By Ustaz Mark Bang
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” How much do you love yourself? How much is too much? I love myself enough to defend myself from everything that can hurt me without even thinking if I should do it.
I think it is a good definition of love—both loving yourself and loving your neighbor.
You love yourself (and your neighbor) too much when you start to actively look for potential dangers for your love interest to attack them preemptively. This is a phobia or fanatic and leads straight to hatred. Why should I love my neighbors as I love myself? You are not obligated to do anything for anyone else. Condemning someone for not loving their enemies is one of the worst things ever to do to someone.
Our healing journeys is different from everyone else’s. When someone is mean or bitter to anyone for no reason or a dumb reason, it means it’s the bullies’ own issues that they put on others. Bullies tend to be secretly bland, not creative, and unhappy and lack success. The majority of the reason someone is mean to someone is because they are jealous.
When someone reacts negatively to an enemy that usually means that the person who is the victim in the situation is spilling out negative emotions they had already had long ago. Nobody controlled your emotions but you. It’s best to walk away and ignore people. It’s good to just love them from a distance.
Being mean back only adds fuel to the fire. These people are pathetic, bitter, and lacking; they want you to react because they want attention. They love to see perfectly happy people react to their BS. They want you to go from being happy to mad. Just forgive them. Be a better person and move on. Show kindness to people in need. Connect with a loved ones. Find happiness and be okay with being alone. I realized when I became happy in my own company that I didn’t let people like that control me. When I took the time to meditate on my feelings to feel them, I became less numb, and I found myself stopping running from negativity. I faced it head-on as if it never mattered, and so my mood calmed down.
There are times when loving neighbors is not your obligation in times of civil war, war, justice, or toxic people. I know that there are some people I shut out of my life because they were so toxic, and I know anyone who condemns me for that is toxic themselves, and I shut them out too. So be careful because a lot of people say love thy neighbor because they are toxic and abusive. If everyone loved their neighbor 100%, there would be no revolutions that result in the peace and freedom we have today.
We can realize the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” in today’s world through education. Education means filling our media, our schools, colleges, universities, and our cultures—literally everything that influences us—with examples and explanations of our need to achieve positive connections among us all. If we do so, then there is hope of reaching positive social values and a whole, pleasant, good, and perfect world. If not, then our constantly growing ego—the desire to receive that wish to devour others and nature for self-benefit—pits us up against each other on a collision course to destruction.
We can understand the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” similarly to how an ideal family functions. In the beginning of creation, we were a single family. Today, we need to realize ourselves as a single family among several billions of people, which is possible through regular learning of our interconnection and interdependence.
We are currently like a family that grew up and lost their connection, and we need to bring them together to talk about it. That is what we need to do today in humanity. You can love someone before loving yourself, but you will, metaphorically, bleed to death. You will be a victim, and those who come to love you will take from you instead. Because you are an unprotected storehouse with lots of worthwhile things in there (and you don’t know their worth). And everyone is luting… If you are not ready and armed, they are coming, and they are damaging and stealing… Whatever is of worth… within, even the finest things you thought were worth nothing.
Our energy to love comes from the essential love energy we are actually made from. If we ignore ourselves, we are always wanting, always wondering if we are okay. How do we know, you see? This (denying ourselves unconditional love) keeps us in a vulnerable and exhausting place. We can love while we are self-inflicted empty… But we can’t love like we want to; we have little energy. Then the love turns to fear-motivated; I have to keep going or I will lose or suffer. Yes, you can love when you are empty, but it hurts like hell, and it will kill you eventually. Soul, mind, heart, and body.
We have to give ourselves love (premium gasoline)… kind words, regard, trust, ears, attention, then we are filled and overflowing with love for others.. and it takes nothing from us, but increases the magic love we have given ourselves. and again spills. We do not need someone else’s love’ to be blissfully full… But if we think we do need it, we give up too much, way too much. The magic of self-importance, regard, respect, and love.
Yes. To ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ means to love your neighbor as if they are you yourself. That is to say, treat them the way you’d treat your own self or treat them as if you’re treating your own self. Everyone loves to be treated well, and with kindness and love, everyone wants to be shown mercy. So in the same way one wishes for these good things (goodness, love, kindness) for their own self, they must also seek the same for another. “Public Staunchest Ally.”
The writer of this article is a human rights activist, writer, and professional teacher.