Learning To Love Thy Enemies We’ve Created

We make many enemies throughout our lives, none of which live outside of our own heads.

Ponder on that for a second before you decide to read any further…what does that mean to you? Are you open to learning to love thy enemy for your own sake?

How We Create Our Own Enemies

Habits As Our Enemies

We create our own habits that we aren’t fond of and call them the enemy as if they have a mind of their own. Well, they do, except it’s not their mind, it’s our own mind. The same mind that created the habit is the same mind that will replace it. All of our habits are created with good intentions at the time of conception, we thought they served a purpose. If you’re not fond of a certain habit, it has outlived its’ purpose, it’s time to replace it. Don’t resist it, understand it, love it, replace it.

Time As Our Enemy

We’re late for an important meeting or occasion and we call time the enemy as if time made us late when it was our own choices that made us late. Time never speeds up or takes time away from us in order to purposely make us late, that just makes us sound like a lunatic. What we choose to do with the time we have been given is entirely our own responsibility, not the responsibility of time itself. Love time, as time is one of the few things you will always have until the day you die.

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Challengers As Our Enemies

We don’t think we’re enough and we make enemies of anyone who challenges our outcomes. How dare them to have the audacity to make us feel like we’re not enough. Yet we were the ones telling ourselves we’re not enough before any challengers arose. If we were enough, we would see the opportunities in being challenged, we would welcome them. We understand that no matter what they say, we’re enough. Love being challenged, it fosters your growth.

Hitler? Really?

Is it possible for one to generate compassion for a man who has done such horrific things? Yes, it is.

For him to do the things he’s done, can you just imagine what was going on inside his head? Take some time to think about that. Put yourself in his shoes and just imagine.

What would he have had to believe in order to carry out such acts of hatred and horror?

In a way, we can feel sympathy for him, he was a victim of a menacing mind. That’s one way to look at it.

We can also compassionately empathize with him. We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of, many of us still haven’t forgiven ourselves for some of these things. We can look back and ask ourselves…who in their right mind would do something like what we did? But that’s just it, we weren’t in the right mind. We had temporarily succumbed to certain thoughts that led to our regretful actions.

Being compassionate toward Hitler does not mean we condone his actions, it means we can understand with love, the horrific thoughts that led to his actions.

Sure, our wrong-doings were on a much smaller scale than that of Hitlers’, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still empathize with what it feels like to have a troubled mind. To be completely and utterly lost for a period of time. Lost to the point we performed some regretful actions, actions we wish we could take back if given the chance.

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Now, I’m spiritual but not religious, some may call me a Theist as I believe in a higher power, an intelligence behind life. I’m going to take a quote from the Bible thought, regardless of who said it, be it Jesus or not, it has great power.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”

Jesus

Why else would Hitler, or ourselves, follow through on any actions would never repeat while in our right mind? At the time, we thought we knew what we were doing, but we really didn’t because in the right mind we would have never done it.

Just like Hitler, we too know what it’s like to know not what we are doing.

Holding hatred in our hearts only hurts ourselves, not the one we’re hating. At the very least, sympathizing with him will leave us much better off than hating him. Each and every one of us does have the capacity to feel compassion and love for him as well, despite his wrong-doings.

Resistance, Options, And Illusions

As soon as an enemy is created, resistance toward the enemy is created. Using the examples above, we would then feel resistance toward our bad habits, toward time, toward the ones that challenge us, and toward Hitler. We don’t think with clarity when in a state of constant resistance. This simply does not serve us.

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We fear to make enemies and therefore see much of creation as a threat to our illusionary existence, otherwise known as our ego. We point the blame outward in an attempt to preserve our ego, yet it is our egos that created our enemies in the first place. Ironic right?

Seeing that we do, in fact, have the option on whether or not we decide to create an enemy for ourselves, is the beginning of learning to love thy enemy. Enemies are not inevitable, people do bad things, WE do bad things, but we don’t have to make an enemy of it.

If we can get just a little glimpse of the illusory non-existence of our enemies, we will get a sneak peek at the existence of our allies.

Our enemies bring with their stubbornness, exile, resistance, and division.

Our allies bring with their understanding, compassion, non-resistance, and unity.

When facing our enemies we have three choices: play the victim, play the hero, or love them.

With love comes a willingness to understand and learn from our enemies. An enemy we learn from becomes our ally, this is how they make us stronger.

Love thy enemy and add to your strength.

May you awaken
May you see clearly
May you be love

Take care ♥

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