FEAR NO EVIL
You know even the nicest people in the whole world have a dark side.
Sometimes, in fact often, the very very very very very very nicest people, the very nicest people.
It's not actually even that the nicest people have the darkest dark side-- it's just the contrast that makes it seems so. What we have is a capacity. Our capacity for light is matched by our capacity for dark. It can scare us a lot. It scares us a lot. I wouldn't say that it’s that the very nicest among us have more dark side, but the nicest among us are more scared of it, and are more concern, and are more sincerely an potentially incapacitatingly upset by having a dark side. I mean A DARK SIDE. I mean no kidding hater - our capacity to hate and be cruel and wreak harm to others.
It’s the capacity to generate blackest blackness of Hell. No human doesn’t have the ability to let pure hell come through - purest Hell - purest hating, uncaring, opposite of love, Hell, come through. This is a capacity that is equal to that same capacity to open and allow pure love to come through. We are capable of being very good ventriloquist dummies, and if we want the capacity to be useable by an infinite amount of love, and have that capacity, part of what comes with the territory is accepting that we could use the same capacity for something else.
It isn't unusual to any of us. It is sometimes the cause of fear of ourselves… and it can be the cause of self loathing too, though usually only in a very nicest people are completely horrified, sickened, incapacitated by self loathing, or self-terrified by having a dark side like everyone else.
There does seem to be some difference in the life that we each lead, especially early on, as far as how circumstances do or do not bring to our own attention that we have a dark side. People can go through much of their lives without ever realizing that they’re anything other than pretty nice. Other people face circumstances that make it clear early on…
Ideally, children don't discover that there is such a thing as whatever we want to call the opposite of LovingTruth – evil, hurter, hater, harmer. It's nice if it's not discovered until puberty.
At puberty human organisms actually demand the knowledge of evil, and they will go seek it out and get themselves an education. If you try and keep them from it, they will still find a way.
That’s when the capacity usually awakens, and there’s a burning need to know: “What do I do with this? I feel it inside of me, I recognize it outside of me; how does evil work? I need to get at home with it.” It’s a natural evolution and a natural timing, around puberty to start seeking out how do I live in healthy balance with these forces in myself and in the world and find a way with it. If it comes earlier than that, it's a loss of innocence that can really be frightening – it shakes people up.
This is different that the common meanness and unkindness in children that is completely channeled and not self conscious and it’s not theirs - it’s their parents, it’s their TV set. They’re not actually feeling aware inside of themselves a capacity for destructiveness. Very few children have that self-aware capacity for destructiveness. It's a terrible burden. It’s a gift that we’ve perhaps been given to develop as a particular kind of soul… Every single demon is a gift to look at something in some way, and those who get it really early that they have a dark side and that they have the capacity to be destructive, it’s a great rigor. It can also lead to not just fear of one’s self, but self-loathing. Sometimes really deep self-loathing. Many people are heir to a

sense of self-loathing that comes from having discovered that they have a dark side, and not really having a sense of how to be in relationship to it.
We’ve got a couple of different situation that can come out of this. Two come to mind particularly in this classroom. One is the situation of “ don’t know how manage from inside of myself, the feelings that are coming up from the dark side that are destructive.” How do I selfmanage what feels like genuinely nasty hell demon energy coming up through me, and not being able to live with myself, and not being able to feel okay about myself, which its worst peril is clogging up the channels of feeling lovable, feeling worthy to receive.
In a sense, it's in a management issue. Everybody has this capacity; it will come up sometimes.
There's a certain amount of sheer distress of having this to deal with and not having a management system for having this on the inside to deal with. This requires just staying with, staying with, staying with, staying with you are lovable - and yes this is a lot deal with. Yes, you are lovable and wow you—yes—you don't really have a system in place for this. Yes, you are lovable and Oh wow! You sure can pitch some darkness - Yup, there it is. I hear you. This is a lot to live with. Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, we definitely need something. We need help. We need to be working with this – absolutely—against the back drop of love. Let whatever fit and hysteria and pain go ahead and freak out all over the room against the back drop of unassailable lovability that doesn’t change whatsoever - a steady note of love. We do this aiming towards a time when
(without this degree of total overwhelm because it's just been too, too long) we are able to start asking; “Please how do I live with myself?” “How do I live with all of what's inside me?” “How do
I live with the way I’m made?” “How do I live with myself?” “How do I live with myself?” Usually this is asked first by someone who's hysterically and desperately under pressure. But it's a really good question, and it is THE question that the tutorial is needed for: “How do I live with myself?” “How do I live with this?” “Can you show me the good idea in all of this?”
There’s the whole vector of self disgust, self rejection, self unlovableness in response to our own dark side, and the self fear, terror of one’s self, of one’s nature, of what the demons say is “our true nature.” Anything that we keep inside and keep hidden is demon bait for the “your true nature” harassment routine. You know, the hidden thing, that’s who you really are - the thing that doesn’t show. One of the most important aspects of working with something that we’re afraid is our true nature, because it’s the hidden part, is to start not hiding it so much. That does not mean acting out evil - it really does not. Absolutely—trust me this is not what I am advocating. But hidden things are demon bait. Hidden and forbidden things are demon bait.
Hidden, forbidden things that we think we’re the only one like that, and that if everybody else knew this about us it would change everything. We would lose our friends, people would no longer come to us for acupuncture, they would not want to marry us—that’s what makes the hidden demon bait.
It means that as practitioner, we all are in a position, as an act of love, to be able to find the door way to the dark inside of us, And to know where it is inside of us. Not necessarily to go through it, and not necessarily to allow anything to come through it in to us. But to note the doorway—Yes? Oh yes! I know where that door way is. Sometimes things come howling through it when I’m not guarded. And sometimes I go through it, and disappear into Hell.
To know this door in ourselves: this is one of the most loving public services that we can do. Not to bring things through the door, not to go through the door, neither to bring hell to earth, nor to descend into Hell, but to live beyond innocence. To stay where you are aware, where you can

feel what you could bring through if you were a bad witch. Just what I could wreak – Yup, I feel that door. And it's infinite - it's an infinite force. I could bring this through infinitely. Just as surely I could fall through that door and disappear into it infinitely. I know about this - just knowing the door, knowing the door… So that we can publicly be somebody who can meet someone else’s eye, showing that we know it, and are not afraid. Yes, I know about this. Yes, I am choosing. I’m making my choice, but not innocently. Not innocently…