So how do we make peace with someone who is envious, angry, jealous or hateful towards us? … and how do we make peace with our own enemies, with the opposed party within. 

It is likely that that person isn’t open to creating peace and that your inner demons aren’t that eager either. No matter what you try, they will reject it… So how do you deal with that…what can we do….

Isn’t this what ‘s going on between countries too….hate, envy and jealousy create war on both a personal and a global level. If we know how to solve it personally, maybe then there is a real hope to solve it globally too. And if it’s too hard for us to work with this, if it’s too hard to reach out on a personal level and make peace, to approach our own ‘enemies’, inside and out, and to heal the trauma …how can we then ever expect whole countries to overcome their hate, anger, envy and jealousy?? How can we ever expect anybody to forgive us, if we can’t forgive others, if we can’t forgive ourselves…It starts with us, inside….we have to try harder.

Beneath these ‘dark’ emotions of jealousy, hate and anger; fear, insecurity, hurt and a lack of some sort lie. Once we can see the cause, it’s easier to understand where the emotional reaction is coming from…the pain, fear and vulnerability created the actions… often we are not able to feel our pain because it hurts too much. We protect ourselves by keeping the pain under wraps and by lashing out….it’s a natural mechanism but not a very healthy one, because the ‘tumour’ inside grows.

What we really should do is become aware that we are feeling angry or jealous or envious and see it as a sign that something inside is asking our attention to be solved. These darker emotions are our friends, they tell us that something is wrong, it needs healing and who-ever has triggered the jealousy, envy or anger is in actual fact doing you a favour… by exposing what could cause illness if it’s not being addressed. However, for many this is very hard. We haven’t been thought how to do this properly and it also asks a constant awareness and self discipline to be able to control the response to hurt the ones who touch upon the trauma that is locked inside.

Now I believe people aren’t mean by nature, being mean is something we develop when we are not able to cope with our inner pain and fear. You can compare it to a wild animal being wounded, if we’d approach it….it would lash out. Knowing this, we can imagine that there is a deep wound inside the person that acts this way and often the wound has nothing to do with you who triggered it. That doesn’t mean that the hate, jealousy or meanness won’t hurt if we don’t protect ourselves. We may defend our boundaries and ourselves. We may stand up for ourselves and fight or… walk away and we can understand,  forgive and keep loving, knowing that right now the other person is not able to deal with what is going on inside.

And don’t for a moment think that this is idealism on my behalf, because I have practised this in the most difficult traumatising situations. I wouldn’t write about it, if I hadn’t practised it over and over again and if I hadn’t experienced it in every single cell. This is a constant challenge that we need to keep practising until it becomes a part of our fabric.

Forgiving those who attack and victimize us, those who have killed a vital and vibrant piece of us is hard, it’s really hard. It takes all your strength to over come it, but when you do you’ve gone deeper into your true essence, you are able to love more because of it. But we often just want them to feel how we feel, we want them to hurt like they have hurt us… but in the end that doesn’t give salvation in any way. It makes it worse. An eye for an eye is not the way forward, its what is destroying our world inside and outside, slowly and steadily… this is what creates more hate and envy, more war.

It’s the symbolical turning of the other cheek, that creates true freedom and strength. Not by allowing the other to strike again but by not striking back you turn the other cheek. By staying open in your heart, by staying loving, by forgiveness…we keep our heart healthy  and our soul present. You make yourself stronger by seeing the divine in every single thing….. it’s the only way forward to be free and to keep having peace in your heart and soul and to spread it into the world.

MAKE YOUR PLEDGE TO PEACE NOW:

You can head over to Peace One Day and commit to a pledge there or leave one in my guestbook!

Peace to you all,
Sacha.