To piggy back off of AA's thread, can I get some help understanding what you mean when you say the below terms? What do these terms feel like for you internally?
Hate-what does it feel like? How long do you maintain it? Why? It is anger fueled or does it just mean establishing a distance?
Hate is a clenching of the heart. It is also possible for "love" to involve a clenching of the heart, so in one view, it can seem like love and hate are the same, merely positively or negatively directed.
However, both are based upon
desire, by which I do not mean libido, but in particular that
one wants something. When the wanting is strong, and directed toward a particular person, it can seem like love if you want the person to be present in your life in whatever regard, and it will be hatred if you want the person out of your life or wish ill upon the other.
In the end, it's merely a reflection of what reality is and what you want from reality.
These are normal feelings that often feel very deep, but they lack spiritual depth.
Forgiveness-When and how do you forgive? What does it mean to forgive? What do you do if you do not forgive another? What do you do with that remaining negative emotion internally?
Forgiveness
is the unclenching of the heart.
It is, however, an attitude, not a feeling. It is the choice to unclench your own heart. It unclenches both the hatred
and the loving style I mention above. In the former, it is more like classical forgiveness, though I would imagine a lot of people "forgive" in the not-so-open way, feeling like they have a responsibility to forgive, but don't actually let go of feeling the hurt in one's heart. What I'm talking about is just completely letting go of the hurt, all of it, so that it simply doesn't hurt any more. The difficult part is that the hurt
feels like it comes from the wrongdoer, but the hurt one feels is always within oneself, and is under one's own emotional control.
Where does the remaining negative emotion go? It is identified and remembered, but not relived. It becomes part of oneself, but not in a hateful, resentful way.
The unclenching of the heart also applies to the "love" I described in the reply to the first question. In this sense, it is not forgiveness, but acceptance. What happens is that we tend to have a picture of what the one we love
should be like, a set of expectations. Those expectations are hurts waiting to happen. The object of your love can do something perfectly reasonable and innocent, yet hurt you because your expectations impose a violation. It becomes something of an art to determine whether a hurt is truly another's wrongdoing (they did something wrong that most people would objectively recognize as being hurtful), or is really just one's own unreasonable expectations. Either way, dropping the expectations, letting go of the feeling that things
have to be a particular way, is what unclenches the heart and allows real love to flourish.
Love towards mankind in general-What does this feel like?
Pretentious posturing, for the most part. I distrust most claims of love for mankind, as it feels as if one is trying to make oneself bigger by claiming to have such a love. If one has a loving attitude, then one loves
people, not "mankind" in the abstract.
Love towards close ones-What does this feel like and how does it differ from the above?
Love towards close ones ... this is where I feel most complete. With most people, my natural expression of love is stifled. It is too "forward", too invasive. In order to express the love I feel, there must also be a connection that conveys the love. To have my love expressed, and to have its expression fully, completely positively received ... I'm afraid that words cannot describe it.
