Pathway of Peace: Working with Hatred I suspect everyone has been troubled by the war that is happening right now between Israel and Palestine. As the war indicates, the many years of international efforts to maintain peace within the volatile context of Israel-Palestine context has failed. Why? Some point to the many underlying issues of injustice that have not been addressed in Israel-Palestine. But I wonder if it goes deeper than. War and injustice both create trauma, and one of the powerful realities of trauma is the dynamic of hatred. People who are traumatized naturally hate those who have hurt them. However, hatred is something that many in our world see as sinful, wrong, even evil. It is true that if hatred is left unchecked it can and often does lead to major traumatic atrocities like we are seeing now in the Israel-Palestine. However, this hatred, if honoured and processed in healthy ways, opens up the door to the potential healing of this trauma. Until we learn how to work with this hatred in supportive ways, I think there is little hope of healing the trauma that is fueling this conflict in the Middle East. In this blog, I want to explore what it might mean to work with this hatred in helpful and transforming ways, ways that help people struggling with hatred to regain their power, agency and voice. The Roots of Hatred I have found my Christian tradition to be very confusing in understanding the dynamic of wrath, which is the Biblical word for hatred. The Bible is very clear that humans should not express anger or any form of hatred/wrath. For example, in listing the different expressions of human fallen nature, the author of Galatians includes “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions” (Gal. 5: 20), all different expression of anger or hatred. While it is wrong for humans to express hatred and wrath, the Bible does have many teachings about how God is “slow to anger” (ten different places in Old Testament) and that God does express wrath. “God’s wrath is always regarded in the Scripture as the just, proper, and natural expression of his holiness and righteousness which must always, under all circumstances, and at all costs be maintained” (www.biblestudy.tools) . For example, in Apostle Paul's writings, we see how he saw it wrong for humans to express wrath but acceptable for God. Here is an example of this teaching. Apostle Paul writes, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse . . . Do not repay anyone evil for evil…. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord” (Romans 12:14, 17-19). This seems like a major contradiction. God can express anger and wrath in our world while humans can’t. But how does God, as Spirit, express wrath in our earthly world? The only way I know for this Divine wrath to manifest is through acts of incarnations in our world…and humans are the predominant way in which this incarnation happens with God’s spirit. Can human expressions of hatred be seen as manifestations of God’s wrath? I suspect there are both Jewish and Palestinian people who believe deeply that they are instruments of God’s wrath in the world. However, I, and many religious people would agree with me, must say no to this belief that we, as humans, can be instruments of God’s wrath in our earthly world. If I am correct, then I am not sure how God’s wrath can take on form in our earthly world. This means that we have to rethink our theology around God’s wrath, and all the verses in the Bible that talk about God’s wrath. Maybe the experience of God’s wrath is a heavenly dynamic, one that we sense mentally, emotionally and spiritually within our soul that is connected to God, but a dynamic that is never meant to be manifested physically within our earthly world. I think all of us can relate to the experience of hatred in this way. When someone hurts us or our loved ones deeply or threatens our survival or our loved one's survival due to acts that we judge as immoral or evil, we naturally are filled with feelings, thoughts and desires of hatred toward those people. We want vengeance. One could say that we are connected to God's wrath toward those people And yet we know, deep within us, that it is dangerous for us to act out from this place of wrath, just as the Christian scriptures teach. Instead, we are to leave these experiences of hatred/wrath in God's hands, that is, keep them in our mental/emotional/spiritual world where God's spirit can interact with these painful experiences, and not allow them to become expressed in our earthly world. This way of reframing hatred/wrath would be one way of holding both truths as true, that God experiences wrath/hatred, which we experience within our soul, but the human incarnation of this Divine wrath is not part of God’s will within our earthly world. I suspect some of my readers would question this framework I am proposing but as I will show in this blog, the two major psychospiritual frameworks I use in my counselling both work with hatred in this way. To help me understand better the dynamics of hatred tied to God’s wrath, I have turned to two different modalities . I plan to draw upon the Diamond Approach, a spiritual psychology that seeks to integrate the teachings of psychology into spiritual formation, and Internal Family Systems, both psychological modalities that I am quite familiar with. I have been a student of the Diamond Approach now for 17 years and I have been working with the IFS framework extensively for 3 years now in my counselling practice which has many overlapping concepts with the Diamond Approach. The Diamond Approach Understanding of Power and Hatred Within the Diamond Approach, hatred is directly connected to the experience of powerlessness. The Diamond Approach has discovered that hatred naturally “arises when you feel powerless, for it is an attempt to eliminate the frustration by annihilating it. You want to annihilate whatever problem you have, whatever is in your way, whether it is an inner or outer frustration. You want to make it disappear.” (Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry p. 328). Hatred is a survival strategy. Every time our sense of self/being is threatened, hatred will arise to protect us from those who are threatening our existence. Seen