Anger

Path Of Creator

Anger In Relation To The Path Of Creator

The journey of transforming the state of anger begins with developing awareness because one can only address as much anger as one is aware!

The practice of meditation will thus be truly helpful. Through daily practice, one will be able to become aware of their emotions even at the subtlest level. Realize that the more moments one can become aware of their anger, the more clues one will have to realize the deeper causes of their anger. And subtle experiences of anger are as important as the more intense experiences because they can blow up to be as intense given the right conditions. 

Inner_Resistances

There's a possibility that one may not want to develop the awareness of their anger because they believe that they know everything about their anger already. But realize that that Self-knowing can be a life-long journey as one can always know more than what one already knows.  

Have you ever met an angry person who can't tell that they are angry?

When one has lived with themselves for such a long time, one can normalize the experience of anger thus overlook it. So, the practice of that allows one to introspect will be especially useful, i.e. meditation. 

Once the angry parts of The Self is discovered, remember to embrace it with unconditional love rather than judge it as something that is undesired or imperfect beecause the journey of transforming anger can only be progressed with developing Self-Acceptance. Realize that fighting a suffering state of mind with another suffering state of mind will only make it worse.  

The seed cause of anger will always take one to the beliefs they have created about themselves and the world.

Once these are discovered, one can work through their anger by learning to let go of their attachments to them. 

Let us examine what kind of these beliefs can be. 

Negative Ideas

To understand the seed cause of anger, one can first understand how the experience of Suffering is created in the mind. 

When we become attached to a belief that promotes Self-Rejection, the suffering states of the mind will be experienced, for instance, fears, impatience, self-doubt, jealousy, anger, and so forth. 

Negative Ideas can be simplified into Ideas that begin with "It is not ok.."

For instance,

"It is not ok to be arrogant."

"It is not ok to be poor."

"It is not ok to be loud."

These are just the few examples of the countless forms of Negative Ideas one can create in the mind. 

The more one is attached to the Negative Ideas, the more Suffering one will experience.

For instance, when one becomes attached to the Negative Idea "It is not ok to be arrogant", it can drive one to form negative judgements towards arrogant people and experience fears of appearing arrogant in front of others. 

The deeper the attachment, the stronger the negativity.

Relationship between Anger and Negative Ideas

Negative Ideas can create different kinds of negative states of the mind when they are experienced in different narratives. 

Anger is usually experienced when there one has a deep attachment to a Negative Idea, enough to create the desire to control others so that they wouldn't embody what their Negative Idea is rejecting. And the more one fails in controlling others, the more negativity one will experience. 

For instance, when one is strongly attached to the Negative Idea "It is not ok to be arrogant", one can experience anger when one fails to control others from being arrogant. 

Anger Creates Confusion

In an angry experience, there can be more than one negative idea that are being triggered. When this happens, one can become confused as to what one is really angry about and only see the person in front of them as the one to blame for the miserable experience. 

As anger is usually experienced when there are deeply-rooted Negative Ideas, it can bring about intense suffering experiences, and the more Negative Ideas being triggered within the experience, the more intense the state of confusion will be as well.

Transforming The Anger

The following thoughts usually accompany the experience of anger:

"That person should be a certain way." 

This situation should be a certain way."

"That person should not talk to me like this" 

"This situation should not be happening right now."

Thus, when you experience the need to control, you can choose to Accept the other person instead. This will help you to transform your anger—by challenging the mind to do something different than before.

But of course, to forgive someone when one is angry is easier said than done.

That is why to Accept the other person, one will need to develop the motivation to do so.

As stated previously, this motivation can be developed through becoming more aware of how holding onto anger can destroy one's happiness and wellbeing. