day 91: Go Inside, wake up to Loving the "enemy"

Peaceful "interior" of a different sort. Photo by my daughter, paintings by my son's ex-gal

Go inside, be happy, and if not….do the Work

My Christian friend, Dick Staub, offers Jesus as the way to find our lives centered in love. He and I agree a lot that one center of a real, authentic and full life, is the ability to “love your enemies.” The heart, our heart, is the heart of the matter. And our heart, holding onto any little bit of a grudge, can't love the way a heart so loves to do (and be).

Another way this could be said, is to feel good toward, and treat well, people who don’t necessarily feel go toward you, nor necessarily treat you well.

So here’s today’s project: go inside and let your mind touch, with love, those people who “bother” you the most.

Don’t struggle.

Don’t wish them to be different.

Don’t take their treatment of you personally.

Either see them with the love Jesus would, or use the help, as you know it, of Jesus, to get you to a place of love and appreciation and enjoyment of these people.

Or use the Work of Byron Katie, if you need to come to inner peace that way, or find it useful. Indeed, you could be a fine Christian, and take advantage of the four questions and the turn around to help you return to the place Jesus wants us all to live.

Either way, go inside, let your mind roam freely, and then come to the place where you can smile about the stuff that bothers most people.

This is only a life time’s work, this little section today, and a life is composed of days, and today is a day, so enjoy many times of doing little except going within and finding peace.

And making this a peace that gets work, by letting your thoughts wander the to “troubling” people, over and over, until there is no “trouble” left.

Play with, and work with this dilemma and challenge and gift of our life on Earth: other people are jerks sometimes. We are jerks sometimes.

We can be present and we can find a way to see them as the same as us and love them. This is the inner game for today.