Evil or Good or both?

People desire to separate their worlds into polarities of dark and light, ugly and beautiful, good and evil, right and wrong, inside and outside. Polarities serve us in our learning and growth, but as souls we are all.

Joy Page - American Actress

When I was a little girl I made a promise to God to live, perfectly, so I could take friends and family members place in hell, if they weren’t saved by the time they died. My view of God was really one of hellfire. If you didn’t follow His commands and take Jesus as your savior, you were going to Hell. My little 12 year old heart’s intention was from love – and a ton of fear. I was going to be their back up plan if Jesus couldn’t save them. Sweet and innocently arrogant.

The major problem with that one “little” promise was how it shaped my world view and controlled my behavior until I reached an age, sadly not until a few years into college, where I was forced to face the reality of what it meant, in lieu of who I honestly found myself to be. I would not be able to save family and friends because I had to confess I was one of the most vile and evil sinners of all – a homosexual. Gasp. But, that is a whole different blog…

Basically I developed a really harsh, limited, and black and white view of the world. People were either good or evil. There was no such thing as grey. The grey aspect was part of the darkness trying to seduce us away from the light of God. Everything I witnessed, experienced, thought about, and talked about was colored by this world view. It was not a kind view of the world. It was depressing to see all the evil rampant (per my perception, not necessarily reality). I preferred to be dead and in heaven than alive on this dark earth. Yet, even with many attempts, I stayed because I promised to sacrifice myself for those I loved, if they hadn’t accepted Jesus.

There were many lessons in life that I believe God brought my way to clear and straighten out my twisted and dark vision of this world. Many people I met who made me question the legitimacy of my world view. 

And most recently an even deeper lesson has been percolating within me. In people I would consider the evilest of people, they too contain the light of God. They too can show love, as limited as it may be. They too strive to make things right, as counter-intuitive to me it may seem. And those I encountered in my personal life that I once called evil, well there are others who have seen their good side. Could it be that we really are a mixture of these polarities and depending on who we mix with, one side may become more prevalent than the other in their company?

Can there be people who, naturally inclined to be kind, generous, loving, bring out the worst in another naturally kind, generous, and loving person whereby unintentionally causing pain to those they love? Maybe it isn’t about one being evil and the other good. Maybe it really is we are all a mix of evil and good (with a dose of Karma thrown in). And instead of calling it evil and good, maybe call it our animal nature vs soul nature. Maybe there is a scale, like the Kinsey scale of sexuality, which measures the strength/visibility of the light of God within a person. Some are on one end of the scale with their light more hidden like on a dark cloudy day, but the light is still underneath the clouds. Some may be in the middle, where it is a semi-sunny or grey sky,  then we have the people on the other end with more sun shining than clouds covering their light.

For all those I judged and called evil, my sincerest apologies. I was wrong. We all carry the divine qualities and light of God and all deserve basic respect for that. 

A Plea for Peaceful Protests

I don’t expect what I write and you are about to read to change anyone’s mind. This may be seen, by some, as an exercise in futility and for others it may piss them off; however I see it as an attempt to put some positive, love filled energy out into the Universe in hopes it permeates some of the darkness that has descended on our nation. 

I understand why some of you are protesting. I totally support your right to protest, as well as Trump supporters right to protest. What I DO NOT SUPPORT, and pray we all can rise above, is the name calling, the destruction of property, the violence, and the hanging and burning any sort of effigy whether of Trump or Obama or anyone else for that matter.

Change born from violence begets more violence. 

I believe the majority of protesters are doing it peacefully and I know that there are some who join a protest to incite the group to violence. There are people out there who purposely go to protests to amp them up and bring them to violence. These people don’t care about why people are protesting, they just get a high off of inciting a crowd to violence.

Please do not be fuel for their impure motives. 

By all means, protest. By all means let your voices be heard.

By all means work for the change you want to see. By all means defend yourself.

Please, though, I beg of you remember we can get nowhere if every act of violence is reacted to with a higher act of violence. Now is the time, as Michelle Obama says, “We go higher”. I am not just saying this to the Democrats, but to the Republicans as well. 

Instead of competing to see who can beat each other down more violently, let’s compete to see who can be gentler and kinder to each other and who is willing to bring the olive branch first. And by this I am not saying we have to agree with each other. What I am trying to remind us all of is that we are all together in this and must live together, whoever is president, whenever a new election is held. Just because you may like orange sherbet and I prefer chocolate ice cream does not mean I am better than you. It just means we have different preferences related to how we want to live our life. 

And a reminder – preferences are way different than prejudices. 

There is no place in America for holding people down and discriminating based on color, creed, sexual orientation, disability, etc. That must stop and that is part of what is being protested and needs to be protested. 

Now is the time to take a stand for protecting our minority brothers, sisters, and family. If I see a person, friend or stranger or even foe, being harassed or abused by someone because they are black, Muslim, liberal or conservative, gay, disabled, etc. I will step in and take a stand. I can use my white skin card to help protect others and I ask for others to join me in this. I have friends and family who voted for Trump and I believe they too want to stop the abuse and harassment. 

Let us stand together for love and peace because we are all humans and because we ALL deserve to be treated with respect, dignity, and honor.

So by all means, protest and protect. And I beg and encourage that we all do it from a place of love where we seek peace for all because we all belong to the human race.

Acting as if you see the Divine hiding in plain sight

“Tell me what Excellence (Ihsan) is?” Muhammad (aws) answered, “To worship Allah as if you see Him, and if you do not see Him, yet He sees you.”

As I was contemplating an upcoming class around finding the Divine hiding in plain sight I was praying to Allah for guidance around some things I could share to help the class get a deeper feel for what I was trying to help them uncover. The above quoted line from the Hadith of Gabriel popped into my head. Along with that seemed to come insight into a new, to me, way of looking at this. It seems there are two places from which one can hear this Hadith. They are fear or love. Depending on which lenses your glasses, for relating to the Divine, have will make a difference on how you interpret this for your personal walking.

The majority of my life I have interpreted this teaching (whether in my Christian upbringing or chosen Sufi Muslim path) from the place of fear. I had better behave and sin as little as possible. I was always aware that God was keeping an eye on me and would inflict either immediate or delayed punishment to fit the sin. On the one hand this did give me a relatively “clean” life where I could pretty safely run for a political office, if I ever felt the need to. On the other hand it produced much stress in my life and relationships and created a perfectionist attitude fueled by a heavy laser focus ready to judge and arrogantly steer people to the right way which also prevented me from having fun and enjoying life. May Allah forgive me for all the hearts I hurt in this process, and there are many. To all of you, I am deeply deeply sorry. 

Then came the insight during the contemplation… What if I looked at it through the lens of love? If the name Allah comes from the verb “waliha”, which means to love passionately, to love madly (Physicians of the Heart – chapter 6) then Allah, not only means “The One” but it also means “The One passionate Love”.  If every surah of the Quran (except one) begins with “Bismillah ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim” (In the Name of Allah, the compassionately loving, the mercifully loving), then it only makes sense to interpret this through the lens of love. That blew it wide open for me in a beautifully new way.

Remember when you fell in love, whether the first time or the last time, everywhere you looked reminded you of the beloved who took hold of your heart. Everything was a sign and all you wanted was to be with your beloved and be enveloped in your passionate love for each other. When you were together they were all you saw, all you worshiped. When you were apart, you either reread letters, emails, texts, looked at picture or listened to songs, anything and everything was a reminder of your love for them and their love for you. Seeing the Divine in everything and being crazy mad in love with the Divine is not really any different.

Dr. Alan Godlas, a professor and Sufi, shared at the recent Sufi School East that Allah is the “Soulmate of soulmates”. The Divine is constantly sending us messages of Love. If we can change our glasses from those of fear of punishment to those of passionate love we can start to see we are being called back to Love, the Passionate Mad Love that birthed the Universe and all that is within and outside of it. It isn’t always easy because, like all relationships, things may happen that are painful and some pain comes from our past and misunderstanding imposing itself upon the present. And some pain comes from those in the world who are living from a place of fear or darkness that is expressing less than the angelic aspect of our humanity. My question is - can we still hold onto our Lover during the difficult times and trust our Lover is watching over us and guiding us, even if, in that moment, we cannot see our Lover? The answer, according to the Hadith of Gabriel, is that it is possible. 

So, for my class on walking with the Divine and finding it hiding in plain sight – I will start out with this Hadith and talk about the Divine being our mad passionate lover playing hide and seek with us in every moment. Sometimes we may easily recognize the Divine and other times, we may have to look way past the outer image to the subtlety contained within to find our Lover. But, no matter what, I now have a new way of relating to Allah – truly as a Lover running through the woods and hiding behind things begging for me to catch It and become One with it in Passionate Love.