it's Easter Sunday. And I feel this morning like I have a whole new heart.
A few weeks back I had a meditation that was a tipping point away from the self-hatred that I've fallen victim to again and again in my life. This doesn't mean that hatred evaporated from my heart forever. Far from it. In many ways it has merely been the start of truly being aware of the shape and texture of this hatred that has lived in my heart like so many years like a psychic tumour.
I've continued to struggle with the kind of petty obsessions, resentment and contempt that rises from heart that is locked into the habit of hatred. But I did figure out something interesting a couple of days ago.
Mattheu Ricard recommends one antidote to hatred, shifting the focus of our hatred away from people and ourselves, and toward the hatred itself. Make hatred the object of our hatred.
When I do this here's what happens: My focus shifts away from the story that I'm telling to myself, or to the "other" person who I'm hating (who, let's face it, is often a stand in for myself), and towards the place in my heart that hatred comes from.
Hatred it turns out, it a de-iterative emotion. Anxiety about anxiety increases anxiety. But hatred of hatred, if you do it right, if you really wrap your hatred in itself, serves to dismantle itself. In time the hatred disintegrates and what is left in the heart is equanimity.
Equanimity is still strange to me, and believing in the power of equanimity is still not a belief that is solid in my heart. Spend some time with this equanimity and soon enough, I'm feeling anxiety.
A trick I learned this week is that it's easier to turn anxiety into excitement than it is to turn it into calm. So when I've been playing around with feeling excited about peace. What I feel when I do this, is very close to joy. I'm not sure yet why I hesitate to call it joy. Maybe because I want joy to be something that arises naturally in my heart, not simply a conceptual tweak.
But I know I'm close. And it's easter. So I will rejoice.
