I have been thinking about the power of freewill lately, and how we can use this power to have a more balanced life. As a traumatized child and later adult, I never felt like a very powerful person. Since healing my past emotional wounds, I have come to realize something very important about freewill. We each have the power to protect ourselves and decide what is best for each of us.
What I have observed about the spiritual community is that there is extreme passivity that is everyone should love each other, always, and forever without giving much thought to the fact we can love different people differently. For example, we can be in love with our partners, lovers, and spouses, we can share love with our friends, and we can even give compassion love to those who we are acquainted and even our abusers.
The biggest problem that I see in the spiritual community is that we spread love without distinguishing this love. Why should I love my abusers as I would love my friends? Why should I trust my abuser as I would trust a friend? Why should I treat my abuser exactly like I would treat my friend? We all have freewill to treat different people differently.
In the spiritual community, many are reluctant to even discuss or acknowledge abusers and wrongdoers as they really do exist in our society and in our reality. There are people who murder, kill, abuse, and injure others in our society. Why would we treat them and love them exactly like we treat those who do good in our society? This refusal to see what is happening in our reality, and facing the truth about our reality result in physical and emotional injuries to the less fortunate and weaker individuals in our society.
Many in the spiritual community finally are waking up to the reality that sexual abuse and spiritual abuse occur within our community and must be addressed and acknowledged before any true changes can take place, and true healing may occur. Please see an earlier post on “Sexual Abuse by Spiritual Teachers.” Through freewill we can choose to hold individuals responsible for their actions as there should be consequences to harmful actions. It is then up to each victim to forgive and emotional heal in order to become survivors of this abuse, and use their freewill to decide whether to show compassion love to their abusers. (Copyrigh 2014 Living Wide Awake with All Rights Rseerved)
Pathway to Joy and Healing 