A Spiritual Perspective on Violence, Abuse, and Healing with Unconditional Love

Hi Brent. When I began consciously offering love to myself, my mind would think up all sorts of things. Rape, murder, violence in general. All these dark ideas began flooding my mind as if to test whether my love was actually unconditional.

Could I love a murderer? A child molester? How deep into love was I willing to go? I admit, I got scared and began wondering why I would even try sending love in that direction.

Why was I playing the devil’s advocate for these unacceptable ideas? Was love really important enough to go there? It left me blocked, confused, scared of myself for opening that can of worms but never finishing it. It’s like I took on all the darkness I could think of to test myself but couldn’t pass.

Like how do you love a child molester and condemn them at the same time for their actions? Is love even what these people need? Have any thoughts on all this? It’s been troubling me for a long time.

Unconditional love is like a flood. Once we open our heart, it’s like opening the flood gates. Love pours out, pushing to the surface all of our personal and collective trauma, fear, karma, and conditioning. All sorts of personal and collective memories, feelings, and suppressed baggage can begin to surface to be washed away in the flood of unconditional love that we’ve unleashed.

In a sense, these things do arise to ‘test’ whether or not your love is unconditional. I would argue though, that it’s not really a test. It’s more of a challenge and a lesson. It’s the Universe teaching you that all the negative thoughts and feelings are still aspects of the Divine Light, because the Divine Light is all there is.

If you can recognize even the most negative thoughts and feelings as a manifestation of the Divine Light, even if they are extremely uncomfortable, perhaps sickening, and disgusting, you will actually be healing and releasing them from your system.

Within spirituality, we have this big notion—everything is Divine, everything is One, Everything is Light. It’s easy to see and practice this with other people when everyone’s in a cheerful mood. It’s easy to see and practice that when you’re out in the forest all by yourself. 

But if everything is Divine, what about a negative thought? A violent thought? A demon? A child molester? 

Either it’s all Divine or none of it is.

Now, this is not to dismiss or permit these absolutely horrendous acts, such as murder, rape, child abuse, and the like. This understanding cannot be used to justify any of these behaviours.

This understanding, that everything is Divine, including the apparent evil in the world, is meant to serve as the foundation of the healing and overcoming of said evil.

If you can recognize a negative thought, feeling, or person as an aspect of the Divine Light, what you’re doing is releasing them from the negative state that they’re in. This is the true meaning of forgiving. You’re giving the negative permission to no longer be negative. You’re allowing the thought, feeling, or person to move ahead on their journey through the levels of consciousness. 

If you condemn yourself for having a negative thought, you don’t allow yourself to heal from the conditioning, trauma, or karma that caused it. You just suppress it and perpetuate it. If you welcome a negative thought unconditionally, you release that entire pattern from your psyche and from within your nervous system. Then you’re healed from it. You won’t have to have that thought again. You can embody the Light that you are in a deeper way from that point forward.

For you specifically, after beginning to offer yourself unconditional love, these different themes began to arise, of rape, abuse, murder, and so on. This doesn’t mean that you have some inner suppressed abusive tendencies that are now surfacing to be acted out. Don’t worry. You’re not going to harm anyone, despite having these thoughts. You’re healing them for the collective, actually. They’re arising to be healed in the light of your unconditional loving awareness. 

We all fear such abuse and violence. It’s a collective karma that we all carry. Ancestrally, somewhere down each of our family lines, someone was abused or murdered. We carry those wounds. If you want to go deeper, we’ve all lived many lives before this one. Some have also involved such violence. We carry those wounds as well.

Furthermore, we all have violent tendencies to some degree or another. When you think a hateful thought about your own self or another, is it not violence? When you don’t take care of your body and mind, is it not violence? When we take from others, manipulate, lie, steal, or betray, is it not abuse? Is there anyone on this planet above the age of ten who has not acted in such abusive or violent ways at least once before? 

