Add & Subtract - Anger

Today's theme is Anger

Most people struggle with the intensity of the feeling we call anger. It is usually associated with the destructive expressions we know as aggression and projective attack.

If we understand anger as the active use of our will (the topic of next week’s newsletter), and combine it with the awareness of fear-based ego and love-based Self (last week’s topic), we can start to see and work with our anger in very different ways.

ADD ASSERTIVENESS

Often life challenges us to act in response to attack. Unloving violations of boundaries - ours, others, animals, nature - require remedy. The answer is always love, something in alignment to correct what is out of alignment.

Sometimes the corrective intervention needs to be robust; a love tough enough to crack through the shell of another’s fear-based aggression. We might use the term ‘assertive’ to describe the use of our will through righteous anger to change a wrong.

One of my favourite moments in the life of Jesus is when he cleared the temple courts of all the money changers and sacrificial-animal sellers. His righteous indignation over the defiling of “my Father’s house” fired him into action. But the calm, love-based, assertive authority with which he acted welcomed many other people into assisting him, and did not trigger the Roman guards to intervene!

Suggestion: Be still and feel your life-force moving within your body, your breath, your mind. Get a sense of how powerful your will really is, the same force that creates mountain ranges and keeps the stars in the sky.

Understand that at times your life requires you to use your will in assertive ways, ways that reveal the true power of your Self. Notice any judgmental thoughts that arise around you being more forthright. Especially for women (so conditioned out of your authority), correct any ideas about it being wrong.

Allow yourself to feel the calm, peaceful strength that comes from claiming your ‘anger’ as part of your healthy, human nature.

Author Thomas Westover on the loved-based use of anger:

“... never feeling anger might be just as unhealthy as experiencing excessive anger. A healthy level of anger means that we have a sense of right and wrong, that we know when we are being treated unfairly, and that we are willing to stand up for ourselves when we experience injustice. When channeled in a healthy and productive way, anger can help us to overcome barriers to our success and well-being”

Source: Anger Management: 12 Simple Ways to Control Your Emotions, Develop Self-Control, and Minimise Your Day-To-Day Stress

 SUBTRACT AGGRESSION

When we are stuck in our ego (fear-based, separated mind), we constantly feel threatened and attacked. We reflexively use our will through anger -in all the varieties of aggressive attack, passive and active - as a means of defence. These expressions are essentially calls for love, but can cause a lot of hurt.

The Dalai Lama was speaking in Melbourne a few years ago. I remember him saying how, if someone attacked him physically, he would defend himself - not to protect his own body, but to protect the other person from the negative karma that harming him would generate!

I believe it is entirely appropriate for individuals and society to protect themselves from destructive aggression. However, understanding the fear-pain-trauma behind it helps us move towards healing and ultimately forgiveness.

Suggestion: Think of a time when you felt anger-rage-fury. Perhaps you suppressed it within. Perhaps you acted it out on self or someone else.

Notice the fear underlying the expression. While not excusing destructive behaviour towards self or others, what it is like to understand the moment as a fear-driven, defensive use of your will?

What if you could see the scared little ego-self hiding beneath the hatred? How does this part respond when you bring it love and compassion?

Now think of a time when you witnessed someone else acting out their anger, attacking through mental-emotional-physical violence.

Try to see the fearful, split-mind ego driving their behaviour. While not condoning the attack in any way, how does it change your feelings about the event to hold that deeper understanding? If it was appropriate to offer in the situation, how might that person respond to loving kindness?

Social psychologist Carol Tavris on fear-based anger in therapy:

“I heard from marriage and family counselors, who agreed that the... problem is getting couples not to 'express' anger, but to shut up long enough to listen to each other”

Source: Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion