Roy Masters
Have you ever wondered why there is so much evil in the world?
Halfway around the globe, there are religious zealots that delight in terrorizing, torturing and murdering people of other religions. In America, perversion and corruption are rampant, and violence is commonplace. Even in your own home, temptation, and terror hovers nearby -- if not already firmly in charge.
Why do evil and corruption have such a foothold on the human race? I will show you exactly how the evil gets into our lives and our world -- and most importantly, I will show you the way out, so you can be free to serve God, and not evil.
The truth is, people the world over, as they have for thousands of years, live in a suppressed, traumatized and therefore "altered" state of consciousness, manipulated and controlled by various political and religious systems.
On the surface, we all look alike. We may belong to the same race, color and creed, even have the same criminal behavior or psychological illness, but we are not all the same inside.
Many people not only will never awaken to acknowledge and repent of their own corrupt state, but they choose to remain zealously preoccupied with keeping others confused and asleep. Such as these go about the dirty business of degrading, even killing millions struggling for meaning and happiness. After all, the only way such as these can maintain the illusion of a misguided sense of worth is by destroying the consciousness of those around them. Left alone to unfold, the bright, unaltered consciousness in others would take back their world and prick the conscience of the earth bound, into recognition of their deformed selves, and they cannot allow that to happen.
As I said, such inhuman "soul stealers" abound, not just in foreign countries under dictatorships, but in our own homes and wherever the sickest, most corrupt member rules families and communities.
Most of us spend some part of our lives in this altered state, so we may well share some of the same aberrant behaviors. Nevertheless, there is hope for us, because one thing separates us -- our conscience. The real difference between them and us is that we have conflict over our problems, and they do not - for that reason alone, we have survived them and so are still alive inside.
Just as the most corrupted member often gets to rule the family, such as these oftentimes rise to political power and literally create chaos, violent crime, mental illness, broken homes and drug addiction. Like the Egyptian pharaoh, they will never let our people go.
The wicked are not stupid; they simply abuse their God-given talents ambitiously and ruthlessly manipulate or eliminate anyone who stands in their way. They ascend to power with the game of "hurt and rescue" - first causing the chaos, and then fixing it with wrong answers.
When they ascend to positions of authority in society, they rob the innocent of their mental health and freedoms, then sanitize and legitimize the perverted and the wicked. A proliferation of dangerous advice confounds the good and gives license to the decadent.
If all this is true, then freedom can prevail only when common sense becomes the fashion, no longer held up to ridicule. Unfortunately, many otherwise innocent and productive people have spent virtually their entire lives in various emotionally troubled states, governed by the same kind of madness as the evil ones. The difference is that we know we are sick, but we have not found the way out, or allowed to awaken and take back full control of our lives.
Since we all look and act alike -- with our various sicknesses, mental illnesses, violent and foolish behaviors -- how then can we become separate from those who will not ever awaken, and who revel in chaos, irresponsibility and wickedness?
There is an answer. For over four decades, the Foundation of Human Understanding has helped many thousands of people overcome the vice-grip evil and corruption have had on them and become free, conscience-driven individuals once again - as God intended them to be.
"through patient endurance are you forgiven as you forgive."
How to take back control
Our conscious mind -- like a radio receiver with just two channels -- acts as an other-dimensional gateway, the conduit through which good or evil enters to project heaven or hell on this earth. Depending on what "station" we tune into, the "programming" we receive comes either from within us (actually from beyond us, from God), or from the outside world, changing us into externally motivated cultural, religious or political animals.
The key to which "program" we tune into has to do with our level of consciousness, which in turn is determined by our willingness to honestly face the truth -- particularly the truth about our own weaknesses and failings. You see, without the knowledge and willingness to "be still" and squarely face our own imperfections, we literally cannot stand to be conscious. That is because the awareness necessary for us to find true inner fulfillment and rise above evil, is the exact same consciousness that will always make us aware of our own sins and imperfections. Thus, there are only two kinds of "freedoms" in this life: freedom from the slavish compulsion to do wrong, or freedom from knowing that we are wrong.
