2009-12-6 03:45:00
JJ:
Do you ever notice when you try to take a step forward that there seem to be all kinds of forces pulling you backwards? Anybody in here ever smoked and tried to quit? Who has tried to quit? When you try to quit, have you ever noticed that every force in the woodwork comes forward to offer you cigarettes and get you back on the habit? This is what happens. That's a good analogy because every smoker can identify with that. Not only smoking, but everything you do that will move you forward, to more happiness, better health, whatever, there are forces trying to pull you back, and they come out of the woodwork when you take that step forward. If you've never taken a major step forward, you may not have noticed it, but if you ever try to make a major step forward in your progression, you will encounter forces pulling you backwards. You'll wonder where they all come from and where they've even been all your life, because they are powerful and they will pull you backwards.
Jesus gave a parable about this. He talked about a man with an unclean spirit who cleaned his house and got rid of the unclean spirit. The unclean spirit went abroad and found seven more devils more evil than himself. He brought these seven back with him and they entered into the guy, and his last state became worse than the first.
Now, there is a principle around this, discounting the fact of the typical view of what devils may be. There is a principle behind this teaching of Jesus, and that is -- and Dan encountered it when he tried to quit. Have you wound up quitting?
Dan: Well, sort of.
JJ: (laughs) You're really good at it because you've done it hundreds of times, right?
Audience: "He did quit."
JJ: Oh, you did quit? Okay. Are you still kind of tempted now and then?
Dan: Dan: No. Actually, it's been a long time.
JJ: Okay. So what happens when you try to make a step forward, especially a spiritual step? Now, Dan has also encountered this on the list. He has decided to create a course, and he presented the course to our triad group and he got all kinds of flak over that. Now, good ole Dan, he was just trying to help people move ahead spiritually, and you got all kinds of flak over that, didn't you? So it's interesting. Now I'm not saying whether Dan was right or wrong, it's just a fact that he was making an attempt to move ahead, and when you make an attempt to move ahead, you're going to have forces pulling you back and trying to make you think you're just all screwed to the Dickens with your idea to move ahead to begin with. You'll have these forces that will come to you and ask you this question -- this is what I call the mantra of the dark brotherhood: Who do you think you are?
Now, getting back to quitting smoking. This mantra enters you head in a certain strange way when you even do something simple like that. You try to quit and something in you says, "Who do you think you are, trying to quit? You can't quit." And whenever you try to move a step forward, you will have this inner voice from the dark side pulling at you: "Who do you think you are? You're nobody. You can't move ahead. You cannot be a spiritual man. You cannot be a healthy man. Look at all these people and the bad shape they're in. What makes you think you can move ahead of them? You think you're better than they are?"
You'll have this inner voice from a point of darkness trying to pull you back. In other words, the dark energy that you threw out will go find seven other dark energies worse than himself and come back with about a dozen times the force he had before. And you thought it was hard before; now, all of a sudden, as you're taking that baby step ahead, you feel a force very powerful trying to pull you back.
Do people here identify with that, when you look over your lives? Have you felt that force trying to pull you back when you try to move ahead? Lots of people nodding their heads here.
Audience: "Do we need the dark brothers to provide that resistance for us? Or is there enough -- if they all disappeared tomorrow, would there be enough resistance...?"
JJ: Well, it's not that we need them, it's just that whenever we're in creation, the polarities just are. One polarity will always be to move us forward, and the other polarity to pull us backwards. Now, the question is: Why does good dominate? A lot of people think that good doesn't dominate, that they are exactly equal and they balance each other out. But do you realize that in all of creation, creation exists because one energy dominates over the other. Without this domination, all the universe would disappear. Do you ever think of that? And that's a scientific fact, it's not spiritual metaphysics.
If you look at the creation of the atom, you have the positive nucleus of the atom, and then you have the electrons. Within the atom itself, it will be created because it's a little out of balance toward one energy or the other. And in this universe, it's toward the positive energy -- what we call the positive. Slightly positive. And that out-of-balanceness causes rotation and movement to try to balance off the two energies, and that rotation and movement, and the wavelengths that are created, creates everything there is. If you had the most powerful microscope in the universe and could look, look deeper and deeper, you'd see empty space wherever you go -- empty space with wavelengths. You go into the atom, you go into the quarks, you go deeper and deeper. You do not find anything solid. Everything is created out of energy and motion that is just slightly out of balance.
If you could take the matter in this book and balance off the two energies so that the positive and negative were exactly equal, it would disappear into nothingness. Not exactly nothingness, because where it comes from is not nothing. It is that which is esoteric; it is that which we do not understand. There is no such thing as nothing. But where creation comes from is a point that is just not understood by us. There is something there, but from the concrete mind we would call it nothing. But it's not nothing. So one energy balances over the other at all times, and it causes creation.
