{"id":3025,"date":"2012-08-07T14:46:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T18:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3025"},"modified":"2012-08-07T14:51:57","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T18:51:57","slug":"struggle-with-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3025","title":{"rendered":"Struggle with Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Written in December 2008)
\nI read a book that I picked up in the Library \u2014 Breakfast with Buddha<\/a>. The author does a good job telling the story of a road trip with a middle American man and his sister\u2019s guru.\u00a0 The guy is resistant and skeptical, but finally begins to open to another way of looking at things.\u00a0 The core of what he gets, and what the guru teaches, is that the center of things is love.\u00a0 Love is what animates dead matter, energizing it to grow and change.\u00a0 Our basic human nature is to love, but we create armor to protect ourselves and that hides and restricts our power of loving.\u00a0 This makes a lot of sense to me.\u00a0 Then it seems that the reason why I can\u2019t feel my loving for two friends I\u2019m currently in trouble with is that my armor is too thick and strong.\u00a0 I don\u2019t begin to know what to do about that.\u00a0 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.
\n[Added later in margin: WRONG.\u00a0 I have NO<\/span> armor, and I\u2019m too raw & vulnerable & wounded to be able to feel my own power of loving.]
\nMy heart hurt really badly all day yesterday.\u00a0 The talk with one friend didn\u2019t help at all because I shifted from being with it to trying to make it go away.\u00a0 I also saw again the terrible tangle I get into with Eleanor \u2014 that belief that if I don\u2019t do something for someone then I \u201cdon\u2019t care\u201d about them.\u00a0 The part of me that knows I do care gets angry about being invalidated.\u00a0\u00a0 So what I feel is the dull pain of anger and invalidation, instead of being able to feel my caring.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what to do about that either \u2014 except remind myself to hold my anger and invalidation with compassion.\u00a0 Lately I\u2019ve had occasional moments of suddenly seeing the depth of my good will \u2014 how I really do want what\u2019s best for everybody.\u00a0 I have a moment of astonishment and reverence for this amazingly good<\/span> person that I am, and then the clouds roll back, the gold disappears under the clay, and I\u2019m back with the miserable worthless version of me.\u00a0 I wonder if it\u2019s been doing the lovingkindness prayer for myself that\u2019s made this possible?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Written in December 2008) I read a book that I picked up in the Library \u2014 Breakfast with Buddha. The author does a good job telling the story of a road trip with a middle American man and his sister\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breakdown","category-depression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}