We can learn much, in an intellectual sense, from religion, psychology and medicine, but all of these knowledge bases fail us miserably as we face daily pressure and our old conditioning takes over.
Winning the war against evil requires something more spiritual, more innocent, than acquiring mere intellectual knowledge. Let me bring the solution into sharp focus by considering briefly a phone call I received recently on my radio program from a man seeking counseling.
The voice on the telephone sounded like a tormented demon -- like a cackling, raspy, unspeakably twisted fiend in some horror movie. For nine years, this 24-year-old man had descended into a living hell on earth. Fortunately, the pain of his early conditioning had also prompted an awakening from his altered state. Now, as did the prodigal son, he was on his way back to his original innocence.
"My life has been a lie ever since I can remember," he told me. "Whatever I said, I would accept as truth. I could make up stories and people would believe me. Therefore, in my mind I never did anything wrong. I thought nothing of trafficking in drugs and corrupting kids. I knew no other truth than what I thought and lived."
"I have remembered many of the things you said when I was a child. My parents had all your materials and books, but I resented you because they were close to you and they were my problem."
"As I began to awaken, I began to see that I had been a compulsive liar my entire life. I also realized that I could do nothing to stop myself from lying. I tried being 'honest' by admitting the lie, which, for obvious reasons, caused more problems. I came to you, Roy, because I knew you would understand my dilemma and would not misjudge me."
The next day this young man came to see me. He stood before me, his voice changed, wearing a clean shirt and his hair respectfully groomed.
"I'm living with my father who is still a pathological liar," he said. "I needed to go back to live with him to confront my demon roots. When I look at him, I see myself. I see that he is unaware that he is liar and that he may never want to know it."
"He lived off corrupting, spoiling and putting his nature inside me, compelling me to do to others as was done to me. I am now standing in his shoes. The difference is that I can see that he is as helpless as I still am, but for some strange reason I feel compassion and forgiveness."
I knew at that moment that this young man was finally awakening from the altered state of consciousness through which comes all human tragedy and conflicts.
As I have said, we are by nature compulsive creatures of environment, and find ourselves "slaves of sin" "programmed" by a corrupt world, when we ought to obey the dictates of our conscience. If indeed "the original kingdom of heaven within" were able to override environmental pressures, it would then be impossible to be truly consciously aware and do anything wrong at the same time.
Unfortunately, before the time of enlightened reason, we all tend to "solve" our problems by diminishing our awareness of them one way or another. Emotions imperceptibly submerge us into a dreamy escape-reality called denial, so much so, that we become hard-pressed to explain why our lives have become such a mess.
To varying degrees, our consciousness descends into daytime nightmares. We become their prisoner and are driven and deluded by a perpetual flood of emotionally induced ideas that we come to believe originate from within us. For this reason, we tend not to resist and we "follow our hearts" into inevitable tragedy.
The story goes something like this: You are upset and things go wrong. Since you are confused and frustrated, the same pattern repeats itself. Denials (excuses) compound the loss of clarity vital to solving the evolution of problems, and on and on it goes.
Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, you begin to live in a world of imagination ruled by the maniacal Queen of Hearts. Solving problems by reducing your awareness of them is the soul's slow dying to the dust. Eventually, you do not know that you do not know -- and so make catastrophic decisions.
Emotional excitation evokes a heightened (delusional) state of awareness that we call a high, each one leading to the next low pursued by what appears to be the "punisher" conscience -- but only because of the ego's unwillingness to face its sins.
To the prideful person, the redeeming quality of the pursuing reality (conscience) is more painful than the hell of his or her corrupted existence, and so the flight from redemption continues, with the "soothing flames" of sensuality constantly beckoning. As a final escape, the descending soul may choose suicide, thinking to end the torment of existence. Unfortunately, it is not the end, because whether in heaven or in hell, the soul lives on, eternally or infernally.
The way out
Have you ever given any thought to what it is like to die? Does it all just fade to black, or is there some kind of afterlife? What do you think is the purpose of the gift of consciousness?
