Do you have enemies?
What is an enemy, someone you hate, or someone who hates you? Do you hate them because they hate you, or for some other reason? What are the reasons for hate? And what is the medicine for hate?
Whenever I’m in the car my new favorite thing is to listen to podcasts. Some are funny, some are interesting and some resonate with my passion, my Divine Purpose. One such pod is The Arthur Brooks Show.
He just completed his second season in spectacular fashion in my opinion, with the topic of Love. He talked about, and had guests who discussed, all aspects of Love but managed to tie the final episode with his first seasons emphasis on how to, in the midst of the most toxic political climate we’ve seen in decades, disagree well.
Could we all use a refresher course on The Art of Disagreement? Have we gotten used to the hatefulness of the Twitter Universe; the trolls on every social platform spewing negativity, the arguments, eye rolling, rigid stances and hostile posturing? Not to mention that which flows like lava, from the upper echelons: the falsehoods, sarcasm, name-calling, and petty snidely sniping. Is this the new normal? Are we supposed to just take our corners, dig in and snipe back within the illusory cocooned safety of our group-think bubbles?
I don’t think so. And neither does Arthur Brooks. In my post Me Too, Why Good People Do Bad Things, I talk about why we are ALL better than that, bigger than that.
Like Arthur, I seek a Higher Vision, a place where we are free to break out of the false confines of idealogy. But how does one actually go about doing that?
Willingness
From a spiritual/energy perspective, Willingness is a powerful Energy of Change. Without the first step of Willingness, where can you go?
Willingness is an Energy of Flexibility, of letting go of your current perspective just long enough to try on a different perspective. It is a Conscious Choice. If you Choose to be Willing to try a different perspective on for size, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Willingness opens the door to Freedom. When we are Willing and Flexible enough to see a different perspective, we are freed from the limits of one particular perspective; and when we can see other perspectives, we can see other choices. We may or may not accept those other choices but we will see how the other choices will either validate our previous perspective, or perhaps, invalidate it. If we are Willing, we will then be Free to Choose to identify with a Perspective that resonates with a Higher Vision.
Other energies such as resistance, stubbornness, rigidness and rightness run counter to Willingness. The former are illusory energies based in fear, the latter is based in Reality with a capital “R”.
In Season Two, Episode 4, Arthur talks about How to Love Your Enemies. Still Open and Willing to hear a new perspective? Good, stay Conscious and keep reading…
He begins the episode by talking about how he is a practicing Catholic but has had the opportunity to study great teachers and masters. He said he could see the differences of religions but what caught his attention were the moral similarities,
“the great faiths of the world teach some of the same subversive truths.”
I love how Arthur really gets to what is Real, the common Principles of Love which are espoused by all the great masters.
He says that in the Dhammapada, the lord Bhudda says to conquer the evil man with Kindness and the miser with Generosity but that
“Jesus takes it up a notch in the fifth chapter of Matthew…’Love your enemies, do good to those who harm you.’”
Jesus and Bhudda are not saying that we should tolerate each other. They are calling for a higher standard with those who hate us or those we hate, Arthur notes. They are calling for us to love our enemies. And then he asks, “Can we love our enemies?” He posits that we not only can, but should, love our enemies. People often ask him how you can love someone who is unlovable. He argues that there are unlovable statements and unlovable acts, people do unlovable things all the time, but people themselves, are not unlovable.
The Power of a Different Perspective…
Enter Francesco Mesa, a former LA gang member. With 33 bullet scars to show for it, Francesco has a few enemies. “I believe for a minute I had a bullet magnet on me…” Born to an “abusive, broken home” that was mostly absent of parents, Francesco ended up on the gang infested streets and from the time he was eight years old, experiencing shoot outs was “a regular day.”
When he was two months from being released from prison, he made the sound choice of turning to Home Boy Industries, a non-profit designed to provide a safe, nurturing place to turn ones life around after street violence and incarceration. Home Boy is renowned for its ability to initiate healing, beginning the very first day.
“…first time that I walked into Home Boy, my enemy was the first person that greeted me at the door,”
Francesco remarks. “To see that greeting you once seen as the opposite…you can’t really put it into words. It’s very overwhelming to be put in a situation like that but to later understand it’s part of the dynamics, the great dynamics of Home Boy Industries.”
