Thinking kindly about an unkind action isn’t really necessary in order to love your enemies. However, it is necessary to love the person behind that unfriendly, protective pattern of behavior. It doesn’t matter if a person acts arrogant, impolite, pushy, bossy, withdrawn, or fierce; they are using those behaviors to hide their love.

At first it may seem improbable that anyone would hide their love. But most of us feel at least a little, if not a lot, vulnerable without our shields of anger, judgment, fear, and pretense. While it makes no rational sense to feel protected by such shields, it makes emotional sense. It was nasty actions from others that were birthed from their shields of anger, judgment, fear, and/or pretense that hurt us emotionally. Therefore, we unconsciously come to the conclusion that we must attain and maintain those shields in order to fight back.

Emotional shields may act out in any number of behaviors, from obnoxious to what is even considered kind. However, a shield blocks your heart-energies from recognizing and joining with other Hearts. Since you unconsciously believe that shields are necessary to protect you from unfriendly and unkind patterns, you may have a hard time hearing that those patterns are only illusions. All that is real comes from love, and love always exists behind those protective emotional shields and the resulting bad patterns.

Recognition that this game plan of hiding the Heart is ineffective is a good beginning point for loving your enemies. Telling yourself that there is more to this person you dislike than their bad pattern of behavior gives you permission to look further. But you can’t look further unless you put on your “heart glasses.”

Heart vision makes it possible to see beyond the film of illusion to what is real. Every single person has a Heart that can love and yearns to resonate that love with other Hearts. It is just that most people are short-sighted and can’t see beyond the film of illusion. In fact, we have been trained to see what frightens us instead of what sustains us.

In order to wear “heart glasses,” you have to look inside your own shields to find that love within yourself. With each heart-energy that you uncover, you need to spend time getting to know it until you love it enough that you recognize it through any enemy’s illusionary shield.

Just saying you love a heart-energy is not really enough. Full love thinks, feels, and acts love. Recently my granddaughter fell in with a group of hecklers and started teasing a little Down syndrome girl who was in her class at school. She felt bad about acting that way and told her mother how ashamed she was. Her mother helped her to discover that the heart-energy that she did not fully love in that interaction was kindness. So she wrote down something kind she could do for, and/or with, this little girl everyday for a week. It was in this way that she came to love kindness more fully.

Unless you love your Heart with all your actions and your thinking, you will not love your neighbor as yourself. And to not love your neighbor—and that includes your enemies—you don’t really love the Heart. For after all, their Heart is just as lovable as yours. So look to see if you have anyone around you that has patterns of behavior that bother you. Begin to excavate through those patterns with your x-ray heart vision of love. If you can’t seem to go there, then go to the source of the problem, and find which of your own heart-energies you haven’t yet loved.

By seeing your “enemies” as opportunities to love more fully, your opinion of patterns will change, your need for shields will disappear, and your heart vision will improve. This is not to say you will ever love nasty patterns of behavior, but they will no longer keep you from loving the real person behind those patterns. Your protective emotional shields will drop away, and the illusion of separation between you and your neighbor will fade. The alternative to this plan is to stay judgmental, wounded, and separate. You have a choice.

My recording, Blessing People In, is a wonderful tool to help you love more fully – and ultimately bring more Light to our world. Thank you for your Light!