Each of us is born with a unique, separate awareness of being. There is only one of each of us. We have not ever lived before. We are born brand-new, and before us lies the destiny of searching for truth or denying it - of wanting more or less consciousness. The path has always been and always will be the same for everyone. Some find meaning, live, and die well, while others turn toward a different destiny.
No one begins life perfected. Our gradual perfection is a process of becoming better through welcoming, not shrinking from, those painful awakenings.
Life is like a complicated chess game, where pieces keep changing sides. People who have been pawns of an enemy may have a change of heart and cross over to the right side. It works both ways; while good people try to save the bad ones from evil, the bad seek to corrupt the innocent and separate them from their indwelling goodness.
Fortunately, there is a positive way to change the end game. It is as follows:
Patiently endure offenses. If people puff you up as a holy person, do not be uplifted. If they try to degrade, defame, betray or berate you, let not your soul be vexed -- remain even and centered, thereby neutralizing the sting that once prevented goodness from coming through.
Past traumas are slowly undone through your patient endurance.
We love by loving good people and by forbearing to hate wrongdoers. In this fashion, do we endear and complete ourselves to God.
Resentment is the antithesis of love, in that it reinforces in the present the very same anger that established the aberrant behaviors of the past. Resentment is the loser's anger.
Therefore, through patient endurance are you forgiven as you forgive, just as the Lord's Prayer says.
True love has two sides, two faces. One side of love is kind and generous toward the deserving, while the other side is patiently firm with wrongdoers.
Love those who are good and do not hate (resent) those who are bad - it's just that simple. When people are decent, you love them; if they are not, forbear to hate them.
Overcome all the failings of the past by dealing more perfectly (not falling to resentment) with imperfect people in the present.
As instinct is to creatures, so are the intuitive laws to the human heart. That which separates the redeemed man or woman from all other living things is the inclination of their soul -- the resigned consciousness that, when drawn inward toward the indwelling light, finds the fulfillment of true love and therefore becomes unable to hate.
Life is a continuum, up or down. Some people love in such a way that they are willing to "lay down their lives" -- that precious, conscious uniqueness -- by standing for what is right. Others do just the opposite and preserve their miserable ego-animal carcasses, defending what is clearly evil.
The preservation of the ego-animal leads to the fusion of the soul to the flesh and the slow dissolution of the truly human identity meant to develop and manifest heaven on earth. Everywhere through human agencies, malevolent spiritual forces are at work, perpetually pumping you up with anger and judgment. Those same forces also keep you comfortable in your weaknesses, until its soul deadening pleasures and securities compel you either to cry out to God, or to burrow ever deeper into denial and escape. The temporal life you live is preparatory to the eternal or infernal one.
Surely, it is better for a boat to go through the ocean than for the ocean to go through the (leaky) boat. Likewise, should we go through life, not life through us. No one in his right mind would bail out water from the bilge without first patching the leak. So must you first plug up the leak of resentment, only then can you stay ahead of drowning in a flood of internal problems.
There exists a "place" within us, a space from which vantage point one both observes and changes the future a fraction of an instant before its shaping - and therein lies the faith of choice.
Come now up to a new "altitude" with undreamed-of potential -- become an observer.
Come now toward the pain of shame -- do not run.
Heed that still small voice. Sink no longer into thinking, nor drown in dreams. Deal anew perfectly with imperfect people, minus resentment and frustration. Be patient in the little things and the evil of the world will stop flooding in.
No need to roll up your sleeves to will any outcome, you will change the world by remaining unchanged; in effortless control, influence the world through not being influenced, win by not losing.
No need to win -- just don't lose, which is to say, under trial and tribulation be patient, forsake not principle for gain.
Out of a calm composure, choose to say or do something - or choose to say or do nothing -- without fear of repression.
By not becoming upset, and braving the outcome of any conflict, a quiet sense of triumph follows.
The moment-to-moment practice of being patient with others by giving up resentment and hence self-doubt is much more profound than it seems. It is not just a psychological stress-reduction technique or coping mechanism. Rather, it is true faith in action. It is humility and forgiveness. It is obedience to the commandment to love God and your neighbor. Therefore, God rewards that obedience with His unfailing love and direction and happiness.