Everything

     Everything has good aspects and bad aspects, some aspects that are desired and
others that are not desired. This is not the fault of the individual but is simply the
way things are.
     If a person perceives the evil in things and constructs his perception based on
those aspects, then his view of the world will be that the world is evil.
     If he perceives the good, he will base his perceptions on what is good, and his
opinion will be that the world is good.
     Imagine time as a relative factor and that when a person dies it does not matter
how we living individuals think of that death in terms of brevity or length, but that
the now dead individual reviews his life completely and fully as though time were
infinite in all its properties, which indeed may be true, for there is one and only
one eternity: The Present Moment.
     So imagine a man dead and remembering his life. The one who while living
perceived the world in terms of evil may then, having all time at his disposal,
realize the aspects of his life that were good, but which he did not perceive as good
while he was alive. Now his perception is complete and what seemed to him evil is
now understood as being quite different in its aspects, simply that while living he
did not perceive them correctly. He lived on the assumption that the world is evil,
and this had its influence on his thoughts and actions. When confronting this reality
after dying, such an individual might experience great sorrow in not having realized
the true nature of life and the world. He would not be able to change the fact of his
failure in this respect.
     Similarly, the one who thought the world was good may now understand that
every thought and action which he experienced and committed while alive had
consequences he did not intend and which now he reviews with profound remorse.
     A man who intends to believe only what is true is at least more likely to have
developed the understanding that everything has good and bad aspects and desired
and undesired results and outcomes, and in this instance he is ultimately faced
primarily with the question of whether, having figured this out, he had at some time
begun simply living his life well, by this I mean skillfully, as based on his
knowledge with regard to the true nature of life and the world. For such a being,
that is all that can ultimately matter.
     Those who never understood the importance which truth has in relation to such
relevancies can, at best, only wish that they had done so.
     Many would become sealed within the character of their perceptions and be
unable even to appreciate that. Neither of these two sorts can experience then the
delusions of which paradise consists, but would tend to inhabit the opposite
extreme.
     The intention to believe only what is true leads to an eternity that is not
delusional in any sense but real and totally satisfactory in all of its aspects, and to
a mastery not only of life and the world, but of eternity itself.

by Robert Hampton Burt
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