As a spiritual teacher for over twenty years now, you get used to the unfortunate realities that such a profession entails.

You learn to expect that the moment you publish a course one of your students will have taken it to teach themselves. You are not surprised when someone who one week asks “what is spiritual work” the next has a bio stating that they learned to be a spiritual healer at their grandfather’s knee and have ten years of experience working with clients.

I have noticed over the last five years or so that highly problematic and narcissistic individuals have been emboldened in their use and abuse of others in the spiritual field. This is in no large part due to the fact that we are seeing an uprising of individuals suffering no consequences in our larger social media, pop culture, and political arenas for their depraved behavior.

We currently are in a moment of celebrating those who regularly perpetuate harm to those around them, who bully and abuse and use without remorse, and who suffer from a lack of awareness and accountability to such a degree that they cannot see fault in anything they do.

We are also in a moment culturally where we value style over substance, and so those who wish for attention, fame, and likes to fill the empty places of their soul will create chaos, spreading their darkness in order to temporarily feel something other than the immense spiritual poverty that consumes them.

While I used to think spiritual teachers who talked so plainly about spiritual warfare and evil were grandiose, this year has been a sort of education in evil for me.

I have had encounters with the many faces of evil in human form this year and each one has been an education of sorts. Such encounters have consequences, as evil seeks to absorb, to attack, to triangulate, to feed, and to infect anyone they can with their darkness.

I can now plainly see how evil is spread by such individuals in an unvarnished way. It has been in some ways unfortunate to encounter such individuals, but in many ways (as I describe below) it has caused for me to more deeply see that evil lies in the vacuum where love does not exist.

Being in a spiritual space as a teacher is strange some days. Every day, every week, every month I interact with the most genuine and light of souls. They are willing to look deeply at themselves, to do the work, and are doing the “heavy lifting” of not only personal healing, but work of depth that ripples forward to their family, ancestry, and our world as a whole.

The amount of conscious people in the world who are actively working through their suffering is so incredibly beautiful. In a silly way it kind of reminds me of the lightbulbs that would light up on the Lite Brite toy I would play with as a child, an interconnected map or grid of conscious, interconnected souls all gleaming brightly.

As humans we contain such suffering. As a spiritual teacher and healer I am privy to the fact that many people are struggling under the weight of it all, and it is such a task of bravery for someone to look within, directly at this suffering, instead of ignore it, deny it, or project it onto others.

Every once in a while I meet the type of person that these days we would cavalierly refer to as “cluster b”, as that is still a moment in our cultural consciousness to bucket people in this manner.

I do find in many cases for this to be correct, but in other ways find this unfortunate, as I do meet people who meet the criteria of this designation who are doing the work on themselves to look at what lies underneath the suffering that created such maladaptions and disconnection from reality in the first place.

But lately, and from a deeper spiritual perspective, I would simply describe some of the people I encounter as evil. Such things may seem like a harsh assessment, as our picture of evil is of a serial killer on our latest Netflix special or someone with horns actively growing out of their head.

As Hannah Arendt wrote, true evil has banality to it. It comes from the everyday actions of ignorance, denial, and harm that occur each day.

It arises because people cannot take true moral stock of themselves, to think critically about themselves.

She further wrote that true evil is not radical or extreme, but something that can lay waste to the world because it spreads like a fungus.

Evil arises, according to Arendt, because it is a shallow force that takes root when people are unthinking. Goodness is a force that is something of depth.

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The type of ignorance, selfishness, harm, abuse, and lack of personal accountability for any of their actions that evil people perpetuate creates further darkness and suffering in this world. It spreads like that fungus, or like a virus.

If you pay attention, you will notice that how evil plays out in humans all comes from the same playbook. I have little surprise anymore when this playbook is enacted, as they cannot help but follow the course of the virus they are infected by.

We like to believe that evil has many faces. It certainly can. But it manifests in human beings similarly, and they carry forward their darkness and the ensuing spiritual sickness like a virus (or fungus) that infects every person that they encounter.

They cannot help but to infect others with this virus, as evil likes to spread. There is nothing more that evil likes than attention and souls that it can feed off of. Evil as a conscious being has an agenda, a purpose, and there is nothing it likes more that unconscious, unthinking, and ignorant souls as it is easy to infect them and use them as an agent to spread chaos, darkness, and further ignorance.

Embodied Evil: How to See the Playbook of Evil

The attention-seeking, the claims to victimhood as they feel free to use and take, to bully and abuse others, the deflection of any blame or accountability for their actions, and the inevitable smear campaign that feeds them parasitically the attention, chaos, and validation they so deeply desire are all basic ways to see evil playing out.

While in my earlier years I might look at other, more surface-level cause-effects for why people behave this way, for the last year or so I have been contemplating the nature of evil and why it remains a seed in most and blossoms and fills the entirety of a being of another. Other such considerations have moved to the side as I can see this virus and how it lives and is passed on clearly.

