What Would Buddha Do?
Raymond Ziemkowski, for The Hearts Center®
May – June 2026 • Vol 4, No 22
Occasionally in new age circles, I encounter individuals who express the belief that evil does not exist or who hold the perspective that Lucifer was part of an internal schism, coordinated with God, to create the polarity of good and evil as our creative framework in time and space. They propose that there is no real objective superiority of good over evil and everything we encounter is just experience. They hold a perspective that all potential outcomes in the universe are valid and that we need not be concerned with the evil we see in the world. Just ignore it, they say, and don’t give it energy.
I have spoken at length with individuals who carry within their metaphysical beliefs a perspective that enables them to sincerely say, even as the Twin Towers fell in New York in 2001, “There is no real threat.” They argue, “It is an illusion. Just tune into a different reality. Everything is in perfect balance in the Universe.”
Other individuals are much the opposite in how they perceive and deal with evil in the world. They take it very personally and are deeply pained and wounded by what they cannot control and do not understand. They lash out at the Military Industrial Complex, politicians, capitalists and dynastic wealth, or greedy warmongering men in general. All of these and more become the target of their frustration, fear and anger.
Words can be chameleons depending on how we express them and from what point of experience or internalization of the “Word” we offer and receive them. Today it is probably easier to create division rather than unity with words given the many landmines of division already in place within our assumptions, opinions and judgments. Often, we are divided and conquered because our best intentions are lost or misunderstood.
The Nature of Evil
What is evil? Does evil exist? Are good and evil equal partners? Was Lucifer just playing a role when he fell? Just what is meant by the term, “fall”? How should lightbearers respond when confronted with circumstances and energies that we typically identify as evil?
Do we accept the perspective that all potential outcomes in the universe are valid and we need not be concerned with the evil we see in the world? Do we just ignore it and not give it energy? Do we lash out at “them,” whoever they are, and become victims and pawns of powers we don’t understand? Is it possible that there is a middle road, one that takes us beyond the extremes of mental detachment and denial or emotional lashing out at the atrocities of war and suffering on our planet? To borrow a popular phrase, “What would Buddha do?”
What Would Buddha Do?
Gautama was challenged by Mara to give up his seat of meditation and abandon his pursuit of enlightenment and a solution to elevate mankind’s suffering. Upon enlightenment, he could have entered Nirvana. Instead, he chose to remain here on the earth. He touched the ground with the earth-touching mudra, in essence saying, I will remain here. I have a right to be here! I have a duty to be who I am and to fulfill my mission!
Our Spiritual Source
Students of the ascended masters are taught that our spiritual Source is our I AM Presence. And that the blueprint of being is our Higher Self or Christ Self. Our individualized soul as “potential” has free will to choose to be or not to be the Higher Self. We understand that, because we have been created in the image of God, we have the authority to also create. In fact, the very flow of our life-stream is a self-creative, self-affirming process.
Further explanation by the ascended masters, tells us that from the I AM Presence descends a crystal cord, delivering divine energy that sustains a threefold flame, centered in the crystal chamber of our heart chakra. This energy gives us life, distributing light throughout our four lower bodies and chakra system. It is from the point of the threefold flame within our heart center that the soul begins to qualify God’s energy—heart, head and hand. And according to the free will of our soul, we either externalize the Christic potential of our thoughts, words and deeds or we create an energy veil (evil) of human substance.
This substance is still God’s energy but trapped so to speak because it has lost its polarity of perfection. It becomes a karmic signature that reprograms our DNA and ties us to physical plane karma. It sets into motion the cause-and-effect karmic relationships that are intended to help us make better choices as we learn what we sow, we shall reap.
The Energy Veil (Evil)
When God’s energy passes through your heart, do you express the patterns of love and compassion that underlie the unity of all life and complete a figure-eight flow of energies between Spirit and matter, as above so below? Or do you, at times, create an energy veil (evil) of hatred, division and hostility, playing out a wounded psychology of pain and separation? This created energy veil (evil) is God’s energy locked by the soul’s free will into patterns and vibrations that no longer mirror the perfection of Spirit. And we are tied to them because we have allowed them to pass through our heart.
The Fall of Man
One interpretation of the “fall of man” is an incremental separation between God and man, as the soul chooses to create and qualify God’s energy, chakra by chakra, lifetime after lifetime, outside of the patterns of Spirit’s perfection.
