I don't care much for the old American addage,
"Don't get mad, get even."
I do think it is time for some people
to finally learn not to be helpless.
To stop seeing themselves as passive,
poor things, victimized or just intimidated.
Don't get mad at your enemies; get rid of 'em.
Did I say kill them? No, nor whack 'em with a crowbar.
But loving, serving and remembering
should mature one over time and patient practice,
prepare one for sovereign handling of situations.
Loving everyone is not to love their ignorance or aggression,
but to love the sentient Being that is the core of all our potential,
and that core is divine, and it is pognantly, terribly, wonderfully human.
And sacred.
Serving is not being a "helper" and "fixing things" -- even if
someone gets helped and something gets fixed, this is not your concern.
Serving is to nourish from your heart, from the richness of spirit,
which nourishment you have only received and are not the source.
Remember that Source, it is your only wealth and can be shared.
Don't recite Scripture, be Scripture. Be the temple. Be the fire.
So what of those enemies? It won't help, thinking you have none,
when for some very rude and angry forces of energy
you may be theirs.
Get rid of 'em. Breathe and repose in that sovereign Presence,
then work intuitively instead of reactively, embracing first the fact
that you may not be liked, you may well be hated, don't avoid it.
Reposing in your Faith, neither seeking nor avoiding enmity,
clarify your cowardice and bent toward appeasement,
value your most genuine integrity and basic sanity.
Sometimes you can rid yourself of enemies by being authentic,
robbing them of ammunition by your humor, indiscriminate warmth,
your indifference to the illusion of injury, and clear eye contact.
Sometimes they will become your friends, having little recourse left.
Sometimes it's out of your hands, they are fixated on hostility toward you.
Give them no further thought, erase their existence from your mind;
if they stand before you, seeking to bait and provoke, arouse your reaction,
give them no satisfaction, address them with not so much as a breath or a glance,
look right past them and let them be as nothing.
For you are nothing and therefore empty of whatever they want to grab.
And if their grabbing should become physical, learn to not even be there;
and if you are there, then it is as it should be. Prepare to stand your ground.
Know your ground: it is to love everyone, serve everyone, and remember God.
Be open to the grace to rightly perceive, firmly confront, and
compassionately, creatively, constructively prevail over all forms
of tyranny and aggression and abuse, whenever and wherever you are
witness to it -- in defense of the defenseless, the innocent, or even the truth.
Don't say it's "karma" -- your karma may be to fight.
I am not for holding hands of victims, I am for teaching victims
to put perpetrators out of business by not being their customers;
by learning of one's inherent and natural worth and dignity,
and to ground oneself in that, knowing that God loves you.
To make an ideology of victimhood is pathologically unnatural.
Should one in enmity toward you be determined to make hostile contact,
it may be most loving, most nourishing, and most conscious service
to pull the weed out by the roots, gather your inner resources,
and fight back with all you've got. You may not win,
but you will surely stop losing.
