Love Thy Neighbour?

Seems to me people get so hung up on love. The Xtian religion(and others)suggests we should love our neighbour as oursleves. Most exclaim that we can't do that! I think because we get confused between love and attachment. We think we are supposed to feel about everyone the way we feel about our family or lovers or even our pets. Some say 'how can we love people we don't like?' Well we don't have to like anyone but we can still love them. How? It is quite simple and we can love everyone thru our actions. Love is an action after all.

Making sure we don't drop litter. HUH? Helping to keep our environment clean is an act of love. Not leaving our supermarket trolleys by our cars but putting them back where they belong. Another act of love. Not parking in the disabled bays when we are not disabled. Another act of love. Smiling at people, being polite, friendly, helpful. All acts of love. Treating people with positive regard. It's love. Treating others, regardless of whether or not we like them, as we would want to be treated ourselves. Love.

Love is not so difficult after all. We can all do it. We all benefit. What we give, we receive. Everything we do, rebounds on upon us. Our attitudes, our actions, all affect us. We cannot escape the consequences of our thoughts and actions. We act and think in a poisitve way and we reap the benefits. Act and think in a negative way, and we reap the result. It is good to realise that the we are not the way the world is but that the world is the way we are. In other words, we each live in our own world-one which we created ourselves. If we don't like our world, we change it-by changing ourselves. Not so nutty as it sounds at first hearing! We all experience the world differently, according to our beliefs, the way we think. If we are unahppy, we need to change our beliefs and thought patterns. Our thoughts, beliefs, are really importnat. They dictate the life we lead. By thoughts, I do mean the habitual thoughts, the deeply held beleifs we have, not the fleeting thoughts we all have-like 'oh drop dead' when we are angry. That is just a fleeting thought. It goes and does no harm. However, if that 'drop dead' becomes seated and we truly wish another harm and it becomes a part of us, then we are in trouble.

I know of two people who died from cancer, not too long ago. One of them believed her cancer was bad luck, just one of those things that happens to human beings. The other believed his cancer was a punishment, aimed at him specifically. Which one had an easier illness and death? The first one, who believed it was just one of those things. What we think and believe really DOES make a difference.

If we believe in a God, the sort of God we believe in makes a difference too. Is your God loving and kind and patient? Or is your God demanding and jealous and angry and vengeful? It seems many have the latter type of God, and we see how that affects them and us! Fundamentalists are not loving and kind and patient and tolerant because the God they believe in is not. Or rather the God they believe in is the result of how they are inside-fearful and judgemental. We create God in our own image! When you listen and they insist they are right, that they have total faith in their God, you must realise that in reality they have total faith in their own judgement. Not God. But in themselves. Their ego. Their sense of righteousness. THAT is where their faith is. Total faith, with no room for doubt, is a clear message that the the faith is not in God but in themselves. They are in total agreement with their own ideas! It isn't a book that tells them 'this is THE TRUTH', but their own selves!

No one alive today knows what the TRUTH is. All we have is our ideas, the beliefs we have created, the meanings we have created, from our experience. Those meanings and ideas may or may not be positive. We all have different experiences, and we all create diffrent meanings and thus we all see the world and eachother differently. Hence all the grief we experience. Not just because of the meanings we create but because we try and force our ideas and our meanings upon others. This is what WAR is about. Power is the abilty to force your idea, your meaning creation, upon others. In other words, to get others to see things the way you do, the get others to be the way you want them to be. Of course, it never works because some people will always think for themselves. And people always want to force their ideas onto others. Thus peace does not last for long.