There is a primary conflict between good and evil at play, of course. There is also, of course, an interplay between darkness and light. But lately I have more clearly seen how darkness begets darkness, the karmic cycle of it all, and the repercussions that ensue. The darkness that gathers around and in someone, further sprouting and spreading that seed and blossom.

Evil can be described as willful ignorance, the sort of small depravities that people commit every day, the misery and chaos that people cannot look at within themselves so they pass it on to the outer world and to anyone that will accept it.

Evil thrives on emotional reaction, on attention, on chaos and distraction and blame casting in order to spread.

Evil is a lack of love, it comes in and fills the vacuum of those who remain in spiritual poverty and the hypocrisies of those who maintain that they are filled with light and righteousness but do nothing but create more harm and suffering in the world.

Evil will have a specific name in their mouths. They will dox addresses, emails, and triangulate anyone they can to prove themselves morally righteous and faultless in their actions. They do this to create a narrative that suits them, far away from the reality of the situation. But the deeper spiritual reason is that they are doing this to infect others with their darkness.

In spiritual communities, they will cloak themselves in light. They will claim ethics, morality, humility, and goodness in order to spread evil. If you look at their actions and motivations rather than their words, you will clearly see the darkness there.

You will see the true motivation, which is to spread ignorance, hatred, chaos, and suffering.

Evil is like the Ouroboros, continually chomping on its own tail, engaged in a cycle of continual harm, destruction, and chaos in order to regenerate itself endlessly into the world.

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Evil will seek to absorb light. It will use and abuse and then claim victimhood. It feels entitled to what it takes, and cannot consider that harming others, stealing, lying, and then doubling or tripling down in revelry of the harm they have created is all very typical and expected behavior for infected individuals.

Evil will deny any harm it has created. It will gaslight, deflect, believe it has been misunderstood and is the harmed party, and do anything but take accountability for its actions.

To move beyond evil someone would need to pull away the mask, to look beneath the surface, and to see the spiritual poverty and shame that is always at the root of this, as well as to take accountability for the darkness that they have spread into the world.

There is a reason why they need to claim that the other person is somehow “too sensitive”, defective, evil, remembering things incorrectly, or are wrong. They are utilizing a splitting defense, casting their darkness onto a convenient party, so they do not have to own what they claim in others within themselves.

Often there is an appeal to morality, as if the harmed party were the evil one. Evil most often cloaks itself in its hypocrisies, and there is no greater hypocrite than the spiritual teacher, leader, preacher, or other person claiming they know God in order to spread hatred, discord, and darkness.

The mask of light is one of the most convenient to wear to spread darkness, and to infect others to continue to spread its darkness.

There is an antidote to evil– it is love.

This week I have had several conversations with people about the difference between being loving and compassionate versus being nice.

We expect people to be nice: to do what another person wants, to be passive, to take the abuse and difficulties of those struggling, to accept the abusers and harmers of this world darkness without fighting back. We want people to be the “bigger person” or say “Sheila is just like that” to excuse and ignore this evil.

To fight back means that a person infected with evil will fight back in equal measure. They will do anything to not see that they are infected. If they were to look within, even for a brief moment, all of their darkness would come pouring out. They would need to contend with the harm they have created in others, the ignorance they have spread.

They would need to contend with the inevitable karmic backlash, the reality that the evil we spread is a difficult energy to release from the energy field and from the soul, that the infection has taken root in such a way that it is difficult for the body and soul to recover. In many ways I view such evil as a garden overrun by weeds. For some people it may take years or even lifetimes of genuine reflection and contrition to remove all of those weeds, to repair the damage they have done by spreading darkness.

Such weeds strangle the soul. Every act of evil we do, every darkness we spread, every time we abuse and harm and feel entitled in our actions without reflection or remorse for what we have done we lose bits of our soul.

In the end, we remain accountable to those we have harmed, even if we are not willing to look at ourselves or acknowledge the harm we have created.

To be loving and compassionate means being loving and compassionate towards yourself first. To sit with and acknowledge and feel every bit of darkness within in an embodied way. Eventually, this will include the base nature of humans: a recognition that humans can harm, take, and kill with little remorse. Some humans may even delight in such actions, as it gives them a sense of temporary power or glee to make another suffer.

Such things are difficult to look at, but if we are willing to, we can see all of the places within ourselves, and within others, where there is a soulless emptiness. Every place where love is not, that God has not touched.

When we are able to recognize the playbook of evil, we can have acceptance. We can see the actions of someone, what they will claim about you, how they will attention seek, how they will cloak themselves in light and moral superiority to shield themselves from taking any real accountability for what they have done.

In time you can see the sadness of this, of people too scared to look beyond the surface of their being, of karma tangling and strangling them as the virus spreads and infects others who come into contact with them. The darkness that they inflict gradually consumes their being and the entirety of their soul.

