Originally Posted By: Revlgking


However, what about our intentions? Can agape/Love--the sincere intention, or will, to do that which is best, even if we fail to do the perfect deed--ever be any degree of evil. In my opinion, no.

The most obvious answer is that if one is not immersed within the universal flow of God, but instead of ego and belief, Love is limited within the confines of ego's beliefs and best projections.

Here is an example.
Jesus and the Pharisees.
Jesus often claimed the Pharisees interpreted the words of Moses and scripture falsely, thereby trying to increase God and God's Love in everyone's awareness through personal belief rather than actual experience in universal awareness.
They (The Pharisees) also claimed this awareness could only be understood by certain people, and that these chosen few were only qualified to interpret God correctly for all. Their decree was that this privilege was God given thru special birth or family lineage and not given to everyone.

With so many people following their own ideas and going in different directions it has the obvious results of chaos. The masses became subservient to the self proclaimed authority that the Pharisees preached to the ignorant, and the ignorant withdrew even further into protection of their private beliefs for fear of losing themselves and God.

Jesus' Self proclaimed authority was from the immersion of Awareness in God, and it enlivened those he touched with inner knowledge and awareness of Truth that was more than relative belief. Jesus proclaimed the only thing that kept one from not knowing God was the ego, and that anyone who would rise above its limited boundaries could awaken to reality.

The Pharisees took from the people and gave nothing but rules which maintained Their authority over the people and the limitations of individuality.

Jesus Gave only love in Truth absolute and expanded Authority of the One universal Mind within everyone.

The subtlety of differences that is the authority of individual, and authority within individuality, is that One is owned, and the other unites all as ONE. One is personal and filled with opinion and the other is non personal and lives within the personal and always speaks in flow with the NOW.

History has presented us with religious leaders, who by their self decree of being in union with God, believed in having the best and most loving intentions for all of humanity and the best qualities to represent God, Good intention, and Love for all of humanity. These are/were reflections of individual opinion.

Obviously these leaders have either stood out for their actual immersion into selfless service and God, or passed in and amongst the personal opinions of ego and belief and drifted off into obscurity.(mostly the latter)
Even those who are known for having helped many, have suffered the consequence of personal opinion, greed and inappropriate actions when confronted with truth universal.(Jim Jones and David Koresh the most recent, The Cardinals and Archbishops during the crusades and Spanish inquisition in the memorable past.)

Today God has a bad rap, religion is a bad word and all because ego in its best intentions to do good has failed to convince anyone of anything but to remain independent in ones own beliefs and superstitions, suspicious of anything that might take away personal belief to establish awareness of Unity in Truth universal.

People love to love only if it does not threaten personal opinion and the ego.

Perpetuation of ignorance in the name of love and goodness is just as evil as deliberate subterfuge.
We just like to (from the ego) create degrees of separation so that we can covet our own personal reality with the idea that we are righteous in our ignorance of Universal Truth.
Originally Posted By: Revlgking

And what about misos/Hate--the intention to take revenge, get even, pay back? IMO, hate, in any degree, is devoid of any kind of redemptive value. No wonder that Jesus equated hate with murder.

Jesus also saw Hate as Twisted Love, and often granted redemption thru forgiveness or thru greater awareness in the understanding of reality.
His compassion was born of omniscient wisdom and the intuition to discern whether mortal judgment came from innocent belief and misinterpretation of reality, or from greed, personal aggrandizement, and personal investment.
He spoke harshly to evil, and he also spoke lovingly to evil in the ego that was misdirected where the heart was wide open to repent and enliven truth over illusion of the ego.

His intuitive sense was finely tuned to the universal flow and was able to give what was needed to enhance growth in everyone, even if it was to initiate what seemed to be a move backwards, as was the case when he sent Judas out to manifest the choice to turn Jesus over to the authorities. He knew the Karmic repercussions it would create in Judas to make that choice, but he also knew he could not take that choice from Judas.

Evil is misunderstood, as is Love and God, from the ego.

Without the Union of the un-manifest/absolute and the manifest/God in the awareness, reality is only an opinion. All best intentions within the reality of personal opinion are subject to limitations of belief rather than the immersion into the unbounded NOW or Universal Consciousness.

Jesus was willing to sacrifice the material world (his own body) for the greater mind that was not limited by material beliefs and desires, which was evident when he surrendered himself to the crucifixion.
The ego sacrifices nothing of its physical needs for it believes the transitional physical reality to be greater than that which created it in the first place. Reason is, the ego does not have any familiarity with the Universal mind, the NOW or spirit.

So Good and evil are created of material values that are of the ego world, or those things which will perpetuate the senses needs in comfort and self recognition, and protection of the physical body.

Funnily enough it is this very idea that creates so much diverse conflict of interest and results in stress and deterioration of health and longevity in humans as a species and as a collective mind. With so many fragmented pieces created as parts of a whole and those pieces in constant change in belief, the ongoing attempt to arrange diversity into relative constructs that make sense to everyone, or build relative unity takes more energy than is used to support the whole from Spiritual Union.
We literally wear ourselves out trying to rebuild relative truth into believability.

I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!