Music by Lisa Thiel - Kuan Yin's Mantra
Ask Teal
Hatred
Hello there.
Hatred,
we see it everywhere in the world today.
It's the internal condition that leads to things like,
prejudice and genocide and war.
Hatred is essentially the emotional state
of deep and intense dislike,
aversion,
or even hositility
towards someone or something.
It's perhaps the most extreme form
of vibrational resistance to something.
It is resistance to the degree
that one wishes to destroy the thing that is perceived
to be causing the unhappiness within them.
But what is it exactly that causes hatred?
Hatred is caused by the perception of threat.
What is a threat?
A threat is you facing something
that is going to diminish
something that you hold dear.
A threat is something that's likely to cause danger or damage.
In other words,
it's something that's likely to hurt you.
When a person feels as if they're in the presence of a threat,
they feel fear, and that fear is quickly converted to anger,
which is a state of defense.
You can think of anger and aversion
as a person's attempt to keep their boundaries intact
so as to stay safe.
The person tries to push that thing away from itself
or somehow eradicate the threat.
Hatred is the human ego in a state of defense.
When we find ourself hating something,
the question we have to ask ourselves is:
"What threat does this thing pose to me?"
"How is it hurting me?"
"What am I afraid of?"
For example,
A woman may feel hatred towards another woman
who is beautiful,
and upon further reflection,
she might find that that woman is a threat
to her own sense of self-esteem,
her self-concept.
Or for example,
a man may start to feel hatred towards another man
that's flirting with his girlfriend.
But upon deeper reflection,
he finds that it's because
that man poses a threat
to his sense of security and connection
within his relationship.
Or a group of people might feel hatred
towards another group of people.
Because pretend they have different religious views.
Upon deeper reflection,
one of those religious groups might find
that the reason they hate the other,
is because of the belief they hold about them.
They may think that this other group
is evil or wicked.
And so their beliefs about this other person,
makes them think that that other group
is a threat to life on earth,
a threat to happiness.
The safer we feel, the less we hate.
The problem is that hatred
tends to snowball.
Essentially, this is how it goes:
We perceive a threat first.
Our reaction to that threat
is to push it away from us,
so we start to feel hatred.
And because we're focussed at that thing
with an attitude of hatred,
as if it's a threat,
what happens in a law of attraction based universe?
We attract more proof that they're a threat.
Which makes us more afraid,
which makes us hate them more,
which makes us manifest more proof that they're dangerous,
which makes us hate them more.
And it just keeps going and going until finally,
we have so much hate inside of us,
that we can do nothing
except for try to destroy that other thing.
Some of us find ourselves more frequently
on the receiving end of hatred.
I'm one of those examples.
This is especially true
if we're one of those people
who grew up in a condition,
which led us to shame.
That means in our childhood,
the belief which we inherited
from the people who were raising us,
was that there's something about us that's bad or wrong.
We are a perfect vibrational match
to people who think that exact same thing about us.
We tend to take this hatred personally.
We make the hatred that we receive from others
mean that there must be something bad about us.
This pushes is into self-doubt, self-hatred and self-distrust.
But we need to see that the hatred does not exist because we're bad.
It doesn't even exist because they're right about us.
Hatred exists because the other person
perceives us to be a threat to something they treasure
and are therefore attached to.
So what we have to ask ourselves is:
"What threat do they perceive me posing to them?"
For example, we may discover
that somebody feels as if we're a threat to their physical safety,
or we're a threat to their wellbeing,
or we're a threat to their relationship,
or we're a threat to how they want the world to look,
or we're a threat to the beliefs which are keeping them safe,
or we're a threat to their sense of self-esteem.
It's much easier to feel better about someone or something
that's hating us,
if we can develop compassion.
Now I realise this can be a stretch.
Feeling compassion for someone who hates you
and who is potentially actively trying to destroy your life is quite difficult.
But remember that what you're after here
is not letting them of the hook,
for hating you or doing the things they're doing.
What you're trying to look to do, is to feel better yourself.
And obviously, when someone starts hating you,
you start perceiving them as a threat.
So one of the best ways to get out of that vicious cycle,
is to start focussing on the pain
that is in fact causing their hatred.
Where is that fear
and that scared little child, essentially,
who is completely convinced
that you're a threat to them?
In other words,
we don't feel the need to defend ourselves as violently,
because it really isn't about us,
it's about the fact that something about us makes them feel threatened.
Perhaps we can even help them feel
less threatened about whatever they feel threatened about relative to us.
When it comes to hatred,
regardless of whether it's us hating them
or them hating us,
what we have to do is to address the fear
and the pain
that is underneath that hatred.
We have to access the vulnerability.
So when you encounter hate,
I want you to do three things.
1. You need to question the threat.
This means you gotta get present to what threat this person poses,
or what threat they think you pose.
You gotta be really aware
of what that is first
and you have to question it.
Is this genuinely a threat?
Is that a threat they actually pose to me?
Is it a threat I actually pose to them?
We also have to explore and loosen our negative attachment
to the thing we think they pose a threat to.
Obviously if we start hating somebody,
or if they start hating us,
it's about the fact
that we feel like we have to defend something
which we're attached to.
This is a perfect opportunity
for those of us who are in the spiritual practice,
to question our level of attachment.
Obviously, I've identified with this particular thing
so strongly,
that that in and of itself is causing me pain.
2. Find non-reactive conscious strategies
to diminish the potential threat,
without causing the other person harm.
For example,
let's say that the other person poses a threat to my self-esteem.
How could I go about decreasing that threat
to my self-esteem without causing them pain?
Step 3.
Increase your feeling of safety and integrity.
Obviously you're defending something
that you think you're gonna lose or that's going to be diminished
by the person who is hating you
or who you're hating.
