As I ran berated and raged against my "ex" in my mind for the hundred millionth time, I became more intensely curious than usual about this experience.
Clearly, he is not the problem. He lives 2500 miles away, and I don't speak with him anymore. Yet, here an image is of him, in my mind, once again, and I'm running through the scenarios again and again of "you did/didn't _______" blah blah blah and in my mind I end up beating him up with a baseball bat and kicking him. Recently I spontaneously playacted being a tiger, and I imagined tearing him apart and eating him up.
In inquiring, I began to wonder, what IS hate, really? What is the payoff? What do I get out of it? What is it doing for me? I don't WANT to forgive him, I want to HURT him. I want to make him SEE what he did, make him see what I see, see it MY way.
I couldn't even really find anything illuminating on the internet about hatred, it's purpose, what it actually "is".
So far, I have theorized that I don't want to forgive, because I believe I must before I can move on to a new relationship and it's a way to keep me from putting myself out there again for my heart to be broken.
Another theory is, it serves to counteract a feeling of powerlessness by inducing a boost of feeling powerful. It's my experience that feeling helpless and powerless is nearly intolerable, and the mind is SO quick to conjure a defense!
I have a lot of time on my hands today to go deeper into inquiry...any thoughts?