Valentine Ickiness!

Valentine's Day makes me sick!  Is there something wrong with me?  I don't suppose you, nice, peaceful, you, would judge me, right?  Well, I'd judge me.  Perhaps you'll settle in for a bit of Buddhist reflection and I'll tell you why?

I have this deeply ingrained habit of thinking that if I feel bad, I must be doing something wrong.  For example, as I write this, I feel generally awful as I contemplate love.  That is accompanied by a series of thoughts and emotions that redefine me as a 'bad person' and a 'failure.'  Love should feel good.  Love sucks and that means I've failed at it.  Connecting the two things--sour feelings and blaming myself for them--feels like crossing a chasm 10000 miles wide, but it feels like the right connection to make.

Yet, even as I write this, I am trapped in a whirlpool of strange confusion.  I don't understand the connection between the two things.  Why is this self-destructive process so immediately present in my life when suffering is present?

If I have a headache, I've done something wrong.  If I am depressed, I've done something wrong.  If I don't want to meditate, I'm doing something wrong.  If I'm not in love, I'm doing something wrong.  If I write this down and it makes me feel guilty, frightened, angry, or nervous, I've done something wrong.

You might think this has to do with me having self-confidence issues, but it doesn't.  It is much simpler than that.  It is not self blame that causes my confusion, it is the rejection of bad feelings that causes it.  Before I blame myself for feeling bad about love, I reject the experience of feeling bad in general.  If I feel bad, that should not be, I should feel good.  I reject bad feelings on the grounds that I don't like them and they should not exist in my life...now who to blame for them?

So, yes, right now I feel like ick about love.  And it is there.  And it is my experience.  It might happen that I feel like hell about meditation as I sit on my cushion.  Not a problem.  It is there.  It is my experience.  I feel like crap about my body.  It is there.  It is my experience.  There is absolutely no reason to reject feeling bad.  It is part of life.  It is there when it is there.

Whatever you feel, about whatever there is, it is there, and it is your experience.  Don't reject any of it.  Observe it.  Just observe it.  It is there.  Nothing more.

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For another contemplation on love, check out Single & Buddhist: Learning the Path of Love.

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