It made a huge impression, “Very shocked. The fact that that person welcomed me, you know, welcome to Home Boy Industries. You know, come in, how you doing? That’s mind blowing. I mean I’m shaking just thinking about it to be honest.”
Francesco has now come full circle, greeting other would be enemies to Home Boy just the way he was greeted when he arrived.
Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Home Boy Industries in LA. He is a Jesuit Priest and author of two books, Tattoos on the Heart, the Power of Boundless Compassion and Barking to the Choir, The Power of Radical Kinship. He says that the 30 year history of Home Boy has a reputation that he doubts any of the 120,000 gang members of the 1100 gangs in LA County, hasn’t heard about. Father Boyle regularly travels the country speaking to anyone who is interested in how to bring young people together who are caught in the grip of gang violence. Currently Home Boy employs and trains more than 10,000 men and women each year for many different social enterprises.
Conceived during the peak of gang violence of the late 80’s in the Royal Heights neighborhood, Father Boyle began with a school for middle and high school gang members who had been kicked out to the school system and were wreaking havoc with violence and drugs in their communities. When asked if they would go to school if they could they all said yes, so he gently kicked the nuns out of the convent and turned it into a school for gang members. He asked them if they would like jobs and they said yes, so when felony friendly employment wasn’t forthcoming he started maintenance and landscaping crews. This later evolved into Home Boy Bakery and Home Boy Tortillas.
“We originally called ourselves Jobs For Our Future, then we changed our name to Home Boy Industries and that’s what we’ve been ever since.”
Arthur says to Father Boyle that his parents taught him that the mark of moral courage is not to love people who are traditionally unloved but to love those who are unlovable “because that’s where your faith is really tested.” Arthur comments that many politicians depict gang members as “super-predators”, with no conscience, remorse or humanity even. “…and yet you’ve written that gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope. Nobody’s ever met a hopeful kid who joined a gang.”
Father Boyle describes the three profiles of kids who join gangs, of which a lack of hope is one. When kids can’t imagine their future they find themselves stuck in a dark place where hope is a foreign thing. The second is “the kid whose so deeply traumatized, who can’t see his way clear to transform his pain so he just keeps transmitting it. And the third profile for a kid who joins a gang is a mentally ill kid.” These are the three profiles of kids who join gangs but it’s also the three profiles of the people who benefit from what Home Boy has to offer. “If we can give them some rest from their chronic toxic stress then they can heal; and an educated inmate or gang member may or may not go back to prison, and an employed one may or may not, but it is our guarantee here at Home Boy Industries, that a healed gang member won’t ever re-offend.”
…Can lead to Healing
Everyone at Home Boy has to work with multiple enemies who may have once shot at each other. “So it’s kind of a ‘3-fer’…they get to find healing, they have money in their pockets and they have the added advantage of being able to work side-by-side with somebody they used to hate.”
Arthur asks if that is the hardest part, to work with someone they used to hate?
Father Boyle says no. Something happens when two people who used to shoot at each other are working next to each other in the bakery making croissants, “…wordlessly they’re working something out and it always happens. I can’t think of a single exception where anybody hung on to their resentment. So there’s this ‘us and them’ that dissolves into only ‘us’ and that’s the healing piece here is that people enter into a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. We always say you know, that love is the answer, and community is the context, and tenderness is the methodology. So here they have a real palpable experience of tenderness which is love at its most connective, otherwise loves stays in your head, or in the air, or in your heart even, but unless it becomes tender there’s not union, there’s no kinship, there’s not connective tissue. So we kind of stay anchored in that here because tenderness is the most foreign thing to a gang member and yet it’s the most healing thing for them.”
Arthur responds, “So it sounds like you don’t see anybody as unlovable. Everybody can be loved more and you see the humanity in each person. I think that’s an important insight.”
Father Boyle says that people sometimes say they don’t see the good qualities in a person. “It’s not about qualities, it’s about goodness, that everybody has this unshakable goodness. The Buddhist would call it ‘Buddha nature’, you know. Everybody has goodness, everybody does. And that demonizing that happens currently in our country is not only untruth but demonizing is the opposite of who God is. And you were mentioning earlier loving your enemies, no we’re not invited to that because it’s the harder thing but because it’s the thing that most resembles the kind of God we have. So it’s not about a hard, difficult thing, it’s about seeing in a different way. And you spend one minute here and you see people and you see only unshakable goodness couched in, you know, people who have a harder time conjuring up an image of tomorrow or who have been unspeakably traumatized or who carry more than I’ve ever had to carry so suddenly you’re ushered into a sense of compassion and awe.”
