UNIT 17
A True Friend
The ego’s notion of love is based on agreement. It cannot conceive of love being present when two people disagree. Yet unless you are free to disagree with your brother in any given situation, you cannot love him.
If your brother is in error, do not support his error or his justification for his error. Tell him, “Sorry, I do not see it that way.”
Support your sister when she feels called to take a controversial stand and you know that she is correct. Support her, even if it means that you too will need to take a risk.
Remember, commitment to the truth is not popular. Often it means saying “Yes” when others would say “No,” or saying “No” when others would say “Yes.”
Saying “No” can be a loving act. It is easy to say “No” if your child is putting his hand on a hot stove. You say “No” quickly and firmly. You do not want him to hurt himself. And then you put your arm around him and reassure him that you love him.
How many times does your brother come to you with his hand on the stove? You cannot support behavior that you know will be hurtful to another person. And you don’t want your friends to support that kind of behavior in you.
A true friend is one who is free to agree or disagree. S/he will speak to you truthfully. S/he may or may not perceive the situation accurately, but s/he is not afraid to tell you what s/he sees.
A friend knows that there are limits to what s/he knows and does not try to impose her opinion on you. S/he reminds you that you are free to make your own choice.
You can’t be a friend if you are not willing to speak honestly. This doesn’t mean that you are right. Being right and being honest are not necessarily the same thing.
When you are honest, you are giving the best that you can give with the awareness that you have. That is all that can be expected of you.
But honesty alone is not enough. Honesty and humility must go hand in hand. A humble person understands appropriate boundaries. S/he never seeks to usurp another’s right and responsibility to make her own choices.
Love Your Enemy
Remember when I told you, “Love your enemy.” I did not say this to be perverse or difficult. I said it because it is easy for you to love your friend. Most of the time your friend agrees with you and supports you. So it is not hard to love him.
But it isn’t easy to love your enemy who disagrees with you. He believes that you are wrong. He sees your weaknesses and would do his best to exploit them. If you have a blind spot, you can be sure he sees it.
To put it simply, your enemy is not willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. He is therefore your very best teacher.
Your enemy reflects back to you everything that you do not like about yourself. He shows you exactly where your fears and insecurities lie. If you listen to what your enemy is saying to you, you will know exactly where you must make correction in yourself. Only one who opposes you in this way be such an effective teacher.
No one can go through life without both allies and opponents. A good ally is willing to disagree with you. And a good opponent is ultimately the best ally.
Your enemy is simply a mirror into which you look until the angry face that you see smiles back at you.
Remember, you do not have to agree with your enemies to make peace with them. But you must learn to accept and respect them.
Love is not based on Agreement
Love does not come through the agreement of egos, for it is impossible for egos to agree. But when mutual respect is present between adversaries, love can gain a foothold and the path to peace can be undertaken.
Do not cast your brother out of your heart just because he sees things differently from you. Listen carefully to what he has to say.
The cause of all human conflict is a simple one: each side dehumanizes the other. Each side sees the other as less worthy. As long as each side perceives the other this way, even the simplest details cannot be negotiated.
Your job, my friends, is to give every person a fair hearing. This is the essence of justice, which is not only a spiritual ideal, but a living, moving, breathing process.
A society that tolerates differences of perspective is a society that is based on the practical demonstration of love and equality.
On the other hand, those who seek only agreement build totalitarian systems where individual freedoms are sacrificed and the whole never benefits from the wisdom of the parts. Such systems create suffering and are doomed to failure.
Understand, my friend, that you will not find love if you seek agreement. Love runs deeper than that.
Journaling Questions
When have you spoken honestly to a friend and declined to support behavior motivated by fear?
When in your life have you realized that Love is not based on agreement, but on acceptance and respect?
UNIT 18
Crime and Punishment
If thoughts could kill, how many of you would still be alive?
The seeds of all actions are to be found in thoughts. If you hate someone, you are already attacking him in your mind.
If you speak words of hatred, you are broadcasting your hatred to others who may join in your attack.
What begins as thought becomes speech and what becomes speech sooner or later becomes action.
