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In the book Open Secrets, Rami Shapiro, a rabbi, gets to the heart of the Jewish traditon. It is a collection of letters written to Rabbi Shapiro’s great-grandfather by his mentor and Rabbi. He covers everything about Judaism from the perspective of a mystic: from the Shabat, holy days and Jewish practices, to the nature of God, spirituality, and evil. A few of the topics in the book are discussed in this six-part series. Last week, the discussion was about the nature of God as all. This week, it’s about the nature of evil.

Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael, the author’s great-grandfather’s mentor, explains that there are two types of evil: necessary and unnecessary. Under the umbrella of necessary evil, he places events like illness, death, and natural disasters. He considers these part of the natural course of life. In the unnecessary evil bucket, he counts things like war, greed, or theft. In other words, acts that are chosen.

He eventually came to the conclusion that necessary evil wasn’t really evil at all, but they are events that are a part of life. I agree with him in that we are transient expressions of a permanent being and so death is a natural part of life. I also agree that things like death, illness, and natural disasters shouldn’t be classified as evil at all. However, this is as far as I can agree.

What we see as evil is more a manifestation of our disconnection from Spirit. Disconnection is not even the word. It’s more like being unaware of our connection to Spirit. It is not owning up to our true nature as Spirit. We can never escape being Spirit or being connected to It, but we can be unaware of it, most of the times unconsciously.

Then there’s the issue of creating your own reality. Our bodies seem to have a particular timespan, so death, I agree, is a natural occurence. However, illness, to me, does not fall under that umbrella. If we can create our own reality, we can choose health. In additon to all of the practical measures we can take to become healthier and calming techniques like meditation we can use to reduce stress and mental contributors to illness, we can employ the Law of Attraction to manifest health in our lives.

How do you explain evil within the context of creating your own reality through your thoughts? How do explain natural phenomena such as tsunamis or hurricanes? Does evil even exist at all?

In Spirit,
Nneka

Open Secrets is a collection of letters penned by a Rabbi to his student in America. In it, the Rabbi discusses the salient points of Judaism as responses to questions posed by his student.

I don’t know much about Judaism, and what I do know may be extremely flawed. As such, I can not attest to how much this book accurately describes the Jewish tradition. I do know that it resonates within my soul. To be clear, the book is spiritual fiction, but it presents a deeper understanding of the Jewish faith.

Within the first few chapters, the point that jumps out at me is “God is All.”

What does it mean to be All? God is the sole Reality. God is the Source of all things and their Substance. There is no thing or feeling or thought that is not from God, even the idea that there is no God! For this is what it is to be All: God must embrace even God’s own negation.

That’s a neat idea, but I had to stop at that statement. I’m with the idea that God is the sole Reality, even that God is the Source and Substance of all things: the invisible and the visible. However, that brings into question all the seemingly “bad” things in the world. I’m not talking illness, I’m talking the twisted stuff like killing sprees, or famine, or war. Is God the Substance of war?

Well, I could explain that with the Lens theory. The idea that we filter with our mind and thoughts the pure good that God is. As a result, if we have a heavy filter on, it would appear as though there are really “bad” things. Those “bad” things would still be a manifestation of God, but a very filtered sliver of God. Or, taken from a different perspective, even in the midst of seemingly “bad” things God exists and good can be witnessed.

However, he went on to say that there is no thing, or feeling, or thought that is not from God. That’s a tough one to swallow. Frankly, I’m not willing to swallow it. It would mean that even the filter is God, and that war, death, destruction, and famine is God.

I leave this to you, how can you reconcile the idea that God is All, with the appearance/reality of things that seem not of God? I’ll be pondering this one for some time.

In Spirit,
Nneka

This is the first in a 6-part series review of the book Open Secrets.