The Energy of Darkness
Hate, like all life-taking energy, is a shadow created when one is turned away from the Light. In the World of Form, the place of contrasting and complimentary dualities, hate, like all dark energy, has a role to play, a Purpose. Like the warmth of the sun on a cold day, Contrast naturally lends itself to deeper levels of Understanding, Recognition and Appreciation of Divinity.
How does ‘hate’ happen?
The “reasons” for hate usually include a sense of injustice, unfairness or victimization. These ideas produce thoughts and feelings, which produce more thoughts and feelings. For those who are susceptible to identifying with the energy of hate, any ‘evidence’ presented by hate mongers or circumstance, may or may not be valid but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the person identified with hate believes the ‘reason/excuse’ and ‘buys-in’.
To be compelling, engrossing and overwhelming enough to keep up the buy-in requires a lot of energy. As long as the buy-in continues, hate naturally invites more dark energy like anger and rage. If there is still buy-in, anger and rage thoughts will lead to acting out, passively or aggressively. Gang violence, school shootings and terrorism are just a few of the examples of the path hate, anger and rage will take. Ultimately, the vengeful killing of others and even of oneself, is the final goal of hate.
How does one stop the buy-in/identifying with hate?
For someone who is identified with the energy of hate, to contemplate letting it go will cause a sense of loss, a very uncomfortable feeling of giving up, giving in or sacrifice.
Hate will produce thoughts of false rationalizations: if hate is given up it means a condoning of the perceived egregious action, statement, opposing ideology, etc.
Opposing the actions of others does NOT require engaging the energy of hate.
Indeed, succumbing to the energy of hate robs one of their power, so then hate will dictate the thoughts, words and actions of the one identified with it.
Hate, like any other life-taking energy, has a “mind” of its own, and a “life” of its own. When “it” feels threatened with disengagement, it may well summon its friends: fear, stubbornness, defiance. Not unlike a wild animal backed into a corner, it will snarl, growl and threaten in an attempt to ensure its own survival by convincing you that it is YOU who are threatened. It is NOT YOU! You are not thoughts and feelings, yours or otherwise.
Life-taking energies are NOT YOU!
It’s easier to fall prey to the con and totally embrace an attachment to the perspective of hate if one does not know the Truth: hate only has the power we give it. Hateful thoughts and feelings are not ours but are being interjected by a separate entity/energy potential drawn by a void of vulnerability. The ancient Hawaiians called them ‘malu’. They can only do this however, if we are unconscious enough to accept those thoughts and feelings as our own. I am here to tell you: You are a Divine Being and Divine Beings do not generate hateful thoughts and feelings. YOU have the power to CHOOSE your thoughts and feelings. Anyone who is identified with the energy of hate, is not Conscious enough to know better. Who, in their ‘right mind’ would choose hate?
The Life-Giving/Akua Energy of Willingness is a powerful bridge.
Embracing Willingness can be a first step. Hate does not want to lose its source of expression and power and will try every trick in the book to keep its “host” hooked. That is why a different Perspective can be so empowering. Even when there are intense thoughts and feelings, one can still Choose. Like Father Boyle said, “…it’s about seeing in a different way.” “…everybody has unshakable goodness”. If one is Willing to release attachment to hateful thoughts and feelings, and rather see from the unshakable goodness within themselves, they will see the unshakable goodness of others.
“Unshakable goodness” or Divinity, our common spiritual Nature, is the most basic thing that Connects us all together.
It is only when we regain this grounding of our most Natural State that we can see the ‘other’ as quite the same. It is a level of Consciousness. We are Conscious enough to Choose, or we are not.
When two gang members who used to hate and shoot at each other find themselves working side by side at Home Boy, what made it is easy to let go of the hate and resentment was an atmosphere of Love; a deliberate Conscious invocation of the Spirit of Love of which Tenderness is an Expression. When the Spirit of Love is present, “you’re ushered into a sense of compassion and awe”, and the illusory energies don’t stand a chance.
What is Real (Love) prevails, what is illusion (hate) goes poof!
In Part 2, we will look at the energies of Love and hate with respect to political divisions. How can you be Conscious of what is really going on and why it is important to us all. Stay tuned…