A Spiritual Response to Hate and Ingnorance

by Kasey Castleberry

This sermon was originally presented on 2016 August 28 to the congregation of Mountain Light Unitarian Universalist Church in Ellijay GA.

I like to surround my sermons with song lyrics, and given the current state of politics, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, something of a modern-day morality play, comes to mind. I had a vision of "The Donald" & his new campaign manager (Kellyanne Conway) and Bill & Hillary Clinton campaigning on stage in corsets and fish-net hose. Additionally, its lamentful closing song, "Superheroes" seems to sum up the deeper psyche within us as a nation...

Indeed, the Beast is feeding. I see it on Facebook nearly every day. I hear its appetite in the hateful words from our handlers, the superheroes... the super-villains. I sense it eating the hearts of those around me with every unkind word overheard from my fellow shoppers, diners, and movie goers.

Down inside we're bleeding.

You do not have to be an empath to be affected. I am certain that everyone here has felt the pain, maybe even the anger, but certainly the uncomfortable state that mean-spiritedness leaves in its wake.

For a person of conscience, a person of compassion, knowing what to do or how to do it in a manner that honors our principles can be most unsettling as we encounter people who claim to respect truth and justice, claim to embrace love, yet who practice the anti-principles.

• They treat others with disrespect;
• They cling to what they have and are afraid to share;
• They fear those not of their own tribe;
• They spout dogma;
• They believe that anyone who thinks differently than they do are unpatriotic;
• They would isolate themselves from outsiders;
• And they deny the very oneness of being that their own religions affirm.

It can be difficult to honor the worth and dignity of someone full of hate, but we must – even as we seek to bring about justice on behalf of those that they would alienate or otherwise harm. To not affirm the worth and dignity of BOTH the oppressor and the oppressed, is to fall short of honoring the interconnectedness of ALL, as we attempt to affirm and promote our seventh principle, the respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.

Standing on the side of Love, fully embracing Love, is not always easy.

It helps if we can see the inherent goodness within the angry ones and understand that it is simply ignorance that clouds their minds. And yet, we must be careful in labeling others as ignorant, least we give in to our own. As Richard Cecil said: "The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant."

Admittedly, by normative standards, my world view is a bit "weird". After all, I did begin this sermon with lyrics from Rocky Horror. Nonetheless, in a more traditional vein, I believe in the importance of the biblical passage, John chapter 1, verse 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." [KJV]

To me, this means that Original Consciousness, All-That-Is, forms the megasvonai, the multiverse, from the infinite power of mind, which becomes thought, which is energy. And, from energy, physical reality is derived: E=mc².

If thought is energetic and if energy fields, such as auras, respond to sympathetic resonance or sympathetic vibration, then it is not unreasonable to assume that we draw similar vibratory events to ourselves, through the Law of Attraction. In that case, all of our conscious encounters are potential lessons that we have laid before ourselves, even that rendezvous with ignorance.

Galileo (Galilei) summed this up nicely when he said: "I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."

It is our desire to learn that is important, otherwise we fall from ignorance into stupidity. As Benjamin Franklin put it: "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

While it appears that some people, many of them politicians (and Fox News commentators), do seem to work very hard to remain stupid, it behooves us not to point this out to them. That will quickly turn an encounter with ignorance to one with anger and possibly violence.

Anger is a Beast that should be handled carefully, least it feast wildly and ravenously.

Should you find yourself at such a feast, it is important to understand that angry people are being ruled by their emotions. If you feel at all threatened, walk away, do not engage them. If you feel safe and think that the anger can be managed, then there are several things that you can do.

First, it is import to disengage, to distance yourself emotionally, and to not take what follows personally. Avoid ego battles and remain calm or, again, walk away if you feel your own blood rising.

