Good and bad

 The good and the bad are terms related to the so-called “horizontal level” of life, which is the consequence of our present life situation. The person evaluates it subjectively as good or bad. By contrast, there is need to distinguish words “goodness” and “badness”. These serve to describe the spiritual direction of man - “the vertical” of his life. If you imagine human being as a point through which the horizontal of the expressed earthly life and the vertical of spiritual life comes, you will get a cross. The cross is a symbol of Truth; the level of your life (horizontal) will be proportional to your spiritual quality (vertical). So if you really want to change your life and its external circumstances, change yourself.

People look at the world around them mostly in a subjective way, because they usually see it only in relation to themselves. “This is what I want but not that, this is good and this is bad...” - according to whether it suits them or not. In fact, things are not good or bad. We only make them look this way. We call the rain a good thing when it waters our garden and a bad thing when we want to be outdoors; a fire in the fireplace is called a good thing on a cold evening, but the summer heat is considered a bad thing.

Opposites such as “good” and “bad” somehow belong to one another like two sides of the same coin. Once you see it from one side and then from the other one; yet you never see both sides at the same time. Seeing the two opposites and mystically connecting them is something only a fully aware person can do - an individual who experienced both opposites, knew them and learned to love them, or more plainly, accepted them without grumble. We learn that something is good only in comparison with its bad opposite. Without contrast nothing would exist. After all, how would you know what is beautiful if you did not know what is ugly? How would you realize what is happiness if you wouldn't know what it feels like to be unhappy? But when you stop judging things around you in terms of whether you like them or not, your subjective view changes to the objective one and you see things as they are. Then you will really understand life and you will be able to live fully.

What is a good thing for one person can be bad for the other. You can slice bread with a knife but you can also kill with a knife. “Slice of bread” from a poor family (to take from the little they have), however, is not good, and to kill, for example, a pig, may be good for its owner. But it would be bad in case the pig has some illness. Good can easily turn into bad and bad into good, and what once was convenient can be a burden now.

Most of the things according to which people act change their situation only in the horizontal way and are irrelevant for the quality of life - like a particular brand (of car, beer, clothing), where to go shopping... In contrast to this there are opposites that lie on the vertical line and choosing between them does really change our lives. For example: pride - humility, greed - generosity, fornication - chastity, envy - goodwill, gluttony - moderation, anger - tolerance, laziness - diligence.

Based on our choices, we tend to go towards the good or the bad. On the way to the good, the good things can help us, as well as the bad ones. When, for example, someone at home wakes us up in the morning and drives us out of bed, we see it as a bad thing if we did not sleep enough. However, when we learn not to be angry with them (which is not easy if it is a repeated situation), we become tolerant. If we learn to wake up early in the morning and not around lunch time (a thing we will initially perceive as bad and unpleasant), we will overcome our own laziness and gain time which we previously outslept. Every step on the vertical line changes us and thereby our lives will be different. For example, thanks to earlier getting up from bed we can experience a lot during the day and later, at night, we have no need to sit somewhere in a pub and “beat the air”. Birds sing lovely in the morning and the weather is usually nicer before the noon; on the contrary, alcohol and cigarettes “taste” better in the evening than during the day. We only have to step out high up on the vertical and the way gets each time easier, because while we go along it, it changes also our whole live. After all, it is a reflection of our internal state. When we are tolerant, other people are tolerant towards us. When we are not lazy to do something for others, other people come and help us, too, if we need it. If we are generous, others will give us what we need just at the moment we appreciate it in the most. We therefore wish you a lot of strength and patience on the way through the vertical line of your personal cross.