Out beyond ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing

What are the implications of living in a culture with a fixed sense of right and wrong behaviour? We can’t completely pass through the gauntlet of opportunities to “sin” without failing in some way. Whether the sin is having sexual thoughts about the neighbour or throwing a can in the garbage rather than the recycling bin. The great looming trap in this is the possibility of continually condemning ourselves for “being bad”. Reacting against “badness” can take the shape of self repression that distorts otherwise healthy energies into perverse ones. Or it can to a form of deep dissociation where we split from parts of our soul and vital energies in an effort to not feel part of who we are.

Reality doesn’t impose “good” and “bad”. It can be true though that feeling the full breadth of ourselves - including the more elemental, underworld-y energies, can feel like holding up a mirror to a dark part of ourselves that’s hard to face. It’s easy and tempting then to snap back to self-judgement and suppression. But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

This is beyond the sense of right or wrong, bad and good. Centred in the sense of what’s most vital to you, the division line between bad and good collapses. A sense of virtue or purity is there to be felt without the possibility of an opposite represented in the idea of sin or wrong behaviour.

This is Jesus meeting Satan in the desert: offered every opportunity to pursue temptations, Jesus holds to his alignment to the Divine. In other words, he chooses not to take refuge in the satisfactions of victimhood and revenge. He chooses not to take refuge in power fantasies or grasping after what he can snatch from the world. He doesn’t take refuge in fear or a sense of duty. He turns his back on all the easy reactions that are deeply engrooved in our being. Instead, he stays aligned to the sense of God within. He chooses it.