Despite their obnoxious behavior, most angry people are manifesting pain. If they act threatening, like Dr. Frank-N-Furter, it is often because they too feel threatened. Maybe, amid the shouting and fist pounding, they are simply trying to let us know that they are feeling hurt, ignored, disrespected, unappreciated, and unloved. [Nadia Persun]

The website, Mind Tools, tells us that it's important to know how to deal with angry people for a number of reasons. Responding in kind to anger confounds the problem. Calming them down breaks the spiral of escalation and lessens the likelihood of them harming someone. Responding well to angry people helps build better relationships, and calming angry people sets a good example that can inspire others. [Mind Tools]

The steps:

Listen. Active or reflective listening is a basic building block to communication. Keep the focus on them. Do not share YOUR experiences but acknowledge THEIR anger. Repeating back what you hear is connecting and calming.

Ask questions and clarify. Request specific examples to have them refine the points that they should be making. Ask how you might help, right now? Since responding to questions requires rational thought, you are also drawing them away from their emotional centers. However, if they are not receptive to questions, do not force the situation.

Show compassion. You do not have to agree with angry people to validate their feelings. Tell them that you understand how the situation might be difficult or frustrating. Again, keep the focus on them. Do not say: "I know how you feel." Some people become more angry by such comments, believing that NO ONE knows how they feel.

Distract the anger. We tend to focus on one thing at a time. Be careful how you do this, but if you can get them to redirect their attention, even momentarily, it might diffuse the anger. Humor is great, since it is impossible to laugh and be angry at the same time, and it changes the chemical processes in the body.

Please note that discussing this in depth could take several hours. So, for a more detailed explanation on how to deal with angry people, please check the notes at the end of this presentation.

Dealing with ignorance has a different set of challenges. Ignorance is defined by Webster's Dictionary as "a lack of knowledge, education, or awareness", and to some degree or other, everyone is ignorant. In fact, as Benjamin Disraeli said: "To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge."

Ignorance becomes a problem when people think that they are more educated, more knowledgeable, or more aware than others, when they are not. This is NOT the same as being stupid, which is "having or showing a lack of ability to learn and understand things", according to Merriam-Webster's definition.

When dealing with stupid, you should just walk away.

As the great "philosopher", Bill Murray, put it: "It's hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person."

Remember, ignorance is not the same as stupidity. The stupid person lacks the intellectual capacity to evaluate his or her behavior; the ignorant person simply chooses to disregard learning opportunities.

Although they often believe otherwise, intelligent people can be quite ignorant, even as Dr. Frank-N-furter was ignorant of his approaching downfall. But, how do you deal with ignorant people, without resorting to laser guns, and should you even try?

Sometimes, especially when they are being rude, ignoring ignorant people might be the best solution. Un-friending such an individual on Facebook, for instance, is much more simple than trying to pry open a closed-mind to pour in a little bit of kindness that probably will not take anyway.

Still, sometimes there are voices that you can not ignore for various reasons. Those must be handled with compassion and patience, otherwise you will be dealing with angry again, and we will have to start all over.

Mind, I know the entire songbook from Rock Horror, but let us save the songs "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me" and "I'm Going Home" for another day. [smile]

Management Professor, Bret L. Simmons, says in his blog:

It's the chronically ignorant that concern me. We know that their choices are not our responsibility, but their choices consistently affect our ability to perform the responsibilities we've been trusted with.

Ignoring the ignorant person avoids a confrontation, but it is also a subtle form of collusion with the very behavior we abhor. Benevolent confrontation is the right answer to ignorance, but it does not always work and sometimes blows up in your face.

It is likely this concern over "collusion" of which Mr. Simmons speaks that makes UUs uncomfortable. When someone seems to be trampling our second principle, it urges us to push back for justice, equity, and compassion.

Kimberly Key, author of Ten Keys to Staying Empowered in a Power Struggle, brings up another problem in dealing with difficult people, they often talk down to us. After all, they are more educated, more knowledgeable, more aware than we are, and look better in corsets, too, at least in their own minds. She says:

I have an allergy to superiority. Start talking down to me or patronizing me in a belittling tone and I can feel my blood pressure rise. My nervous system gets triggered, and I have to work hard at assuring it (me) that I am safe and to please calm down because I don't want to react and get defensive with the person who is (or whom I feel is) demeaning me (and sometimes they're not). Getting defensive would only exacerbate the situation and I would lose: a chance to learn something, my own sense of inner peace and self-confidence, or a valued relationship.