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This is something to be very aware of as a spiritual student looking for a teacher. Sometimes the darkness is not readily seen. But know that someone of worth does not need to announce themselves as being worthy. They do not need to describe themselves as morally superior or talk endlessly about how light and ethical they are. Their actions will be of peace, rather than further spreading chaos, hatred, and darkness.

They will be someone who solves conflict within, and has the genuine capacity to admit wrongdoing and human imperfection. Someone totally absorbed by and infected by evil cannot admit to any type of blame or wrongdoing, as it would open them up to see all of the harm they have caused to themselves and others.

Someone who has healed within themselves no longer needs the validation of others, and to energetically feed off of others by manufacturing and publicly creating drama. There is no creation of an enemy in name or in group (race, religion, class, etc)– this is a significant part of the playbook of evil individuals seeking to infect others. A convenient “other” to displace wrongdoing and the darkest of human impulses and sins onto.

Be aware that when you see drama like this that it happens because an infected individual wishes to use the situation to create attention and energy that they can parasitically feed off of. They wish to infect others so they can continue to spread their ignorance, hatred, and darkness. They wish to create a narrative that is opposing to the genuine reality of the situation… otherwise they would simply believe it, rather than need to seek validation from others to continue their path of denial and abuse.

If we believe something to be true, it is embodied, and we no longer need to announce it to the world to convince ourselves and others of it being true.

Such drama is purposeful– it is to lure you in like a fish on a line.

The individual needs to feed off of your energy, power, and light to sustain themselves because otherwise they would need to develop their own.

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When we are able to see evil so plainly and no longer deny its existence there is little you can do for those infected unless they make the conscious decision to look within.

Countless people over the years have contacted me because their mother, teacher, brother, former friend or lover has harmed them and even after the relationship is estranged or broken off, the abuse continues, often very publicly: through social media posts, contacting workplaces, friends, family, and others to speak badly about the person.

This is triangulation, and it is a common tactic of those seeking to devour the light and energy of their victims.

There is unfortunately little you can do for those who are infected to the point that evil has overtaken the entirety of their being. They are no longer a human soul, but a collection of shadows and darkness. They will infect and spread the virus as long as they can.

Those who embody this evil will do anything to not look within.

This is the biggest difference between a conscious soul and one still mired and stuck in the darkness of ignorance and suffering.

As Jung says, he who looks within awakens. We cannot awaken without taking embodied responsibility for every aspect of our being– including the darkest aspects of ourselves.

If you meet someone like this, it is best to plainly and clearly see who they are. They will behave how they will, like all those infected will, in exactly the way I describe. There is little variance, and once you know what to expect, you can distance yourself as far and fast as you can from such individuals.

They are the human equivalent of a cancerous tumor. They must be excised.

If you do so they will find the next person to displace their darkness onto (and another after that, and another after that). If you cut off any energy and emotion to them, no matter how deluded and unjust they are in their harassment and abuse of you, no matter how badly you want to express to them that what they are doing is evil and wrong and they are no victim, if you fully understand that this will fall on deaf ears, that weeds have taken over their garden to the extent that they are no longer living in a logical reality, that they are an infected individual who will do anything but look at their own darkness, you will realize that it serves you no benefit to argue, justify, explain, or defend yourself.

They will simply use this energy to feed off of anyway. It makes you still involved with them, when what is needed for any case of true evil, whether in a person or on a land or in a house is to cut off contact and get away from them as far and as fast as possible.

Use any emotions that such darkness creates to create something positive and of benefit to yourself and the world. This transmutation is a most powerful act of goodness and grace that can light up the darkness in such an astonishing way.

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It is an interesting place to be in, to see how evil and darkness is spread, how it infects, how one person passes it on to another.

Gradually we will come out of this moment in our history and the amount of people feeling emboldened in their embodiment of evil will go back into the shadows.

Such shadows will still contain the virus of evil, but it will not be rewarded to the same extent that it is now. People will feel less entitled to being evil when it is no longer celebrated and experienced without enough glaringly obvious consequence that even the most surface-level person (as acts that this virus thrives on require a lack of self-knowledge and basic consciousness) will be able to recognize that how they behave will have consequences for them.

For goodness to proliferate it requires remaining actively against the type of evil, and the ignorance, misinformation, chaos, and lack of accountability that such evil thrives on.

If we create an environment within ourselves that this seed cannot sprout, or our personal garden which was once overrun with weeds gets pruned, we will no longer be an environment that darkness can find root it. We will not become infected, or can de-infect ourselves from this virus.

If we are able to see this playbook, this evil out in the world, we will be more clearly to see into the hearts of people and no longer align ourselves with them, or offer our energy to them in order for them to parasitically feed off of us.

While there is nuance here, as we all have this seed, and some have blossomed but are dealing with a lower-level of infection (it has not taken over the entirety of their being), I will say that those lost to this darkness are best recognized and left alone.

They will find more damaged and deluded souls to infect. You need not be one of them.

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