Struggle with Myself

(Written in December 2008)
I read a book that I picked up in the Library — Breakfast with Buddha. The author does a good job telling the story of a road trip with a middle American man and his sister’s guru.  The guy is resistant and skeptical, but finally begins to open to another way of looking at things.  The core of what he gets, and what the guru teaches, is that the center of things is love.  Love is what animates dead matter, energizing it to grow and change.  Our basic human nature is to love, but we create armor to protect ourselves and that hides and restricts our power of loving.  This makes a lot of sense to me.  Then it seems that the reason why I can’t feel my loving for two friends I’m currently in trouble with is that my armor is too thick and strong.  I don’t begin to know what to do about that.  Although maybe the lovingkindness meditation is something I can do to indicate the direction in which I aim myself, and to keep reminding myself of all the beings that I really do love.
[Added later in margin: WRONG.  I have NO armor, and I’m too raw & vulnerable & wounded to be able to feel my own power of loving.]
My heart hurt really badly all day yesterday.  The talk with one friend didn’t help at all because I shifted from being with it to trying to make it go away.  I also saw again the terrible tangle I get into with Eleanor — that belief that if I don’t do something for someone then I “don’t care” about them.  The part of me that knows I do care gets angry about being invalidated.   So what I feel is the dull pain of anger and invalidation, instead of being able to feel my caring.  I don’t know what to do about that either — except remind myself to hold my anger and invalidation with compassion.  Lately I’ve had occasional moments of suddenly seeing the depth of my good will — how I really do want what’s best for everybody.  I have a moment of astonishment and reverence for this amazingly good person that I am, and then the clouds roll back, the gold disappears under the clay, and I’m back with the miserable worthless version of me.  I wonder if it’s been doing the lovingkindness prayer for myself that’s made this possible?