The perfect depiction of this situation is when Bruce Banner feels a threat and begins to transform into the Incredible Hulk. He leaves quite a mess behind.

(When I read that superhero reference, I knew instantly that I had to quote Ms. Key. To read the entirety of her excellent post, please refer to the link in my notes.)

The point, of course, is that the more we let our emotions into the equation, the more impaired our rational mind becomes. Even if we manage not to go all Hulk on the person pushing our buttons, we still tend to get overly defensive and maybe a bit self-righteous.

Emotions come in many flavors, though. More often than we might realize, it is fear that clouds our reason, and dogma is an excellent crutch at such times, delivering a sense of security to a fragile ego.

When you say something loud enough and often enough, it becomes a fact, albeit a faulty one. Thinking back to the lyrics: "God knows I've tried, to find the truth, I've even lied." Thus, the superheroes have said it, so it must be true.

Living in fear sometimes leads people to dress in creedal armor, and then they wield dogma like a weapon, attempting to find a sense of self-worth in the battlefields of politics and religion.

In his book, Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare, Tony Evans says:

If you're a Christian, you're in a battle whether you realize it or not. The battle is for your mind, your spirit, and ultimately your life. The apostle Paul warned us about this ongoing conflict in several of his epistles but perhaps most importantly in his letter to the believers in Ephesus, where he also spells out our strategy for winning the battle. That strategy has to do with the armor we wear as we enter into warfare with the enemy of our souls.

The armor to which he refers is the Belt of Truth, the Breastplate of Righteousness, and the Shoes of Peace. (For the full battle dress, please refer to Ephesians, chapter 6, verses 13 through 17.)

I am not much a fan of Paul, and I do not mean to belittle someone's acceptance of him. Still, as a symbolic interactionist, I find it interesting when people embrace dualities (such as good and evil, God and Satan, and peace and war) and do not see the inconsistencies in how they utilize the symbols of their beliefs.

This also concerned the philosopher, George Hegel, who in his early years as a theologian, was particularly interested in how Christianity was based on opposites. He proposed that Jesus had emphasized the virtue of love to bring about a union of opposing concepts. [Writer's Almanac]

However, it appears that some people are not so moved, for if Christianity is a message of Love and Peace (as in "turn the other cheek"), why all the battle references? War does not beget peace. Peace begets peace. To Not understand this seems to be trading in Paul's armor for one more commonplace: the belt of misguided truth, the breastplate of self-righteousness, and the boots of war.

I bring this up not to ridicule (nor to have some of my relatives un-friend ME) but to reiterate that one man's ignorance is another woman's truth. The fact is, if we all are ignorant in some fashion, then perhaps the answer is not to try to educate others so much as to educate ourselves.

It is even possible, if you believe in a higher power or even interconnectedness theory, that the answers are already within us, and we have merely been taught to forget.

Seth, as channeled through the late Jane Roberts, in her ESP class session of 1970 December 01, spoke about trusting our spontaneity and our inner selves:

Now, listen to me. You need not try so hard. If you trust the inner self, then you grow as a flower grows. The flower grows correctly. And, it does not strive to grow. And, it does not say to itself: "I must grow two inches, so help me, by tomorrow night at twilight." A flower is. And, it allows itself to grow. And, it is sure of its IS-ness and of the spirit of All-That-Is that is within it.

This full "Flower Parable" is rather involved, but here is a condensed version:

Goodness is as natural as a flower grows. The flower can begin to ponder its natural state too much: "Should I grow to the left or to the right? Is it too easy for me to grow in the light of the sun? Instead, should I attempt to grow in the darkness? I must strive to reach that sun that is God. And, I must work hard because, if I do not strive, I shall not achieve. And, I must achieve."

But, beside our intellectual, conscientious flower is an idiot of a flower. And, it stands and feels the sun upon its petals and opens up its leaves and says: "This is the sun. It is good. Within me is the spirit of growth. I'll follow it and give it freedom. And, I care not whether I grow to the right or to the left, for I trust the spirit within me and know I shall grow correctly."

And so, it grows from within and is perfect. And, it is strong, while the intellectual and spiritual flower fears the evil shadows and darkness and worries about how to confound these adversaries in its now arduous task of growing in the proper direction.

