subject: Is There Such a Thing as Right and Wrong? [print this page] A tweet on Twitter recently suggested that there is no such thing as right and wrong but that everything is simply an opportunity to learn.
People pass tweets like this on because it makes them feel good to believe they never do anything badthat everything is just a lesson to be learned, a further step in our development.
But can something be an opportunity to learn, a chance to develop greater consciousness, and at the same time involve doing somethingwrong?
It's so easy to circulate ideas because they sound good, without ever questioning themand yet the least questioning would perhaps reveal the inadequacy of such ideas. This would seem to be the case with the concepts of right and wrong.
Take the holocaust as an example.Some might have a little difficulty seeing the murder of six million Jews, four million Poles, and countless others as simply a "learning" experience.
They might think that to slaughter people in this way is plainwrong.
Was Adolph Hitler just engaging in a "learning" experience when he started a war that in the end left fifty million dead?
Yes, we can engage in some mental gymnastics to "explain" how all of this is just part of humanity's learning. But that's exactly what they are: mental gymnastics.
If we are honest with ourselves, allowing ourselves to be touched by the suffering of others instead of rationalizing with our mind, we all know that the holocaust and other tragedies of this kind are great evils.
Of course, in the bigger picturethe much, much bigger pictureholocaustsarepart of the evolution of consciousness in the world of form. We do learn from these tragedies.
But does this make them any less tragic, any less bad?
Let's bring this down to a personal scale. Do we ever do wrong by each other?
Some of us have found that when we pay attention to our true self, a voice within us at times points out that we took a wrong turn.
Wrong? Yes. What we did caused ourselves and perhaps others immense pain. Or it was a huge waste of effort.
We learned a lesson and make sure we avoid such behavior in the future so that we don't have to go through such suffering again.
Something can be wrong for us and for others even if it's a lessons we have to learn. That it's bad doesn't negate how it might cause us to grow.
The fact that a painful experience may become a catalyst for the evolution of our consciousness doesn't mean it can't be deemed bad. For instance, how many times do we have to bang our head against the wall before we realize it's nuts to do that?
Eckhart Tolle sets this issue straight inThe Power of Now. A question is posed:
But if you call some emotions negative, aren't you really saying that they shouldn't be there, that it's not okay to have those emotions? My understanding is that we should give ourselves permission to have whatever feelings come up, rather than judge them as bad or say that we shouldn't have them. It's okay to feel resentful; it's okay to be angry, irritated, moody, or whateverotherwise, we get into repression, inner conflict, or denial. Everything is okay as it is.
Eckhart responds:
Of course. Once a mind pattern, an emotion, or a reaction is there, accept it. You were not conscious enough to have a choice in the matter. That's not a judgment, just a fact. If youhada choice, or realized that youdohave a choice, would you choose suffering or joy, ease or unease, peace or conflict? Would you choose a thought or feeling that cuts you off from your natural state of well-being, the joy of life within? Any such feeling I call negative, which simply means bad. Not in the sense that "You shouldn't have done that," but just plain factual bad, like feeling sick in the stomach.
How is it possible that humans killed in excess of one hundred million fellow humans in the twentieth century alone? Humans inflicting pain of such magnitude on one another is beyond anything you can imagine.Only people who are in a deeply negative state, who feel very bad indeed, would create such a reality as a reflection of how they feel. Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species. That's not a judgment. It's a fact.
The really interesting question is why so many of us resist calling something bad, wrong, or evil. What is it in us that has a need to make everything somehow okay?
