How Do STS's View Other Selves?

[Minyatur]

You can dismiss almost anything as "not existing" if you recourse to nonduality. Because almost everything cancels out in nonduality. I have no disagreement with you on that front, and never have.

Nonduality integrates and does not dismiss though, to dismiss would be to separate/dualize. This is why I say the term evil hints toward a facet of good, because good integrates what the misnommer evil seek to portray.

But when you attempt to apply the rules of the Absolute to the relative universe of duality you are moving backwards in my opinion, by looking at manifestations which are actual within our illusion, and then pretending they aren't real. You can say they are illusions, sure, but just like the game analogy I presented earlier you still have to deal with them if you want to progress.

I did speak of the spiritual utility of the archetype of evil. It is a useful misperception with it's own lessons but remains a misperception of yourself and/or others, and/or the Creator.

Of course to say there is no evil is not a way to avoid progress. If you come to the realization that there is no evil, then you will feel that there is no evil. If a situation still triggers you, then you won't tell yourself that the other person is evil but instead that you are offered a mirror that sheds light upon that you still have work to do upon yourself. Bottomline, at some point no more evil is seen by the self because one's understanding is too aligned with unity to perceive evil in others. The illusionary archetype can be recognized, but the understanding transmutes "what is not" into "what is".

For example: I could say, "Well physicality isn't real, and every time you see solid matter you are misperceiving what is really there, because in the Absolute there is no tangible form. Your translation of reality is not in alignment with nonduality." But if you go running full blast at a concrete wall, I'll wager the manifestation will convince you mightily of its "realness".

There is probably a lot of pros toward gaining an understanding that reality truly is non-physical. But to non-dualize would be to perceive that reality while being non-physical offers the illusion of physically within it's non-physically, but remains not constrained by it. You can then ponder how this aspect of reality affects you in your daily life (because it does).

And this is why it is absurd to pretend evil doesn't exist. To not acknowledge it is equivalent to pretending pain doesn't exist. Does pretending pain doesn't exist make it, the so called "illusory manifestation", go away? No, the distortion remains. So the attempt to clear it via that method was a failure from my perspective.

I think you miss the point that to not see evil, you need to first learn your lessons about evil and distill it within yourself. Then others can have distortions that relate with lessons regarding the illusion of evil, but you won't yourself. Someone can think of itself as evil, but you'll know the person is nothing evil. Others can think a group of people are evil, but you will know they are not evil, that the truth behind the seeming-evilness is quite something other.

Just because I see and acknowledge that evil exists doesn't mean that I'm not optimistic. It just means that if I see one man murder another man in cold blood, I don't delude myself into thinking he did it for the benefit of mankind. It makes me more objective, because I'm not attempting to filter some presumed distortion from my reality. It just means I don't conflate selfishness with its complete opposite. Frankly, in my opinion, conflating the two doesn't lead to more harmony, it leads to much much less, because you are more likely to be manipulated by negatively oriented beings.

Have you considered that maybe it is good you misinterpret? Is good to do something for the sake of a large group of people?

Also, to not see evil does not mean you can't recognize the distortions of an other-self. Just recnognize that evil is the illusionary way to look at things and that it is stopping at the surface of the distortions which run deeper. Like I said, there is no evil, what you interpret as evil is not evil. You could call it self disalignment with it's reality, and I'd agree.

But I really do sincerely believe that realizing nondual awareness is *NOT* about pretending any given dichotomy is not real, but rather CLEARLY perceiving the dichotomy, which leads naturally to the perception of the continuum, or dimension of experience, that they both extend from. So rather than pretend evil doesn't exist, I see it for what it is, and in clearly seeing it, I see a real glimpse of the creator, rather than some preconceived notion of how I imagine it to be.

As I said just above, evil is a state of disalignment with your reality, that is to look objectively at things, but usually the term evil refers to a non-clear perception of something. It's really just the easy way, calling something evil is what mankind has been doing for milleniums of confusion.

I could label anything that is unwell as evil, because from the perspective of well people it absorbs the well being of those who are well. Would that make sense? No because it is inconsiderate of why the unwell person is not well and creates a separation between those who are well and those who are unwell, while they are truly the one same thing under different circumstances.

I don't believe I said anything about an objective line in the sand delineating what constitutes infringement, but for a conscious and self aware being it is a simple matter of realizing if something doesn't feel good to you, it probably doesn't feel good to others either. There will certainly be distortions, because not everybody likes or dislikes the same things, but the core factor is that a self aware being knows that other beings are conscious and suffer as well, so at some point in any given interaction with another, it will become obvious that an action is an infringement.

They will say something to the effect of, "Hey jerk! You're infringing on me!"  

I think the things that I say are more of a tool to understand others, or not block in your attempt to understand them. If you stop at evil, you don't go beneath the mask of evil, because even as a thing, it's still just a mask.

As for yourself, whatever you think, you will have this abstract line (compass thing) upon which you will have to make choices. There is no avoiding that, because we work with feelings and face ourselves in a conscious or unconscious fashion.