For the purposes of this discussion, let’s say somebody was brutally murdered. Let’s say there’s a continuum of A to Z, where A is the point of this event. (Of course, nothing ever has just a beginning, everything is on the continuum. But let’s say that this is the beginning for our purposes here.) Now let’s go to Z, and it’s twenty years later. The victim of course is not here. They’re in the Light, so they are on the good path.

Let’s say the perpetrator was captured, tried and convicted. When the perpetrator dies and has their life review, they will experience the events played out again, and they will have the experience of being the person that they murdered, so that they may choose to learn from that.

Notice all the other people and how they are related to this event: attorneys, judges, jurors, family, friends, people watching it all on TV, folks reading about it in the newspapers and most of them making all kinds of assumptions. They’re all having experiences related to the event. Now let’s give the story a twist. Let’s say that the person that was convicted of the murder is ultimately proven to be innocent. Our modern DNA sampling proves that the person who was tried and convicted is not the murderer. Then all these people say, “Oh great! Did we mess up or what?” That changes things a bit, doesn’t it?

Murder & Hatred: Rushing to Judgment

Yes, the murder was “evil” and “negative” and “bad”, especially in the eyes of the “victim’s” loved ones, but consider how the people who are related to the event can grow from all these outcomes. Now they realize that the person they hated didn’t kill their relative. What do they do with their hatred? They realize that they have been hanging on to this emotion, which has been hurting them for twenty years, so they let go of it. And many others do the same. And a sense of sorrow and regret for the one who was incarcerated sets in. (Eventually this will spawn compassion.)

They realize that rushing to judgment is not such a swell idea. In this process they learn something about feelings and about people, and about “good” and “evil” and making judgments. As a result, out of all of this there is a blessing and it’s a blessing for many, not just for the family and friends.


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Earthquake: Catastrophe or Opportunity?

Take another example. Let’s say there’s a terrible earthquake and 20,000 people are killed. We say that this is a catastrophe — a horrible thing! However, pause to remember two things: first, this is an act of nature, and second, there is no death. Twenty thousand people get to go Home collectively. We don’t look at it that way, but that is the way it happens.

What we typically downplay, or completely fail to see, is that all of these peoples’ families, friends, neighbors and total strangers get together in the aftermath and embrace each other, figuratively and literally. They offer each other emotional support and multiple other supports. Here’s something we say is “horrible” and yet it gives huge numbers of people the opportunity to come out of their own little worlds and be of service to one another. That is not a bad thing!

Failing to See the Big Picture

Our problem is that we fasten on an emotionally driven, myopic point of view of an event in any little part of our history, and then claim that it was a “bad” thing. We fail to get the big
picture.

Take a look at the major wars we have survived in the past 150 years. In the period after the conflict, in hindsight, we realize that, as a result, we have gained substantially. Not least is that we have the opportunity to see the bigger picture. As a result, we can choose to avoid creating or re-creating the kinds of things that contributed to what happened to, say, the Native Americans in the United States, or to millions of Jews in Europe and so on. Gaining that kind of big picture is not a bad thing! Engaging in positive and proactive behavior as a result is even better.

Accidents & Victims: How Do We Stop This?

From my perspective, when the two jets flew into the Twin Towers, it wasn’t an accident and there were no victims. Instead, it was an opportunity to ask, “What are we going to do with the situation(s) that creates this reality so it won’t happen again?”

If we fail to address this question, it will keep on happening, in one form or another, over and over, until we do ask the question. This explains why crime and other transgressions are said to be “the sins of the father and the mother that will be visited on the children.”

Thus, we brought people to this country (and we did) and we enslaved them (and we did), and the society that sees these things as racist is, at its core, still “enslaving” people: if it’s not African Americans, then it’s gays, or lesbians, or Jews, or Hispanics, or whoever happens to be an underdog in the sight of the majority. We are perpetuating what we openly admit is a “bad” thing.

The Melting Pot: Blending Cultures and Religions

If we turn that around and see the good that comes out of the matrix of all of these cultures — this melting pot — then we’ve really got something positive going. In the U.S. we have this opportunity to blend many cultures and religious groups. To our detriment, we do not always succeed in doing this without conflict, but fortunately, it’s a social experiment that’s still running. It’s quite a drama!

So you always need to consider the big picture, and though that often only happens with the passage of time, the sooner after the event you can verbalize it, the better off you will be, and
so will those around you.


This article was excerpted with permission from the book:

This article is excerpted from the book: The Order of Melchizedek by Rev. Daniel ChesbroThe Order of Melchizedek: Love, Willing Service, & Fulfillment
by Rev. Daniel Chesbro with Rev. James Erickson.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Findhorn Press. ©2010. www.findhornpress.com

Click here for more info and/or to order this book on Amazon.


About the Authors

Rev. Daniel Chesbro, author of the article: Good & Evil -- Seeing the Big PictureRev. Daniel Chesbro is an ordained minister in the Order of Melchizedek. Trained at the Andover Newton Theological School, Crozer Seminary, and Colgate Divinity School, he is the head of A School for the Prophets and lectures every weekend throughout the United States and Canada. He lives in Consus, New York.

Rev. James Erickson has the gift of clairsentience. He is a psychic and aura reader as well as a healer. He was ordained into the Order of Melchizedek in 1993. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Read more articles by these authors.