soul journey : Loving thy enemy!

Loving Your Enemies
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Love your enemies as yourself is good psychological advice as well as sound spiritual counsel.

You might not want to admit that you have enemies, but we all do. A friend is someone you like, while one who is not a friend is someone you do not like – perhaps because you do not know them.

The word ‘enemy’ comes from the Latin in + amicus (not friend). The root of amicus (friend) is amare, ‘to love.’ So a friend is someone you love, and an enemy is someone you do not love. An enemy is someone who represents something negative within yourself that you do not know or do not accept. An enemy is someone on whom you project some unconscious aspects of yourself.

You cannot like or love someone you do not know. In order to love your enemy you have to know them, and in order to know them you have to know yourself enough so as not to project onto them aspects of your shadow self.

I recently spent several hours in a government office in a developing country trying to get some paperwork done. I was going through an inner struggle about the real situation I was in. I found myself alternating between thoughts of criticism about the inefficiency the clerks were demonstrating, and thoughts of me admitting that I did not understand why they acted the way they did. I wanted things to proceed more quickly and I could see how that could easily be done. I was projecting my mentality, expectations and attitudes onto the situation. On the other hand, these people had been doing this work for years in a culture and in a government department that was unknown to me. There was no way I could understand without learning much more than what I knew. But the situation did not lend itself for teaching me what I did not know.

So often this is the kind of situation we find ourselves experiencing. We do not understand, and the situation does not lend itself to be understood at the time. And whenever we do not understand we always project our own thoughts and feelings about what we want and what we think.

Projection is never about the situation, so it never reveals any further understanding to us. Projection is about ourselves. It comes from an unconscious place within ourselves where we feel unfulfilled or lacking in some way. That is, we want something and therefore impose our feelings and thoughts on a situation through uninformed judgement, criticism or making demands. It is very easy to make enemies in this way.

Whenever we criticise or make demands based on personal desires, we alienate others. They do not feel loved or appreciated by us. And we obviously do not love or appreciate them.

Anyone we meet – even in places like government offices – can be a friend, someone to love. But it takes an effort when they are different from us – when they act or behave differently, when they look different, when they have different beliefs or lifestyles, or when they do not meet our expectations.

We must make an attempt to understand. If we do not succeed in gaining accurate understanding with our minds, we can then approach them in other ways. Understanding is also possible with the heart. The heart accepts; it does not judge. When we know something with our heart what we know is that there is a cause why something is the way it is, and that cause is valid. The heart accepts the limitations of a person or situation and values whatever efforts are being made. The heart is altruistic and therefore accepting and tolerant of others. It is not preoccupied with self-centered interests.

When we open our heart to another we can transcend our emotional reactions and self-centered desires. Often, however, this is not easy because we feel those emotions so strongly. One of the qualities that turns on the heart significantly and strongly is appreciation. Appreciation is not an emotion that arises spontaneously, but a soul quality that we can choose. The more often we choose to be appreciative the easier this choice becomes and the more frequently is our heart open to give and receive love.

Heart is a word that refers to many different levels of our being. Essentially, it is the love aspect of soul, capable of making direct, intuitive contact. Soul love is not emotional; it is highly impersonal and intelligent, capable of grasping the essence without any projection on our part. When we activate this centre through choosing to appreciate we simultaneously activate the physical heart’s intelligence which then resonates the brain’s intelligence, bringing our whole being into alignment with soul, with appreciation, with love. In this state of love we accept ourselves. In this state we then love our enemies because we have made a connection with their soul. The enemies are now friends because of our heart-centred choices.

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Exercises:
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1. What situations or people do you find difficult to appreciate?

2. What expectations or projections on your part get in the way of appreciating them?

3. With eyes closed, and in a relaxed meditative state, focus on your heart and the quality of appreciation. When you have it, then visualize someone whom you have difficulty seeing as a friend, and direct this appreciation toward them.

souljourney:craving & aversion

Issues of what to desire or aspire to are addressed more than once by the dying man, Morrie, in Tuesdays With Morrie. He says: “People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job (will be the answer). Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running.”


