Today, I had a very interesting conversation about good and evil. One woman stated: “Of course evil exists if good exists. Everything has its polarity.”
I’ve been told before that I only see the good in people and that I need to live in the “real” world. Despite this, I said: “I realise that without darkness, there can be no light. But ultimately, and beyond all that, I feel that love and light prevail. And everything is part of that Divine Oneness.” Somebody else piped up: “Yes, duality only comes into play when the human mind perceives it.”
Deep, I know! I went home in a bit of a daze. I knew I had to sit with this and feel what was right for me. I went to bed with a copy of the Tao Te Ching and randomly opened a page. I was amazed to read the following words:
“Recognise beauty and ugliness is born. Recognise good and evil is born. Is and isn’t produce each other. Hard depends on easy, Long is tested by short, High is determined by low, Sound is harmonised by voice, After is followed by before.”
It is only in defining something that its opposite arises. I felt very tired. I switched off the light, pulled back the curtains and gazed up at the night. “What is the truth,” I asked the crescent-shaped moon. The clouds moved across the sky, part shadow, part light. Suddenly, a large black cloud completely covered the moon. It was as though the darkness had banished the light.
The truth, according to my human eye, was that the shadow had overridden the light. Yet I knew that the moon had not gone anywhere. It still was. I also knew that, although it only appeared to be a sliver of its full self, the moon never actually diminished in size. It was always there in its entirety. And I knew that it was the brightest object in the sky, after the sun, even though its surface was actually very dark, with a similar reflectance to coal.
The dark cloud moved on and the light shone down. The moon said nothing. It simply was. And I no longer needed to be answered.
justhotpics.blogspot.com/2008/12/beautiful-pictures-of-moon
betterthansurviving 
That is so beautiful. When I ponder on good and evil, right and wrong, I always think of the symbol of ying yang – there is a dark side and light side but within the dark there is a little speck of light and within the light there is a little speck of darkness. We can perceive or interpret anything as good and bad but mastery of life happens when we can see the balance and opportunities in all events. Wonderful, post, Sharon. Sounds like a great conversation to have.
Thanks Lisa. Yes, the yin yang symbol is a wonderful example of the perfect balance of light and dark, hot and cold, day and night, action and rest. It’s the labelling of things as “good” and “bad” that keeps people stuck.
To me, it is a Pink Flyod or Disco Party song… and reminds me of Monty Python dearly, cheers!
Peter Kropotkin’s Anarchist Morality is a must read, he treats morality as a characteristic of all living beings and argues that anarchism, oft condemned as immoral, is in fact entirely consistent with this innate morality:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kropotkin/anmorality/