Reply to Letting go of hate

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Letting go of hate"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh! Oh! I have experience with this! The hating and the growing weary of it!

Two things helped me.

[b]First, every time the familiar feeling of hate arose, I tried to consciously turn it into a moment of gratitude — literally turning an FU into a thank you. At first, all were veiled insults. “Thank you for showing me who I never want to be.” “Thank you for demonstrating such pathetic weakness so that I might better recognize strength.” But even this helped soften me some! And over time, my thank yous became less about them and more about me. “Thank you for illuminating my own moral fault lines in this very complicated world.” The whole thing felt sort of silly and futile at first but really helped.[/b]

The second thing that helped suffers from the world’s most grossly cheesy name: loving kindness meditation. I KNOW, I KNOW, even typing that out makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little. But it is a (subversive) superpower. Basically, you repeat four simple lines, each line wishing people (yourself…then loved ones…then neutral parties…then eventually, eventually those you dislike or even hate) safety, health, happiness, and ease. WAIT, STAY WITH ME FOR A SEC, here’s the key to the whole thing: as you do this, as you say these lines again and again and again, you realize that the people you struggle with most are missing one or more of those things. They don’t feel safe, and/or they’re really not well, and/or they’re miserable, and/or they are struggling struggling struggling just to get through the days, and as soon as this truth  truly sinks in, some of their power just…disappates. Poof. Gone.

Do you love or even like them? Well, maybe someone more enlightened than I does. But I never got there. But practicing this (at first by listening to Sharon on the Happier app, she’s good), I did let go of some hate and return to myself, and now I think about them a lot less, and with a lot less energy when I do.

It seems twee, I know. But I am not a kumbayah type by nature, and these two things helped me a lot.

Good luck. Sending my best. [/quote]

NP.  The bolded kind of reminds me of "ThanK u aIMee" by Taylor Swift.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics