Addressing shame and self-hatred

Using metta to support and soothe the revelations of the heart

As we progress on the meditation path, challenging content is likely to arise. Much of this content is stored below the conscious level. Some of it may be what buddhists describe as karmic traces; I have no way of knowing at present. But whatever you have in there is absolutely going to come up. You may already have experienced these heart opening challenges.

How do we manage the damaged heart as practice deepens? I’m a firm believer, and have a firm bias, that when this deeper material starts to arise, we must be incredibly kind and gentle with ourselves. This is best. On the other hand, refusing to address this challenging material causes problems.

So what do we do?

Sharing a bit about my personal path, instead of attempting to generalize, will bring increased clarity, making the described actions more helpful and impactful. It is a little like a circle that keeps going, with deepening grooves that reveal our particular patterns of subconscious material. And our skill at managing what arises begins to improve as we continue down the path. Material that might have seemed overwhelming at an earlier point now becomes more grist for the mill.

The writing that follows will describe the way that some of these subconscious patterns have played out in my life. While a gamut of content can arise, I’m going to focus on shame and self-hatred. These patterns directly impacted my meditation path, drawing me towards jhana practices that seemed to offer a way beyond these personal difficulties.  I’ll describe how all of this impacted my first retreat. Finally, I will offer one type of meditation support that helped me through these difficulties, discussing the role that metta practices played in the healing process and the gradual release of self-hatred.

Shamatha practice and the opening of subconscious patterns

My meditation path began with basic shamatha training using The Mind Illuminated (TMI) by John Yates and others. I learned to focus the mind on a meditation object, applying helpful information about the differences between awareness and attention. As my concentration skills improved, subconscious patterns rose to the surface. For example, I began to struggle with extreme irritability and a sense of failure. I read about challenging emotional material that commonly occurred in stage four of the TMI model. Check. That’s where I’m at, I told myself. For many months, I was unable to practice effectively with these intense feelings and harsh thoughts. Traumatic experiences began to arise during sits. These experiences were intense and confusing. I sometimes had no story to link to these experiential presentations.

I met those experiences with the self that had developed up to that point. Of course I did. What else can any of us do as we walk the path? There was a problem though; my self development up to then was centered around a harsh and demeaning part of the self that was running the show. So what happened when the practice got deeper? You guessed it: the harsh and critical part of the self took over. At a vulnerable point in practice, my self reacted with harsh judgment and condemnation. If you’ve ever had this happen in practice, you know it’s a difficult place to be. Making it even more challenging, the harsh self-criticism influenced my willingness to reach out for help. After all, at the time I was believing that these problems were happening because I was a flawed and ruinous human being.  This contributed to a vicious cycle of shame and self-hatred.

Patterns of shame and self-hatred

The ongoing sense of shame prevented my sharing any of this with a teacher for many months. What I was going through seemed to be a reflection of my failure as a meditator. And I held another belief that kept me trapped for a longer time. I believed that if I exerted more effort, I would somehow escape. More specifically, I believed that the source of the difficulty was my not trying hard enough. Because, of course. This seemed obvious to my mind, geared as it was toward harsh self-criticism.

I was caught in a cycle that is common in early (and sometimes later) meditation practice. The cycle goes like this: first, there is enthusiasm and hope for the practice; then misunderstanding shamatha as being only related to concentration (neglecting cultivation of calmness and sweetness). This was a crucial error that made everything worse. The increased concentration caused the arising of subconscious material, including patterns of shame and self-hatred. As part of these patterns, I held beliefs that I was not making enough progress and that the lack of progress was due to not trying hard enough. I concluded that I needed to try harder! When I say try harder, I mean focus even more exclusively on increasing concentration. What a setup for negativity and pain!

Now, I was working with teachers during this time. But I was so filled with shame that I could not be honest about my experience. If this sounds crazy to you, just know that I was fully convinced that the entire source of my meditation difficulties was this flawed human being. Teachers did pick up on some of the negativity I carried about the self. But I told nobody what was actually going on. The shame was like a wall that was beyond me. The teachers suggested I might want to try some metta. Hah! That was the last thing I needed. I had a kind of violent internal reaction to that practice. What little metta that I did was like shining a light on the shame, which was an unpleasant and nearly intolerable sensation.

I began exploring some trauma based therapies. Therapists and teachers would bring up self-hatred as they got to know me, but I would dismiss that; they didn’t know me! I hung on tightly to the harsh and judgmental view of the self.