in this way, we see how hatred is a reaction, and when that reaction of hatred happens frequently in our life, often reactive structures within our soul begin to form that cause us to move to hatred very quickly anytime we sense, even a little, that our survival is threatened. Now the opposite to powerlessness is power. Our religious traditions, including Christianity, often see God as possessing this quality, the quality of Divine Power. This Divine Power is often characterized as almighty power. The common understanding of this almighty power is based on how we see power being expressed in our earthly physical world, a power that can dominate and overpower any physical expression of power. One could say that this notion of power is how our human ego understands and seeks to express power. Ego-based power has a lot of hatred associated with it. In fact, hatred is often the driving force of this power, a power to destroy our enemies who threaten our survival. When we see power in this way, we realize that Divine Power must be something very different. It is here that I find the Diamond Approach's understanding of Power helpful. Divine Power is “simply the power to be who you are, without domination or control, the power of True Nature that brings a love and a freedom in simply being yourself” (Almaas, Unfolding Now, pg. 111). This Divine Power that arises as we allow ourselves to be true to what we are experiencing in the moment is not a selfish or ego-driven power. Far from it. When we are in touch with this Divine Power, we are in a place of vulnerability, a place our ego avoids like a plague. In this place of Being, where we are vulnerable, we reveal our truth, what we are feeling and thinking, our own unique story, as Michelle Obama says it, though it may be different than others around us. That is true Divine Power in action. You will notice that there is no reactionary quality to this experience of power unlike hatred, which is why the Diamond Approach sees hatred as “false power” or “fallen power.” We will also observe that this Power quality of Being is always present or available within our experience of life, if we are in this vulnerable place of Being. We will also discover what when are in this place of Being with Divine Power, the Divine qualities of Love, Compassion, Strength, Joy, Will and other essential qualities (the Diamond Approach term for “fruits of the Spirit”) are also present or accessible. That is, these qualities of Being can co-exist. I see this interplay in my spiritual care practice when I see a palliative client shift from experiencing sadness/compassion at the prospect of dying and saying goodbye to their loved ones, to anger/strength at the unfairness of life that they have to die, to gratitude for having enjoyed many years with their loved ones…all within a few minutes. I have come to see this intermingling of experiences as a sacred moment, a sign that my client is connected to their sense of Being or Divine Nature. In contrast, hatred is a reactionary force that only arises when our ego believes our sense of survival is threatened. The same is true of anger and despair and lust, and other ego-based qualities; they are all reactionary dynamics. When these ego-based dynamics arise, people's sense of I often merged with these powerful negative experiences, and they no longer have access to any of the qualities of Being or spiritual fruits. When we are centred in our experience of Divine Power, the Diamond Approach has noticed that a sense of stillness and peace settles within our soul, and all mental activity comes to a place of rest. In this mental place of stillness, there is a deep peacefulness and that is why , within the Diamond Approach, Divine Power and Divine Peace are seen as two sides of the same coin. They co-exist. When we experience Divine Power in its fullness, we realize that Divine Power is a mental/emotional/spiritual dynamic that we, as humans, experience within our soul before it manifests within our earthly realm. And when Divine Power does manifest itself through human actions and words, its goal is not to destroy the enemy but rather to nurture a movement toward reconciliation and restoring a sense of peace to our earthly life and world. However, any time this Divine Power within a person or nation is oppressed or obstructed or distorted, and they are no longer able to express their power of being themselves, then they begin to feel powerless and fear for their survival. When that happens, the egoic dynamic of hatred and wrath naturally arise instead within us. When we see power and hatred in this way, we begin to see that there is no hope of peace in Israel-Palestine, or anywhere where there is racial/religious/cultural violence. That is until the governments of our world embraces and practices a different form of power, one shaped by Divine Power emerging from Spirit rather than Egoic Power triggered by hatred. The Dynamic of Trauma and Hatred Both the Diamond Approach and Internal Family System see a split in the soul as the source of this hatred. This soul split is due to trauma. The experience of trauma happens when an experience in life is too overwhelming for our human soul. This is especially true in our childhood years when our soul’s capacity to hold trauma was quite limited. However, we are discovering that adults can also be traumatized through distressing experiences in their life that are just too much to hold like we witness in war, car accidents, intense violence and abuse, etc. When our soul reaches this point of overwhelmness or too much, it splits as act of human survival. The Diamond Approach and Internal Family Systems (IFS) understand this split in two different ways, but I think they are simply two different ways of describing the same split. Within the Diamond Approach, this psychic split leads to a split in how we experience the reality of Being and life. No longer able to hold authentically all our experiences of life within ourselves, a split forms within our experience of self. All that is seen as bad is projected outside…as all occurring in the world, in the other. Everything that is seen as good is perceived as only occurring within one’s self or within one’s people. Furthermore, this split