I Am Consciousness Itself

 

                                HATE AND FIRE

                                     ARE BOTH

                           FOUR LETTER WORDS

                                     C. S. Roberts, 2026 all rights reserved                                                      

 

Like arson hate begins as a targeted thing.  But, like a wildfire, hate will spread until it consumes the innocent. Like fire, hate often overtakes unintentional targets. Let’s talk about that.

Hate usually chooses a target while natural Fire does not choose.

Hate grows and spreads, so does Fire.

Hate causes flashovers that consume all it can devour as does Fire.

Hate will suck all the oxygen in the area so that bad decisions are made, Fire does that too.

Hate will smolder as does Fire, making both easy to restart. Once hate becomes its own, living thing, it too no longer chooses.

Hate’s intense, deep-seated biases and prejudices are the feelings that fuel the fires of this too often unrestrained emotion. It is driven by anger, contempt and disgust for anything or anyone that is perceived as different. These things can be a lifestyle, a belief, an action (usually misunderstood, misinterpreted or an unfounded assumption.) All of this is usually drawn from someone’s past. Whether born of abuse, manipulation, a toxic environment or devaluation, the stage is set for those persons to attack from their damaged past. Some folks realize this and strive to become better people but, more and more often, they do not.

To try to make themselves feel better they strike out in much the same way they were hurt in the first place, quite frequently not even realizing exactly what they are doing or why they are doing it. Soon, they meet others of like mind and heart, thus the smoldering embers of resentment burst into a conflagration of ugliness that will soon burst into the flames of unbridled hatred. As their coalition grows, the flames (of hatred) get hotter and less controlled.  This is as large a problem as a raging wildfire bent on consuming as much acreage as possible. It doesn’t choose what or where it burns, it just consumes. Hatred does the exact same thing. It is a conflagration of the mind, of the heart and, here’s the clencher, it also destroys the vessel in which it is housed. That vessel being you, the person holding all that hate.

This brings us to the question of how to stem the rampant spread of the stuff. With fire it is a relatively easy thing to remove one or more of the things that keep it going, fuel, oxygen and/or heat. With hate it becomes a very personal battle.

The dissolving of this oh so toxic emotion starts from within, down deep where it first began. Hate is not an emotion that is born with us, it is taught. This damaging lesson is brought about by many different things such as how we are treated as well as what we hear and see as children. The treatment we endure as we become thinking people. What we see as love. If we grow up in a hurtful, malignant unhealthy environment we can be deeply damaged.

The initial damage is not truly on us, however, to grow and learn enough to realize that it was such is, most definitely ours to recognize and do something about. From our deepest heart and mind most of us feel that something is not right, something is off and needs looking into. This is where healing starts because once you become consciously aware of these things, you CANNOT become unaware of them. Your job then is to figure out what is going on. Aks yourself where it came from and why do you think you hold on to it. Does it make you feel better to hurt others? Does it give you a sense of control? A sense of power over someone you see as less than? If so, I strongly suggest you find a therapist to help you see how to heal those feelings. Why? Because they breed hatred.

Here are some guidelines to give you some ideas of how to help yourself and turn the broken parts into healthy, helpful thoughts and actions. WARNING; DON’T TRY ALL OF THESE AT ONCE. You will overwhelm yourself and fail. Take what time you need. You didn’t get in this situation overnight, you can’t solve it quickly.

As I said in the paragraph before this one, Educate yourself about you. Go ahead and ask yourself the hard questions. Pull your demons (kicking and screaming) into the light, that’s where they dissolve. Is it painful? Yes, AND it is healing because once you realize you aren’t alone in what feels like a hole you can’t get out of, you start to see light where you thought there wasn’t any.

Learn compassion and true caring for yourself as the miracle of life that you are. Most of us (especially women) were taught self- deprecation and to always put ourselves last in all things. How familiar is this, “Take care of your family first and then, if you have anything left, take care of you.” I tell you here that you can’t serve from an empty vessel. You MUST fill yourself so that you have strength and stamina for others. If you feel good about you, then this feeling shines out to others. Learn gratitude and appreciation for all that you have and all that you are. This lifts your spirits and the spirits of everyone around you. This positivity and gratitude crowd out feelings of resentment, jealousy and envy which are the building block of hate. Practice mindfulness about everything you do. Being mindful focused on good things rather than things that make you feel anxious.

Own your mistakes and learn from them. That is how we, as thinking people grow, learn better and do better. Without mistakes we would never know what went wrong in any given scenario. Own what is yours and don’t try to blame others. Blaming others is a sure way not to learn anything.

STOP DOOM SCROLLONG

Next, look long and hard at your personal biases and prejudices. Understand that these are learned behaviors. Anything learned can be unlearned, redirected and retrained, therefore, retrain yourself. This works because, if you understand others and why they are different, they aren’t seen as an obstacle to your safety and happiness. Learn about other cultures and their traditional behaviors as well as their learned ones. Just because we are different colors, have different religions, different celebrations, ways of dressing and different outlooks do NOT make us enemies. Consider this, we celebrate divergence and differences in other species, why not our own. Without them we would be extremely boring.

Teach kindness and discuss the rightness of allowing others to be themselves. It isn’t your job to control the world. All you have to control is you.

As you accomplish these steps you will be another mechanism in the ongoing effort to cool hatred, calm fear and restore peace and sanity to a very troubled species, the human race.

Do Peace, Be Love.