When there is someone you cannot tolerate, when there is someone who is a thorn in your side, when there is someone who maligns or treats you ill, pay attention to how you look at them. I do not dispute the hurt they have caused you. I dispute how you disapprove of them. You have sentenced them to your disapproval. It is hard for someone to live in the face of your disapproval. Your disapproval, like your love, reaches into every corner. No matter if kept to yourself, your disapproval is heard.
You set your mouth, and you have much evidence to support your disapproval. Yet you are the one disapproving, and you are responsible for that, not they.
Isn't it their disapproval of you that haunts you? You have met their disapproval with disapproval of your own, and so you bind yourself to the other in a common bond of disapproval. You have taken your cues from them, and so you have let their thoughts control yours. Find another common bond.
Break out of that silent contract. Someone else's thoughts do not have to pounce on yours and hold them captive. Your thoughts are too important to your well-being. What God do you serve to hold animosity?
I do not say to fake love for this other person or persons. I say not to be so attached to your dislike of them. You have empowered someone else's way of looking to become yours.
They have leaped to put you in your place, and you have leapt back, and so you both stay in the same place instead of moving on.
Whoever has seen you amiss has been blind, and you have let them blind you as well. You are blind to a morsel of good in them. You have counted up their faults and held them dear to you. You have seen nothing else. You do not see how they can be allowed to exist in the same world as you.
Your feelings have been swayed by your thoughts. Your feelings did not originate your thoughts. It was the other way around. Think a moment and see if that is not so. If you could let your past thoughts of this person who is an anathema to you go, they would no longer be an anathema.
You do not have to be all one way. You do not have to dislike or to like. You can release this person or persons from your hardened heart whether you like them or not. Who are you to keep them imprisoned in your heart? Who asked you to be their guard? A guard imprisons himself, and I made you to be free.
Let's look at this from another angle. You do not have to like this person or persons. You do not have to adore them. But you do not have to disdain them either. They do not have to be caught in your craw. You do not have to let your thoughts chew them up.
You do not have to keep your same thoughts. Your thoughts have been ruthless. Ask Me to pick up these biting thoughts and take them from you. Ask Me to empty your heart of ill will. Ask Me to restore your heart to its fullness. Ask Me to help you release your fingers of thought from their neck. Ask Me to help you restore yourself to yourself. Ask Me to help you let this person go to their own life without your nagging thoughts following them. Ask Me to help you let them be who they are. Ask Me to help you not take them so seriously. Ask Me to help you remove your indictment of them. Ask Me to occupy your thoughts more than they do.
Remember that I love you no matter what someone else thinks of you. And I love you no matter what you think of someone else. Remember that I love you and that is why I ask you to ask Me to help you disband your negative thoughts. They do not belong to you, and I do not want you to have them.
So, come embrace Me now, and your heart will be assuaged.