Hate text

In the olden times (or when cell phones were but an inspiration waiting to be realized) the art of "destroying people" was done in less obvious ways. People used to whisper and slyly gossip through the telephone and beauty parlors. Other more elite gatherings were the tea parties and mah jong games. Here in these seeming innocent settings, women bashed and destroyed other women for the sheer joy of it, others for issues such as adultery and their own jealous pains, and others, for such trivialities like finding gleeful respite from their boring humdrum lives. And because a group of people (mostly women) were always present, it was often hard to say who really started the talk and all the reputation bashing.

But how the scene has changed since the advent of the now-indispensable cell phone! In the new millennium where technology allows thoughts to jet off from one mind to another almost as fast as they are thought of, the idea of reputation bashing assumes a gargantuan and scary dimension. In two minutes, your whole reputation can be broken into pieces or a great shadow cast over it. And one would not even know where it all began.

Human nature remains intrinsically the same. This with all the jealousies and bitterness that can drive scorned and angry women ("Hell has no fury like a woman scorned!") to bring out their worst shadows. Time has not changed this truth. What is different is how the new technology has allowed the venom to spread like wild-fire, almost epidemic in its proportion.

I have to write about this topic since I have been on the receiving end of midnight/dawn hate text messages – not aimed towards me but to another person I know. I am one in a string of many being sent numerous text messages, breaking into pieces the reputation of another person. Almost in disbelief as I am awakened to read the hate text, I feel great pity for the woman from whom the text originated and the object of her hate. It’s a story as old as time – where another woman finds the love of a man (in the process of a separation) and the wife is in hateful rampage screaming "mistress, dirty woman," with so much hate, hate, hate.

Of course my friend and her boyfriend know it is the ex-wife doing all this, the ex-wife with the retinue of supportive friends who gamely send off the text brigade. What is sad is that while the ex-wife may think this is her only way of getting back at her husband, this energy boomerangs double-fold into a karmic connection of such negative energies that will continue eating her into the dark of the night, wreaking madness in all her waking thoughts, moving with demonic force into her great subconscious crying in pain.

The energy one sends out is the same energy returned. Of course, there is the chorus of her friends on the side, who, thinking they are helping her, are adding their own karmic knots to the process of forwarding texts. Do they not know that for every negative thought or wish they have for another, this doubles back to them two-fold? (Such is the spiritual law of karma that what you send out returns to you. Actually, this spiritual law is now a scientific occurrence where quantum scientists have proven that space is concave and that any energy released from one point, moves through the concave form of space and bounces/doubles back to its place of origin. But this is going beyond my story.)

What then of the "mistress" or the other woman’s (as well as the man’s) reputation that has been totally dragged in the mud? No doubt the objective was reached with this text brigade – but what is clear is that there are always two sides to the coin (No, actually three. The left side, the right side and the thin line in between). But wait, lest readers think I am taking the side of my friend, let’s look at the case objectively.

Does the wife know that her former husband had been leaving her side way before he even met the other woman? Does the ex-wife know that it was perhaps her very nature that was driving her man away? That the mistress never did anything to lure the man to her side but that the man actually fell in love with her? That the mistress and her man are just going about their lives trying to fix their situation in the best way they can?

The term "mistress" nowadays does not have the same connotation as it had in the past, where mistress equaled bad woman. I know a lot of mistresses/girlfriends who are actually nice, whole and wonderful women, whose only fault was that their man’s past relationship has not yet had any closure, legal papers finalized, church annulment not yet given or things to that effect.

What is very clear to me is that a great karmic triangle is being played out here. In the level of the soul, how do we know the great karmic connections that bind these three souls together at this point of their lives? While religion may judge this and quickly classify this story under "adultery," that thin line of the coin inevitably brings the storyline into the shadow area of gray. There is a karmic connection being played out here. There are great soul lessons that must be learned. And even I cannot say what these are except for the fact that the three must undergo the process of their actions based on the free will decisions that have been decided upon in the course of their lives.

In the story of past lives which gives credence to the belief in reincarnation, there is the chapter where we come back into this physical earth to work out various karmic connections left unfinished from other lives. These connections will inevitably bring people back together so they have the chance to grow in the wisdom of their soul purpose, to understand the discipline needed to grow beyond all the hurts and pains, to learn forgiveness and true compassionate loving. Only when this last aspect of love is learned, then relationships are released with love because lessons have been learned, then and only then do we know that karmic ties have been broken. And the souls can move on.

So now I watch this trio undergoing the fieriest part of their karmic relationships (it’s actually the volcanic eruption where molten lava begins to flow). Where anger and jealousy must be cleansed, where the mind must seek to see the answers beyond the longings of the heart, where the passions must be purified so wisdom and self-knowledge can set in. I have told my friend to say a prayer and to keep her silence as these text arrows continue their mud slinging. I have asked her to try to rise above it all, as only God knows what is deep in her heart. If the story was reversed and the wife was my friend, I would tell her to reflect on her life and why her husband left her, to see that perhaps there was reason why this had to be this way? I would tell her that for every mud slinging thought she did against her husband, she was breaking any last straw to try to get her man back. And that all this was just destroying her. I would ask her to pray and try to make sense of the way her life was unfolding while trying to understand the pearl of the lesson in all this pain. I would ask her to stop being a coward and just go and tell the other woman exactly what she thinks.

I would ask her friends to mind their own business that whatever they do does not help anyone, least of all themselves. I would ask them to not choose to be part of the demolition of another when that other never did anything to them personally.

And in the dark of the night as I read the hatred in the text that shines forth from the luminous face of my phone, I let out a sigh as my heart goes out to all of them. I hear the wisdom of the spirit talking to me that water flows and follows its own depth. That all things are perfectly where they are and how they are meant to be as God’s plan for our lives unfold.

(E-mail me at jej1@easycall.com.ph)