"Because you imagine damage, you require revenge. Because you experience pain, you need another to experience pain as retribution for your own. Yet what possible justification can that be for inflicting pain upon another? Because (you imagine) someone has inflicted injury upon you, you feel it right and proper to inflict injury in return? That which you say is not okay for human beings to do to each other, is okay for you to do, so long as you are justified?
This is insanity. And what you do not see in this insanity is that all people who inflict pain on others assume themselves to be justified.
By your definition, what they seek and desire is wrong. But by their definition, it is not. You may not agree with their model of the world, with their moral and ethical constructions, with their theological understandings, nor with their decisions, choices and actions... but they agree with them, based on their values.
You call their values "wrong". But who is to say your values are"right"? Only you. Your values are "right" because you say they are. Even this might make some sense if you kept your word about it, but you, yourself, change your mind constantly about what you consider "right" and "wrong".
The problem is that so many of you insist on thinking that the values you now have are the right and perfect ones, and that everyone else should adhere to them. Some of you have become self-justified and self-righteous.
Stick to your beliefs, if that serves you. Hold tight. Do not waiver. For your ideas about "right" and "wrong" are your definitions of Who You Are. Yet do not require that others define themselves according to your terms. And do not stay "stuck" in your present beliefs and customs that you halt the process of evolution itself.
No matter how "good" you think things have been, they can be better. No matter how wonderful you think your theologies, your ideologies, your cosmologies, they can be full of even more wonder. For there are "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Be open, therefore. Be OPEN. Don't close off the possibility of new truth because you have been comfortable with an old one. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Yet be not quick to judge another. Rather, seek to avoid judgment, for another person's "wrongs" were your "rights" of yestermorn; another person's mistakes are your own past actions, now corrected; another person's choices and decisions are as "hurtful" and "harmful," as "selfish" and "unforgiveable," as many of your own have been."
--- quoted :o
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