“Anger is like flowing water; there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.” Joybell C. 

I live in a what I consider a “magical village,” 4 miles from Reagan International Airport in Del Ray, a part of Alexandria, VA. When I tell you this place is sweet, I mean it, from the unique bungalo houses to the main street that really is where you can run into people you know and slip off to one of the many little cafes that invite you to stay a while. I love it here!

Last week I was walking down the center of town and saw a huge sign saying REJECT HATE. It was at the colorful pet store where Sophie and I hang out sometimes. I was taken aback, on a visceral level. I felt my heart contract.

 The next day, I was coming out of yoga and heard two men with baby strollers who were walking toward the sign say something to the effect that “hate is not what most of us feel. That seems a bit extreme.”

I thought to write a blog about it, and when I went back later that afernoon to take a photo, the sign was gone. I saw the sign on a building nearby the next day.

There are others in the neighborhood, RESIST, Spread Kindness, Hate is Not Welcome Here:

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I began thinking about how to express the message of REJECT HATE in a different way, and came up with this:

I bring it up because I believe that right now, the need to be mindful about what we say and put out into the world is more important than ever, and even apparently everyday occurences give us the opportunity for a kind of quiet spiritual activism. 

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung contended that “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” In addition, resistance and resolution are at opposite ends of the spectrum of power. When we resist or reject something, we essentially declare that we are either not able or willing to deal with whatever we are pushing away. Paradoxically, we are in the position of holding onto to the feelings of hurt, anxiety, and anger under the resistance.   The repression of these feelings often leads to hate.

Rejecting and resisting has a way of attracting what it is pushing away, due to the vibratory nature of the universe and the fact that like attracts like.

But then what do we do with our hate?

What about hate? Just saying NO has simply not worked!

Once you become aware of the exorbitantly high costs of not acknowledging, and working these feelings through, you become more willing to let them go, knowing it is the price you must pay for your own liberation.  Each of us must own and free ourselves of our own hate first.

Each time I come upon my own hate, I am humbled. It crept up on me recently as I was dealing with the police over something I felt they had handled poorly. I had dialed 911, for a client, but no one answered. I called the police with my skype phone, as emergency mode on my phone kept me from dialing out.

When they got there, they called me, but I could not respond due to the emergency mode. By the time I could call the station to have them call the cop, and he called me back, he had already made his own decisions and I strongly disagreed.

I had been afraid, then pissed off that 911 didn’t respond, and so on…..lots of reasons for feeling the way I did, and even my own past dealings with the police, as well as what is happening in our country right now.

My hatred came out as I spoke with the cop. His came at me.

What do I do with that part of me? Do I simply reject the hate I feel, which then leaves that part of me with the option to rebel or become depressed?

Could I possibly welcome that part of me to be witnessed, and given the opportunity to experience the feelings of hurt, fear and anger without the story of powerlessness?

As Byron Katie says, “Without our stories we are pure love.”

By becoming aware of and owning my own feelings, I can call them to myself and allow them to be there alongside other feelings of love and peace and happiness. They have their roots in my biology, biography, and circumstance, and I am calling them back to me so that I can be whole.

In an earlier blog, I explain the workings of the Universal Law of Polarity in regard  to emotions:   ‘When applied to your emotions, when you take a negative emotion and identify the equal and opposite positive emotion that co-exists alongside it, the negative emotion is annihilated and you open to love. This is something the mind can do! It wants to do something, so show it how to create an explosion of love in your heart.”

They are not me, but aspects of my experience. The better I get to know them, the more they integrate with the other aspects of me, so that I have the ability to understand others who have similar feelings, without judging them.

We have exiled such feelings from our culture for too long, rejected and resisted those who express hatred, and now we hear about a culture of hate.

Maybe it is time to welcome the inquiry into our own feelings of hatred, as a way of contributing to the deeper healing that is required today.

As I sat down to write this, I chose a card from the awesome deck I received from a friend: Pema Chodron’s Compassion Cards: Teachings for awakening the heart in everyday life 

It said: Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation.

The Commentary: The unexpected will stop your mind. Rest in that space. When thoughts start again, do tonglen, breathing in whatever pain you may feel, thinking that others also feel like this and gradually becoming more willing to feel this pain with the wish that others won’t have to suffer.   If it is a “good” shock, send out any joy you may feel, wishing for others to feel it also. Meeting the unexpected is also an opportunity to practice patience and nonaggression.

This leads me to want to strengthen my meditation practice, and deepen the groove in my being where my mind stops and I rest in that space, not needing to control what comes next, and being at peace with that—since I cannot control it anyhow!

That space is the place of power, from which clarity about what to do next arises. There is no arguing with reality.  

It is a place of compassion, as there is time to connect with all the others who feel similar emotions.

I missed really connecting with the cop at that moment, which brought me no freedom. I felt the emptiness of such powerlessness, as I argued with what is. Maybe you will remember my story when you come upon hatred in yourself.

Maybe you will remember to stop and put your arms around your hurt and fear and anger, and resolve those feelings within. That would be a huge contribution to the so-called culture of hatred, which is really a culture of unconsciousness.

In the words of the Hawaiian Healing Mantra Hoʻoponopono:  I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.

I say that to myself.

You and I are one.