leads us to experiencing the evil outsiders as powerful and our experience of our good self as very powerless. The end result of this psychic split is that “this all-good, innocent, and powerless sense of self is experienced as confronting a world that is all-bad, hateful, and powerful” (Almaas, Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 450). When we reflect upon what is happening in Israel-Palestine right now, we see evidence of this psychic split on both sides. Both sides see themselves as powerless, innocent, and good and see the other side as evil and powerful. Within Internal Family Systems, this psychic split is understood differently. When the human soul becomes overwhelmed by trauma, our soul or sense of self splits into two types of parts, a Protector part often full of hatred or rage and an Exile part that contains all the pain from that trauma. The deeper the pain contained within the Exile, often a younger part, the stronger the hatred found within the Protector. The goal of the Hatred Protector is to make sure the person does not enter any situations that will trigger the traumatic pain found within the Exile. As soon as this Hatred Protector senses any risk of danger that echoes of the pain in the Exile, this Protector causes the person to feel hatred and take actions to ensure nothing happens that will retraumatize the person. (Click here: Here is a simple but helpful description of IFS and trauma) When you apply this IFS model to the Israel/Palestine context, you quickly see that the Hatred Protectors of both groups are very active, both protectors seeking to protect their people from the other side so that the deep pain of their traumatic past is not touched. Healing of Trauma and Hatred When you understand the conflict of Israel/Palestine through these lenses, you soon realize that the only way to peace is through healing the painful traumatic split that has occurred within both the Jewish and Palestinian people. I find it interesting that both the Diamond Approach and IFS see the pathway to healing as working with the emotional/spiritual dynamic of hatred. Within IFS, the dynamic of hatred toward who we perceive as the enemy is seen as a Protector structure within our soul. For healing to happen for a client, a counsellor spends a lot time with the client exploring this Hatred Protector with the goal of helping the client understand and appreciate its protective role. Just because Hatred Protectors are spewing out hateful words toward their perceived enemy does not mean these parts are intrinsically bad. Instead, these extreme expressions of hatred reflect the intensity of the traumatic pain carried by their Exile parts that these protectors are trying to shield. Before these traumatic events happened, IFS teaches that this protector part didn’t exist in this form: it was simply a part of a healthy dynamic soul. However, due to the overwhelming pain of the trauma, the best available survival strategy was a psychic split, where a Hatred Protector part developed to protect the Exile part, carrying the traumatic wound, from ever being triggered. These Hatred Protectors are doing everything possible to keep these past traumatic memories from being triggered. IFS counsellors spend a lot of time with clients helping them see the positive protective nature of their Hatred Protectors with the goal that eventually the client's sense of Self will begin to validate and appreciate these protective parts. This exploring process involves helping the client notice how this Hatred Protector affects their thoughts, feelings, and sensations in their body. This inquiry also includes helping the client discover when this Hatred Protector first appeared in their lives, and all the memories and narratives connected to it. This investigation also means noticing how this Hatred Protector dictates their behaviors and impacts their relationships, both those they see as friends and those they distrust and treat more as enemies. Through all of these inquiries, the client begins to understand how this Hatred Protector protects them and is working so hard to do so. But they also see something else. The begin to understand how this Hatred Protector has a very limited view and understanding of life and the world, and the harm that arises and has occurred due its thinking and actions. This exploration process requires a lot of patience, grace, and time for clients are often very anxious of their Hatred Protectors (a sign of an Anxious Protector) and often judged themselves as evil (a sign of a Judgmental Protector) because of these Hatred Protectors . However, as the client works through these other Protectors and begins to validate and befriend their Hatred Protector, they begin to appreciate why their Hatred Protector is so active. This Hatred Protector has a huge fear that if it stops doing its job, "making the client hate people they perceive as dangerous", the client will re-experience that painful trauma again. It is important for the counselor and client's sense of Self to see and validate this profound fear. In doing so, the Hatred Protector slowly softens and begins to trust the client’s sense of Self. Eventually, when enough trust develops between the Hatred Protector and the client’s Self and their counsellor, the Hatred Protector will allow the client and their counsellor to begin to spend time with the Exile part. This opens the door to healing the traumatic pain held by the Exile part. Once the client's Self begins to care for and protect the Exile part that carries the traumatic pain, the Hatred Protector no longer has to be so active to doing its protective role. If we were to apply this IFS approach to the Israel-Palestine war, we would realize that our ultimate goal is not peacekeeping, trying to manage the hatred on both sides so that war does not happen. Rather, our goal would be to have two groups of trauma-trained counsellors, one group for each side of the conflict, to work at helping the nations of Israel and Palestine heal the different traumas driving their conflict. The counsellors' purpose would be to hear and validate the trauma that they are hearing from the ethnic group they are supporting, both current trauma and historical trauma. We know from the