Hard to love others? Been lied to and betrayed? Step right up...let's help each other

[Miss Hepburn]

Does that sound good?
Does to me!!!

Got any helpful insights or hints as to how to forgive even the worst hurts and slights?
Ha, and then move right on into Love, Kindness, Compassion and Understanding?

This is the place!

[Baile]

Miss Hepburn, maybe I'm weird or off or unenlightened! I feel I have plenty of compassion for people; for people who aren't in very good circumstances for example. I picked up a hitchhiker in a snow storm two years ago. He was trying to get to a city 400 miles away but had no money and hadn't eaten. I drove to the bank and gave him $100, then drove him to the bus station.

And I'm extremely conscious and kind to people I meet, and I'm light and funny and even go out of my way to brighten their day. Especially people in the service industry; I feel compassion for people who have to put up with the nonsense that service people put up with.

But in no way do I ever feel it necessary to love people. Just no. What I do is already enough! No!

[Shivani Devi]

I figured that this thread comes on the back of "Does God Want Us To Be Perfect?" thread.

I started off loving my parents, found out they didn't even want me and I was 'unplanned' - I was sexually and physically abused by my father, totally ignored by my mother and left to rot.

I had no friends in school and growing up...I was bullied, teased, made fun of and bashed outside the school gates every afternoon.

The only person who ever seemed to care was grandma, but she died when I was very young.

Got married...was treated like a slave and as long as my husband's shirts were ironed, his meals were ready on time and the house was kept clean, he didn't give a damn about me otherwise...we got divorced when I became totally fed up. He needed a maid and NOT a wife.

I had two children who grew up independent of me...didn't want me in their lives from day 1 and left home in their teens without giving any forwarding address...haven't seen them since.

I look at the news...I just see the people around...no consideration for others, always in a race to be 'first' at anything THEY want to do, pushing others out of the way...trampling people underfoot...a lot of people seem no better than animals and I thought we had intelligence! I thought we had progressed beyond our 'animal nature'...who was I kidding?

Of course I can love the 'spark of the Divine' in people...in a rock...in a tree...in a dog...but I cannot love the behaviour of people and it's hard for me to feel love and compassion for those who 'make their own beds' and then whine that they can't get a good night's sleep.

Also, being autistic, I was born without the ability to feel empathy or compassion and I have tried to learn how, until I discovered that this is something which cannot be learned or taught...you either have it or you don't...and I don't.

[barrynu]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Does that sound good?
Does to me!!!

Got any helpful insights or hints as to how to forgive even the worst hurts and slights?
Ha, and then move right on into Love, Kindness, Compassion and Understanding?

This is the place!

Understanding is the first step...and one step at a time

we cant decide to love everyone as love cannot be controlled,,,it just happens.
one day I appreciate the person that caused my pain and I love them so much but another day I get angry at the very thought of them ......its about accepting ALL your emotions and thoughts even if some of them may be classed as "bad" and not spiritual.
love those folks or hate them folks but understanding them folks can free you from those chains of the past

[Starman]

I grew up in a home that had lots of physical and emotional abuse, and subsequently I had lots of emotional problems myself. I think that is why I went into the medical field and later the counseling profession; to gather tools to work on myself. I was called “the black sheep of the family” when I was young, ran away from home many times before my tenth birthday, and was placed in an institution for emotionally disturbed children at age-11.

I was institutionalized for about 5-years, and at age-16 they released me and told me I was an adult. I moved back in with my mother, and did not get along with my mother or siblings at all. One week after my 17th birthday I walked into a U.S. Army recruiting station in New York and took a test. My mother had to sign for me to go into the army because I was only 17-years old, and she gladly signed. The army was like an escape for me and I was glad to get away from my family of origin.

Of course, all of this effected how I had any future relationships. Many of the relationships I had I felt like I was going to be abandoned. I suffered from having been emotionally deprived as a child. I lived in my head and hide from my heart, because there was so much emotional pain inside of me and that was the only way, at that time, that I knew how to deal with it. All I allowed myself to have were concepts and mental constructs, and my dominate feelings were grief, anger, and rage.

