Robert,

I’m sorry for your suffering, brother, and can understand why you feel cruddy about yourself. Its good that you feel some guilt that you acted poorly, it means your heart is still beating. 🙂 Instead of looking at yourself as a mountain to conquer, perhaps you could see what I see… a child learning to play nicely. Sometimes when we stumble along the way, we hurt our own tender heart, lash out, and lose belief in ourselves. This can lead to a cycle of self flogging that is unnecessary. Said differently, something was cooking inside you that was wild, hard to manage (anger, jealousy, delusion) and it pushed you to act unskillfully. This was like burning your hand on a hot stove, and it has left some pain and burning smell (guilt and seeing yourself as a “bad Robert”).

The cycle can become complete, however, if you can simply see it. You had some unmet needs, some inner fears, tangles of thinking and behavior, and those conditions lead you to act abusively, which then produced guilt and shame and regret. Instead of furthering the drain on your tender heart by beating yourself up (clinging to the guilt, for instance, as a “just punishment”), you can honor your mistakes by figuring out how to become peaceful, gentle and tender. This will uproot the whole of it. Said differently, perhaps then you had a difficult time being gentle with her, and now you have a difficult time being gentle with yourself. Abandon, abandon, abandon!

Consider starting a loving kindness meditation practice. Better than wallowing in guilt and self judgment, using our mistakes to fuel our evolution helps to honor the beings harmed by our actions, especially ourselves. Consider searching YouTube for “Sharon Salzburg metta meditation” on YouTube if interested. Consider that perhaps the abuse was fueled by a hunger, a restlessness inside you that would build and build until it exploded outward in poorly aimed actions. Metta (loving kindness) helps to reduce the compression inside our head, so the unskillful behaviors have no fuel, no pushing. The mind and heart become peaceful and smooth, and our actions naturally become more gentle, because the warm glow fills us and motivates kind action. Without “sheesh, what the hell Robert” or “oh my god, no one could love me if they knew the real me” and trying to force yourself to be a better person.

Said differently, we act foolishly when we go undernourished. Instead of struggling to stop yourself from ever abusing another, consider struggling to find nourishment, good fuel, peaceful fuel. Then, abuse will have no purchase in your mind or heart, and you’ll find it easier to forgive and let go… both as it was done to you, and done by you. That’s when you can surrender and get back to just playing in the sand box with the rest of us children. 🙂

Namaste, brother, your heart is far more loving than you give yourself credit.

With warmth,
Matt