It’s Time to Love My Self as I Love My Neighbor

I'm going to plant a heart in the earth
water it with love from a vein
I'm going to praise it with the push of muscle
and care for it in the sound of all dimensions.
I'm going to leave a heart in the earth
so it may grow and flower
a heart that throbs with longing
that adores everything green
that will be the strength and nourishment for birds
that will be the sap of plants and mountains.

Rosario Murillo is a Nicaraguan poet and revolutionary who fought in the Sandinista revolution of 1979. She is the first lady of Nicaragua, a title she has had since 1985 when her husband Daniel Ortega became President. Rosario’s poem is a tribute to life in the physical sense as well as the non-physical. As humans we plant our hearts in the earth and water them with love, or what we define as love. Love at times has muscle wrapped around it and it gets trapped in verbal, as well as emotional misunderstanding. Humans leave their hearts in the earth in diverse and complex ways.

There is no book of instructions, there’s just the experience of physical living that teaches how each flower of consciousness should grow. All consciousness throbs with longing and adores connectivity and awareness. Our strength and nourishment comes in different shapes and forms and the experiences created from the nourishment of thought produces the sap, the plants and mountain of choices, which manifest and express unique layers of consciousness. Hate is an emotional choice that does plant hearts in the earth and they are continually watered in love.

Putting a spotlight on hatred has been a priority for centuries, but the purpose of hatred has never been fully identified, because hate is considered a denial of love, when in actuality it is an attempt to regain love. In an unusual way, hate is a means of returning to love. Love can contain hate, and hate can also contain love and be driven by it, especially if it is an idealized love. We never emotionally love or hate a person or thing if we don’t identify and focus on them in some way. There are no emotions involved in uncultivated relationships.

War then contains both love and hate. The opponents fall short of each other’s love and hate is the emotion that expresses that shortcoming. Hate cannot be denied, if it is, love is also denied. They are not opposite emotions, they are different aspects and are experienced differently, but are compliments of each other. Hatred develops when expectations are not met in an accepted way. The higher the expectations the higher the degree of hate; hatred communicates separation from the love that is expected. Greater expectations in that separation create an atmosphere of war, which creates energy of its own. The vibration of that energy reduces hateful expectations by isolating and numbing emotions in order to create a road back to love. The complete devastation of war eventually creates a healthy element of hate which then becomes acceptance and then the emotion of love begins to emerge from the carnage at some linear point in time. Consciousness continues to replay that story until I get the message that my heart can be planted in love even when it is sprinkled with a little hate. Idealized love is a catalyst for war, pure essential love accepts diversity.

By understanding the nature of love I can accept feeling of hatred. When I trust my emotions, I am able to arrive at a mystical understanding and a peacefulness, which leads me back to the essence of love. In physical form my emotions are the signals that plot my daily course and filter my beliefs through a mesh of choices that become my expressions.

Hate and war have been studied and analyzed for thousands of years, but the true message contained in all these battles is always overlooked. War is one road to love, albeit a devastating one. It always contain elements of exaggerated hate in order to expand within the ever changing consciousness called love.

The destructive manifestation called war, is an attempt to bring me back in focus with my emotions, as well as my inner consciousness and accept my self in every respect rather than denying, restricting and burying that energy. Denial and internal hatred eventually manifests in an internal war and quiet suffering which creates illness and dis-ease. The ability to communicate all my emotions is an affirmation as well as an acceptance of my own complexity and multidimensionality.

The purpose of hate is to recognize the love within it. When I begin to love my self as I love my neighbor in flesh as well as spirit, war no longer becomes a manifestation. The emotion of hate is accepted and transformed back to love in a self filled act of consciousness.