The Relativity of Evil

Recent events, spurned by recent transits—particularly of the Scorpio type—have brought me repeatedly face to face with what I’ve tried to avoid, both in the collective and in my personal life as well. But the avoidance had been so thick and routine that I didn’t recognize it. This is mirrored in the collective as well, in my little town, where everyone seems to be trying really hard to do ‘good',’ perhaps without being honest with the reality of the moment. This is like building a ‘Fun Park’ right beside a homeless shelter. If we saw what was going on at the homeless shelter we wouldn’t be so quick to build the structures for manicured enjoyment. This place, like many places, have a shadow that can go unacknowledged even among the apparently ‘spiritual’ community, which can be so bent on running toward the light that they don’t see their own toxic aversion to the dark.

In my own life to, I have at times paved over unpleasantness with a righteous quest for enjoyment and inspiration, not realizing I would eventually run into a dead end if that quest was not congruent with reality; not attached to a genuine root. What initially appeared to me as unwanted events and circumstances (some of which still appear that way to me) take on a more beneficent countenance when in retrospect I saw that they woke me out of my slumber. These were the ‘evil’ factors that seemed to stall my life—injuries, chaos in the home, family health issues—which stopped me in my tracks which were leading me off course, away from Nature. More and more it seems to me that these difficulties are Nature’s way of steering us back towards ourselves. This can be more or less accessible at different times in life, in different planetary periods. And the particular challenges will depend on the qualities of the planets we are under the influence of, providing different access points to our personal shadow—all that is just out of view for us.

There is a song by David Sylvian called “The Banality of Evil.” One line of lyrics goes like this:

There was a time
Not so long ago
I was master of everything I surveyed
Yes, there was a time
We did it my way
We'll do things my way

This sums up pretty well the insistence that the stars are giving us an opportunity to release. Scorpio is brimming with resources right now, and this is the sign of what is hidden, unseen, ‘dark’ and generally repulsive—including patterns which we not awake to. it is the compost pile, from whose eventual soil food can grow. Now is compost time. But if not enough heat is applied in this direction then the soil won’t be fertile. The particular type of heat that is required is one of attentive curiosity. Even in regard to the aversion we might be curious. What does it feel like? How do we feel inside it? Does it live in a particular place in our body, or a specific thought pattern?

That aversion is coming to offer a gift, to open a doorway. To receive entrance to the locked gate one must accept the reality of the aversion without trying to change it. This is how evil loses its charge. The word devil has roots in ‘diablos’ which means to ‘throw apart.’ it is a separative energy, which is not inherently evil. it’s the dynamic forces of coming together and moving apart, after all, which create the separation necessary for love and longing, and give us the diversity of our seasons—themselves an expression of nature’s longing.

This is a time we could all practice transferring our sense of ‘mastery’ from bulldozing the path we’ve decided is right into mastery of congruence with reality. Instead of deciding what ‘your way’ is, ask and witness what it actually is. How are you operating? Stay with that for a while. You might surprise yourself by becoming comfortable there.

Note: if this subject matter is interesting to you, feel free to email me at maggiehippman@gmail.com about an upcoming meditation course I’ll be teaching (starts 1/27) which delves deeply into the techniques that can make this approach very accessible.