia that's just semantics you're just playing some word games because what you're basically saying is that your version of a limited evil in the world is just for me to stop thinking that things are evil but in fact I can still get killed my daughter can still get raped and my nation can still get attacked by foreign power and there could be a nuclear war and you're right all of that stuff can happen but you know what it can happen anyways you can't prevent any of that stuff really you can fight it and fight it and fight it but it still gonna be there we've been fighting violence with violence for thousands of years and guess what we still have lots of violence and we still will for many many centuries to come the trick is not to stop violence the trick is to understand what it's about and also to stop being so defensive to the point where you're not offended if violence is done to you not that you go seeking out violence not that you want to become a victim not that you want to give people license to abuse you no not at all but you want to dis identify with all the material stuff in life including your physical body and your mind and all your ideas and all your beliefs and once you're detached from that then you're not gonna care so much about what happens with the body and with your life because no matter what happens your body is still always in jeopardy your mind is always in jeopardy and they will die that's their nature they're temporary that's a game you can never win but what you can do is you can realize that you're not them and by doing this dis identification now you're set free and you're not worried anymore and literally this is how the problem of evil is solved it's counterintuitive because it's fundamentally a conceptual problem but mistaken as a physical problem now to really bring all of this home to you I want to help you to do this imagination exercise this really helps me to to reconcile evil for myself so what I want you to do is I want you to imagine that right now you're living life as this particular being that you are or that you think you are you have this particular perspective you're this human being who is born you were given this name and here you are alive but now I want you to imagine that from the universe's perspective from God's perspective there are all these billions upon billions and trillions of other creatures and other beings alive all over the universe and even though right now you just feel like you're one of these perspectives I want you to to take God's perspective and to see that as God you will inhabit every single one of those perspectives of all those creatures and I really want you to imagine this so imagine for example that a couple hundred years ago you were alive as a slave and you were beaten and worked until you died and then you were hung and that was your fate really imagine that live through that not as some other not as some other person's life but as your life you lived through that and now imagine yourself as a concentration camp victim you and your family were all rounded up and put into these concentration camps you were starved you were beaten you were tortured and ultimately you were led into ovens and you were burnt and as you were gap being gassed and burn in these ovens your fingerprints were clawing at the concrete walls of this gas chamber and that was your life that was your perspective not as some other but this is you you're living through that and now imagine that you had a family you had a nice daughter that you loved perhaps you were the mother or the father and that she was raped and you lived through that and imagine that you were the mother and the father and also the daughter herself and you were raped and see how that feels and now imagine that you are a family living in the Middle East someplace like Iraq or Afghanistan just a regular farming family let's say or a merchant family and your entire house was blown up at a drone strike because hey some mistake and military intelligence thought that you were harboring some terrorists you weren't but they thought maybe you were so they decided that it's better to take you out so they took out your entire compound entire house an entire family and yourself was killed so imagine that that's your life you lived through that now also imagine that you're an ant crawling along the sidewalk and some little kid is running to get his ice cream cone during the summer and as he's running toward his ice cream cone very excited to get his ice cream cone what does he do he just steps on you he doesn't see you cuz you're this little little ant and he's this big kid he just stands steps on you and squishes you now imagine being that ant getting squished on and notice what that feels like imagine that you're a pack mule perhaps in the ancient Roman times and you're working to to lug giant stones and stuff for building public works and as a pack mule they just work you to death it barely feed you they barely give you water they leave you out in the cold they don't care about you and eventually you starve to death from being overworked and malnourished and imagine what it's like to be that pack mule that's your whole life or imagine that you're a big cat on Safari like a lion and some businessman from Wall Street from the u.s. flies over on safari in Africa and shoots you and that's the end of your life imagine you live through that you didn't even know what hit you you were just laying there on the rocks basking the Sun and then you get a bullet through your heart or imagine that you're a pig in a factory farm where you were born and raised you didn't even see the light of day you never even saw the Sun or grass you were just raised in this kind of metal warehouse and you were given a little tiny space that you can barely circle around in and you just live there in your own feces amongst all your other Pig friends and then you were butchered for food and that's your whole life that's your existence that's you imagine that these kind of exercises are really helpful to see the other side that the devil doesn't want you to see the part that people don't realize is that since you are God and since God is one and since there is nothing else outside of God that means every single life and every single perspective that ever was and ever will be is identical to you in the sense that you will experience all of them and you actually already have you just don't have a memory of it see right now the only reason you can be so complacent about all the evil in the world is because you're sitting there you're living in a first world country probably if you're watching me and you have a very cushy lifestyle now in the 21st century even if you're struggling in life you still have an extremely cushy lifestyle and still you want and you [ __ ] and you moan and you complain but you don't realize that you literally were the slaves you were the concentration camp victims you were all these butchered animals not only were you them but you were also their abusers you were Hitler you were Stalin you were the terrorists you're all of them because there's no boundaries that's what non-duality means but when you are conscious of that really conscious of it not just as a thought experiment but you're actually conscious of it can you start to see how that might change your behavior not in a moralistic sense of like oh you shouldn't eat meat or you shouldn't do that or you shouldn't harm people no no no not at level at a much much deeper level where you realize the oneness of it all I want you to spend the next week living your life consciously reminding yourself that everyone you interact with from your parents to the people at your work to the ants that you see on the sidewalk that all of them are you and that you're living as all those perspectives you just don't have access to it through your current memory because what it means to be you is to not have memory of those things see and notice what difference that makes in your life just observe what you'll find is that you start to walk through the world very lightly very carefully because you just naturally then don't want to inflict unnecessary suffering on other beings and that's ultimately what spirituality boils down to once you become conscious of that interconnection of everything then you start to act like it but you have to be careful not to put the cart before the horse don't start to act like it if you don't really feel it because that leads to actually more devilry when you start telling yourself how you're supposed to feel and how you're supposed to act you have to actually do the work do the consciousness work start with this exercise take it seriously don't take it as just an exercise don't say oh well Leo you're just talking about reincarnation that's some sort of Hindu concept no no I'm not this is not a concept you literally have experienced what it's like to be every single human that was ever alive and that currently alive and that will ever be alive you just don't have access to it as itself right now shocking but that's non-duality when you realize that that will show you the way out the way out of your devilry it's only after you try to stop being selfish try to stop being a self and fail at it over and over and over and over again struggle with this consciousness work for years falling off track getting back on track falling off track getting back on track only then will you really start to appreciate why so much evil exists in the world because you'll have an appreciation for how difficult it is to exorcise the demon from within you and then of course you'll be much more sympathetic towards the challenges that other people face in exercising their own demons do you want unconditional love and tranquility in your life are you sure are you really sure then surrender all notions of evil forever that's the price you got to pay with enlightenment comes the corollary that you will never be able to criticize or condemn anyone ever again for any action whatsoever including the most heinous and disgusting actions you can possibly imagine because all these condemnation criticisms are fundamentally false so if you really want to be conscious if you want to be as enlightened as possible then you're gonna have to drop all these criticisms and that's something people really hate to admit say Cleo I'll do anything I'll be good but just let me keep my ability to criticize and demonize others just let me have that it feels so good I'm so addicted to it I love it so much it's so important Leo if I don't have that how am I gonna stop all the evil stuff in the world that's how the devil thinks but hopefully now you have enough of the theoretical foundation to see why this is so misguided and why it actually is a catch-22 that circles back around and creates the very thing that it tries to stop all right that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me don't forget and come check out actualize that org this is my website check out my blog check out the forum check out the life purpose course check out the book list and make sure that you stick around for more in the future you