It's not just for Christians anymore.
of hate. Does this sound like fluff, the mewling of an overstuffed bunny? Let me add this,
that responsibility isn’t to the gods or the universe, and it isn’t to the object(s) of
those emotion, it’s to ourselves.
Anger, in many cases, is justified. When someone hurts us or those we love or when
someone treats us unjustly we become angry—we have the right to feel anger and to
express that emotion. Anger is natural, and suppressing anger can cause us emotional
harm. However, there’s a point at which this becomes destructive. When we hold on
to anger it affects us physically. It can raise our blood pressure, cause tightened muscles,
and general stress reactions that are meant to be reserved for “fight or flight,� that
are meant to be short term. Our anger affects our relationships with those around us and
can cause strain in even the closest of bonds.
Hatred is, perhaps, less “vocal� a response but no less insidious. Hatred saps the
energy of the hater and gives emotional power over the hater to the one hated, similar in a
way to fear. Hatred burrows into the soul and darkens the spirit, eating us alive from the
inside out. Someone who nourishes hate in themselves often has little strength left for
dealing with or doing anything else. Hate separates us from each other, it denies attunement.
Why should we seek attunement with those we might hate? Attunement is the opposite of
hate, they cannot exist together. Attunement is complete understanding and oneness with
the principle or essence of a thing. One cannot hate what one fully understands. We may
pity, we may dislike or disapprove, but we may not hate that thing. This is not weakness, it
is strength.
In my own life one of my greatest challenges has been overcoming the hate I held toward
my own father, and the anger I held for both of my parents. My father is an alcoholic, my
mother a skillful enabler, and as the oldest child, I was the one who seemed to bear the
brunt of this situation. After realizing that I could escape my home at the age of 19 I went
on to create more abusive situations in my own life, in part because I knew no other way to
function. By the age of 21 I was in treatment for depression. At 22 I married into a bad
situation that grew worse. At 24 I realized that most of my depression symptoms were due
to the amazing amount of stress (both current and previous) that I carried around and began
to try to reduce that stress. By the time I was 25 I began to really look at myself, trying to
decide why I was so miserable, realizing that I did not want to stay miserable forever.
While searching myself I started “letting go� of some of my anger, especially with my
mother at first. As I grew older I could, to an extent, understand some of her actions. I
began studying spirituality and then Wicca specifically. I started searching and finding
myself underneath all the layers, and discovered that I did not need an abusive, unhappy
situation to survive. I divorced at 26, around the time I began truly coming to terms with
the hate I held. While my father has never attempted to reconcile with me (his most famous
quote is “God has forgiven me, so you should too), I learned that the letting go freed my
own spirit. Forgiving, the letting go of hatred, does not require that we forget or excuse the
abuse we have suffered, or that we allow it to continue. It allows us to continue, to move
on in our lives, and to grow as human beings.
In our own coven we have seen the extreme results of nourishing hate and anger, of living
for revenge and being consumed by these emotions. It’s as crippling as any physical
disease. It traps you exactly where it started—part of you never grows or grows up
beyond that point. While I was browsing through the internet, I came across a website that
is another good example of someone consumed with anger and hate and who has no idea
how to be happy:
protect someone who feels powerless and is angry at the world. The guest book reveals
that this is a 14 year old boy who is getting an amazing amount of encouragement to
continue behaving as he is, how sad is this? Here’s yet another person who will have
to spend a chunk of life simply dredging himself out of his own personal mire, assuming that
it becomes possible for him to do so.
There are a couple of really good articles on Beliefnet regarding forgiveness:
personal Book of Shadow and Light is what started me thinking on the subject.
Forgiveness is a skill that I believe must be learned by most people. Forgiving others is the
first step--forgiving ourselves is the next, and more difficult one in my opinion. Once we
have been able to let go of our anger and hatred for others we just might have enough skill
to do the same for ourselves. When we hold anger and we hate we also learn to hate
ourselves. I spent a good deal of the last 14 years looking for someone else to forgive
me, and most of the time I didn’t even know for what. It’s only been after my
experiences as I’ve grown older, after learning to let go and forgive others significant in
my life, that I have been able to truly heal myself. It’s an ongoing process, but one I
am relieved to be engaged in.
