Ending enmity

While reflecting on what it means to "love our enemy," it suddenly occurred to me, that, maybe in reality, there are no enemies.

I wondered, "Could we eliminate our enemies by realizing that in truth there are no enemies?" Do they only exist as a figment of our fear, born in our separated, fortressed imagination? Is our perception of them as enemies only a misguided idea based on an incomplete and fractured perception of ourselves? Are they only imagined as enemies out of a perception of ourselves as weak? Has their emerging anger terrorized us, and in our weakness, we have deemed them enemy?

But, is our weakness real or only a perception? Is our  flawed fear of impotence, projecting as fear of them, based on the erroneous belief in their overwhelming strength and power because we think we're not strong or worthy enough to hold our own ground?  Is it all just a mind game? And, none of it is true because we are all innately imbued with the power of creation within us. The dissonance comes when neither of us - them or us - realize who we are as co creators of life itself.

So, an enemy ceases to be an enemy as soon as we love (honor, value ourselves) and them, and make them a friend. When we listen to their story, hear their pain, their need for love with compassion and understanding, we walk with them in their pain, journey alongside them in their story. When we hear and understand their perspective, molded by their interpretation of what has happened to them, leading them to erroneously perceive themselves as victim or victor, we become a kind of companion to them. 

By walking with them in their brokenness and their struggle, a divine compassion is drawn from within us bonding us to them, first as a companion and then, hopefully, even as friends. Then, they become neighbors, and brothers and sisters, all of whom we will grow to love in greater levels of truth, mutuality, and intimacy.

The idea of someone being an enemy has more to do with our sense of "us versus them," a kind of duality, a barrier we set up as defense. 

Our enemy isn't an enemy to everyone - not to his or her spouse, friends, neighbors, other like-minded people, their children, their parents. Our enemy is only an enemy to us, and that may be more a reflection of our relationship to them which is primarily a reflection of our relationship to ourselves. 

Maybe, more simply, someone is our enemy because they push a button in us, stir an unrecovered painful memory. If that memory or button weren't there, all their pushing in the world wouldn't - because it couldn't - push it. And, they could never be anything other than a friend, a companion on this journey in life.

I think that anyone we determine and name as our enemy is merely an outward expression of an inner presence. I wondered if our relationship with ourselves is shadowy and conflicted, stemming from a fractured sense of self, then wouldn't our relationship with them be a kind of anti-sacrament? But, if our inner presence is the presence of the Beloved, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Light, then all outward expressions would be manifestations of that divine love-light, which embraces all people, equally in love, connecting us all in that divine love-light. That very idea just blew me away in its incredible ability to mend the many huge broken divides everywhere in our world.

If that were the case, then, there would be no more enemies, either because we wouldn't perceive them as such or because we would be attracting into our lives magnetically those who reflect what is already in us, which would be the divine love-light.

It seems that if we first uncover our buried pains contributing to our brokenness and fear, love and heal ourselves, we would be able to love others.  I guessed, if we face our own insufficient sense of personal identity and innate divinely-bestowed power, we might be able to heal our prejudice, hurts and brokenness. Then, as we practice this heightened kind of unconditional love and acceptance of ourselves and each other, courageously opening our hearts, quieting our minds, listening with our ears, hearts and minds, enemies might suddenly not be people in armor but people in love.