The Opposite of Love

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

- Saint John

We teach that hate is the opposite of love, but I’ve been thinking that it is actually fear that is the opposite.

As I was writing about the things I want to transcend, I realized that most of the things that we want to overcome can be reduced down to a fear. Let’s say, for example, that I want to overcome a concern about what others think of me. That’s reasonable. But where does that concern come from in the first place? Fear, right? Fear that if someone thinks something negative then I’ll be shunned, rejected, left. So isn’t it really from the fear that I would have to be liberated first?

Fear, though, gets forgotten as our attention and our “treatments” gets directed to what are really just the manifestations of the fear. We end up being held back from knowing the fullness of our Selves and the beauty of our dreams because the underlying fear isn’t addressed. Imagine if that fear was gone. What if the prospect of rejection, neglect, and abandonment just wasn’t scary in the first place? What if you weren’t scared of loss, of death, of pain? Sounds pretty liberating.

In my experience, the first step to getting free from fear is recognizing that it’s there. When you think you are upset by something, try being still and asking our mind and your body what they are really scared of. Accept the answer you get without judgement and with great compassion. Connect with your belief in a higher power that is interested only in your greatest good. Then you are ready to begin to let that fear go.

Some fears are easy to change simply by CHOOSING to believe in something different. For example, if I declare that I believe in all things working together for good, it is much easier for me to release the fear of failure, because even “failures” must be part of the good that is unfolding. They lose their power.

Other fears of course aren’t so easy to let go of. The process might be longer, but it is the same in principle. No matter what your belief system is, if you sit with compassion and listen to the pain that resides in you, asking it what it needs and offering YOUR love to it, I believe that it must dissipate. Because love does cast out fear.

Media credit: Leah Piken Kolidas

Besides your own liberation and accessibility to your dreams, there is another benefit to realizing that fear is the opposite of love: you begin to have more compassion for others.

I have someone in my life who must have been sent to teach me about loving others! I sometimes find this person to be condescending or dismissive toward me which then triggers sensitivities in me and make me feel hostile toward her. It’s a terrible, but common cycle. This morning, as I was thinking about my experiences with her, these realizations about fear  entered my mind at the same time and I realized that the two are related. I realized that just as I have fears that lead me to operate in less than love, so too does everyone.

As I reconceptualize her condescension as a product of fear–hers and mine–I can feel compassion for the two of us. We become reduced to our essences…two souls traveling in this journey on Earth together and navigating our experiences with our own level of consciousness at this point in time and space. Separateness becomes comradery. We’re in this together! Why be cells that are battling against each other when we can come together and form something new??

Of course she may not have the same realization, but suddenly that doesn’t matter. I recognize and express gratitude for our connection and I embrace her in a protective, prayerful energy that genuinely desires her highest good. It feels good to be free. And to let her be free as well.

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I have been receiving a lot of wonderful, simple insights during my times of prayer and meditation. I post these most frequently on our Facebook page so don’t forget to visit us there. You are all such joy to me. May you be free from fear today!

Stir up the love!

It has been interesting to look back at some of the posts I’ve written relating to animals and to compare them to our mission statement. Sometimes my attitude when writing about animals doesn’t quite reflect the magnanimous tenants that those of us on Life As a Wave believe in. I think to myself, “Will people read the mission statement and then wonder how I can be hating on the king of Spain or factory farm workers?!”

I know that at the gut level it is hard for me to feel anything but disgust toward people who are exploiting or abusing animals; it is next to impossible to feel that I am connected to them on some metaphysical level as two waves of the same grand ocean. Yet from time to time I am inclined to step back and ask myself to check in with that contempt and judgment that I harbor for them. Are those people not me? Am I not them? Don’t I exist only as part of their existence?

Hold on. That’s too deep for right now…It’s almost 1am for goodness sakes. Let’s start again.

Basically, it is good to love. So yes, I love animals. I can love my loving neighbor. I can love my family. But can I love the (alleged) enemy in this scenario? Can I love the people who are performing vivisection? Or who are skinning animals alive for fur?  Are they really even my enemy? (By the way, sometimes when I see my own writing style I think I should just rename this blog, The Blog of Important Rhetorical Questions.) When I step out of my gut and get into that place of higher self I realize that there is love in me for them. It takes work to plug into it and it may be just a fraction of its potential, but it is there. I don’t like what they do and I would take action to make them stop but I don’t hate their essence…because I truly think it springs from the same source as mine. We are not so different.

