Demolishing the Walls

Look at how badly you need an enemy.

Someone has to be the fool. The hypocrite. The politician. The fundamentalist. The activist. The billionaire. The immigrant. The conservative. The liberal. Someone has to carry the blame so that you get to feel innocent.

It’s fascinating, really.

Your ego always manages to find someone else who is the problem.

And as long as you’re staring at them, you never have to look at yourself.

You call it discernment. You call it standing for truth. You call it having strong values.

Most of the time, it’s fear dressed up as righteousness.

Jesus had very little patience for that.

He looked straight through it and asked:

“Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but pay no attention to the log in your own?”

Don’t turn that into a nice little lesson about being less judgmental.

He’s exposing the mechanism of the ego.

The moment someone irritates you, your attention rushes outward. Your mind becomes obsessed with fixing them, analysing them, condemning them. Anything to avoid the uncomfortable possibility that what disturbs you out there may have something to teach you about what’s happening in here.

The arrogance you can’t stand.
The need to be right.
The rigidity.
The control.
The self-righteousness.

Before you accuse them…

Ask yourself if you’ve simply become more sophisticated in hiding the same movement within yourself.

Then Paul says something that completely demolishes the walls you’ve spent your life building:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one…”

One.

Not similar.

Not connected.

One.

If that’s true, then the person you’ve reduced to a label is not standing opposite you.

They’re another expression of the same life.

And then Jesus says the sentence almost nobody wants to take seriously:

“Love your enemies.”

Not because it’s morally impressive.

Because your enemy is an illusion.

That doesn’t mean harmful behaviour should be accepted.

It doesn’t mean injustice shouldn’t be confronted.

It means that underneath the conditioning, the fear, the trauma, the opinions and the identity, there is no human being who stands outside the reach of Love.

The moment you deny that in someone else, you’ve denied it in yourself as well.

The Third Zen Patriarch, Sengcan, wrote:

“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.”

Think about that.

Your preferences don’t just shape your opinions.

They shape your reality.

You spend your life sorting.

Safe. Dangerous.
Good. Bad.
Us. Them.
Worthy. Unworthy.

And while you’re busy dividing the world, reality quietly slips through your fingers.

Thich Nhat Hanh called it inter-being.

Not as a beautiful idea.

As a fact.

The person you despise breathes the same air you do.

If you had their body, their parents, their childhood, their fears, their wounds, and their life, you would almost certainly believe what they believe and do what they do.

That’s not an excuse.

It’s an invitation to humility.

So here’s your practice.

The next time someone triggers you, don’t immediately defend your position.

Don’t write the clever reply.

Don’t gather your tribe around you.

Freeze.

Put your hand on your heart.

And ask yourself one question:

What am I protecting?

Not what’s wrong with them.

What am I protecting?

Stay there.

Long enough for your certainty to crack.

Long enough to realise that the wall you’ve built between yourself and your enemy has never protected you.

It’s only kept you separate.

Drop the stones.

Tear down the walls.

And see if, just for one moment, you can meet the human being standing in front of you…

before your mind remembers who it’s supposed to hate.