Healing and Transformation through Love

In a special room in my house, I have the following saying framed, “Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I need it the most.” I almost cried when I found this piece, knowing that I have been both the one who needed to feel loved, and the one who needed to share love with someone else.

Each of us throughout our lives has encountered someone who is troublesome or difficult to be around. They may be fighting addictions or anger issues. Perhaps it’s someone at work who you just can’t seem to get along with or a family member who breaks all the rules and is hard to deal with. This may be anyone, a spouse or loved one, children, parents, friends, co-workers or someone you love but you just don’t know how to be with them. These are people who are painful to be around, or who cause you a lot of anxiety and struggle. You may even be that person to other people.

In his CD set titled, “The Secrets of an Inspirational (In-Spirit) Life”, Dr. Wayne Dyer shares the following story originally taken from a book called “Contact, The First Four Minutes” by Leonard Sunin (now out of print), about a tribe called the Babemba or Bemba, who make their home in an area of Africa that includes Zambia and the Congo. The Babemba tribe of southern Africa has a social structure with an elementary criminal code. Their close community living makes harshness unnecessary. A visitor was deeply impressed by the tribe's handling of antisocial and/or delinquent behaviors, which are exceedingly infrequent.

As you read the following, just bring to mind this difficult person or people in your life in which you want to be a source of inspiration and understanding, or who you just want to know how to be with:

“In the Babemba tribe, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he or she is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, the entire village gathers around the accused individual, then each person of every age begins to talk out loud to the accused. One at a time each person tells all the good things that the one in the center ever did in his or her lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All positive attributes, good deeds strengths and acts of kindness are recited carefully and at length. No one is permitted to fabricate, to exaggerate or to be facetious about the accomplishments or the positive aspects of the accused person. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days, not ceasing until everyone is drained of every positive comment that can be mustered. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically welcomed back into the tribe. The necessity for such ceremonies is rare; it only occurs once in every 4 or 5 years.”

When we change our point of focus as the Law of Attraction states, we begin to open up to opportunities otherwise unseen. This way of working with a difficult person in your life is a beautiful example of unconditional love. What would it look like if you took this practice and applied it to your own life? How might your relationships change? What possibilities could this type of love and caring open up? We will only know the truth of this by doing it within our own lives. Here is an opportunity to see with new eyes, and hear with new ears. This practice is called many things, and much like a Gratefulness journal, allows us to put our focus on what we appreciate, and what we feel grateful for.

So let’s celebrate the goodness in all the people we come in contact with. Let’s allow people to be exactly who they are while being an inspiration to them by our ability to see the brightest parts of their being. Just as we cannot know others’ reason for being, neither can people know ours. Coming from a place of love, kindness and appreciation, we allow others to blossom. We can even apply this process to people all over the world, people whose cultures we may not understand or agree with. Just imagine what it would feel like, if instead of being judged and punished, you were loved and appreciated, and how that might change your entire life. Be that gift to someone else starting now by opening your heart and sharing it.