Recently a friend of mine kindly wrote to me to share some points of view regarding some of the questions I have about the existence of Evil and the intrinsic nature of suffering in our world. (See the following articles for more in-depth information on my thoughts on this subject: (1) , (2), (3). )  Some of the points she raised covered the subjects of karma, reincarnation, sin, Sylvia Browne and Dolores Cannon's writings, etc. I thought my reply would be helpful to visitors to this website who've been reading my thoughts on this subject to date, as it addresses some important issues.  (I've removed a few comments which might identify the friend to whom I was responding and some personal responses that acknowledged our friendship, otherwise the text is intact.)

Regarding Human Suffering: A Letter To A Friend

Thank you...

I may have mentioned in one of my videos of a couple of years ago a story about how Spirit caused me to drive 2 hours to another town to discover a book by Sylvia Browne. In vision Spirit gave me information about Dark Souls and encouraged me to share this with people. I was reticent to do so, partially concerned by how some people might react to such statements, partially unsure about whether or not what I sensed was largely influenced by my own imagination, and for other reasons. Anyway, Spirit told me that Dark Souls come to Earth with the sole intention of causing as much suffering and mayhem in their time here as is possible. But, like I said, I vacillated over whether or not to share this teaching. So, a day or two after the message had been sent to me Spirit encouraged me to drive to a town called Devizes, which is about 2 hours from Bournemouth, along some circuitous country roads. So I drove there. When I visit a town I quickly learn where the bookshops are, and I tend to remember good ones. I'd been to Devizes before and whilst there I'd visited a bookshop. So whilst there on this occasion, I returned to the shop. I made my way to the religious section. I don't think I saw anything that caught my eye. However, as I was about to leave I chanced upon a book written by a woman called Sylvia Browne, which stood out boldly on a small book rack containing a few esoteric books. I opened the book, and what do you know(?): I discovered her writing about Dark Entities, who... come to earth to cause as much mayhem and suffering as possible. Exactly what Spirit had told me a day or so before. The only obvious difference in what she wrote and what I'd been told being that Spirit used the term Dark Soul to me, whereas Sylvia wrote instead about Dark Entities (a minor difference). If I remember correctly, her mother, Sylvia said, was a sociopath? I think the book may even have been 'The Other Side And Back'.

As a result I purchased several of Sylvia's books. Some of what she wrote on other subjects resonated with me. I agree that Earth is a 'school', I'd learned about this from others, such as those who write about Near Death Experiences... and directly from Spirit. I agree that this world is Hellish too. I'd written on this subject myself briefly several years ago: http://www.kerin-beautiful-day.co.uk/index.php/articles/33-hell-on.html Curiously, with this in mind and your recent comments, I was visiting my parents on Sunday (where we usually spend a lot of time talking about spiritual issues) when, amongst other things, this week, my mother too said something like 'This is Hell', in response to the thread of conversation and her observation of the kind of suffering that's allowed to occur on Earth. I am in total agreement that only brave souls choose to incarnate here. I am, I suspect, not as brave as I thought I was then when on the Otherside, as I often wonder what I'm doing here. I never want to return. Yet, I'm not sure I could stand idly by when so many people and so many animals suffer here either... and this worries me. If an ox, or a person, falls into a ditch I'm inclined to want to help them get out. Which (and I've thought about this a lot) might encourage me to return, to help, particularly if the ox was an animal I'd known while in physical life and had a bond with, or the person was a relative or friend from times past. But this is perhaps another subject. I understand the motivations of the Bodhisattvas, although I don't claim to be one: I'm not that brave.

One of the other books I purchased by Sylvia Browne was called End of Days. www.amazon.com/End-Days-Predictions-Prophecies-About/dp/074992909X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1312882501&sr=8-10 Sylvia is very talented, to be sure, and she has a great mind, that's clear, yet, as I read her words in various books I noticed what seemed to me to be flaws, here and there. For example, if I remember correctly, in End of Days she made some emphatic predictions about the future. At the time I'd purchased End of Days several years had passed since its publication and some of the predictions were, if my memory is correct, way off the mark. I read what she had to say about past lives and past life therapy in another of her books too. Some of what she wrote seemed plausible, some didn't. In the end I found that, to my mind, she, like everyone else, has partial answers, yet, when taken in their entirety and tested against the reality of our world, to my mind, some of what she has to say is unsupportable. Indeed, just the other day one of our national newspapers ran a two or three page article about one of her recent books in which she claimed to channel Elvis, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and, I think, one or two other celebrities. I felt decidedly uncomfortable about what she'd written - and what she'd claimed to do, based on what she'd written.

I gave most of my Sylvia Browne books to charity shops recently, along with one of the Dolores Cannon 'Convoluted Universe' books I'd purchased in recent years, because some of the claims made seemed to me to be too emphatic and lacking in substantive evidence (I tried very hard to read The Convoluted Universe, as someone else had recommended it to me too, but it seemed too speculative for me - and it appeared, to my mind, to lack good foundations and solid architecture. Although I expect Dolores herself is well intentioned, and it is clear that she too is very gifted in lots of ways. I tried to follow her on video too, probably a couple of years ago now, but some of the statements she made, I personally found implausible). I've got a couple of Michael's (Newton) books, which I've dipped into now and again, no doubt I'll return to them when the time is 'right'.

I'm sure there is a reason for why the world is as it is. One day we'll all find out, I'm sure.