When the morning sun rises. We find our idiot flower in full bloom and our conscientious flower with its head down and leaves turned this way and that. Rather than listening to its inner voice, it hears only the cacophony of its own imagined fears. It thinks that to be good must be difficult and that to be evil is easy. And, that is a deception.

When a student asked Seth if the idiot flower, the one which just stands there naturally and accepts its due, has a responsibility to try to enlighten his brother flower, the one caught in confusion, then Seth tells him; "It does, indeed. And, it does by its example."

The point here is NOT that the intellect is wrong and should not be used. The problem is that when we do not trust our inner spontaneous self, the spirit of All-That-Is within us, then we distort reality with concepts of good and evil that may not apply beyond the scope of our own fears. That which we have named ignorant, that beast burning with anger, was called to feast not by fate nor by happenstance, but by our own unconscious self, as a lesson, a reminder to trust our own divine nature.

Seth continues:

By allowing yourself spontaneity, you automatically develop all your abilities and in that way you are able to relate to others honestly and completely. And, when you look into their faces, you do not see the reflection of your own ignorance. You do not project upon others your own errors and then react to them as if they were alien to you. The only way to complete your responsibility to others is to feel your own spontaneity, which is the spirit of All-That-Is within you. And then, you are able to help others.

Seth is speaking metaphorically, and the idiot flower represents our natural innocence. And, it is as a child that we should embrace it. He says:

Unless you are a child, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Unless you are joyful, unless you live in trust of spirit, you are not whole. A little child shall lead them because the spontaneity of spirit knows All-That-Is.

Now, All-That-Is is not dignified. All-That-Is is not adult. All-That-Is is not pompous. All-That-Is is. And, in His is-ness comes his creativity.You can allow your intellect full freedom when it follows the spontaneity of your being and when you can open yourself up to others.

Seth sums it up thusly:

You follow the spontaneous self as long as you are conscious, in whatever life or whatever existence. But, to evolve spiritually, you must consciously join with it, joyously and with abandon.

It is not important whether or not you believe in the possibility of a disincarnate, energy-essense personality, like Seth-Roberts. After all, you are and should be your own authority. When you honor your own truth, truth will resonate within you, and it becomes your own, not Seth's, not Jesus's, not Buddha's, not Donald's or Hillary's.

By joyfully honoring your own truth, you will know instinctively how to respond to hate and ignorance and your actions will be an example unto others. But, we must trust our hearts to love and compassion and never surrender our minds to fear.

In closing, if we do not rise above self-righteousness and misguided truths, then we will certainly NOT be walking in the shoes of peace. We will NOT be one in spirit, but instead we will see those who think differently as little more than insects to be squashed or medusa-ized and manipulated to perform as we see fit, in an insane floorshow within our time-warped realities.

Instead of trying to understand one another, instead of trusting our own inner truths, we will loose our way in our search for truth and meaning, and this will be our last refrain as we writhe in the destruction left behind..

Reference Notes

"Superheroes". The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. Music & lyrics by Richard O'Brien.

KJV. The Holy Bible. King James Version.

Brainy Quotes. website

Nadia Persun, PhD. World of Psychology. "How to Switch Off an Angry". website

Mind Tools. Dealing With Angry People. Learning How to Defuse Tense Situations.. website

Wikihow. How to Communicate With an Angry Person.. website

Communication Skills Power Blog How to develop great communication skills. How to Deal with Ignorant People.. website

Bret L. Simmons. Positive Organizational Behavior. Dealing With Chronically Ignorant People. February 12, 2012. website

Kimberly Key. Counseling Keys. 8 Ways to Talk to Difficult People. Ninja-level people skills to help you maintain your cool with anyone. Posted Nov. 26, 2014. website

Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare by Tony Evans, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon. 2015.

The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. August 27, 2016. website

Seth (Spirit). Channeled by Jane Roberts. The Early Class Sessions. 4 volumes. Manhasset NY: New Awareness Network, 2008. Edit used: Seth-Roberts Center, 1971.08.31 (ESP: EC4).