Seems to me Nanner that the problem with 'love thy neighbour' is that while it's paramount it can be tricky when taken as a practical instruction. It's so open to misinterpretation. What's worse I don't think we can ever truly know what it means until we reach that as much spirit as human point (realisation) where it genuinely becomes possible to do so.
One example of the practical difficulties in it is the question 'what is love?'. Many define it in rose tinted nicey nicey saccharin terms when as often said love in fact is often as much 'tough' as soft.
The mother that smothers her perfectly capable son by running around after him picking up his junk, serving up laundry and meals, making excuses for him time after time as he fails through making no effort and allowing all sorts of self indulgent carry on without ever sticking a marker in the sand regarding what he needs to do is NOT expressing unconditional love.
He'll probably be perfectly happy to be indulged, she'll at some level rationalise it as being a great mother, but in practice he's being denied a learning experience, and being blocked from taking responsibility for himself while she is probably indulging some neediness in herself. It's in effect a form of unhealthy co-dependence.
That's not by the way to say that there are not instances where the son is in some way incapable, and this kind of support is consequently 100% appropriate.
The bugbear as ever is ego, or selfishness. Until we finally drop it we can't help but that self interest guides our behaviour - to whatever degree it's present. It can of course in the case of say the above Mother, or a spiritual teacher using his or her role for personal feel-good or even financial gain, or members of a religious group who play the game because they think it'll take them to heaven on a rocket be very subtly expressed, and be wholly unconscious. But it's there.
The wholly realised person (it's taught all over the place) has by comparison reached a point where since the selfish urge is no longer present they can truly empathise, and consequently see what's in the other person's interest. And for the same reason can access intuitive prompting which when blended with an unbiased intellect makes it likely they will act correctly for the other in any given situation.
They most probably will even have come to genuinely love their arse.
Trouble is what they do may be very far removed from the politically correct saccharin view (which for example is usually a selfish positioning that seeks personal advantage by making the speaker 'holier than thou') of what loving behaviour might be in that situation.
We're all somewhere on the path to realisation, but have varying distances left to travel. And can only act at our level of consciousness. It seems to me means that what matters is the path. We can't avoid getting it to varying degrees wrong all the time. What matters is that we keep on working to learn, both through experience, and through spiritual work and study. And that we persist in doing our level best to maximise the wisdom and compassion we apply in our lives.
But at the same time be realistic about the situation - we can't get it right all the time.
Meaning that at a given point we can only ever 'love our neighbour as ourself' in relative terms. Or (genuinely) do our best. How can you avoid doing harm to your neighbour when you can even avoid harming yourself and most of the time, and (as demonstrated by millions upon millions every day) haven't a clue what will make yourself happy???
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Jesus said love thine enemies (Read 3300 times)
