Love your enemies.
I keep rediscovering and relearning how healing this is.
What my mind makes into an “enemy” can be a person, a situation, a part of myself, an experience, or anything else. As soon as my mind makes anything into an enemy, there is struggle, a sense of separation, and suffering (even if just slight). It’s uncomfortable. It creates unease. It’s how suffering, wounds, and trauma are held in place.
When the mind finds love for it’s “enemies” there is a relaxation, a healing, a reconciliation, a sense of connection (or no separation at all), and receptivity.
So how can we do this? There are many ways to help the mind shift into this.
Tonglen. Give and take. Visualize the “enemy” – whatever it is. See its suffering as dark smoke. Breathe it in. Breathe out light and see it go into and light up the other. (This can feel scary at first. If it does, do tonglen for the scared part. Include it.)
Ho’oponopono. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Say it many times towards the other. Repeat until the sense of separation and sense of it being an enemy softens and dissolves. Here too, if there is fear or resistance coming up, do ho’o towards these parts of the mind.
Prayer. Pray for the health and well-being of the other.
Inquiry. Examine any sense of threat and a threatened one, any sense of solidity of the other (and yourself), any command to see the other as an enemy or not. (Living Inquiries.) This will help soften or dissolve any sense of solidity of what you are examining and it tends to open for receptivity, understanding, kindness, and love.
Love seems to be at the core of healing. Love. Reconciliation. And helping softening and dissolving any sense of solidity of the components (threat, separation, commands) creating a sense of an enemy.
As I have said before, to me the love your enemy pointer is more a pointer for healing than anything else. Although I also see how it can be helpful if it’s taken more as a pointer for how to behave.
Here are some typical enemies created by the mind:
People I feel have wronged me. People who see me as a problem or an enemy.
Life going against what I wished or hoped for.
Situations I dislike or wish were different.
Illness. Discomfort. Uncomfortable sensations.
Parts of myself I dislike or wish were different or not there.
Any experience – anything the mind tells itself is in the outer or inner world – that seems wrong, shouldn’t be there, should be different.
When I see an enemy I see my parent’s dark side, which I have come to understand as being the dark side of evolution. By awakening to their suffering I am better able to heal my own suffering but for many years I was at war with it. To love my enemy/friend (parents) is to love myself.