How can I love my enemy, it is asked, or anyone who is outwardly or inwardly repugnant to me? The answer is that we are not called on to love what is evil in our enemy nor what is ugly in anyone. We are called on, however, to remember that alongside of the evil there is the divine soul in him, alongside of the ugliness there is the divine beauty in him. His non-awareness of it does not alter the fact of its existence. And because he is a bearer of something grander than himself, unconscious of it though he be, we are to meet his hostility with our goodwill, his baseness with our nobility, and thus help him by our thought or our example to move onward--even if no more than one millimeter--towards the discovery and realization of his own divine soul. When we are enjoined to love others we are really enjoined to sympathize with them as fellow living creatures and to have compassion for their sufferings or ignorance. If the thought of our enemy arouses hatred, dislike, or fear, he will continue to haunt. The only way to be free of him is to arouse our compassion for him, to extend goodwill towards him. In the moment that we feel like this we exorcise his wrath and are liberated.
-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics > Chapter 2 : Re-Educate Feelings > # 102
