Love and Hate

Date: 96-07-22 18:36:00 EDT

Jeff,

You write:

"Not to be condescending, but I hope that there are not those who are saying "yeah, the opposite of Love is Hate" what I hope is that we are not still hashing that one out!"

Guess I'll take the bait and play the foil.

This issue relates to the Divine Paradox, the experience of the pairs of opposites, and our task as beings who have taken on the limitations of physical space-time.

I believe that it was A.D. who said (with regards to Key 6 - The Lovers) "True discrimination is the ability to see reality by discerning differences yet at the same time be acting in accordance with the reality of unity."

We develop discrimination through the experience of the pairs of opposites. We thus learn to develop our faculties (Attention, Memory, Imagination, Reason, Intuition) to receive spiritual intuition about the true nature of the problem or item of interest before us.

What this means to me is that we have to use our other faculties first before we can receive the spiritual intuitions that bring to us the principles allowing us to see the unity behind the appearance of opposites. In our life we do see and experience relationships that are reciprocal and harmonious (loving) and we also see relationships that are inharmonious. The key is to learn to see the principles that lie behind both. Discrimination is intuitive.

Saying "All is love" may be true in the absolute sense, and it may help us to open up to feel God's grace and love, but it can also act as a bland platitude that keeps us from developing our discriminating faculties. There are many frequencies of vibration. Discrimination means being able to detect them, understand their nature, and yet know that they are all sprit.

I prefer A.D.s' saying. "Love everyone, Trust no one." To me, this statement means: "Act from Unity, yet be Discriminating."

There ARE (spiritual) vibrations out there that are in-harmonious to your own, whether they be lower, higher, or just not in harmony with where you are at this stage of your evolutionary development.

To answer the question: Is Hate the Opposite of Love? In the relative sense yes, if we define Hate as the feeling caused by inharmonious reciprocity due to incompatible vibratory rates, and Love as harmonious reciprocity between opposites. This is a reasonable answer since most often this question is posed within the context of human relationships. (In the absolute sense, the answer is no, since from God's point of view there is nothing that is not God/Love, and Love and Hate are but two sides of the same coin.  This is the Divine Paradox spoken about in the book "The Kybalion").

Therefore, for us as beings who have taken on the limitations of space-time, the question boils down to the principle of Vibration and the principle of Polarity. The key is to not let yourself begin to vibrate with discord, but to raise yourself above it by using discrimination to identify the vibration (and thus avoid judging the person) and either shield yourself, raise your vibration to avoid being influenced on that plane, or radiate back love to influence the other person via induction.

Of course radiating love to a person who can't handle it (vibration wise) could really irritate them, so be careful.

JC