Love Thy Neighbor

Duck Dynasty

The Trouble With Love and Our Neighbors

To love your neighbor as yourself is a tall order! Is that possible in reality or just a nice idea doled out on Sundays? I thought about this after an episode of “Last Man Standing” which welcomed a guest appearance from the Duck Dynasty. The Duck family seems to be able to bring the Bible into everyday conversation. In this particular episode there was discussion about Jesus’ commandment to, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” to which Si responded that Jesus must have had better neighbors than his!

So, how do you arrive at that sublime state of being able to accept and love everyone? I’m sure that the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa support this notion too and have some profound words to share on the topic. But the rubber meets the road on Monday morning when you accidently spill your latte on an innocent bystander waiting in line at Starbucks, and receive more than a few angry words. Or maybe you just received an angry text from your neighbor –something about tire tracks on the lawn.

Breaking Boundaries

The reality is that we have difficulty with people and are unable to love our neighbors because we are trapped in a sense of our own ‘personal importance’ thinking that everything is about ‘me’, which creates artificial boundaries between ourselves and others. We end up little islands, oceans apart.
In order to break down those boundaries we have to step outside the mindset that everything is about ‘me’. This is how young children are. It’s part of normal human development for a young child to be somewhat self-centered. They perceive that the whole world revolves around them. Nobody hates a child for being this way because we recognize it’s a stage of life.

The Family is the School of Love

familyRev. Moon often referred to the family as the “school of love” because it is a natural environment in which to grow our ability to love. We start off as an infant, incredibly self-absorbed but develop over time into someone who has the ability to fully love and live for the sake of others, with a generous heart. So what went wrong? Well, we are all variously trapped along the continuum between selfishness and spiritual maturity. We are adults, or teens on the way to adulthood, but a part of our heart got left behind. We grew up physically but our spiritual and emotional development often lags.

Moving Forward

Today, I want to share one strategy that we can use this week to move forward in our spiritual and emotional growth to become someone who can love his neighbour as himself. It’s a simple concept but one, that when applied, opens up a whole new world of freedom. This concept is exemplified in all wisdom literature, it’s about learning how to “not take things personally.”

Practicing this spiritual discipline goes a long way! It’s what allows someone like Jesus or Buddha to live among suffering humanity and not be negatively impacted by it. Not taking things personally gives immunity to being offended.

When we take things personally, we react by getting defensive. We make something big out of something small. We take offense because of what we assumed the other person meant.

Our own point of view dictates how we respond to everything and everyone around us. We each decide whether we trust people, live in fear, or feel good about ourselves. Often there is this inner conflict going on inside our head that spills out onto our lives.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” James 4:1

Escaping Your Past

We sometimes cause our own suffering because we don’t know how to live outside the world of thoughts and emotions that we are trapped in. This was brought out in the movie, “The Long Way Back” which is based on a true story.

The way BackThe movie depicts the struggle of a group of dissidents as they escape a Siberian prison camp trying to survive as they travel through unspeakably harsh conditions while being relentlessly pursued. Amazingly, they make it to the southern border of Russia and are about to step into freedom when the Russian member of the rag-tag group declares to everyone’s surprise that he cannot leave Russia. This is incomprehensible to the rest of the group; after all, his own country had essentially condemned him to death in Siberia. He became trapped in his own suffering because at least it was familiar. He was afraid of the unknown.

Learning to Take God’s Point of View

There are lots of lies around us and we have to learn how to let go of our own ideas or point of view when it is misinformed, and discover God’s point of view. That means also learning to trust ourselves. The Divine Principle has a profound explanation about how humankind became separated from God. It wasn’t mere disobedience, it started with losing sight of God’s love and true human value. At the time maybe it seemed like a subtle shift but it had huge ramifications. In one sense human history and the history of our own lives is all about searching for God’s point of view of ourselves.

When we make it a habit to not take things personally we avoid many upsets in life. We will find that anger, jealousy and envy towards others disappear. Even when people lie, they are lying to protect themselves. They are lying because they are afraid someone will discover they are not perfect. Now, that doesn’t make lying OK but it does give us understanding that can help us have compassion for the insecurities of ourselves and others.

Rather than putting trust in what others say, we need to look for God’s point of view. Then we can learn to trust ourselves to make responsible choices.

“We can love with true love because God, our True Parent, first loved us with true love. God created human beings out of His absolute love, to be his partners in love. This relationship forms an axis of love, linking God the Father with human beings as His sons and daughters.” SMM 9/11/05

When we learn how not to be hurt by others we can find incredible freedom and power to love. We can travel the world with a completely open heart without getting hurt. We can say, “I love you” without fear of rejection because we are not dependent on what’s going on inside the other person. This way we can always choose to follow our own heart. We can even be in the midst of hell and still experience inner peace. I think this was Jesus’ secret while he lived on earth and we can make it ours to.

So this week, take time to love your neighbor as yourself. Doing so will come naturally as you form the habit of not taking things personally and trusting in yourself to discover God’s point of view.

B4Peace Monthly Challenge: http://everydaygurus.com/2013/10/31/monthly-peace-challenge-love-thy-enemy/

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