You can't feel self loathing and love together for very long. Eventually love wins. The trick to life is to take the accumulated stress, disappointment, fear, regret, whatever sad and painful feeling you hold in your body and brain and to make the very so slight adjustment that makes this food for consciousness, instead of food for more of the same.
I grew up in a household of hate, and I see how everyday is a choice for me between passing that hatred, and the habits of hatred--constant bickering, fighting, power struggles--and cultivating love, and the habits of love --acceptance, openness, peace building.
It starts in the morning, in the alchemy of my practice where I stand with these painful, tight, disabeling feelings, and I just allow presence to loosen them and start working with the warm energy of chi, bodhicitta, whatever one wants to call it. If I can do that consciously every day, in time my body will begin to do it without my need to sit there and give it instructions.
This is the process of enlightnment.
