Is love really stronger than hate?
Hi Friends,
Let’s pause for a moment. Come into presence. Hold your hands over your heart if you’re able and take a few deep breaths into your heart center, into the universe of love alive within you. With each inhale, open yourself even more to the energy of your heart, and with each exhale breathe out any anxiety or resistance you feel. Inhale more love, exhale any barriers to it. Maybe close your eyes and allow yourself to connect even more deeply with your heart, with the love inside that always has your back, that never stops reminding you that you are beautiful, and worthy, and loved, just as you are. Let yourself remember: you are beautiful, worthy and loved, just as you are. Give yourself over to your heart, to these messages, to your willingness to love yourself.
Doesn’t that feel good?
If you weren’t able to center in your heart and feel the self-love, that’s okay. Keep working at it. Self-love is a skill, and like all skills, the more you practice at it, the better you become. It’s the only possibility.
Okay, we’re going to take an abrupt turn now, so hang on.
I’ve seen several posts on Instagram with the news that Magomed Tushayev, a Chechen warlord who was known in part for his direct involvement with the persecution of LGBTQ+ people, has been killed in battle in Ukraine.
Per The Advocate, “Chechen officials in the Kadyrov regime, including Tushayev, have rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being queer, and have held them in detention centers for days while they are humiliated and tortured.”
On The Advocate’s Instagram post with this news, there were hundreds of comments, nearly all of which were some version of good riddance or karma’s a bitch or yay! Hundreds of people celebrating this man’s death. My mind went there too, instinctively. Serves him right, it thought. My heart held its compassion though, and reflected on how much pain he must have been in to cause so much pain to others. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes. My heart doesn’t celebrate anyone’s death.
I struggled during the Trump years, with myself as much as with him. I found him to be more reprehensible and dangerous than I can remember feeling about any public figure. In my lower moments, I wanted him to die. I don’t write that proudly, but it’s the truth. Had he died, I certainly wouldn’t have publicly celebrated it the way I’m sure many would have, but I would have felt relieved. Serves him right, my mind would have thought. Good riddance.
My reaction to Trump made clear to me I was not who I professed myself to be. I was all over social media talking about love and compassion, without exception, while at the same time wishing he would fall down the steps of Air Force One and break his neck. It’s true we can’t control all of our thoughts, but we do have a say in how much energy we give to them. I gave a lot of energy to ugly thoughts about Trump. I let my mind lead where he was concerned, and pretended too often not to hear my heart. It never felt good.
Many times, during a Trump-inspired rage, I would look in the mirror and ask myself, “Who are you?” or “Where is your love?” If I felt clear enough in those moments, I would close my eyes and think of Trump as an innocent and lovable baby or little boy, and then would consider how unhappy and insecure he must be now, how terrified and paranoid any human would have to be to show up the way he did. In those moments I would muster as much love as I was able and send it his way. I would pray for peace in his being, for him to feel truly loved. Sometimes I was too consumed by my rage or disgust to find the love, but other times I was able to open my heart to him in a genuine way and in so doing remind myself who I really am, who we all really are, beyond the fear and conditioning that has us believing the lie that in certain cases hate is a more acceptable response than love. It’s not. Ever.
Hate is a destroyer. Love is a healer. We only need to look at our world, and at ourselves, to feel the truth of those words.
I don’t want to be someone who hates anyone. I don’t want to be led by impulses to dehumanize others, no matter how horribly I believe their actions to be. It’s not at all helpful. I want to continue to give myself over to love, no matter what, because I long for a world that does the same, and I know that any hatred I feel within only fuels the hatred I see outside. There’s no way to hate ourselves or each other into a loving world.
Our minds may implore us to hate Trump, or Biden, or Putin, or Tushayev, or whomever else we’ve decided is beyond redemption, but our hearts are clear: love everyone. At least that’s what my heart says to me, and it has never, not once, strayed from this position. Check in with your heart and see if that’s true for you. In my experience, all justifications for not loving come from a scared and conditioned mind.
If God were an actual human-like being, do you believe She would hold hatred for any of her children, even the rapists and warlords and dictators? Of course not. She would love them all. That is our potential as human beings, to love each other. Period. We just have to be willing to act on it.
To be clear, deciding to love someone is not the same thing as agreeing with them, or wanting them in our lives, or believing they’re kind people. It doesn’t mean we won’t protest against them, or vote against them, or make abundantly clear our thoughts and feelings about their thoughts and feelings. Deciding to love someone, no matter what, simply means we are willing to express the highest call of our humanity by recognizing the fullness of their humanity, with compassion and love.
I wrote the following and shared it on social media the other day:
When we pray for peace around the world, let’s not forget to pray for peace within ourselves. Who will listen to a prayer for peace from those who refuse to model it, from those who lack empathy and compassion, those always ready for a fight? Peace cannot come from war, and we are all at war with ourselves, and with each other. We have to be willing to confront our own hypocrisies when we pray for peace, to unbury all resistance within to that call so our prayers will not be muddied by our own unwillingness to rest in love. Where within us are we too aggressors? Where are we unwilling to empathize? Where do we wish for harm to come to those we dislike or don’t agree with? Let us become the living examples of the peace we want to see in our world, and then watch how our prayers are magnified, how war cannot sustain within the energy of love we together have co-created. Prayers alone won't do it. We cannot root out war in our world until we root it out in ourselves. Until we return to love.
I’ll add, until we return to love, with everyone, no matter how difficult. No matter how insulting to our minds. No matter what.
I suspect some of you are rolling your eyes or annoyed or even pissed off by this essay. Maybe you’re thinking, “With all the insanity happening in our world, who cares about sending love to a gay-bashing warlord, or Putin, for God’s sake.” I understand this thought, and yet I think these acts of love, when genuine, are critical to our evolution as a more peaceful and healthier species. We can’t get there with hatred and war. It’s not possible.
It’s also not love’s full invitation.
It’s no big deal to love someone who’s easy for us to love. We don’t get applause for that. When we are able to find love for a person the world and our minds implore us to hate, we will understand just how powerful love actually is, and we will no longer doubt its ability to transform and heal our world.
Love is the answer. It has always been the answer, and it will always be the answer. We just have to be brave enough to choose it.
Wishing you endless peace and so much love,
Scott
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