How would you like to have eyes that see beauty everywhere? If not beauty as beauty is known, something so touching that it becomes beautiful in your eyes. Seen with love, all is beautiful as you are to Me. A smoking chimney, a lone shoe, a dog barking.
If all that you see before you were a painting framed in gold and hung in a museum, would you not admire it?
We could say I am the Artist Who painted all that you see on Earth. All that I have painted is framed in the gold of the sun. Many pass through the museum of life and see the beauty, and others pass through and have not eyes to see.
There is a mirror of love that you see yourself reflected in. Beloveds, it is yourself you see every time. When you see beautiful, or you see ugly, it is yourself you see. You would not make so much of it were it not yourself. It is yourself you find beautiful or ugly. Your emotions involved color what you see. To you, a mouse is not beautiful and you scream. To another, the mouse is a beloved pet. You are at the mercy only of what you make of what you see.
It is definitely understandable how you are up in arms about those who mistreat. You see with anger. I know even the concept of abuse is hard to take, yet, still, don't put your attention on the abuser.
"Do not put my attention on the abuser?" you say.
I say, "At least, do not rage against the rager."
Put your attention elsewhere. Put your attention on loving and caring for innocent animals, for instance. Outrage burns you up. Outrage is self-attack. Do not consider outrage virtuous.
When I say to send My blessings to the abuser, my words may fall upon deaf ears. Perhaps you appeal. Perhaps you ask Me, "How can I do that when I abhor the abuser?"
I say to you: If you must, abhor the abuser. At the same time, befriend the abuser. He is making a dreadful error, and yet he sees it differently from you. He can see only from where he sees.
You, too, can only see from where you see. How fortunate you are for the vaster view you have. And you know that there are more rungs higher up on the ladder that are there for you to climb to and see from. You can think differently. The abuser does not know this. You know this. How blessed you are.
You do not want to mentally beat up the bully any more than you would physically. It is you who sets the tone of your life, whether it is peace or outrage. If your life has the tone of peace, you have chosen it. If your life has the tone of outrage, you have chosen that too. The tone of your life is not foisted on you.
Only the powerless exact power over others, and they can only exact it over those more powerless than they. Unfortunate is the abuser who can not pick on someone his own size.
You do not have to pat an abuser on the head. Nor do you have to hurt him back by how you look at him. From whom do dirty looks come from? From whom does sense of superiority come from? Let them not come from you. When you see yourself lording over someone else, you lower yourself. You who can radiate compassion can at least not sneer.
It is not a question of your saving a hurter from himself. It is a question of your not abusing yourself with rank thoughts.
We make no excuses for the one who hurts others. He must not. It is not to be allowed. Nor are you allowed to hurt him back in your heart. You who would not perpetuate hurt must not hurt the hurter in your heart.
There is the possibility that the hurter serves you in your need to extol yourself. In life, beloveds, the hurter is at one end of the teeter-totter, and you are at the other. How connected you are. Get off the teeter-totter, beloveds, and raise your thoughts higher.
Beloveds, for you, to whom much is given, more is asked of you. Greater vision is asked of you.