In another passage he suggests, rightly, what can give people meaning and purpose: “So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”


It has often been said in spiritual circles that material possessions hinder us on the spiritual path. But, desires and material possessions do not hinder the spiritual life as long as one is not attached to them or controlled by them. In other words, as long as you are free to be yourself and are free to choose your responses to ever-changing situations, then desires and material possessions are not hindrances at all. Then they, too, can be enjoyed and appreciated.


Desire has two sides:

a.) craving (wanting to possess)
b.) aversion (wanting to dispossess or avoid)


These two sides of desire exemplify the working of a universal law, the Law of Attraction, along with its implication – repulsion. This law is reflected in physics in the saying, ‘for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.’

Buddhists consider these two aspects of desire “poisons”, and they add a third one, “delusion”. Delusion is the perception that something is what it is not. It is a bias of perception and cognition caused by an “afflicted” mind and emotion.

Both of these two aspects of desire are movements – toward something or away from something. Both cause pain because we give these drives or desires some of our power – the power to control us. Only through detachment are we free to move as we, in our essence, choose.


John Nash, in the movie, The Beautiful Mind, says something true of our personality life: “Our dreams and our nightmares – we have to keep feeding them for them to stay alive.” It is usually our desires that feed the dream and our aversions that feed the nightmares.


It is interesting to note that craving – and by implication also aversion – has a brain based association. One area of the brain, called the nucleus accumbens, is activated by craving. This centre is an area very rich in dopamine and appears to be involved in all forms of craving and addictions. Dopamine is associated with heightened feels of pleasure or well-being. The curious thing is that the brain circuitry associated with liking is different, and it has an inverse relationship to that associated with craving. The more we crave something, the less we like it. This is what makes us crave something even more so we can satisfy what we like. But it doesn’t work, and eventually we can end up in addiction.

Everyone has both negative and positive within, as does all manifest reality. Perceived negativity within ourselves is only ever a problem when it is an object of aversion – for then it controls. Virtually all conditions that are judged to be negative become objects of aversion. But so, too, the positive eventually becomes a problem when it remains the object of craving, for this type of attachment negates wholeness. When we crave the positive it is not because we have due recognition or appreciation of its presence within us, but that we feel we lack it, and therefore must get it or become it.

When we crave something it is always something outside of ourselves. It is curious how craving for something positive, such as acceptance, for example, always brings us an experience of the negative, such as rejection. We usually don’t see this, and say that it is because we experience rejection that we crave acceptance. We don’t see that the craving for something external does not bring us what we crave, because there is an inner reality that must be first embraced. In this example, we must accept ourselves before others will accept us. And in order to accept ourselves we have to embrace both the positive and negative within ourselves. And when we don’t accept the negative within us, others will bring it to our attention or possibly reject us because of its presence. Once we see it and accept it, it is no longer an issue in relationships.

According to spiritual principles and laws of life, satisfaction and fulfillment come from giving ourselves in response to the needs we recognize in the world where we live daily. Fulfillment is derived from experiencing meaning in whatever we do, not in accumulating or demanding anything. What we have or want in terms of possessions, or even in the responses we get from others, must in some way be related to what it is we attempt to give and express that makes life more beautiful or more authentic in some way.

When we do not express what we need to express, which is some aspect of our essence or soul, we feel a lack. This lack is felt as a dissatisfaction which then results in craving of some kind.

When we are afraid or insecure about who we are and what our value is we tend to become defensive, which often results in aversion – trying to push away and reject what threatens us. When we are soul-centered we do not experience aversion because we value who and what we are.


Your ultimate value is who you are. Your fulfilment comes through sharing yourself with others. It is through this expression that causes craving and aversion to diminish and unity to be experienced.

Exercises:

1. What do you crave and when do you crave it – i.e., what are you feeling about yourself when you experience craving?

2. Toward what do you experience aversion – i.e., what are you feeling about yourself when you experience aversion?

3. Reflect deeply on what it is within you at a soul level that is seeking to be expressed. Then make a decision to start expressing it more.