Like a lotus in a pond (our I AM Presence represented by the flower and our soul represented by the plant in the muck and mud) our souls in the muck and mud of our human creation have in time become completely oblivious to that part of self, our I AM Presence (the flower) that we are tied to by our crystal cord. That muck and mud is the humanly created not self, the cumulative patterns of imperfection and misqualified energies of the soul. It is still God’s energy—just waiting to be released, balanced, repolarized, and returned to God by the soul.
Planetary evil, that which we encounter of darkness on earth, has a relative/physical reality because it is God’s energy given form by free-will acts of the life streams, the soul’s incarnating on this planet. The same is true of our negative personal karma. It also has a relative reality. The misqualified energy can be played out physically as the violence and cataclysm we see on earth.
To Be or Not to Be
The real choice of the lightbearer today is the archetypical conundrum of Hamlet, “To be or not to be.” To be on the cross of initiation and transmutation, transmuting and repolarizing the energy veil (evil) that sustains the illusion of separation between Spirit and Matter—or “not to be” and walk away to leave for another day the working out of our karma.
The ascended masters teach us that we must balance our karma where we have created it. So, in a sense, all the potential universes and potential realities imaginable have little relevance when put into perspective with the here and now of our physical incarnation. The question is: when life becomes difficult because our negative karma is upon us, do I or don’t I determine to “be here now,” as Ram Dass might say?
Am I determined to face, as Gautama did, the wind and the storm of personal and planetary karma? Am I determined to balance and garner the energies of my lifestream and be a shining example, “as above so below,” to ensoul, transmute and repolarize the energies of the physical plane to create heaven on earth? Or do I succumb to Mara, satisfied to continue to pour my energies into an impermanent clay cup, an energy veil of seemingly endless experience of human maya?
Mankind Today
Mankind today is a composite of spiritual reality and potential, as well as impermanent, self-created human patterns of unreality—patterns that sustain a sense of separation from God and the synthetic humanistic world we live in. The human potential is not the God-potential of our Spirit or I AM Presence. The human self is the composite self in the synthetic world of maya. The human self does not evolve. In fact, the human self is that part of our being that is devolving away and apart from God’s perfection. The human self is what the Apostle Paul spoke of in Scripture that must die daily, increment by increment, if we are to realize our spiritual potential and inner blueprint of perfection that already is!
In our search for enlightenment, like Gautama Buddha, each one of us is on a path, separating out that which is real from that which is not real within our being. We have a right to be an extension of Spirit in Matter. We have a responsibility to be who we really are and challenge the illusion of separation. We have a duty to show the way, that others might be set free. We share a vision that our Earth might once again be restored as a platform of soul-evolution, free from the energy veil (evil), Free from pain and suffering. Free from sin, disease and death.
May peace and enlightenment be realized within our hearts!
May Earth be restored to a Golden Age!
“I AM” Affirmations & Prayers
When we affirm the name of God, “I AM That I AM,” in the Spoken Word, we release the creative potential of Spirit into Matter to complete the blueprint of our statement and intention.
When we say, “I AM” we are affirming that: “God in me is….” If you say, “I AM healthy,” you are affirming that God in me is healthy and releasing the light of Spirit to complete that manifestation.
Center in your heart with devotion to God. Make your attunement with your Mighty I AM Presence and Christ Self. Release your affirmation or decree with feeling and authority. Visualize light emanating through your heart and out into the world. Accept and claim the manifestation and realization of your affirmation according to God’s will.
I AM Emanating Violet Fire
by the Divine Director
I AM emanating violet fire
To blaze and transmute all desire.
Now I charge the Earth with light
Living in pure God-delight.
I AM emanating violet light
Transforming all with mercy bright
Charging Earth with freedom’s flame
Miracle love in the I AM name.
Click HERE to view a video of the above prayer recited as a dynamic decree.
Prayer #70.018B. Inspired by the Divine Director. Sept. 13, 2023. Copyright ©The Hearts Center®. All rights reserved.
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Raymond Ziemkowski is a native Montanan. He has been a student of many spiritual teachings since he was a teenager, often experiencing visionary dreams and insights. For most of his adult life, he has sold crystals, gems, and books spanning the esoteric teachings of the world religions. “Over the years,” he says, “I’ve listened deeply to the customers in my store. I consider the highest teaching and path, and the best book for them to be the one that guides them to the next steps on their spiritual path.” Raymond is a long-time member of The Hearts Center Community.
