Let it come
like wildflowers, suddenly, because
the field must have it: wildpeace.
- Yahuda Amichai
Unless we are without much contact across the planet, we live in a time of serious anxiety and stress. All over the world, across our communities and perhaps within our own families, we are witnessing or directly experiencing an unleashing of frayed and violent regression to hatred.
Almost every survivor has experienced hatred in some form. Perhaps you have known the blanket of fear, powerlessness and rage if you are the one where it is directed. Or perhaps, if you are honest, you have felt an almost aphrodisiac giddiness if you are the one directing it to an other, especially if you act on it with violence or active vitriol.
Hatred is a fever. You may be a product of trauma of racial and religious oppression, or your own upbringing and personal history of abuse. You may understand hatred toward those who are other, whether you know them or not. Or more personally, you may harbor visceral contempt toward those who have abused you or your communities. Whatever harm has been done, there is a history of bigotry or violence either as a target or as a perpetrator of the hatred. You witness this in a world of severe political and civic unrest, with raw generalities of hatred and violence toward whole groups of people. You yourself may be a casualty of racial or religious aggression and violence, or the personal experience of demoralizing abuse and defilement and denial within your own family.
The inevitable consequences. Hatred can overtake your mind and especially your heart. This poison can create a sense or fantasy of entitlement to retribution. It is not necessarily justice.
It is almost impossible to be unaffected by hatred in all its forms. It can weaken the immune system, raise blood pressure and affect the ability to rest. It can create disease, depression, addiction or a learned reenactment of internalized self loathing. It can destroy a sense of one's own humanity as it reverberates back on us. This is not only a remnant of hatred, but an inevitable result of living inside its toxicity.
It is not an easy thing to release yourself from this. To say to a survivor, "You can choose to let it go," is easier said than done. But you may already know that if you choose to hold onto the armor of hatred, there can be profound consequences that will not serve you breaking free.
The journey of healing. It can take a lot of time to heal from the direct experience of hatred or the memories that still live in your body. It is not enough to simply remove yourself, although it may be crucial to keep a distance. Space is both a physical and a cognitive reality. You may not be able to relocate geographically, or easily reconfigure your neighborhood or family, unless the situation is so intolerable it warrants a move.
There needs to be a place to be free enough not only to rant and rave, but to be still and quiet. It is important to find a community that is safe enough to do both, where you can think things through, and get or give understanding, and to release some of the anger, the deep fear or hurt you carry.
Letting it go. It is essential to consider what it means to let go of hatred. Often you are asked to forgive. But forgiveness is often misconstrued in response to those who have harmed you. It is often far more complicated and nuanced to cover with platitudes, and too easily glossed over even in therapy or in pastoral care.
Recovery from hatred is a journey of grief. It takes time and respect for all the rage and loss, pain and betrayal that has transpired in your life. But what is possible, albeit some work--is to find a way to let go and release yourself from the aggression you have suffered and embodied.
Building compassion. One way that I have found helpful comes from an ancient Buddhist practice called tonglen. Tonglen involves confronting pain, and in fact, opening the heart. It appears to be the opposite of how you might ever imagine you could ever deal with pain or hold yourself together. In this practice, you breathe in the suffering of others—even of those who have harmed or hated you. Yes. You take it in, instead of avoiding it. It is a way to confront the pain head-on and open the heart. It means acknowledging the pain in yourself and the other, and then hold a space of kindness around the injury instead of using the armor of hate. Then-and this is challenging at first, you breathe out the fear and resistance, sending calm and nourishment to the source of suffering. At first, such a practice seems almost impossible, because the mind is often hard-wired to feel tightness, anger, or revulsion in response to painful circumstances or difficult people. But tonglen is a practice of gradual steps. It is a practice, not simply a magical formula. But just the intention to breathe like this can increase compassion for yourself and for the situation, as impossible as it may be.
To let go of the crust of hatred can actually strengthen, not weaken us. That does not mean everything is fine. You still must set boundaries, trust your gut, and make a space for self care and self defense if need be. But practicing such compassion, or at least respect for yourself in this process can impact the way you preserve your feelings towards others.
Kindness. It takes time to heal and to think things through. But it is an important part of the journey of grief and fierce compassion to restore the love inside that has been lost or never felt at all. Perhaps this is a road to heal, practicing the wildpeace of kindness instead of hate...
-Mikele Rauch
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore...
--Naomi Shihab Nye