So what I want you to do,
is to think any thought
that would cause you to feel better about this situation,
about whatever it is they pose a threat to.
Any form of positive focus about the situation
we feel threatened by will diminish the feeling of threat.
By doing these things, we will experience a decrease in hatred.
At its root, hatred occurs
because we feel powerless
to the way we feel.
Why is it that we don't wanna lose
that thing we think they're a threat to?
Because we would feel bad if we did.
So at the core,
hatred is about the fact that we feel powerless to feeling bad.
So, what can you do about it?
Prove to yourself that you're not powerless to the way that you feel.
Any amount of focus on anything,
or any action you take
that makes you feel better or more secure
relative to the thing you think you're gonna lose,
will cause you to feel better.
When we hate,
we feel bad and don't think we can feel good
as long as the thing we think caused us to feel bad,
(the threat)
still exists.
Taking our focus of those things that cause us to feel bad
and placing our focus on things that cause us to feel good,
allows us to see that we do have the ability
to alter how we feel deliberately.
This empowerment helps us to see
that we aren't just at the mercy of the world
and thus we feel less threatened by things
and thus we don't feel hate towards them.
For example,
let's say that you feel hatred towards your boyfriend's ex.
When you ask yourself the question:
What threat does this pose to me?
You might come up with an answer like:
She really poses a threat
to the connection that I feel with this person.
I feel like, if she's in the picture,
I'm gonna lose my connection with him.
First, you question the threat.
Is she really a threat to your connection with your boyfriend?
If so, how?
You may wanna do Byron Katie's process
called 'The Work' on this idea.
Then you may want to explore
how the attachment you have to your connection, to your boyfriend,
is painful and therefore negative.
Because what you really want is a man who will choose you
and whom wants you enough
that you don't have to work hard to earn closeness with him.
So it may even be better to have his closeness
tested in this way,
so you can either see his true colours,
or develop real security
in his connection to you.
Then, one of the action steps you could take,
is to have a vulnerable and open and honest conversation
with your boyfriend
about the threat
that you feel this ex of his poses to your relationship.
Then, if you wanna go further than that,
you can begin to positively focus.
How is your connection secure with this boyfriend?
How can you be sure
that it's going to be maintained regardless of whether she's there or not?
This world functions like a mirror,
which means that if we wish to end hatred in the world,
we have to first end it within ourselves.
That means, we have to adress the aspect of us that hates.
But I will give you a tip;
The aspect of you that hates is not malevolent and it is not evil.
It is the aspect of you that is a small crying child
that feels powerless to the world around it,
powerless to the way it feels.
This child within you is the one that needs the attention.
And when I say child,
I don't want you to then go into the space where you're thinking
that a child is less evolved,
or that a child essentially
is not as spiritually enlightened
as an adult,
Because we love to do that.
We love to be like:
"Oh, it's the underdog
and it's sort of like lower on the value scale
than my adult self".
That's not the way that the inner child works.
But this is an aspect of you that is deeply in pain.
And so it needs your conscious attention,
your conscious focus.
It needs you to know what it's scared of.
And it needs you to help it
to feel better about what it's scared of.
This small child is terrified
in a state of fear
and is reacting by trying to push the thing that it's afraid of
away from itself.
We need to feel love and compassion
towards this aspect of us that's feeling threatened.
And by doing this we create more safety for ourselves
and this subdues the hatred.
Now before I continue,
I have to say that in the spiritual field,
hatred has become a bit like anger.
It's not okay to admit that you feel that way.
In fact, you're SO not spiritually enlightened
if you hate anything.
So, "just cram that deep down inside and never admit to it."
~ Laughs ~
But here's the thing,
It's natural when we feel threatened,
to basically jump into a space of hate.
So it would be very rare
to meet somebody who is genuinely free of all hatred.
And it's really, really damaging
for you to bury that aspect of you deep down inside,
to stay unconscious of it and not admit to it.
Suppressed hatred wreaks havoc on your body
and it wreaks havoc on the world at large.
So, admit to what you hate
even if you're one of those spiritual people
who is all about the love, light and communion on this planet.
It's really important for you to actually become conscious
of the hatred that you have,
so that can find some resolution to it,
instead of just trying to convince yourself it doesn't exist.
On the other hand,
when we're not in the practice of suppressing our hatred,
but we're also not conscious enough to work with it directly,
we mistake the fight or flight peak in energy we feel
and hatred for power.
Hatred is the opposite of power.
It only occurs when we feel powerless to a threat.
When we become reactive.
Instead of addressing the internal world and it's state of fear,
we try to eradicate the threat itself.
We rage war against it in order to try to get rid of it.
This does not work in a universe based on the law of attraction,
where whatever you resist persists.
This is exactly why people in the media say
that bad press is good press.
Hating someone feels bad.
It doesn't just feel bad to the person
who is on the receiving end of our hate,
it feels bad to us.
We have a tendency of thinking
when we feel hatred,
that whatever we are perceiving to be a threat,
is what is causing that feeling within us.
But in fact it's just our reaction
to something we perceive to be a threat.
That means that hatred is not really anybody else's problem.
It's our problem.
And it deserves our conscious attention.
Even if they have done things to justify the hatred,
the one power that we do have,
is to deal with our reaction to them
and what they did.
This is good news because it means
we are not powerless to our hatred.
Hatred is a cover emotion
for feeling pain,
hurt and fear.
So address that pain,
that hurt and that fear
and then conscioussly focus
on anything that causes you to feel safer,
to feel joy,
to feel that state of integrity.
And watch your hatred disappear.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: David Soh, Katja Vleermens & Tanya Duarte ( www.tanyaduarte.com )