The military allowed me to travel the world, living in Europe, Asia, and the Orient, and I continued to travel after leaving the military. World travel was a great education for me. I found that Asia has different cultural rules for relationships than America. An relationships are different in various parts of Europe, France and Italy for instance, than they are in other parts of Europe. However, “trust” seems to be the main ingredient wherever you go. Although trust is loosely applied in some areas more so than others.

It was critical for me to leave my head and go to my heart. Get in touch with what I was avoiding, and I had acquired a number of methods/tools by which I could do this. Much later in life my spiritual practice helped me a great deal with human relationships no matter where I was. It’s like when I do a lot of meditation a presence surrounds me, and if I am out in nature camping, animals, birds, deer, etc., will come over to me, like they are attracted to that presence. I find that same thing happens when I am in a town or city around human beings.

Human beings find that quiet presence which we experience in meditation alluring. It has little to do with what a person looks like; it’s a lot deeper, a magnetic presence. An I feel a responsibility to be honest in that presence. People want your core, they want your heart, but often they don’t know what to do with it once they get it. I have often thought that the world wants to suck you dry and then abandon you. I have made lots of mistakes myself. There are things in my past that I remember and now cringe at the thought of those things.

However, I have learned forgiveness for my own sake, and my spirituality helps me to let go. When I do not listen to my intuition, I most often end up with an emotional butt kicking. If I listen to my deeper being, I feel protected. These days I am a very transparent person, and it took some time for me to get here. Still, I am a single male attracted to women, but the rules on closely held relationships here in the U.S. are changing so fast. It can be so confusing.

Love

[Melahin]

I like the Emotion Code; chapter 7 is about Heart Walls and how when we get hurt we sometimes build a wall of trapped emotions around our Heart... and how releasing them makes love much easier

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Does that sound good?
Does to me!!!

Got any helpful insights or hints as to how to forgive even the worst hurts and slights?
Ha, and then move right on into Love, Kindness, Compassion and Understanding?

This is the place!

Many years ago I wasn't in a very good place and my world was crashing down around me. Then my Guide popped into my head and asked me the one question that turned everything around for me. "What do you want to Live with in your Heart?" I could choose, I could make that choice.

Compassion, empathy, forgiveness and a few others don't come cheap. Perhaps what we need to do is start working on turning our hurts into halos.

[inavalan]

Interesting ... When I read this thread's title I expected an avalanche of well intended posters to profess their unconditional love, or at least wish to be headed there. I'm surprised!

I'll add that I think it's nice to love, it's nice to be loved, even nicer to love and be loved, but I don't believe "love" is something we incarnated to learn, because we've come from a place of non-dual love, on purpose, to experience duality.

I venture the idea that if humanity reached the level when everybody would love everybody, incarnating on Earth would stop, and it would be diverted toward better schools for souls' evolvement.

let's face all the consequences
and love it, because the light be
our partner

i think that works for me

plus love lovers attract

up above invented rules
or something

[Tomma]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Got any helpful insights or hints as to how to forgive even the worst hurts and slights?

One thing that helps me forgiving someone is when I understand why they acted as they did. Forgiving then comes by itself.

Here's an example:
One of our neighbours, an elderly man, always came running out of his house throwing stones at the stray dogs. He had a stash of stones on his wall just to throw at them. I hated the man with all my heart! When we moved in here I started to take care of those dogs, you know, spaying, vaccinating, feeding them, etc, and slowly we adopted them and they now live with us. But at first they were strays and only lived on the road. Anyway, I really despised the guy. Then one day I found out he likes the stray cats, and the stray cats often give birth in his garden (he doesn't spay them, so they really give birth there often!). And those dogs, well, they were sometimes killing those little kittens I've seen it with my own eyes, terrible. So when I saw him one day feeding one cat, with love, bending his old back down to give her something, I suddenly understood all the anger towards the dogs - he was just trying to keep them away from entering his garden! My heart was touched. All my anger for this man dissipated. (And nowadays all of the dogs are too old to chase the poor kitties around anyway, so the whole stone throwing thing has stopped.)

Understanding someone is key for me. But it's not always possible, of course, for example, if that person refuses to talk. And even then it's still sometimes hard to forgive (as I know from my marriage) even if I understand where the meanness came from.

And I agree with others, you don't have to love anybody. I'm happy with neutral Anger and hate sucks so much energy! Yea I'm happy with neutral.