Q: How do I feel love? I feel more hatred, jealousy and all other negative emotions than LOVE. I try my level best but I’ve never tasted it. I grew up as an unwanted child and experienced hatred, ill will and jealousy. How can I come out of it all? I have been doing meditation many years trusting that I will develop love for everyone, but still there seems to be no hope.
A: I would suggest that you consider the possibility that you already do love your hatred, jealousy and other negative emotions. Love in its most basic essence is just attention and acceptance, and you are probably already giving attention and space or acceptance to those feelings. So I would invite you to let yourself really love those feelings when they arise. Get to know them as you would get to know a new lover. Explore them and discriminate everything you can about them.
This will allow your inherent love to start flowing, and from there, it might be possible to also start loving more things. You can start with neutral things or things that you already like as it is easier to shower attention and acceptance on things that we like. But it is also possible to give that same quality of attention to things that you do not like or even hate. You do not have to like something to pay attention to it and let it be here.