The Promises and Premises of Evil

If you indulge in anger, you will feel much better and more powerful afterwards.

If you join evildoers without judging them, they will also spare you the pain of being judged as bad.

If you are lonely, siding with evil can save you and you will never feel alone again.

If you are on the path of truth, mistreatment from others should convince you to pursue the path of ego gratification and self love instead

There is no God, says evil, and there are therefore no consequences of immoral acts.

There is no God to whom you or your body belong. You are the master and the master of your own body. In other words, you are God.

The highest priority is you own sensual, mental, intellectual, and egotistical happiness.

If God is all-forgiving, He must and should forgive you for willful transgressions and callous misbehavior.

Evil can offer more and better than what God offers you.

Power lies in dominance, not subservience or humility.

Hatred of weak people helps you feel better about yourself.

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/memorize-the-promises-of-sin

Stressors in congregations

If a congregation member or team is stressed they exhibit behaviors that indicate or reveal this stress and sooner or later, there is conflict or departure. Perhaps the members stay on, but they become ungrateful, cynical, critical, and angry for being the sole burden-carriers.

I am following the dharma Srila Prabhupada has described in his lectures to the best of my ability. He is my authority and my concern should simply be how to ensure that I please him. Other than him, I am answerable to no one. Yet people assume power over others as if they own them and it is a behavior that is hard to avoid. I try to limit my interactions to people who are cheerful and helpful. However, I do not manage to avoid becoming the receptacle for the inevitable manipulative anger from members whom I have come to look upon as valuable and worthy of respect. Either I manage to disappoint or neglect someone in a way that is irreparable, or I sense anger and start to wonder what caused it and keep meditating on the experience in pain and fear. The pain of being misunderstood and unloved and the fear of being isolated and abandoned.

I seldom think about the behavior of others as a reflection of their own internal stress and dissatisfaction. I tend to accept blame for all anger by default, wondering what it was that I did to trigger these reactions. I seem to be the perfect victim for angry and stressed manipulators, because I am obviously smiling too much, trying to maintain peace, and almost holding up a placard that says I will obediently do anything to please you, because I can't stand it when people are upset with me. I need to keep everyone happy and I need approval. Exploit my weakness by treating me badly, being angry, neglectful, disparaging, mean, or sarcastic, or just ignoring me obviously and intentionally. If you do that, I will spend nights together analyzing how it was my fault, and then sum up how I am supposed to make it up to you. I will kill myself to pacify you, disregard your ill treatment, and simply consider myself inadequate, unlovable, and flawed.

Instead, I should perceive negative behavior first as a sign of the perpetrator being stressed and later as my personal responsibility, only if there is scope for positive improvement in my actions or character.

If I nourish myself from within, with the love of Srila Prabhupada and Krishna's ambassadors of love, then I can be stable and secure in this love and remain undisturbed by external hatred and rejection. And I can learn to look at negative behavior as both an expression of the person's mental state and feedback for myself to improve my own character..

Instruments

Souls covered with nescience are simply instruments of maya. They are unaware of the role they play in their own degradation and that of others. A person trying to establish a relationship with another on the basis of ignorance based on bodily conceptions simply creates a basis for their combined ignorance to increase and they encourage each other on the path to hell. Sometimes they find faults with each other and by meditating on those faults develop them in their own personality, eventually becoming more and more like each other. In any case, their doom is certain, for they are puppets in the hands of maya. The suffering of the souls in bondage is unnecessary and avoidable. Yet bound souls assume that suffering is inevitable and that they must continue swimming in this ocean of misery. They confidently state that vaikuntha is just imaginary. A result of their mayavadi tendencies I suppose.

If the cheated are willing to be victimized by manipulative cheaters then it is certainly their fault as well for wanting to remain in nescience and wanting to be cheated. Such a person cannot be helped. And yet such persons are the ones who really need help.

Spiritual versus material values

http://www.jamesallenlibrary.com/authors/james-allen/light-on-lifes-difficulties/spiritual-and-material-values

spiritual necessities must be purchased. Though money cannot buy them, they have their price, and something must be parted with before they can be received. In a word, instead of offering money he must offer up self, or selfishness. For so much selfishness given up, so much religion, righteousness, and wisdom would be immediately received, without fail, and with perfect equity.

primary function of spirituality is not to hoard up personal pleasure, but to render actual the interchange of spiritual blessings.

The most selfish man—he whose chief object is the getting of happiness for himself—is a spiritual miser. His mind may perish of spiritual destitution, though he be surrounded with the objects which he has obtained to pander to his pleasure, because he is worshiping the letter of happiness and is ignoring its spirit—the spirit of unselfish interchange.

when a man gives money to a merchant and receives goods in return, he does not wish to have his money again. He has willingly parted with it forever and is satisfied with the exchange. So when a man gives up unrighteousness in exchange for righteousness, he does not wish to have his selfish pleasures back again. He has given them up forever, and is satisfied and at peace.

Thus also, when one bestows a gift, even though it be a material gift, he does not look for the receiver to send him back its value in money, because it is a spiritual deed and not a business transaction. The material thing thus represents the interchange of spiritual blessings, and its accompanying bliss, the bliss of a gift bestowed and that of a gift received.

. Material things have a material value, spiritual things have a spiritual value, and to confound these values is not wise. To seek to purchase spiritual blessings with money, or material luxuries with virtue, is the way of selfishness and folly. It is to confound barter with religion and to make a religion of barter. Sympathy, kindness, love cannot be bought and sold; they can only be given and received. When a gift is paid for, it ceases to be a gift