A few years back I wrote a post about a pivotal moment in my practice, the night my depression died. This morning I write about another such moment. The morning my self-hatred healed.
The process started last night, in much the same way, with insomnia. To try to nudge myself asleep I listend to a Tergar meditation on essence love, a meditation where we forget about lovingkindness and compassion, and practice being, without concept, without cognition with whatever suffering we're feeling in its rawest, most present energy. Only there is transformation possible.
I followed that up with a Rob Bell podcast on grace and peace. Grace is that energy that allows us to receive the gifts of life, and its abundant rewards that are always available to us, whether we deserve them or not. I usually fall asleep half way through a Robcast, but not this night.
Finally, tired of every virtuous option available to me, I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix, until eventually I drifted off.
This morning I was too dull in my brain to read or think much, so I meditated during the hour that I've been trying to devote to tidying. During this meditation, the completion of the triad I started two weeks ago with Absolute Joy and Absolute Self emerged. Absolute Love, the love that is always there, whether we see it or not, regardless of what we have done in our lives.
Then it came to me that before I assimilate this sense of Absolute Love, I need to deal with the deep block, such a strong part of me, so persistent a presence, I'm not even aware it's there. Self hatred. My legacy of years of rage, frustration, unkindness. That self hatred is like this lump of carbon in my heart. But it is also in its way the gem like flame that Walter Pater writes about in his famous essay on the Renaissance. It is love gone hard. But it is love.
My parents successfully maintained their hatred for over 50 years. And I wonder if this has been a great gift to me in a way, because al I need to do is turn it into love. I have the maintenance part down, I just need the antidote.
That night my depression died, did not mean the end of depression, but it did mean the end of depression having a death grip on me. It still visits from time to time, but it's never been as strong in me again. This has happened now with my hatred. I don't expect it to leave me, but it will never rule me in the way it once did. And for that I am deeply grateful.