Perhaps these subtle violent tendencies are manifesting in your mind, as scenes of murder and abuse, to really bring your attention to it. With our love, sometimes it’s easier to hit a big target than a small one. What I mean is, it’s hard to even notice the subtle violence we have against ourselves when we’re thinking mean thoughts. And because it’s hard to notice, it’s also hard to love. However, it’s easy to notice violence when it looks like murder. Because it’s easy to notice, it’s easy to love. 

And if you can love and recognize a murderer as an aspect of the Divine, you will be healing and releasing them. At the same time, you will simultaneously be healing all subtler forms of violence for yourself and the collective as well, including simple negative thoughts.

I feel that I’ve given quite a bit here already, but I’ll address your specific question, so that it doesn’t look like I’m dodging it. It’s a heavy one.

Like how do you love a child molester and condemn them at the same time for their actions? Is love even what these people need? Is love even what these people need?

This is an incredibly challenging thing to look at, especially if you or someone you care about has been faced with such horrors directly. I can only imagine what it would be like. But I do have some perspective to offer.

We must begin by remembering our notion that everything is Divine, and then go from there. If we can remember that everything is Divine, even an abuser, even the act of abuse itself, we can then find clarity and some sort of understanding and closure. If we forget that everything is Divine, then we will be forced to suffer further by holding a grudge, resenting, and hating. So we must remember, and then have courage. 

Recognizing an abuser as Divine is loving them. You’re just recognizing them as Divine, that’s all. You’re not bowing down to them, praising them, encouraging them, celebrating their behaviour, or anything like that. You’re just seeing them as Divine. That’s all that’s asked of you. Can you acknowledge that in some twisted way, they too are part of the Divine Light? If so, that’s love and that’s all that’s asked of you. 

From there, you must absolutely seek justice within the law, raise awareness, and do whatever you can to heal those that have been hurt and to prevent others from being hurt further.

With this perspective, clarity comes. We can begin to bring some degree of understanding to the abuser and their motives. For example, I have heard that a pedophile’s brain is wired to have a sexual response towards a child instead of a caring response. For a normal adult, when they see a child, it triggers a nurturing response within their brain. For a pedophile, a sexual response is triggered instead. This is something wrong within the brain of the pedophile. It’s not that they’re simply evil. It’s that there’s an issue with their physiology. 

Now, with this understanding, in my opinion, those adults that are attracted to children that haven’t actually harmed a child should be able to speak openly to their doctors about their issues without being condemned. The doctor can then provide the person with the proper guidance, therapy, and support to manage their feelings to avoid abuse from occurring.

Unfortunately, pedophilia is so condemned in society that anyone who might be a pedophile, even an innocent person, is not likely to be open about it with anyone, not even their doctors. This can lead to a pedophile trying to manage their tendencies on their own, without any support, which can end very poorly. 

My point here is that if we can recognize that even a child abuser is an aspect of the Divine, this puts us in a position in which we are able to respond to the situation with more wisdom, clarity, and consciousness. We’d be able to understand these challenges and the motivations behind abuse and violence, and from that understanding we could work to heal and resolve. But if we were to just label every abuse as nothing but evil and unworthy of understanding, let alone love, then we are doomed to continue to face these challenges over and over again.

(My intention is not to spark a debate about how we should treat child abusers. I don’t have all the answers and I apologize if I’ve triggered or offended anyone. I’m just responding to your specific question within the context of the rest of what you’ve shared. If there’s anyone with more insight into the matter, please be in touch with me and share what you think and feel. I’m open to learning and expanding my own perspective.) 

Remember, the individual and the collective are not-two. Your wounds are the world’s wounds. The world’s wounds are your wounds. Don’t let this get you down though. The power of love within your own heart is unfathomable. All you have to do is have courage to see and recognize that whatever may arise within your experience is an aspect of the Divine Light. This recognition is love. This is how you heal and transform yourself and the world.

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