Friends, Enemies, and Strangers

After receiving and resting in the qualities of love, care, and compassion, we start to extend that love to others. First to dear ones, then to strangers, then to more difficult ones. One of the purposes of this practice is to notice the different feeling tones that arise when we switch from receiving to extending, and when we switch from extending to friends, then strangers, then difficult ones (sometimes referred to as enemies).

These shifts in feeling tone alert us to the fact that we hold each of these perceived objects (self, friends, strangers, enemies) in a different class of beings. As different classes of beings, we treat them differently. This belief creates a limiting map of where and how we can share our love and compassion.

Here is what John Makransky says about this in his book, Awakening Through Love:

The will to be free [to realize inner freedom] is the profound wish to be free from the causes of suffering in our minds. In this context, it is the wish to be free from bondage to the map that discriminates the few who deserve love (“my friends”) from the many who do not (all those “strangers” and “enemies”). It is the willingness to renounce such discrimination.

Through meditation, as we become conscious of our own map and how much all beings suffer from belief in such maps, a new sense of awareness and conviction emerges. We begin to shift from believing in the map to wanting to be free of its power. Even as limiting thoughts of others still arise in our minds, we are willing now to disbelieve and renounce them. When the meditation tells us not to trust such limiting thoughts but to lean in past them, it is the will to be free in us that says, Yes!