the ego & the “enemy” … (02/15/13)
When your ego hears a Master’s gentle admonitions to “Love your enemies” and “Forgive your trespassers” and “Be Kind when least inclined”, it will whisper whatever it has to in order to persuade you not to do so.
You see, the ego is not really concerned about your life — it is actually concerned about ITS OWN.
It does not really believe that you will die if you are Kind to an “evil person” — Rather, it actually knows that, if you do so, you will come to experience the Truth that LOVE actually WORKS. And it believes that once you remember that LOVE is the answer, it is deathly afraid that you will stop listening to its fearful advice, and that it will thereby perish.
And one of the best ways your ego has of keeping you afraid of “radical Kindness” — one of the best ways it knows of to keep you far from real, unconditional LOVE, is to bring up extremely violent examples to disprove Love’s effectiveness.
After all, what chance does LOVE have against the Hitlers of our day? What chance does LOVE have against zealous terrorists? What chance does LOVE have against those “psychopaths” who break into our homes hell-bent on raping our partners and murdering our children?
Well, we could very well have a rational discussion about why LOVE does indeed work in such cases … I could cite examples to “prove” that it does, and I could illuminate the fundamental psychological principles to explain why this is the case. AND YET this discussion is not necessary for 99.999% of us who are not involved with such extremely rare forms of “evil”.
No, these examples are actually a very clever distraction sent to us all by our ego to keep us from identifying the real targets of our pure LOVE — to keep us from realizing just who the “enemies” are to whom we are to give our unconditional Kindness.
In essence, instead of worrying about Loving terrorists, choose to be Kind to the co-worker who is gossiping about you behind your back.
Instead of convincing yourself that Forgiving criminals is “irresponsible”, choose to be anonymously Kind to the person who annoys you the most.
Instead of supporting a philosophy that commands you to “love your country” by supporting attempts to murder all its enemies, choose to be openly Kind to those in your own neighborhood who have religious &/or political beliefs different from your own.
For THIS is what is meant when it is offered that we are to “Love our enemies” …
THIS is what is meant when we are asked to “Forgive our trespassers” …
THIS is what is meant when we are called to “Be Kind when least inclined”.
The enemies to whom we are to extend our Compassion are not life’s biggest demons or its cruelest dictators or its most warped criminals.
No, we fulfill the call to unconditional LOVE when we simply have the humility to get down on our knees, the compassion to look our “small but prickly” neighbors in their eyes, and then the courage to reach out to LOVE THEM ANYWAY.
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