Owning Hate

And the power of radical self-inquiry

I saw a video last week online of a former National Security advisor to Obama. He had spent the previous two weeks verbally abusing an Egyptian food cart vendor on the Upper East Side in New York, passing by several times to say hateful things about his religion and the current conflict in the Middle East that I’m not going to repeat here. The vendor started making videos of these encounters, and called the police several times.

The comments section on Instagram was taken over in support of the vendor. They shared the name of the abuser, his current place of work, his phone numbers, and so on. By the end of the day, his employer had fired him and all trace of his existence had been deleted from their website. He’s unemployable by any firm for the foreseeable future. I doubt he’ll feel safe walking around the streets of New York for a while.

We are calling out hatred when we see it, and holding it accountable. This is important to do. The man in question has now been arrested on charges of hate crimes.

My Jewish friends tell me of very challenging situations their children are having to deal with at school. Young kids and pre-teens without any contextual knowledge of the Middle-East facing varying degrees of bullying and racism. Schools are trying to tread a very fine line in ensuring that prejudice of all kinds is held to account, without being seen to take sides.

All of these are the ripple effects of up to twenty thousand killed in Gaza at the hands of an extremist government, and prior to that 1200 dead and hundreds held hostage by an extremist militia. All victims of hate.

How do we deal with the root problem? In the first example of the Obama advisor, does the man in question have less hate now that he has been cancelled? This was a highly influential figure who once sat at the very epicentre of power. Its frightening to think that other policy makers could be of the same ilk. And what about the school bullies?

Have they all just been silenced and their true beliefs pushed out of view?

This is the issue with cancel culture. It makes people afraid to voice their prejudices, but it doesn’t mean the prejudice is gone. It has provided the illusion of progress, but the moment a trigger comes along, the surface illusion falls apart. What lies beneath is horrifying, precisely because we so believed it wasn’t there. For so many of us, this has been a tough pill to swallow over the past two months.

No one wants to believe that they could be hateful. We live in a world of masks, where love, light and the ethereal are justifiably the end goal. Many are born people-pleasers, and especially in the modern age walk around terrified of offending anyone.

I’m here to argue that we cannot be embodied in a field of love and grounded in connection if we don’t take ownership of ALL of ourselves. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Part of that ownership is taking stock of where hate lies within us - now. Owning it, so that it doesn’t own you. Trust me: its most likely there. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve told me they feel no hate, yet are shocked by what they observe when we go deep into their subconscious.

The source and projection will look different for everyone. It could be towards parents, an old boss, a former lover. A childhood bully, or a collective of people whose values you oppose. It could be towards yourself. Its roots could be historical, or more recent. It involves becoming radically honest, however unpleasant that may be.

Hate is an interesting energy; its different to how you would expect it to be. Anger is a red hot feeling, like fire. Easily triggered and inflamed, but also easily put out.

Hate is cold. Deadly. Destructive. Completely indifferent to its destruction. Its quiet, and operates in the most surreptitious of ways.

I’ll never forget the first time I connected with my own hate, completely by surprise. I was terrified of its darkness and maleficence. I’d never seen it before, having always assumed I was a kind, loving person – which I am. The details of the source and manifestation of this in my adulthood are personal. But unbeknownst to me, this hate had been stealthily creating havoc in my life; bringing chaos and sabotage.

Hate is not something that can be balanced with more hate. It cannot be destroyed. Similar to the Internal Family Systems model, it needs to be seen for what it is. Conversed with, held, understood. For underneath that hate is something that was lost. A connection that was severed, that could be repaired now in other ways.

Within that understanding and connection is an opportunity. A conversation with this suppressed part of our psyche. Instead of destruction, can we channel what was lost into creation? Instead of chaos, how about calm? Instead of apathy, how about positive purpose? Instead of judgement, how about understanding?

For some, this could get very dark. One could discover that they wish injury upon another. We could become aware of deeply-held destructive intentions.

If you’re reading this, just by being here, I know that that would be something that you would want to change. We are the change-makers, the pattern interrupters, and the breakers of generational curses.

Because in being so, we know that its not just about us.

The patterns we interrupt ripple out through our ancestry into the past, present and future. They alter the trajectory of our karma as well as the karma of our offspring. I was recently at a conference with Rupert Sheldrake, who shared his research on Morphic Resonance – one of the bases of which is that individuals are able to influence the collective, as well as vice-versa.

So where to begin? It starts with getting really quiet, and learning to feel without distractions. Get out a notebook, and ask yourself the question: where, why and how does hate lie within me? Free-write for a minimum of half an hour and see what comes up.

Once you know what you’re working with, you’ll know what help you need to begin the process of moving past it - so that its not unconsciously influencing your choices.

I cannot recommend this opportunity for introspection enough. It’s a profound path of bravery that we all must walk.

Tracing the history of our evolution, it is clear that humankind is on a path towards more unity.

This is where we each individually can make our contribution.