We Treat Others
as We Treat Ourselves

By E. Raymond Rock

What we extend outward toward others, we internalize. Whether the emotions are negative, such as hatred, animosity, and anger - or positive, such as love, forgiveness, and peace, these feelings seep inside of us and affect us deeply, emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

You can feel the physical difference between, on one hand, hating someone, and on the other, forgiving someone. One is restricted and one is spacious and our body reacts accordingly with feelings of stress or feelings of ease. The person we hate, or forgive, only feels the rejection or acceptance momentarily, where we, conversely, feel it constantly. This is because it is never "them" that we hate, but we, ourselves, that we hate, and the feeling is there all the time. We are always the true recipients of our actions. We hate ourselves subconsciously because the ego that we have created in our minds is a terrible burden to sustain.

Positive emotions create spaciousness, acceptance, and love, accompanied by a feeling of completion. Hatred and anger, negative emotions, create closed-in feelings of conflict, and a feeling that something is left undone. This creates tension.

Because we are under the influence of our illusions, we can't accept the fact that the hatred and anger is really directed at ourselves. Therefore, we search for targets outside of ourselves in order to vent these negative emotions, and the targets become those closest to us if we run out of distant targets.

We erroneously think that if we can eliminate the people and ideas that we hate, or change them, the hatred will go away. But this never quite works out - there are always uncountable people and conflicting opinions to hate. The hatred comes from inside, and if there is nothing to externalize the hatred on, we begin to hate ourselves. Therefore, we are ever on a mission to discover things outside of us that we hate, and then we keep the hatred alive, sometimes even over long periods of time, decades. It keeps us from looking at ourselves.

Part of the illusion is that we, each one of us, are unchanging entities. We become concrete images in our minds. Concrete images of others and concrete images of ourselves are based on memory, and instead of being here and now, and discovering ourselves and everybody else in a new light moment to moment, we chisel ourselves into marble statues based on old memories and thought. And both statues and memory are dead, in the past.

Being truly alive is being completely absorbed into our passion, whatever it is. There is no room for hatred here. Those who are passionless, who have not discovered that which they love to do, will become caught up in the past, in the images and thoughts that haunt them constantly. Within our true passion is the absence of thought. In the moment of discovery, thought is not present, only creativeness.

Few discover these things, and as a result many go through a life filled with stress. This is a sad thing. And if someone would mention to them that there is a creative spaciousness of mind that is absent of memory and thought, and a spaciousness that will introduce them to their individual creativeness and passion, they might be suspicious of any new ideas. Habit patterns of hatred may instead use new ideas as targets of hatred. This is symptomatic of closed minds, and the reason humanity continues to war with each; in families, in neighborhoods, and in the world -- even after countless years of society.

A new consciousness is slowly arising, however. If you hate, look into it for your own good. If hatred becomes your passion, you are only hurting yourself and creating karma that will come back on you, if not in this lifetime, in subsequent lifetimes.

Begin with meditation, which will slow things down enough so that you will see how initial feelings of fear spin out of control with a succeeding flurry of thoughts, turning the fear into hatred. You only have to see this once, clearly, and the hatred ends. The fearless never hate, and meditation, if practiced for some time, breeds fearlessness.

The one that we hate so, our separate ego inside, slowly evolves with meditation. It becomes extremely intelligent, and because it begins to realize the interconnectedness of all beings, it begins to experience real courage, because it is no longer isolated and alone. It now has the courage to understand others who might not necessarily believe as we do, and to feel real compassion toward them. Then the fear is gone, and we can be integrated beings once again. It's a great relief.

And if none of this makes any sense to you at all, then simply look to the saviors and sages throughout history. Did they profess love, or did they spread hatred? They professed love, of course, and if you are a person of faith, to hate instead of forgive would be nothing less than a contradiction of your beliefs.







Copyright © E. Raymond Rock 2006. All rights reserved.
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Meyers, Florida is co-founder and rincipal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insigt Center. His Book, A Year to Enlightenment has just been released and is now available at major bookstores.