In the message of Jesus, loving others is inseparable from
loving God. The ideal of loving others is not unique to Christianity. Buddhists
are taught to have unselfish interest in others’ welfare. Bahá'ís are taught to
love all even one’s enemies. Jews are taught about loving-kindness for all. Muslims
are taught compassion for all. Jaina are taught to have benevolence for all. Non-religious
humanists believe in being of service to all of humanity.
The notion of loving one’s neighbor came back to me recently
and made me see that I had not seen its importance. I had accepted it as truth
but had not seen what it truly means. Why is it such an important notion?
It takes an effort to love a neighbor who seems uncaring,
selfish, judgmental, competitive, etc., etc. But let’s go to some extreme. What
if my neighbor commits crimes? What if my neighbor is a murderer, a rapist, a
pedophile? What if my neighbor flirts with my life partner? What if my neighbor
introduces my kid to drugs? Then what does it mean to love my neighbor?
We are used to judging behaviors as good or bad. This is
what our culture has taught us from infancy. But that isn’t helpful in
understanding why circumstances happen as they do in our lives. And it does not
help to heal our self, let alone the planet.
If a neighbor commits crimes, a more useful question is: What
in me needs this experience in my life? This is the approach of Ho’oponopono. It
is not an approach of self-judgment, or self-blame; it is an approach of taking
responsibility, of not separating oneself from one’s experience. As a parent I
know that if I feel stressed and ignore it, my children start acting out. Most
parents then ask the children to calm down, but in truth, they would if only
the parent who is anxious would start taking deep breaths!
So our neighbors teach us about our own state of mind. By
loving our neighbors, as they are, and taking responsibility for our own state
of mind and releasing its negative aspects in relation to these neighbors, with
self-love and self-forgiveness, our neighbors either change or move away.
Dr. Hew Len, who was trained in the tradition of Ho’oponopono,
says that he was originally trained to go out and help people, but then he
realized that that doesn’t work: “What works ultimately, is when I realized
that the world is within me, and that to change the world, I have to change it
within myself.”
In the end, loving one’s neighbor helps heal our self, and
our personal relationship with the universe. Loving one’s neighbor is an
essential component toward enlightenment.