First retreat and jhana focus

In the midst of these storms, I (of course!) went on my first week long retreat. I was focused on reaching advanced jhana states. Jhana practice seems to draw those of us who struggle with patterns of self-hatred. For me jhana practice involved advanced concentration and striving for special states. It is perfect for meditators who think they need to exert more effort! Just to be clear, I am confident that jhana practices help many people; here I am making the point that jhana can also be used to create unnecessary effort and striving.

I wanted to achieve an advanced state and obtain evidence of progress and skill development. I also had a specific fantasy that awakening would relieve my suffering. That one is tricky because awakening absolutely does relieve suffering but not for the reasons I thought. None of my emotions or troubling thoughts were removed by any awakening process that has occurred. For me, a prerequisite to awakening was turning towards the shame and self-hatred, learning ways to support and hold the pain-filled self.

Predictably, the first retreat did not always go well. I met with a teacher on the first day and we talked about jhanas. He encouraged me to reach out if I had other questions. So far so good. The retreat was completely silent except when you were talking to a teacher.  The painful cycle of shame and self-hatred played itself out over the next four days. Trauma would arise during sits, then at night I would go into my car and literally howl into my arm (so I couldn’t be heard or seen).

During that initial retreat, I took long walks into the Arizona highlands. One day I had a funeral for a close friend that had died in a split second when her van was struck by an oncoming vehicle. I made a circle of rocks and talked to her and prayed. This experience was the best thing about the retreat.

Extremely difficult mood and mental states were present. I was using meditation techniques to push deeper, resulting in more pain, despair, and hopelessness. I left the retreat after four days, experiencing a pending explosion.

Things began to improve after that. Something in me surrendered to the process that teachers were trying to show me. I got into a sangha of like-minded meditators and began working with Tucker Peck, a great teacher and psychologist who helped guide me towards a new meditation path that included self care. My views about metta changed and I began taking it as a serious part of my path. Prior to that, metta was more like an obstacle that seemed to interfere with what I wanted to do: go deeper! My belief that I could push through emotional pain by trying harder represented deep confusion.

These days, as I speak with people about their own meditation paths, it appears that I was not the only one! Many people carry these painful and harsh reaction patterns. Using meditation to support internal views about shame and self-hatred is harmful and avoidable. Knowing that so many people struggle with these patterns is the main reason I decided to write this post.

Metta: an action step to release patterns of shame and self-hatred

So, metta. It is so interesting how we react to the practice of metta. In the next year, I practiced daily metta both on and off the cushion. My heart began to open up and the world seemed to change. I gained benefit from various metta practices. One benefit? I began to discover the many places where self-hatred showed up in life.

How interesting that many of us carry a deep resistance to the practice of metta. Perhaps it is obvious to you why the resistance is present? It is partly due to the identity threat. Metta is such an opposite practice from living with self-loathing. It is loving the thing you’ve hated all your life. In this regard, metta is incredibly powerful. Even doing a small amount each day can begin to chip away at the wall of shame and isolation.

Yet so many of us have the mistaken belief that metta is a practice for newcomers or dismiss it is something we’ve already done, so we no longer need to bother with it. This is wrong view. What I’m now finding is that practices of self-love are necessary throughout the path. Even as I’ve experienced deep and significant breakthroughs, I keep returning to metta practices. This is because as the path continues to deepen, other dark corners are revealed. Some of the dark areas contain holdovers of deep self-hatred. As those have healed, I’m now encountering other hidden areas. These involve not so much self-hatred, but a refusal or inability to fully open the heart, to fully embrace the true humanness of being alive. Instead, pockets of judgment and harshness remain. As self-love has uncovered these dark areas through and through, my humanness and tenderness is being revealed. And this is painful and sad at times, seeing the profound and pervasive suffering that humans inflict upon ourselves. But even this pain and sadness are so profoundly different from the pain I once experienced. Now it is a fully human pain. I connect with other people at a level of depth that previously wasn’t possible, because you can’t open your heart when it is scabbed over with pain and fear. I know we are all carrying the same tender heart, no matter how it manifests. This knowing is true beauty, seen within myself and appreciated in others.

Yesterday I was at a restaurant with my wife. We were waiting to be seated and there was a man there with his wife. He used a cane and wore a t-shirt expressing his political enthusiasm. I struck up a conversation with him and pretty soon we were all laughing and sharing stories about life and grandbabies and everything. This life, this world, is so precious and ends so quickly. I’m so grateful for this open heart. I can see what’s right in front of me in all its glory.