Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
- Prayer of St. Francis
The recent killing of a prominent figurehead of hatred had me somberly pondering all day yesterday. This celebration of his death strikes me as unfortunate for those who are celebrating. I understand that with vengeance comes a certain sense of closure, but why? Why must we practice an eye for an eye to regain a feeling of peace in our hearts? Please don't get me wrong, this man had very unfortunate and very strong karmas that led him to act in the way that he did, and it is a good thing that he will not be able to lead and inspire people towards hatred anymore.....but with his death, hatred did not die. Terrorism is not obliterated. Anger has not ceased. The more we deceive ourselves with that, the more the feeling of separateness increases....leading to fear and ultimately more hatred.
The more we make ourselves feel separate and/or better than other human beings, the more susceptible we become to this. Anger is anger. Hate is hate. Fear is fear....no matter what the scale and intensity of the emotion is, it still has the same essence. All these things exist not just in far-off lands, but on our own soil, in the 1 mile radius that you live, even in your mind and probably in your heart at times.
How can you start to change yourself to increase the light? I invite you to open your heart, look at what's inside, and work fill it with love, pure love; not resistance, not fear, not indifference; but LOVE & LIGHT.
I've been looking at my own choices today and to lighten things up a bit, I have a bit of a funny story to share with you on this. Most of my work I do to help increase the light and spread love, but I too am human and many a time fall into the trap of my own thoughts and reactions to things, usually when I've strayed too much from my practice. Case in point....the mysterious dog-owner on my block that has yet to pick up their dog's poop. I've been enraged for an entire week, waging a war against this person in my mind. I took it a little further and made a sign and hung it near a pile of said poo:
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| no judging my sign-making skills |
Yesterday morning, I walked out the front door to find a huge pile right outside our house. WELL....I was FURIOUS (in a still lightly humorous way:) and was yelling at my roomie that the war was ON!!!! I pedaled my way to teach my first class, vowing that I'd stay up all night patrolling the front of the house, waiting for the irresponsible pooper to strike, fantasizing of how I'd approach this person. Would I give them a nice verbal lashing? Would I hurl the poop and the offender? Would I quietly stalk them back to their home and just smear their dogs poop all over their front stoop? My mind was burning with ideas. Thank goodness I taught all day so my teaching, and reflection on the bigger events in the world brought me back to the ground and I realized that I should take my threatening sign down, and am thinking I'll replace it with something like this:
"Dear Person who doesn't pick up after their dog, we love our beautiful block and hope you do too, and we'd like to keep it clean please! Here are some baggies in case your left yours at home, please feel free to use one:)"
And with that, the tiny seed of anger that is in my heart, that I have also spread into the world a bit, hopefully my righting my actions and words will help burn this seed.
What seeds in your heart or mind, however small or large they may be, do YOU need to examine, learn from, and burn? Think about this over the week. Keep your heart open, contribute to love and light.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. "
Martin Luther King Jr.
"Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?" (1967)