None of the attempts to answer the questions posed by the existence of Evil and reality of suffering I've encountered so far have provided complete answers, for me. Lots of partial answers, to be sure. Yet nothing I've read or heard has yet provided a satisfactory answer to the basic question of why God / The Source would allow screaming children to be burned alive in ovens (by the Nazis), or why any child would choose to incarnate to be burned to death in absolute agony and unimaginable fear. Nor does anything so far presented to me explain, using the model of karma, why millions of Jews came first to be tortured in concentration camps and then shot, or gassed to death. Husbands separated from their wives, knowing that death awaited, helpless to do anything... but die. Women stripped naked. Some having had their children removed from them, knowing what awaits their babies, due to the screams that have already echoed across the concentration camp on other days, when other people's children were taken and consigned to be burned alive in the hellish ovens, as they, many spiritually devout mothers themselves walked hopeless, naked at gun point into cold, unforgiving, rooms as the doors shut menacingly behind them and then the hiss of the gas competed with the screams of the people as, one by one, they all slowly fell dead and dying to the floor. Were all of these unfortunate Jews, I asked myself, paying karmic debts? Were the millions of Jews, so to speak, particularly guilty souls in desperate need to expunge karmic debts? I'm uncomfortable with answers which appear to suggest this is the case. And I ask myself, did all of these Jews come to learn something through such awful deaths? I'm uncomfortable with answers that imply this is the case too, because, in effect, both of these points of view mean that the Jews brought their suffering upon themselves. If this is remotely the case, this means that the Jewish people were responsible for the Holocaust, either because they were paying karmic debts or, because they had all chosen to die in this way. And if this is correct this means that the Nazi's aren't ultimately guilty at all because in the first instance, the power of karma caused them to kill the Jews (therefore karma is guilty of their deaths) and in the second example, the Jews caused the Nazis to kill them, because they wanted to learn something. When taken to its extreme this means Hitler was innocent, because he was doing 'good'.

Then there is the 'There is no such thing as sin' hypothesis, which I find troubling too. Indeed, I think that, sadly, there are sins: Al-Qaeda sin big-time, Gaddafi sins big-time, Assad sins big-time, Mugabe sins big-time and millions of others sin, on a lesser scale too. Some even make a 'career' out of it.

Regarding freewill: I've come to understand that freewill is a freewill of degrees, not totality. We don't have total freewill. So the proposition that 'God has given us freewill' and that this can explain why our world is like it is fails somewhat, when tested rigorously. (I agree in general with the freewill principle, indeed, I've felt inspired to refer to it in times past myself, but... it isn't a complete answer, and some of the holes in the freewill theory are large indeed, I think.)

I agree that, as stated above, this world provides many opportunities to learn that cannot be accomplished on the Otherside. But then I ask, why is everything designed in such a way that the only way to learn is to suffer, in some cases unfairly, painfully and horribly? (And then there is the evidence that suggests that the pains and suffering that a person undergoes do not teach them very much at all: except to be afraid, as so much of the past life regression research suggests that many people reincarnate suffering from severe phobias of various kinds (which make their current lives unbearable) because it seems of abuses perpetrated upon them in past lives. Not only did they not, it seems 'learn' from the suffering and death in the past, but the effects of the deaths have followed them through other their lives, torturing them perhaps many times over.)

Then I ask myself, if, as it seems, we're encouraged to aspire to live with Love, and we come from a realm in which Love is the standard, a realm that we call home, why then are we sent to a place (Earth) that is so lacking in love sometimes and so full of violence too often? If we are already living in a loving way in a realm of love, why come to a realm which, more often it seems, experience teaches people to hate, to give up hope, to distrust and to suffer: returning, perhaps worse off (as per in Testimony of Light - by Helen Greaves - regarding the Nazi soul) than they were when they left?

I understand that God would never create evil. I understand the concept too that other souls too may have been given free will, (such as angels, etc) and that some of them chose the Dark Side. Yet, if God is All-powerful and All-knowing and All-loving then I wonder, since He/She/It must have known of this potentiality in advance, why did He/She/It not design a better plan to take account of it? (And, if He/She/It did know then He/She/It is responsible for everything that's happened then, what's more, like the case of the Nazis I mentioned above, in this scenario it could even be argued that the Dark Souls are not responsible for their actions, because, ultimately they're doing God's work.) It brings me back to the point: surely this world cannot be the best possible word that an All-powerful All-loving God would create.

Anyway, thanks once again for taking the time to share my journey with me as I seek answers to my questions... It would be nice to discover a 'Unified Theory of Everything', and perhaps I will, when I return home (the Otherside) and can see things from a better vantage point? I think so. And, in many ways, I think this is my answer. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, I believe Spirit is drawing me closer by encouraging me to ask questions which cut away unsustainable beliefs which might have been getting in my way. Indeed, I feel closer to Spirit now, during this time of turbulence, than I have before. My study of shamanism and mysticism (for example: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mysticism-Nature-Development-Spiritual-Consciousness/dp/1851681965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312892048&sr=8-1) documents similar experiences undergone by others walking our path. They undergo the destruction of outmoded (for them) beliefs and encounter God in the void, in the Divine Dark. I think this is where I have been led, perhaps, like Jung, to be able to share my experiences with others:

http://www.kerin-beautiful-day.co.uk/index.php/articles/134-the-coming-of-kali.html

Best wishes my friend...

Kerin

Here are a couple of other articles on this subject that visitors to this website might find helpful too:

http://www.kerin-beautiful-day.co.uk/index.php/articles/130-good-god-if-an-all-powerful-god-of-love-exists-why-do-we-live-in-such-a-brutal-world.html

http://www.kerin-beautiful-day.co.uk/index.php/articles/135-i-believe.html