counselling office that we cannot move quickly to healing the trauma pain of the Exile parts of each ethnic nation. Instead, these trauma-based counsellors would have to work with the Hatred Protectors of each nation for a long time and express a lot of understanding, patience, and grace. Eventually enough trust with the Hatred Protectors would develop allowing for a deeper healing process to occur that would address the traumatic pain driving the violent conflict both Israel and Palestine. While IFS provides a structure of how to work with the trauma-based hatred driving the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the Diamond Approach provides insights to help counsellors support people and nations working with their Hatred Protectors. This involves understanding the psychic split at the root of the hatred object relationship between Israel and Palestine. Almaas, the developer of the Diamond Approach, states it this way: "To understand this object relation involves recognizing the defense mechanism of splitting, and therefore coming into contact with one’s split-off hatred and destructiveness. When one finally recognizes that it is one’s projected hatred that one is afraid of, and deals with the fear and the splitting, one then begins to feel the hatred directly" (The Inner Journey Home, pg. 205). As we allow ourselves to experience directly the hatred that we project onto our enemy, it is important we feel the hatred but not act on it. Almaas writes, "learn to hold your hatred, be with it, feel it as much as possible from the inside and from the outside. Seek to know hatred, to feel the energy of it, to feel the power of it, and recognize all the associations that come up in relation to it. See into the history that created it and understand that, too. Continue in your inquiry until you are finally able to feel that hatred completely, in its full energy and power. If you do not obstruct it through judgment or rejection, the hatred will—just like anything else that arises in your experience—naturally reveal its own nature. It will dissolve, leaving what is true. And that truth turns out to be essential power—it is the power of truth and peace and stillness. This is the immense and silent power to be—to be undisturbed and unruffled by the ignorance and reactivity of the familiar self. It is simply the power to be who you are, without domination or control, the power of True Nature that brings a love and a freedom in simply being yourself" (The Unfolding Now, pg. 111). I know this may sound airy-fairy to some of my readers, but this description fits very closely my experience when I transformed a hatred-based relationship in my life, with the help of my Diamond Approach teacher. As I allowed myself to experience this hatred directly and fully, in the Present Moment, and not project it, I felt like I was full of evil, almost Satanic in nature. It felt so wrong, which scared me, but as I stayed with and explored this mysterious experience, it was totally different than I at first thought. The feeling of hatred changed…and it transformed into a Power that I had never felt before. This Power had a sense of almighty to it, that this Power could conquer and destroy anything it confronted. However, this Power also had the ability to not act, to simply be with what is without needing to intervene or change anything. It had an aspect of self control connected to it, which as a Christian I perceived as the spiritual gift of self control (Galatians 5: 23). I realized that if I stayed fully present to this experience of Power, there was no danger of me ever abusing this Power. And as I thought about the person I hated, the hate had dissipated. I realize that I had no need to do any harm to this person, that doing harm would be counter-productive and would only lead to more pain, not healing. Instead, now in touch with my own sense of Power, this person was no longer powerful or scary to me. In allowing myself to experience my hatred and discover my Power, that process somehow severed the emotional link with the person I hated. The psychic split had been healed, transformed. They no longer had power over me. Now, to my surprise, I started to feel tender feelings toward this person which totally surprised me. I shared my personal journey with transforming one of my hatred-based object relationships to help you begin to dream of what this could look like in the Israel-Palestine context. This past week, CBC reported an amazing story that is happening in my backyard of Kitchener-Waterloo that illustrates a beginning step toward what I am encouraging in this blog around the Israel-Palestine conflict. The news article shared how the "Interfaith Grand River (IGR) held a sharing circle last week where community members of various faiths — including those from the Jewish and Muslim communities — explained how they feel about the Israel-Hamas war, but made a point of leaving politics out of it" (See article). Jay Moore, President of Interfaith Grand River said that "it was very high-powered, meaningful, enlightening, and we want to carry that spirit of opening up, bringing down barriers, and we have to start with ourselves." Such vulnerable conversations allow Muslims and Jews, as well as others, to own the mixed feelings the conflict in Israel-Palestine brings up for them including their feelings of distrust, fear, dislike, and even hatred. Such conversations allow us to practice our vulnerability where we can own our feelings of hatred and fear with one another without having to act out on them. In doing so, it allows all those involved in the conversation to begin to understand the dynamics of hatred and why they exist. Only then when we learn to hold this hatred, without discharging the feelings through actions or speeches of hate, can we begin to heal the psychic split at the root of hatred.
It is my hope that what was modelled at Interfaith Grand River can become a model for others in the world. We need to find new ways to hold and process our feelings of hatred so that the painful traumas behind the Israel-Palestine conflict can be healed leading to a deeper possibility of peace. Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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