Ann: Would you speak to us about hatred and love?
Kahlil Gibran: Yes, in life I channeled a wise spirit I called The Prophet in the title of the book of his reflections. Let me reach out to that entity now to expand upon that which he gave us then and which now troubles your heart.
The Prophet: My children, hatred and love are not in competition. They are in fact brothers under the skin, for what you hate, that also did you love but for the betrayal that turned that friend into your enemy.
Hatred is a choice for each and every one of you. Hatred is born of anger unexamined and unresolved, and anger is born of fear. Fear, my children, is the fear of losing or having lost love. When the child says to the mother, “I hate you!” that child is really saying, “I know you hate me and are going to abandon me.”
When we say this to God from a desperate and impassioned state, we are likely to hear only an echo of our own anguished cries so loudly do they reverberate in our psyches having been fed over and over again by graduated fears and experiences that incrementally increase our resistance to love as life goes on.
We come to this planet in love, but life inevitably turns us in the opposite direction so entrenched are our fears and expectations of others. No mother, no lover, no friend can be God. We are bound to disappointment there. So it is only when we give these experiences to our Creator that we can recalibrate our own reactions and learn to meet fear, anger, and hate with the enduring power of our Creator’s love.
We are in fact created of nothing else, so it is when we align ourselves with our Creator that we can allow that love to flow through us and thereby remain unfazed by the insults, taunts, and vicious slanders that will inevitably be hurled at our heads as we pass through earth’s heavy atmosphere and interact with its conflicted inhabitants.
When that occurs, we musts try to see through the hatred, anger, and fear to the child beneath, the child who has given up on hoping for love and has given himself over to attack.
Your love may never reach a one so completely walled off, but nevertheless that love will linger in the atmosphere for an eternity. Therefore, send your love to those whom you are tempted to hate, those who actions have aroused your anger, and those whom you fear will strip you of everything you hold dear.
This is the task of the spiritual warrior, the turning away from fear, the placing boundaries as necessary to prevent the poison gas of hatred from polluting our inner atmosphere, and protecting ourselves with love. For if we return hatred with hatred, we undercut our own wellspring of life and can only follow those who hate down their own dark path.
Love is light, the only road to life.
October 24, 2021
Thank you, Ann. I love The Prophet. This message brought back beautiful memories and grreat love. I named my favourite horse after him, Jalil, who still remains in my heart aftert many years. Mary
Thank you, Ann, for giving me feed back. Kahil was not a Baha'i. 'Abdul' Baha' (Servant of God) said:
My name is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. My qualification is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. My reality is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. My praise is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Thraldom to the Blessed Perfection is my glorious and refulgent diadem, and servitude to all the human race my perpetual religion . .. No name, no title, no mention, no commendation have I, nor will ever have, except 'Abdu'l-Bahá. This is my longing. This is my greatest yearning. This is my eternal life. This is my everlasting glory. Abdu'l Baha's Father was the prophet.