One murderous thought may take an innocent life. Are you then responsible? Even if you did not pull the trigger, even if the trigger was pulled by someone inspired by your words, like your son who stole your gun, or perhaps some stranger on the internet, are you liable?
Society says only the person who pulled the trigger is guilty, but that is not true. All those who stoke the flames of vengeance with their thoughts, words and actions are responsible.
Some say you cannot be held accountable for your thoughts. Yet I tell you that you are responsible for everything that you think, say, feel or do. And everything you think, say, feel or do reflects back to you.
If you can overlook, justify or forgive your thoughts of revenge, why can’t you forgive the man or woman who acts with vengeance? This person merely acts out what you have thought about.
I am not justifying the act of vengeance. I cannot justify any attack, and I am not suggesting that you do. I am simply asking you why do you cast this brother out of your heart?
He is perhaps even more desperate for love and forgiveness than you are. Would you withhold it from him?
Your brother has been wounded deeply. He has grown up without a father. He has been addicted to drugs since he was nine years old. And he has lived in a project where he never felt safe. Do you not feel some compassion for the wounded boy in the man who commits the crime?
If you were to step into his shoes, would you do that much better? Be honest, my friend. And in that honesty, you will find compassion, if not for the man, for the boy who became the man.
And I will tell you right now that it is not the man who pulls the trigger, but the boy. It is the one who is overwhelmed and sacred. It is the little one who does not feel loved and accepted. It is the wounded boy who strikes out, not the man.
Do not let your sight be distorted by the angry, disdainful face of the man. Beneath that hard exterior is overwhelming pain and self-judgment. Beneath the mask of mismanaged manhood and vicious anger is the boy who does not believe he is lovable.
If you cannot embrace the boy in him, how can you embrace the boy or the girl in yourself? For his fear and yours are not so different.
Let us first take away your mask of moral superiority. And then let the boy or girl in you look out at the boy in him. That is where understanding and acceptance begin. That is where forgiveness has its roots.
Criminals are just one group of untouchables in your society. You do not want to look at their lives. You do not want to hear about their pain. You want to put them away where you do not have to deal with them. You do the same with the elderly, the mentally ill, the homeless, and so forth.
You see, my friend, you do not want the responsibility to love your brother. Yet without loving him, you cannot learn to love and accept yourself.
Your brother is the key to your salvation. He always was and always will be.
Forgiveness brings a searchlight into these dark, secret places in self and society. It is hard for you to look at your own repressed fear and shame. It is hard for society to look at the pain of its outcasts.
Everybody lives in a prison of reactivity until the wound is made conscious. It is not just the criminal who is behind bars. The men and women who put him there live behind different bars.
If you don’t work intentionally with the criminal to help him come to love and accept himself, he will re-enter society with the same anger and vindictiveness with which he left it.
Building more prisons or putting more police on the streets will not make your neighborhoods safer. These actions just exacerbate the situation by raising the level of fear.
If you want to improve these situations, bring the work of forgiveness into the prisons and the neighborhoods. Hire more teachers and counselors and social workers.
Feed people, challenge them emotionally and mentally. Offer them experiences of safe emotional bonding. Provide them with opportunities for education and training. Give them hope. Give them acceptance. Give them love.
Authentic self-esteem begins with the realization that you have a choice about what to think, what to say, and how to act. This is the key. Show a man the choices he has and he will not commit a crime.
Those who strike out at others feel that they have no choice. Those who know they have a choice do not strike out at others.
Stop trying to punish the criminal and treat him with respect so that he can experience the safety and dignity he never had growing up. Punishment simply reinforces rejection. That is the opposite of what is needed.
The only way out of the cycle of violence is for society to drop the agenda of ostracism and punishment. The lepers of your society are no different than the lepers of my time.
They bear everyone’s wounds on their skin. They are bold witnesses to the pain we do not want to deal with.
The work of rehabilitation is a work of re-integration. Light must be brought into the darkness and then the shadows will lift.
Journaling Questions
When have you been punished and did it help you become more responsible and loving?
When have you punished others and what impact did it have on them and on you?