This morning’s thoughts in my head were around behaviours and how we react to different situations. Anger in specific is a phenomenal emotion that is quite intriguing. In today’s society, this particular emotion runs high and a lot of people have developed a certain addiction to this. In some cases it represents control and power over things. Ego works hand in hand with this emotion to intensify its effects whether you are the predator or the prey.
Anger is a secondary emotion. It is secondary to another emotion that is fuelling the anger. Once that underlying emotion is examined and processed thoroughly, the anger evaporates, giving way to great self-awareness for us. Anger is caused by one thing: perception. It is what we perceive that brings about this emotion just as well as almost all other emotions. You perceive something that may or may not be true; ego pushes you even more so deep into it, wanting you to have physical control and the fire erupts.
As necessary as all emotions are, they are required in moderation. Too much of any emotion causes imbalance, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
The very same force that makes it possible for you to melt all over a fuzzy little puppy with gooey sweet love is the force that makes it possible for you to hate with passion and lash out with anger. There is no love without hate, no happiness without depression. For you to experience one, the opposite needs to exist and you need to have tried or experienced it at least once to know the difference.
It is out of balancing it all that the “joy” is born. Joy comes only when body and mind are in perfect balance. And - more importantly - when we are at perfect balance with our own circumstances, when we no longer fight. Not fighting doesn't mean mindlessly accepting the way things are without trying to change anything. In fact, the only way to change your circumstances is to stop fighting them. To do this we have to understand clearly what and where we really are at every given moment.
If you're serious about surpassing anger you must be willing to give up your addiction and tame your ego and learn to change some of your perceptions.
If you learn to appreciate and fully experience each and every moment just as it is, anger will become less and less of a problem until it finally disappears entirely. Anger begins very small. It's always based on the difference between how you think things should be and how they perceive to be. To quit being angry, you do not accept any of the justifications for anger your ego coughs up, no matter how reasonable you can make them sound. This is the only way to reach the source of anger and be finished with it completely.
One needs to work on this just as any addict works on their addiction. When one wants to quit drinking, they can no longer fool themselves with the idea that they can drink today and then quit tomorrow. You also could no longer pretend it is OK to get angry today about some situation in which you are clearly in the right as long as you don’t get angry tomorrow.
Anger always stems from the belief that you are right and your circumstances are somehow 'wrong'. When you think you're right (ego)- when you know for certain you're right (ego) - in the face of circumstances that are somehow 'wrong', that's when you need to look hard at what's actually happening inside. Your habit of reacting with anger has been built up over long years of reinforcement from the environment around you and what you have been taught and the ways through which you need to deal with them. Society is made up of people all clinging to the fiction of ego that draws support for this idea from the fact that “so many others believe it and do it this way”.
Anger arises out of the belief in the individual self (ego). When there is no 'you' there is nothing for 'you' to get angry about, and nobody outside yourself to feel angry with.
"Venting anger may serve to maintain the old patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur." Harriet Goldhar Lerner
This is a recurring theme that happens all the time. Ego is against change. Hence any sign of change can trigger anger. Some typical emotions underlying anger are: fear, low self-esteem, grief, exhaustion, rejection, abandonment, culture, jealousy, depression, hurt and anxiety.
The interesting part of anger is that the predator feels justified through “ego” in what is angering him/her and the prey feels “victimized” because of “ego” telling him/her that he/she does not deserve this.
If we look at this from the point of view of energy and the law of cause and effect, the predator and the prey are exactly where they deserve to be. The predator is angry because of the addiction to the emotion and the perceptions and beliefs and the prey is there for the fact that this energy was attracted not “coincidentally happening”. In this, if they both, only for a moment, put aside the ego, and ask; “Am I happy where I am in my life?” and the answer is: Yes, then all you are angry about is moot. Because in order for you to be where you are, all that has happened and happening were and are necessary and completely required. If the answer is: No; then what you are doing now, has not worked for you in the past, hence you are not delighted with the outcome and the repeat of the same behaviour will bring about the same results; which better be stopped NOW.
In Love & Light,
EL
