Hate is so mundane. Last week, I wrote that in order to hate we have to maintain the small self, and in order to maintain the small self we have to hate. Everyone has hate; everyone uses it and everyone is motivated by it. This hate is the first and most important distortion of Love. Everything we do comes from and is based on this hate.
Self-hate, the hate we are unwilling to face, motivates us to manifest that hate outward further into the world. I turn in and see my self-hate. So I turn out and project it outward.
We all profess to hate hate. That in itself is hate. We do not need to hate in order to discern evil. In fact, in order to have that discernment we must be free of hate. The love that is opposed to hate is not Love. The love that is opposed to hate is attached to hate, and cannot see clearly.
Our task is to be true even around haters. Can I love in a hating environment? Remember, our small selves arise from twisted Love. And as we as individuals become more separate and empowered, our hate becomes the only thing we have to offer.
True Love melts the borders of selfhood. But we distrust anything that will cause us to leave our prison cell of the small self.
Self absorption of any kind comes from a deep-seated, deep-seeded self hate. We are small selves lost in themselves, not realizing that the very basis of the small self is self-hatred. Again, this is not the small self hating itself for its misdeeds. This is the small self hating itself for existing at all.
In our fundamental ignorance, we mistake self-hate for self-love, simply because self-hate is a kind of self-absorption. It is a way of being caught up in ourselves. We are swimming in our own sewage, but because of our own ignorance and darkness we cannot see it. I hold onto my small self because I hate myself too much.
But for all this, we would rather hate than learn to live in Love. Despite what we may say, almost no one wants Love. Love requires too much hard work. Love requires us to surrender our separateness. That’s why, if you want to get rid of somebody, then Love. If we really Love, then people who are committed to self-hate will not want to be around us.
If you are willing to surrender to the work of Love, you must first know and accept your self-hate. You cannot get rid of something you refuse to accept. Then, you must understand the process by which you got from who You really Are to the self you hate. Here is how it works:
- The True Self. You Are who You Are, the Self of All.
- Ignorance. You mistake the image of the Self in the mirror of the intellect (buddhi) for the Self. You lose the Subject in the object of the mirror. As soon as you take the non-Self to be the Self, you lose yourself in that image. The false, small self emerges. Because the small self has a memory of its True Nature and knows it is false and shrunken, it hates itself for existing. Its existence is a prison cell.
- The small self hoards its hate, collecting reasons for hating itself. It fills its prison cell with various forms of self-hatred.
- The small self tries to unload its self-hatred by projecting it out into the world. It hates others.
- The small self recognizes that it is throwing out hate and decides to restrain itself. It calls itself a “good person” or a “spiritual person”. But it is still stuck in its cell with all its self-hate, and all its “good” words and actions are tainted with that hate. So it has not begun to do real work yet.
- The small self begins to reflect truly and to clear out its cell—not by trying to project hate outward, but by owning, accepting, and dissolving hate. This is what foursquares are for.
- Once all its manifestations of hate are neutralized, the small self is back to its simple, basic self-hate.
- When liberation arrives, all separation is healed, and all hate dissolves.
- You will never then be “Rohini”, “Sue”, “David”, etc. again. You will enliven the small self and remain the Self. Love then manifests through the small self without any twist or taint.
Liberation means re-cognizing our True Nature. In Śiva Sūtras III.9, it says, “Such a one who has realized his essential nature is a Self that is only an actor (on the world stage)”.
In Jñaneshwar’s poetic commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā, Ārjuna awakens in just this way:
Filled with pride in my personality I thought that I was Arjuna in this world and said that the Kauravas were my relatives.
In addition to that, I had the evil dream that I would kill them and then what should I do? But the Lord wakened me from my sleep….
I, being no one, thought I was a person and called those my relatives who in reality did not exist. Thou hast saved me from this great madness.
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