Now, there are only two energies in the universe: positive and negative. And they manifest in all kinds of different ways. One of the ways they manifest is in good and evil. In good and evil you have them interplaying against themselves, and one always dominates over the other. Now, sometimes one will dominate for a period of time and then the other for a period of time, but in the whole scheme of things, one dominates over the other eternally, and that is good, at least in this universe we are in. Now, we define good as being that which moves us forward in our evolution. There will never come a time when we are not moving forward, but there will be rest periods. There will be a great pralaya where the universe all folds up and then a new universe will be created. In between the universes, in between the solar systems, in between the creation of the planets, in between lives we may have a rest, but there is always a new period where we are moving forward. But why is moving forward dominant over moving backwards? It's a key principle here.
Audience: "What's the name of that law that says that once you're in motion, you stay in motion?"
Audience: "Inertia. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion if there is no obstruction."
JJ: Okay, I'm going to give you one word, and that's the answer.
Audience: "Intention. Intent."
JJ: I'm going to give you one word to contemplate on as a seed thought. Intelligence. Intelligence. Contemplate that word in relation to why good dominates over evil. Let's go back to the painting of Leonardo da Vinci. He had a vision of how his art was supposed to look. His dominating good, or his good that he has in mind, is creating a masterpiece of art. Say, either the Last Supper or the Mona Lisa, something like that. That finished product is the good. He begins to paint the Mona Lisa, and he can't get the smile right -- or the non-smile, or whatever people call it. He wants it to look a certain way, and he can't get it right. The evil is that he keeps making mistakes. He keeps not getting it the way he wants. This is evil because these mistakes take him backwards. He thinks he's making progress, then it doesn't look right. He erases it, and he starts over. So he's going forward, he's going backwards, he's going forward, he's going backwards, and eventually he goes forward and he achieves the dominating good. What gave him power to achieve it?
Robin: I just wanted to say something else. Actually, I'm not sure that it's evil each time he tries and doesn't get it right, because he's actually moving forward by eliminating possibilities that aren't working. Just like Einstein with the light bulb. He tries and tries and tries...."
Audience: "Edison."
Robin: "Edison, sorry. Whoever did it. (laughter)"
Audience: "Is it because God is innately in the project itself? Like, this being God's creation...."
JJ: Okay, but see, that's the way we're defining evil. In other words, it's true that without good and evil, there can be no creation. Without good and evil, there could be not creation of a light bulb. There could be no creation of anything, because you have a force pulling one direction and then a force pulling another direction. But one of the directions will dominate. If the direction with Edison inventing the light bulb -- a lesser man would have had 10,000 failures and he would have thrown his hands up and given up.
And the evil, or the going backwards, would have dominated. And that happens many times. Many times people attempt a great work and they encounter so many frustrations that they give up. I have encountered many people who say, "Well, you know, I've read your teachings, and right after I did this, I had this negative thing happen that's a sign to me that I should just go on to something else." Okay, well, is that a sign to him about that? (laughter) No. That's a negative force pulling him away.
In other words, if the teachings have something that could actually move him forward, and that sign discourages him, he's being dominated by retrogression. Edison would have been dominated by retrogression, because-- I think she's referring to the famous story about Edison when a reporter came to him and he said, "Listen, you've made 10,000 attempts to create this silly light bulb idea of yours. Are you ready now to admit failure?" He said, "You have failed 10,000 times." And Edison said, "I have not failed 10,000 times. Ten thousand times I have successfully identified that which will not work, and that only leaves a handful of things left to try. So I'm just about there." (laughs) That's what you call a positive mental attitude.
Yeah, Larry?
Larry: "Maybe the reason why the good dominates is because God, the ultimate One God, has made a decision of will and power that things are going to go this way. It's like a stream, and if you're trying to go backwards, it's like swimming against the stream. And a really strong swimmer like Hitler can go back for a while, but even if Edison had given up because the stream was going forward, somebody has got to invent that light bulb."
JJ: Right. And if Edison had given up, Larry made the good point, somebody else would have come along and built on what he had -- probably would have taken Edison's notes about the 10,000 things that didn't work and maybe made two or three more experiments and found the one that did.
Audience: Maybe good dominates because we'll continue to choose until we get it right. It's like that parable you gave about going to heaven and hell. Even if you end up in hell, you keep choosing again or recreating again until you get it right. Maybe that's why good dominates."
JJ: That's a good point.
Copyright © 2009 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved