What opium was son of man on? love your haters? traitors? betrayers?

While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus, the simple teacher from Galilee and his entourage, the disciples. The Pharisees saw and were perplexed, and they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors, beggars and sinners?” He heard this and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Now get the heck out outta here and go learn the meaning of the words.

Love is complicated and hard, too hard sometimes. Many times I silence my mind to try and understand what state of mind this great teacher and philosopher must have been in, inorder to feel comfortable among those considered outcasts, the beggars, the leprous, those least understood, those who did not command attention, the seemingly lost, the devious, the tormented and disturbed psychos, the stenchy sickly ones that polluted fresh breeze with their decaying raw wounds, and ultimately those within us that betray us. All those whose ultimate goal was to destroy us? What opium was son of man on? perhaps better still, who will teach me what it takes to give such elusive love?
It is not always easy to look at another and not judge. Everyday there are horror stories about ethnic cleansing in Africa; most based on hate and the ever widening gap between “them’ versus “us’ . Yes, a continent far away from here, stories of child slavery, widespread hutus and tutsi phenomen, extreme poverty, ethnic cleansings and religious dogmatic warfare. We dismiss that as not our own story as those people are way out there. They dont speak like us or look like us. They are savages who tear on each other’s fresh like demented beasts. We turn our heads with horror and pity, wish them quick recovery from their ignorance and hope they awaken sooner so they can be like us. Meanwhile focus is on the next not so savage thing around us. Alas, the savage may also be within us.

But once in a while someone among us brings along news about the magnificience and splendid beauty of the same continent, the kindness and compassion of its inhabitants and all this does is creates confusion. While all this drama is playing out in people’s thoughts, and in the midst of it all, a message has just been delivered that Africa is not just a home for elephants and lions. Africa is us. If you want to know Africa, go find out for yourself, you might meet yourself there. Skeptics will always be skeptics and the beholders of beauty perceive beauty. We behold what nourishes us and always recognize what we know.

I first read the book “Say You’re One Of Them” and I became intrigued by the premise and found the title to be wonderfully evocative and frightening at the same time. I was spellbound. The sentiments invoked at some point in all of the stories underscored the all familiar premise of an “us vs them” mentality. In the stories, children’s only hope of survival is by blending with “them” and hiding their ‘otherness”. Those that tell their stories recount details of their situation and life as simple fact, with little commentary, expectation or expression on how the reader should feel. The family expresses gratitude when they are given a gift of love because they see it as such and no more.
It’s up to the giver to give for the sake of giving and not to change anyone. Give to change yourself.There are moments in every day that the evil that hovers does not catch up. We may as well seize those moments to liberate ourself from hate. They are intimate moments, hidden under the stare of the ordinary next to you. The silent moments that happen when no one is looking. As true and magical as a mother’s nurture a child.

At some moment we need to stop and pay attention. This sent me thinking deeply on how I conduct my life in relation to all around me. So I began to judge other people’s situations with a need for my spirits to be renewed. All the wonderful stories, horror stories, other’s misery, or even other’s success soaks in as the other part of us in an almost reflective way. They are the stories that become a mirror against which we should view ourselves, reminding us of what’s important, refocusing and refreshing us. How we deal with our friends, family, collegues, our neighbour’s dog that is constantly barking the whole night, let alone the fact that the owner is absolutely hate-able. What we look and see or feel about others is always a true reflection of what we are inside.

The connectedness with which we exist spells each of us as a small strand in the web weaved together to hold the center that support our existence. We cannot destroy any of the singular strands without distabilising the grounds and the web on which we are held intact. When we stop and pay attention, we will exactly be seeing ourselves in the raw wounds of a leprous man, we will see ourselves reflected deep in the cold empty eyes of a homeless person seeking love and shelter, we will get a chance to identify with an abandoned hungry child lying numb on a cold alley even though we have never gone a day hungry or abandoned, we will hear ourselves in the crying voices of the massacred spirits. We shall stop giving and ask nothing in return. We shall become the other. We shall become whole by identifying ourselves in everyone else regardless of their crap. And love begins.

When you love others you can never recognize hate even when its thrown to you over and over. The perceived feelings are not always about the object of our observation but about something deeply embedded inside of us. For sure it is always easy to tell stories about other people, whether they be true or false. It is a hardship to refrain from spreading gossip and slander about another person, at least from most of us. But in the end all stories are insightful opportunities offered so we can see who we really we are, Saints or sinners needing redemption.

But what with his “in your face” assertion, love thy enemy as well? really jesus, are you kidding? I dont know about you but I have always wondered what one has to be made of to live by this wisdom that the wise simple teacher from Galilee spoke about. It’s the question every critical wondering mind ponders.


Check this one out, Is she a traitor, a betrayer deserving of love, really jesus? I am talking about that girl friend who “stole” your man after entrusting her with all the secrets that binds you to your beloved, the mother who abandons her children to please the new man in her life. What do you do with traitors? What do you do with slaves who get half way to freedom, take one look at the swamp that stands between them and freedom, and decide they want to go back to the plantation? What do you do with the slave who sell out his kinmen and friends down in the slave-quarters to the master who captivates his own kind?

How do you love politicians who grow fat bellies, ride around town in darkened convoys , turn the house of people’s welfare into a den of robbers, while their constituents languish in hunger and poverty? Well, the teacher from Galilee had a different take to all of the above. Love them and love them trully. Now lets fast forward the debate and see why jesus thought it was wise. Remember Judas? one of Jesus trusted entourage? He did an honorable thing to teach this wisdom. Judas took his own life, by the noose.

You do not betray those that confide in you without betraying your existence, consciousness and perhaps without weaving a noose around your neck. So the eater becomes the eaten. That’s when you know that when we burn with rage against the perceived enemy, listen to the small voice that gently whispers in your ears “Let it go, do not soak the vibrations of those that make your stomach turn”. Justice is always rendered the exact moment a violation occurs. This is a law of the universe, and does not deviate, get bent or manipulated. Its true to itself. Thats why its easier to love your enemy as they have already hated themselves and judged themselves at the exact moment they transgress against. After you arm yourself with such wisdom, you will not be bothered by whatever hate is thrown to you. It’s inconsequential as you have let your inner self rise to vibrations of a higher dimension of understanding, where you refuse to become exactly what you hate in the aggresor.

Who I am kidding, to be sincere, I am sometimes a skeptic of such radical love, but I get it, all I have to do is envision the dangling noose on the neck of those that violates me, soak and bask in the calmness of knowing what they do is to themselves and I am not part of what they see in me, unless i choose to participate.

While violence isn’t something I subscribe to normally, I can understand why the legendary slave Harriet Tubman felt it necessary to keep a weapon of defence with her at all times just in case the snakes of betrayal loam their ugly heads along her path of escape to freedom. The gun she carried was not just to be used on the slave master’s bounty hunters but was kept ready to demolish the most lethal of her obstacles and demons among her own people; slaves turned traitors, the snakes between our mattresses, the wolfs in sheep’s skin, the enemy within. Before each escape she made it clear to the escaping slaves that she would deal with them with fair love. Elimination if they dont love themselves. Paradox huh? She would growl on the faces of all those who wanted to escape with her in the harbor, and say to them, “If you don’t follow me when I go out, I’m going to kill you. Go forward and live or turn back and die.”. Those were harsh but necessary words. She already had used the sword effectively with love and no one dies.



And He answered, “Turn the other cheek, and let them strike you again. Give them love in return for hate. If you must take up the sword, then do it in great reluctance, and only after you have stepped aside time and time again. Remember that I bring you not peace, but a sword,for this Path will separate you from your families and friends, and your enemies will persecute you in their ignorance.”



Remember moses in the wilderness. He had to master his emotions to survive leading a bunch of hebrew runaway slaves. No sooner had they almost found their freedom from their captor than they began little whispers, murmuring and throwing tantrums about being hungry and preferring their slave pumpkins and their captors pallets to the harsh desert conditions they now faced (Exodus 16:3).



I wonder what kind of a man Moses had to be as I would have kicked some ass and damn them back to slavery if that’s what they wanted. I am so sure Moses may have complained to God about these ungrateful buggers, but, surely, wouldn’t moses have mobilized his lieutenants and colonels to smark the heads of the devious among them, dump them behind or single out the weak quiters and exhausted complainers who did not “get it”? Perhaps dissuade the runaway fugitives from turning back and betraying the entire crew to Pharoah’s army about the whereabouts of the Hebrew camp somewhere in the wilderness?

Moses was operating from a vibration higher than the emotions evoked by the complainers. Perhaps he was ahead of the game and knew the old wisdom that every organized group, family, movement, relationship, comradeship will always have wolves in sheep’s skin, traitors, quiters, turncoats, defectors, betrayers, venomous snakes under the mattress and people who will never get it. To hate such people is to betray wisdom and to reflect back on them the very same defeatist low vibrations they emit is not love.

Of course, we must urgue that in a not so primitive civilization, everyone has a right to change heart and to express their convictions even if that means sharing the views of the oppresor against their own kind. They can join the enemies camp if they care as that’s their freedom, will and choice. For, don’t we all prop those that serves our interests and shun those that don’t?



In the end, no one makes enemies unless they see what they hate about themselves being reflected in others. Hate is a reflection of what inside of you that stirs your stomach upside down. You cannot love if you have no love inside of you. This gets to be a really challenging battle. How can you do good to and love someone who has just said words about you intended to wound and destroy? How can you not feel anger, and fear, and the hate that rises so easily from them?



Once again I found some pretty useful words from somewhere…. “Love your enemies, or you will not lose them; and if you love them, you will lose enemies while reforming them;” “The mental arrows shot from another’s bow is practically harmless, unless our own thought barbs it. Damn, thats cool stuff.



Indeed it is our pride that makes another’s deed trully pricky and offensive, our big ego that feels hurt by another’s person’s self-assertion and expression.



Who is this enemy that you trully should’nt love ? Is it a creature or a thing outside thine own creation? Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception? whats inside of you I ask? What is it that harms you that resides outside of you?



The wisdom that lay beneath Jesus demand of loving the unlovable is therefore revealed. That If you wish to punish your enemy, you should make him or her hate somebody.For when you hate you suffer. In this context, raise your vibrations to a higher dimension; actively love your enemies even more but ensure you passively eliminate the anger and fear from your own heart by wishing them well while still opposing them.You will be detached from the low vibrations and you will therefore not get hurt by something not attached to you.



It means finding ways of doing good to them, while simultaneously holding unattached love in your consciousness completely without rancor or judgment, and while also resisting the injustice they represent. This way, who wins? In the battle of love and hate, there are no winners or losers, just pure vibrations of beings existing at the dimension they belong to.



I remember this young boy during the presidential campaigns; he stood still planted a gaze on president Obama and asked, “Why do people hate you?” Would it have been a beautiful spectacle if the president’s response went something like, ”well, little son, i dont know why you think people hate me, because I only feel loved. Everywhere I go I see love and feel really loved and blessed than any other time i can remember son! Now go get some good grades, my government is here to support you and to listen to you at all times. Thanks for the question son”.



I think that’s real turning of the other cheek; and the result, the eater becomes the eaten. Perhaps better still would have been for Jesus to announce, hey y’all! I know those suckers are your enemies, which is cool with me. I don’t expect it to be easy goal as y’all human and frail of wisdom sometimes, you all suckers for pride, anger, ego, misjudgment, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, mistake, and all the other foibles and associated crap humans are subject to; but hey I have been around and I know what works really good, trust me on this one; Loving your enemies is as good as speaking the truth. Get behind being too egoistic, bless them and shame the devil that may as well be a resident inside of y’all. Trully I say unto you, all that love heaped onto thy enemies bossoms, you will have shot them for your own good. So why y’all not shoot your enemies with Harriet’s Hubman gun? I mean, Kill them with kindness, damn suckers!



Harriet Hubman made nineteen trips as a “conductor”, risking her life every time, and successfully freed about 300 slaves. She carried a gun and threatened any slave who wanted to turn back.



Yes, kill them with kindness. Silence the damn suckers with kindness. Heap hot coals on dem haters; why? Here’s a “selfish” reason. It’s for our own good.



Hugs to all of you, especially the enemy within me, I salute you.



Wambo.