We are taught by all spiritual paths to “love” everyone. That is an impossible task, sometimes we can barely love our family members consistently. We can recognize that we can love everyone’s potential to be that is a lot easier, but the potential to be what? What we want or think they should be? Or the full potential of who they are and their purpose in this lifetime. Not only is that an important distinction, but it is also foundational to true, unconditional love. Can you love someone for being themselves or can you only love them when they do what you want? If the latter, do you really love them?
That brings us to hate versus love, is hate the polar opposite of love? You could say that and be partially correct, but hate is actually the result of fear which causes hate. Are we able to eliminate fear in our lives and therefore eliminate hate? We fear what we don’t know, we fear people not doing what we want, we fear not getting what we want, we fear people not being what we want them to be, we fear people not being like us which ultimately causes us to hate them. Seldom do we go directly from love to hate, I hate you for being who you are and not being like me.
So how to we eliminate fear? Radically do we try to love our fear because it points out places we need to grow? I hate that person because…you fill in the blanks, I love that fear because it is pointing out a lesson I need to learn. Do they hate you? Maybe, but that is not important, you are only responsible for your reactions and emotions. Can you love the “angel” inside the person that is their soul and say to yourself, I hate, no I fear that person because of this……and fill in that blank.
After retraining ourselves to address hate in the light of fear we open ourselves up more to Divine Love, pure love without an agenda.
