Megan,

We all do that, make decisions selfishly, get angry, act from anger, and so on. This doesn’t mean that you have an ugly heart. Rather, consider that you’re looking at your choices and feeling discontentment, which means you have a radiant heart that feels sorrow when a moment without loving slips past. This is a great place to be, because the rest is just a matter of doing some spring cleaning. 🙂

Without hearing more of your side of things, its tough to say what comes next. Guessing, perhaps you don’t handle mistakes well, such as wanting to give love but giving anger instead, and you end up feeling shitty. Instead of laughing at your bumbling, you feel sludgy which pulls you out of balance, where more “less than ideal” decisions/reactions come up, bringing more discontentment, more sludge.

Buddha taught that we all seek happiness, but the way we go about finding happiness often pushes happiness further from us. Not that we’re bad, certainly not “ugly”… we’re just foolish kids looking here there and everywhere for happiness. 🙂 These bumbling “mistakes”, (reactions of anger, deception, hiding, sludgy bits) are just defenses… and are unavoidable. They provide necessary feedback that motivates our growth in a better direction, where our actions come closer to producing the happiness we’re looking for. Said differently, you don’t get angry for no reason, you don’t lie for no reason, and as those reasons are seen, they heal, and the behaviors naturally fall away. The sludge of it helps us see where we’re hurting, what causes the reactions, and so forth.

Consider that forgiveness is perhaps the key to breaking the cycle of seeing Megan less beautiful because she makes mistakes. You mess up, other people mess up, and that’s fine, normal, usual, expected. As we rest, seeing the way our anger or lies make us feel, how they don’t really keep us safe or bring us joy, we can sigh and try to do better next time. Accepting we mess up, and when we do, it feels uncomfortable… which means our heart is doing just fine, and slowly, ever so gently, growing wiser with each attempt to find our balance.

Also, don’t take your wisdom from internet memes. At best the ideas are like a candy store, and at worst, they’re like a swamp. Just because something sounds correct or witty doesn’t make it true. “Ugly heart” for instance, is something that is never true. When someone sees “an ugly hearted person”, for instance, it just means something is out of balance inside the seer (compassion and clear seeing slipped away from them because of various causes) leaving them seeing “ugly” where another being might see “beauty”, “sadness”, or any number of things.

If you’d like to open up some of the things that pushed you toward anger and lies (defenses against perceived attacks, maybe?) feel free to share. You’re loved, lovable, acceptable… “mistakes” and all. But, if they’re painful, getting rid of them makes sense, ya know? Not so you can be more “beautiful hearted” for others, that’s just silly. Rather, so you can be unencumbered, more happy, free of it.

With warmth,
Matt