I can feel compassion and sorrow for them. I can acknowledge my ignorance of their experiences and pains. I can wish for them better. I can hope for them joy and peace and happiness…just like I hope those for myself. It does my soul good to remember all of this. It stirs up my Love. And I want to act out of Love. I don’t want my advocacy to become aggression, neither mental nor physical. And I don’t want my compassion to diminish. I don’t want to vilify.

I recently heard a sermon given by Ishmael Tetteh in which he used the following analogy to describe our existence:

“Every wave comes into being by the collective power of the entire ocean.”

One wave would not be, were it not for every other wave. And every other wave would be be were it not for that one. Obviously this reminded me of our blog. And thinking about our mission statement–about what it means to live this life as a wave–is what led me think about all of this that I’m now writing. My new mantra, solemnly taped to by bathroom mirror, is:

“I come into being by the collective power of the entire universe.”

This is true moment by moment and eternally. I believe it. I believe I come into being through connection to every other person, galaxy, drop of rain, tree, animal, and ocean wave. So I guess it’s not too deep after all to ask about people “Don’t I exist only as part of their existence?” My best conclusion right now is, Yes.

Brother’s Keeper

Excuse a brief diversion from animal rights for a moment. Let’s zoom out to the larger question of compassion at large…….

I work in Hollywood. Today there was a man walking down the street 2 blocks from my office building. He pulled out his gun and began shooting into the air. He shouted, “Kill me!” Then he began shooting at passing cars. This was at a major thoroughfare in downtown Hollywood…Sunset and Vine. The police were called and the man was killed in the street.

Everyone outside was abuzz. Police were everywhere and the area was blockaded all day. But besides the “what if’s” that we all talk about in these situations, there are other great concerns that this incident brought to my mind.  You see, yes, I’m horrified that someone would do this. But I’m also horrified about this human crying out and demanding to be killed. Tell me, what leads to that?? Is it just me, or is that horrifying? When I hear about this kind of thing, part of my compassion goes to the offender himself as well as to the offended. Some might say a person who can draw a gun and shoot at strangers doesn’t deserve compassion. Who gets to decide, then, where the flow of compassion stops? I certainly don’t want that responsibility! I would rather heed the compassion that I feel inside my gut and follow it where it takes me.

In this case, it took me to wondering about our society. Wondering how people can go from uncorrupted and guiltless babies to men and women wailing for their own demise through voice and vice. I fear that if we see our middle class disappear anymore than it already has, we will be bracing ourselves against more “kill me” shooters, senior robbers, identity thieves, safe surrenders of babies, on and on and on. In other words, more individual and group desperation leading to more poverty-related acts including crimes. What is it called? The strain theory? More socioeconomic strain –> more anger –> more crime.

If I truly believe that I am connected to every Other, then I am intertwined not only with Gandhi, with Martin Luther King, and the heroes of 911, but also with the men who killed them. I am intertwined not only with the man who robs a bank to feed his starving family but the man who robs a bank to feed his heroine addiction. I’ve heard of a man who lives in Colorado, named Ed. He is debilitated, maybe homeless. He is probably repulsive to most and very likely lonesome. He’s a genius though. He used to work as a physicist. If I am happy to consider myself connected to the Ed of the past—the educated scientist—am I equally happy to be connected to the Ed of today? Are you?

I remember in 2004 I was living in Chicago and heard of a young woman who attempted to kill herself. She was driving on Dempster and accelerated through traffic, crashing into other cars. She lived, but others were injured…possibly killed, I can’t remember anymore. I felt such compassion for this girl thinking of the desperation she must have felt. Others thought her evil. I understand why they say that, but I cringed to hear it. Each of us has the potential to fall into such desperation that we have no twig on which to clasp our groping hand.  No one expects to be there when they are beginning out in this world. How many of the 45 million Americans living in poverty planned to be there? Were I to be in that place of desperation I would hope that someone would be there to take hold of my wrist.

Where has the compassion gone in our politics? In our budget? In our worldview? How did one man end up so tormented, lost, desperate and/or angry that he asked to be killed in the middle of the street on December 9th?

I will keep stirring up that compassion in myself even when it seems misplaced to others.  I have a feeling this world is going to need it one day.