In the last podcast, I talked about love. Love is the wish for other to be happy. Love is an emotion. You create the feeling of love within yourself. You choose when to feel love. We choose who we love. We can love everyone, all living beings if we choose to. We can make the wish for everyone to be happy. It doesn't cost us anything at all to make that wish. We will be happier for choosing to love others rather than hate them.
How can you love someone you hate? How can you love your enemy? Why would you want to do that? In these degenerate times, most people would advise you to do the opposite, but sadly, in this day and age the most popular things tend to be harmful to you and everyone. Be very careful of following what is popular and taking advice from backward people. It will only cause you misery in the end.
We may be afraid of an enemy real or otherwise. Our fear can turn into hatred and anger. If our religion tells us to hate or fear certain people, we may do this without even knowing why. The country we live in may tell us to fear or hate certain people and again we may get caught up in the propaganda of the news media telling us stories. Why? Why are they considered the enemy? Are these people truly out to harm you or are they just trying to live their lives as happily and peacefully as they can, too? If none of those people have ever caused you any personal harm, then they are not your enemy. We have to be so careful with these things. We need to stop listening to anyone that is telling us to fear or hate other people because it is so harmful to everyone. Anything that is harmful to us, works against us and prevents us from ever having lasting peace and happiness.
We want to love our enemy because it will make us happier. It will give us peace. All we have to do is have the wish for our enemy to be happy. If we can do that we can change our attitude towards them. You see, if you choose to hate anyone you are upsetting yourself. You cannot be happy if you hate. You cannot be at peace if you hate. You cannot be content with your life if you hate anything. Hatred makes you upset, makes you angry. Why would you want to be like that if you don't have to? You don't have to. It doesn't matter what your enemy thinks of you. It doesn't matter if they hate you. That is there problem. They are causing themselves to be upset with their own hatred. Leave them to stew in their own juices. Why be like them?
While we do need to prevent our enemy from harming us, to benefit them as well as us, we do not want to be a source of harm to them. We only end up hurting ourselves more whenever we harm others. Not only will you suffer greatly in the future from the harm you have caused, but you harm your true self by delaying the spiritual progress you could otherwise be making. If your enemy attacks you, you need to prevent them from doing this as much as possible and protect yourself. However, seeking revenge or planning and attacking them will end up costing you more than whatever retaliation you can devise for your enemy. It is not worth it.
We can let someone we dislike occupy our thoughts for a long period of time. We may spend time trying to think of ways to get revenge or to make them pay for how they treated us. We may fantasize about them coming to harm some how or wishing for something bad to happen to them. Thinking like this causes us to be miserable. We are upsetting ourselves when we focus on negative things, like our hatred or anger. We will attract other negative people and negative entities to be around us. We will cause ourselves to lose our spiritual progress and spiral downward into further suffering. If someone behaves very negatively most of the time, we don't need to interact with them ever again.
We can choose to not feel hatred or anger. Hate and anger are emotions, like love is an emotion. You are solely responsible for the feelings you choose to have. Sure your anger may flare up when something bad happens, but you can choose to release it or stew in it. The more familiar we are with these negative emotions the easier it is for them to flare up and cause us to lose control of ourselves and our behaviour. We need to be very mindful when anger or hate arise within us and do our best to not act on these emotions, so they do not cause anyone including ourselves any harm. It can be very difficult to do this, especially at first, but it can be done. You can listen to my podcast on overcoming negative habits if you need further help with this.
If you find yourself angry and you don't want to harm anyone, you could punch a pillow if you really need to, or do some sort of physical activity that will help you burn off the energy that comes along with your anger. I find I can get a lot of housework done, when I am in an angry mood. You could shoot some basketball hoops or any type of physical activity that you can do alone, so you don't accidentally take your anger out on someone else. Work off the emotion as best you can if you are not able to stop feeling that way right away.
If we can wish for our enemy to be happy, if we can forgive them in our hearts for anything they may have done that harmed us, we will feel better. We can forgive someone without ever having to tell them we have forgiven them. You can forgive them in your heart and no one even needs to know. You don't need to tell them you love you them or tell them you have forgiven them, especially if you think they will cause you more harm knowing that. In your own heart and mind, it will benefit you to let go of your hatred and anger. It is best for you to feel love and forgiveness. It will help you to feel more at peace. After all, most of us want to be happy and we cannot be happy if we are feeling anger or hate.
You may just find that if you can change your feelings towards someone from hatred to love, which is simply wishing for them to be happy, they may no longer be your enemy. The circumstances between you and your enemy may change, sometimes even surprisingly. If you stop wishing for your enemy to come to harm and instead wish for them to be happy, you will have an easier time dealing with them when you have to. Your attitude towards them will change and you will have more patience for putting up with them. You may be surprised to find that they treat you better as a result of you wanting them to be happy.
I lived in an apartment that was invaded by ants once. The more time that passed, the more ants there seemed to be, getting everywhere and in everything. I finally lost it, when I woke up in the middle of the night to find one crawling on my face. I was so frustrated and angry about them. I didn't want to kill them, but I wanted to get rid of them. Nothing I tried worked. One day I was attending a Buddhist class and my teacher taught us about loving our enemies. That we needed to change our attitude toward them. Well, it wasn't long after this teaching when I discovered I had two different colonies of ants invading my home. I found this out because in the middle of my dining room under my table there was a battle going on. One group of ants was coming out from under one wall and the other group was coming out from another wall. They were meeting under my table and a full scale battle was going on! I'm not kidding.
I thought I'd try this love your enemy thing out on them, because the only other alternative at this point was to kill them all and I didn't want that negative karma. I developed love in my heart for all the ants there. I didn't want them to battle each other, for they were causing themselves and each other too much harm. I sent them love from my heart. To my amazement they immediately stopped battling and retreated back the way they came. I was stunned at how quickly that worked. I didn't think it would be possible. From then on, there was only the occasional ant that would show up and I was never bothered by them again. It was unbelievable, but it's true. I was astounded.
When I love people I don't particularly like, they seem to stay away from me, for the most part, so I don't have to put up with their negativity. If they don't change their behaviour, but continue to act inappropriately, I do my best to put a stop to it. This usually causes them to steer clear of me, which is what I want. I know how difficult it can be to love someone that is completely backwards, but I try to develop love in my heart for them and I try to wish for them to happy. I'm not perfect. I still get angry. I still have hatred for certain individuals, but I keep trying to overcome it. I try my best, which isn't perfect by any means. I try to understand that it is their behaviour I do not like, but not the person themselves, for one day they will awaken from their ignorance and change for the better. It is only a matter of time. I keep working at this and hopefully one day, I'll be free from my negative emotions of hate and anger. I know over the years, these feelings do not come up within me nearly as often as they use to and they hardly last very long at all anymore. This lets me know that it can be done and that I am making progress with my spirituality.
This world would be a better place to live in, if everyone could make their hearts and minds more familiar with love and patience, rather than with anger and hatred. If I can improve with these things, we all can. I was very familiar with anger and hatred due to the abusive, toxic childhood I had. I was a very angry teenager and young adult. Over the years I have calmed down and moved on as I try to stop the cycle of abuse I was raised in. I still have work to do on this. The important thing is that I keep trying. That's all any of us can do, is to try to get better and better over time. We all have the ability to change our behaviour if we truly want to. We can all work on this together. We can all learn to love our enemies and improve ourselves and our lives.
You can listen to the podcast here: https://youtu.be/_fUq0Ky71jk
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