You go from a desperate animal to a transcendental consciousness.
You go from infinitesimal entity to the all-encompassing whole.
The desperate animal sees everything from the myopic perspective of it’s own survival.
Therefore everyone is either a tool — or a threat.
In humans this involves either hardcore personality disorder — or deep, deep hell-realms full of hate for everyone and everything — hate for everyone but some pitiful small self that is striving to survive.
And on that level of course there is no love for anyone or anything.
You can’t make such animal love you. You can’t make such animal appreciate you. You can only make such animal hate you.
We all have a little bit of such animal within us.
Beyond that level there’s more practical way of functioning. Capacity of recognising practicality of larger units than the SELF.
At this level you are capable of seeing beyond you — therefore are capable of loving beyond you. It’s a small and pathetic kind of love — but love nevertheless. Most of this phenomenon however is just the simplest self-benefit.
It is nevertheless constructive. It retains some ability to cooperate.
There is some conflict-solving ability. It’s very unsophisticated, but it’s there.
Next level is when we actually begin to recognise that most our conflicts can be solved to mutual benefit.
It is the level when you learn to talk, learn to listen, learn to find common ground and mutual interest.
At this point it really becomes apparent that there’s far more to achieve through cooperation than through competition.
Furthermore this ability to resolve most conflicts changes one’s perception of the world. Since most conflicts you resolve peacefully and mutually-advantageously — you move away from this paradigm of everyone and everything being a potential enemy. Everyone really just becomes a potential ally.
Finally there’s the stage at which your attitude to the world is now informed by deep understanding of personal impermanence, non-existence, emptiness — and the connectedness of the whole. This is now not driven by mutual interest of yourself AND the group. It is now driven by the most universal principles of what is OBJECTIVELY good.
Interestingly now that you are driven by higher ideals — you become more ruthless as an individual.
You goals require greater commitment — therefore you invariably set stronger boundaries, greater standards, and stand by your rules without meekness.
Furthermore your newly attained understanding of the whole makes you less focused on an individual before you — and more on the greater, larger truth.
I believe one usually is some mix of all 4 stages, in varied proportions.
Ideally we would embody the 4th stage — but with a great deal of empathy.
I believe the mixes can be very strange. I believe one can be both level 1 and level 4.
I believe weird twisted mix of actually bettering the world IN ORDER to better one’s solipsistic animal small self — I believe it’s actually possible.
Or perhaps one can have two sides at the same time?
It can be quite complicated
One particular complication is going from empathetic, reconciliation-oriented self — to the more ruthless, strong-boundaries version of oneself,
There comes at one point the inevitable recognition that some individuals can NOT be saved. Not within this lifetime.
What follows is realisation that you must abandon them.
Which sounds awful familiar like stage 1 — of soliptistic animal.
Except the animal hates everyone and loves no one.
While on level 4 you love everyone and hate no one.
You hate no one and you just recognise futility of changing any individual self.
You only recognise it on level 4 — when you already have a great understanding of humanity.
You don’t recognise it on lower levels because you are so preoccupied with bettering yourself BY creating those mutually advantageous relationships.
Here however you really don’t have time to please any single person, or to save any single person, or to make it work with any single person. This is more than that.
Therefore you abandon them. Not as your enemy. Not with ANY animosity. Only as someone who went the other way.
Indeed ANIMOSITY is the litmus test.
Its this feeling of LOVE, vs feeling of ANIMOSITY — which is the true indicator of which stage you’re at.
Therefore the journey really is:
-Learning to not fear your perceived enemy
-Learning to reach out to them — and make friends
-Learning to love them
-Learning to turn the actual enemies into friends, and loving them
-Learning to love everyone really
-Finally — abandoning some of those you love — for the sake of greater ideals
-But maintaining love and empathy as your compass, and as the test of your mental and spiritual sanity — for it is easy to delude oneself