Beyondanews – Loving The Unloveable

My Dear Friends,

This is a very unusual Valentine's Day Message, from Swami Beyandananda, also know as Steve Bhaerman. He offers us the ultimate challenge on this day of Celebrating our Love. I think you will find this a very good read.

I send my Love to all of you on this Day Of Love, and I also send it to my Family whom I have not seen for over twenty years.

Yes, it is the most wonderful gift we have to share.

Carl Azcar 

SWAMI'S VALENTINE'S DAY MESSAGE: LOVING THE UNLOVABLE

by Steve Bhaerman

The lovable is easy to love. Cute puppies, beautiful people, awesome sunsets, whatever brings an easy smile to the face and a warm glow to the heart, we love to love these things.

Loving the unlovable is a whole other ball of thorns. But it might be just as necessary as loving the lovable, maybe even more so. As Carl Jung has pointed out, it's those unlovable parts that we tend to deny in ourselves and project onto others that have done so much damage in the world. Jungian author Paul Levy ("The Madness of George Bush") suggests that the collective denied shadow of otherwise "good" people is what keeps evil in place. In any case, given how well the world seems to be doing, perhaps it's time we tried something different. Like "loving" the unlovable.

There is a meditation practice the Buddhists call tonglen -- Tibetan for "taking and giving" -- that offers us a way to internally "digest" the toxins of the world, and use these to feed our own sense of peace. The practice involves visualizing taking in the suffering of others, and releasing into the world one's own peace, love and happiness. Swami calls this "supply-side spirituality," and reminds us, "We're not here to earn God's love, we're here to spend it!"

Perhaps the most healing thing we can do is spend that love on something unlovable. Sometimes this is called forgiveness. My friend Perry Kimmelman came up with the following Valentine's Day practice, and I pass it onto you:

On Valentine's Day we usually send those most special to us a symbol of our love and affection. A card or flowers express that deep loving connection with our loved ones.

If you are feeling in that loving state on the 14th of February (and even if you aren't) perhaps consider experimenting how the "power" in your heart may help transform our world.

While you're sitting down at your desk, going to work or just having that 1st cup of coffee take a moment to reflect. Think of the person you love the most in this world.

When you start getting that warm" fuzzy", switch gears and think of an individual who has deeply hurt you

Send them some love. ( just for a moment )

Congratulations!!! You just made the world a better place.

To find out more about Perry's work and this project, go to
http://www.forgiveness.healingjourney.biz/

By the way, I had a chance to try this practice this past fall. I had just received a very toxic email from someone I didn't know. The message crossed the line into deep and hateful anti-semitism. I found it very upsetting, and I stewed for a while as to what I could say to this individual in response. I replayed a dozen clever and incisive emails I could send, then I just decided to "ignore" it. Later that night, as I was trying to enjoy a concert, I realized ignoring it wouldn't heal it.

Then, I got it. Instead of sloughing it off or even trying to send a loving email message to this individual, I realized I had to send my message over the "innernet." I felt a profound sadness as I imagined the torment this individual must have been feeling to send such a message out. I inhaled that sadness and despair, and I sent out a wave of love to wherever he might be. What I got in return was a deep sense of happiness and release. And this individual's emails have never endarkened my inbox again.

In her book, Not By the Sword, Kathryn Watterson tells the story of Michael Weisser, a Jewish cantor, and his wife Julie. They had just moved to their new home in Lincoln, Nebraska in June 1991, when their peaceful unpacking was interrupted by an ominous threatening phone call.

Shortly after, they received a package of racist flyers with a card announcing, "The KKK is watching you, scum." The Weissers called the police, who told them it looked like the work of one Larry Trapp, a self-described Nazi and Grand Dragon of the local Ku Klux Klan. Trapp, in fact, had been linked to fire bombings of African-American homes in the area and a center for Vietnamese refugees. The 44-year-old Trapp was wheelchair bound and suffering from diabetes, yet was a leader of the white supremacist movement in the area. At the time, he was making plans to bomb B'nai Jeshuran, the synagogue where Weisser was cantor.

Julie Weisser was frightened and even infuriated by the hate mail, but she also felt a spark of compassion for the man in the wheel chair who lived by himself in a one-room apartment. She decided to send Trapp a letter every day with passages from the Proverbs. When Michael saw that Trapp had launched a TV series spewing hatred on the local cable network, he called the Klan hotline and kept leaving messages: "Larry, why do you hate me? You don't even know me."

At one point, Trapp actually answered the phone and Michael, after identifying himself asked him if he needed a hand in doing his grocery shopping. Trapp refused -- politely -- but a process of rethinking began to stir in him. For a while he was two people -- the one still spewing hateful invective on TV, the other talking with Michael Weisser on the phone saying, "I can't help it. I've been talking like that all my life."

One night, Michael Weisser asked his congregation to pray for someone who is "sick from the illness of bigotry and hatred." That night, Trapp did something he'd never done before. The swastika rings he wore on both hands began to itch, so he took them off. The next day he called the Weissers and said, "I want to get out, but I don't know how." Michael suggested that he and Julie drive to Trapp's apartment so they could "break bread together." Trapp hesitated, then agreed.

At the apartment, Trapp broke into tears and handed the Weissers his swastika rings. In November, 1991 he resigned from the Klan, and later wrote apologies to those groups he had wronged. On New Year's Eve, Larry Trapp found out he had less than a year to live and that same night, the Weissers invited him to move in with them. Their living room became his bedroom and he told them, "You are doing for me what my parents should have done for me."

Bedridden, Trapp began to read about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and learn about Judaism. On June 5, 1992 he converted to Judaism -- at the very synagogue he had once planned to blow up. Julie quit her job to care for him in his last days, and when Larry Trapp died on September 6th of that year, it was with Michael and Julie holding his hands.

This is one extraordinary story, perhaps the exception that proves the rule. I'm willing to bet there are thousands and thousands of other stories like this one. Remember, forgiveness doesn't excuse or condone a hateful, violent act. Rather, it releases us from what has been done to us, and frees our emotional energy to move life forward. This seemingly "selfless" act is actually quite selfish, only on a higher level.

Maybe, then, "higher selfishness" is the way of the future.