Life and purpose of evil

Psychological structures created when we grow up can be enormously powerful in influencing how we lead our lives. Some so-called deep psychotherapy approaches claim to be able to help but don't really care to provide any reasonably trustworthy forecast about when that is supposed to happen. And yet there's a huge number of people involved in an equally huge business and amounts of money for making people feel better. Service providers obviously get paid, whether relief comes or not. My first hand experience with psychotherapy has been consistent with all these techniques shortcomings. Process was extremely slow, totally unpredictable and in fact it has never brought any real relief whatsoever. 

This is anachronic and I personally feel this situation is similar hiring a late 19th century army with non automatic guns for fighting a contemporary war (this is period in history was actually when these clinical psychology theories were created anyways). Sure they can make some real damage. But only until the first plane starts launching a storm of bombs, and killing the whole infantry division in seconds.

Drugs on the other hand may be far more effective, but since they don't act on the underlying causes of the problem (which psychiatrists can't really establish yet), we still don't have an ideal treatment for so called mental illnesses at our disposal as of today.

My personal experience is kind of crazy and maybe someone else could jump in and shed some real light on the issue some day. Personally I know meditation has been fundamental for me. It's probably the best tool I've ever come across for changing myself meaningfully for the better in a very reasonable timeframe. But the other key ingredient for that to happen was not very orthodox: gallons of unsolicited evil in the form of abuse.

For the longest time I've suffered a lot with the fact my life has become increasingly discrepant from what I've expected it to be and what I've hoped to experience as I grew up. Maybe I've had somehow unique life circumstances from the start. But today I truly believe I've been another victim of a very contemporary form of captivity: excess of choice. It is the real post-modern western developed country version of captivity, and without knowing I was its ideal target.

As a prisoner in these conditions, one can't see any chains attached to their ankles or evident physical abuse scars. Maybe that's why this type of captivity is much more powerful in terms of disabling resistance to it. People will embrace it instead of fighting it.

My life has been a perfect analogical example of this phenomenon. My enemies have very rarely been clearly visible to me. Therefore I'd often feel like having the duty to beat myself up for not being good enough at making choices and enjoying all this supposedly postmodern freedom. In addition, most people around me have been usually really nice, which made it even more difficult for me to identify my true enemies, especially real close ones.

However, at 30 something I've finally met real evil. Kind of late I have to say. It definitely didn't look like it. It was in disguise, and for a long time I couldn't tell the difference from it and all the other difficulties I had come across in life until that moment.

But differently from what my mother always have taught me, we don't need to do anything bad to anyone to be treated badly. Understanding this illogical rule of life has deeply changed mine. Forever.
In order to grasp evil around me, and protect from it, I was forced to truly identify with huge certainty this same harmful substance within the depths of myself. Once I did that, two things have naturally occurred:

1- I've concluded dealing with evil people doesn't imply any self-guilt. Evil can indeed be done to me without the need for any previous practical offensive action from my end (or anybody else's). In this sense, I'm afraid, traditional morality is essentially flawed. But that wasn't all.

2- Once I've recognized harassment from this true evil nature on the outside world, my inner devils did not have any safe spot to hide in my subconscious anymore. From then on, the evil I've used to do to myself has become too visible and naturally unsustainable. As opposed to what usually happens with lack of freedom disguised as excess choice, evil has finally become evident like all the otherwise active forms of violence.

Finally there could be a fight that didn't target myself as a whole entity as the opponent.  Now focus is on what really needs to change, inside and out. This is the description of a rather heterodox healing and maturing process. I'm quite confident about how all these factors have interacted to get me to a whole new level of subjective well-being and awareness. 

On the other hand, I'm not crazy enough for advocating for physical or emotional abuse as therapy. I'm not going to justify wrong doing by people in power because it can lead to unintended benefits to victims. Abusers must face hard punishment, preferentially a very visible one because their conduct always relies on what's hidden. But personally I've finally worked the magic of making something useful from nasty experience. And that ability seems to be the evolutionary root of our biased perception of reality. Because bad people and situations have been there since the beginning of times. It's how we frame experience in interacting with these external factors what really determines the subjective quality of our lives.