Essays From The Master

Whether one is of the path or has any sort of training or not one will develop enemies as well as resentments or subjective injuries, this does not mean that one is seeking such, such things are a fact of living life. One must keep in mind that in spite of whatever enemies’ one has one is also a villain in the eyes of others and indeed the source of all evils of the world. If one can accept this one is then able to grasp that ideas of justification, fairness and the like are to a large extent subjective in nature. Many years ago someone gravely offended the author over a matter of personal taste and this very week that person had the misfortune of taking a life without meaning to. Is this terrible event karma for what the author feels the person did the author and if it is, is the ruin of one life and the loss of another equal to the offense the author felt? The answer is no because the offense was over a matter of taste, not over anything that mattered in the face of life and certainly not worth the loss of a life or the ruin of another. Did the offense the author felt toward the person set this downfall in motion, acting as a mode of karma and all of that? Again the answer is no and it further shows how such a happening to this person did nothing for the author and made the likelihood of any sort of meaningful redress unlikely to ever occur. This is the meaning to the teaching about sitting by the river long enough your enemy will float by balanced by the teaching that if you live long enough you will be the evil in someone else’s saga.

The answer to this issue is releasing the blame et al that deems a person an enemy and deal with the situation when it is at hand. One is releasing, one is not forgetting much less forgiving what happened, one is releasing the deeming of a person as an enemy which takes the energy that naming an enemy gives away from said person. Feelings such as hate held within one’s self are toxic to the body and blunts the will of the person with an enemy which also makes acting rightly in the situation much harder. This type of release can be seen in the use of baleful rituals to curse or spiritually attack enemies because if these are done right the one with the desire to do so no longer carries that desire, it is released as an attack against the enemy. If the working has an effect one knows that one’s will was centered and aligned the ebb and flow of nature and if it has no effect one is still free of the hate and the like, the user of the ritual is still free. To carry anger or hate toward an enemy or target is a gift, like boasting, to that enemy or target. In regard to the offense of the author his sense of offense did nothing to the other person, his own actions brought ruin into his life and cost the life of another. If a person acts in such a way as to become an enemy that person is choosing that by what they do and so hating or being angry about it adds nothing to the situation save giving the attacker an advantage. Release is not forgiveness or forgetting, to release is to not get caught in the trap of having an enemy, and one is refusing to make things personal that simply are not.

In martial terms, the lesson of release points to the teaching in the path that one is not acting to attack the enemy one is acting only to maintain one’s center. Where one does not contend with an enemy the enemy cannot defend against what is being down to maintain one’s center and one’s balance through it. To reject the impose to make things personal frees the will which enhances one’s mind, emotions, body and life force in dealing with the situation that created or made one the enemy in the first place. The “holy” person forgives and the optimist forgets but the warrior, the adept of this path deals with what one can and strives to hold to one’s center. If one does hold to one’s center one will be able to find or make a way for the situation to be turned in a way that benefits the one on the path.