Resist Not Hate

Haters are not born, they are made.  For the most part hatred is created by individuals who are wounded in some way.  Intentionally or unintentionally, we seem to pass down our beliefs and our way of relating to the world to our youth....  And Haters beget Haters.

The fact is conscious choices take more effort than accepting wholesale what someone teaches us.

Here's what I've learned; if you come across someone who believes something you don't agree with, you won't change their mind by telling them they're wrong... no matter how right you think you are.  You know this! It's the law of resistance which states that what you resist you draw toward you; so as you resist their POV (point of view) you will only create a greater need for them to try and impose it upon you.

Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and HH the Dalai Lama have been very successful with non-resistance strategies.  But maybe you're not up to sit-ins and such..... try just listening, in fact, it could be your superpower.

Need help listening?  It's not easy when everything within you 'knows' the haters are wrong. The Urban Confessional offers excellent guidelines on how to listen compassionately.  They believe people need to be heard and that there is value in simply listening to someone.

True listening is a skill and it's not the same as agreeing with someone or condoning harmful behavior.  I think the secret is that when you listen and make simple non judgmental inquiries people begin to think and hear themselves.  Here's an example of what's possible, by being heard one young woman connected her own wounded experience to why she felt so harshly about certain people.  

Yes we need to stand for love, but standing against hate is not the way.

Let's have a conversation, I want to understand why you feel the way you do; really, I do.

Love Has No Opposite

Nothing in me supports what happened in Charlottesville, yet I am challenged to see how healing can take place if one takes up the cause of opposition.  

If I am to love the "sinner" and "reject" (I can't use the term usually put here) "sin" then my actions and deeds must be elevated from those of the "sinner" so that my actions demonstrate my choice to love. Now to be clear, I don't use the term sin in its common interpretation but rather to mean to miss the mark.  So in this context, I am loving the individual but not her/his mistake.  

If I were to take any other stand it feels to me that I'm just creating resistance energy that, while motivated by compassion, is still in opposition to something.

Love has no opposite. This I know to be true.  

Today I choose Love and this choice gives me the eyes to see and the heart to embrace all of humanity.  

The Biggest Mystery Is No Mystery At All

Ask and it shall be given to you... Mark 7:7

Miss Dorothy wanted to win the lotto so she prayed to God, and she lost. Next week she prayed to God again, and she lost. The week after she prayed to God, and she lost. Finally, getting quite impatient, she said to God, "Why won't you let me win?"  To her surprise God actually replied, a little exasperated, " Miss Dorothy, How about buying a ticket first?" 

Miss Dorothy like many of us hope our prayers are answered, and God does answer our prayers but not in some Merlin-like magical way but rather through our faith.  It metaphysical terms that means our belief. "It is done unto you as you believe."  Matthew 9:29

The biggest mystery of all is actually no mystery.  We must make ourselves available to receive that which we would ask for.  Sometimes we are ready to receive what we think we need or want and sometimes there is more preparation we need to do.  It is God's good pleasure to give us the kingdom - all we have to do is ask and be prepared to receive.  

If our prayers seem to go unanswered then it is ours to go within and see what needs to be cleared within ourselves to make space for that which we long for.  A few years back a group of gal pals who were single and wanted to be coupled declared the summer to be "Being my own boyfriend summer".  They planned activities, took themselves to dinner and events, bought flowers for themselves and each other and created the experience they were looking for outside themselves.  They are all coupled now, one married, one engaged.

We must be willing to become that which we seek.  Dr. Ernest Holmes, Founder of Centers for Spiritual Living, put it this way:

We arrive at a consciousness of Unity only in such a degree as we see that what we are looking FOR, we are looking WITH, and looking AT. SOM pg 124.2

What seems like a mystery is just the hidden treasure of wholeness living within you awaiting your discovery of it.

Namaste

The Alchemy of Gratitude

"The thing about gratitude is that when we can invoke it, bring it forward, there is an alchemy that happens… it turns water into wine and mere metal into gold.  When we invite gratitude into a difficult situation the ego seems to step away - having nothing to grab hold of and we become available to newness, and a sense of being supported."    Alice Reid

Today I start with gratitude, knowing it is the result of allowing my heart to open wide and experience the One in everything around, about and inside me.  There is no thing but the Divine in all I see, hear, feel, taste, touch, think, and smell.  I simply surrender all ideas and thoughts unlike this and I’m in heaven, right here and right now.  My being remembers why I’m here and who I came here to be and I trust. A knowing comes over me like a warm embrace.  

I am one with the One and it fills me with Love and a great sense of well being.  I am supported and cared for by Life and I walk in the world with a confidence and a trust that Life is for me always,  I serve the world from my wholeness and I claim this deep sense of belonging and confidence for myself and for all beings everywhere.  This is the call I hear and respond to as I bathe in my gratitude for my life and the One Life that lives it through me.  Thank you God.

Amen, Ashay, Blessed Be and So It Is.