In the Apocalypse of St John (at the bible's end) a book with 7 seals is opened. It is explained that with opening of the 1st seal there appears a rider on a white horse holding a bow and wearing a crown. With the opening of the 2nd seal there appears a rider on a red horse with a great sword. With the opening of the 3rd seal there appears a rider on a black horse holding a pair of scales in his hand. With the opening of the 4th seal: "And I saw: see, a pale horse, and the name of its rider is Death, and the spirits of death are his retinue." Now that we are in the fifth, these spirits of death are now everywhere: outside us and within us. Physical boundaries hold no meaning for them. Our prejudice is our own but you could say these spiritual beings feed off our prejudice increasing it.
The previous post ends with two paths of development: deal with our own prejudice or project what we don't like onto others and fixate (vector) all we do like towards our selves. We can truly change who we are at our most personal and deepest levels or become ever more self centered and brittle. Either spiritual development starts with our shadow, dealing with what is immediately present, or it clouds over our brokenness and inability, falsifying egotism in place of self.
It is an open secret that we owe our shadow a great debt, without it we would be lost, having no direction forward. Our weakness and failing show us where we need to work and the objective is not a perfection that rejects the shadow but a perfection that is all inclusive. Death is as much a part of life as everything else and conversely life is so much a part of death.
The question of the shadow is what to do with evil? Do we make war on evil? Do we bomb it out of existence? Jihad means struggle not war. We have to struggle with our shadow, dance with it, and the dance goes: two steps forward one step back.
In the hope of getting to know the shadow it is noted that a good way to know anything is to see it from three sides, in a tripartite way. A great example of this is the setting forth of the goal of spiritual development as: Wisdom, Strength, and Love. That covers an immense amount of ground. The three in a tripartite view can stand for: body, soul, spirit, or thinking, feeling, will, or nerve-sense system, rhythmic system, metabolic system, or head, heart, and hands.
For the shadow there is: doubt (confusion), hate (projection), and fear. The goal of doubt in a positive light is to lead towards reasoned understanding. There is no positive goal to hate. It is purely destructive. The positive side to fear is very far reaching. Let's just say it is not an early warning system but fear incarnates you, brings awareness to your boundaries, and leads you towards a continual state of awareness. Maybe the positive side of these three is not helpful because it is only in the overcoming of doubt, hate, and fear that there is any positivity at all.
The goal of evil is the development of mankind but the trouble with evil is that once it slips its place and manifests, it thoroughly messes up the very development that is its goal. Therefore, it is the job of every spiritual seeker to leave evil in the lower part of the spiritual world, where it properly belongs, and to attempt to not let it come into being through one's actions.
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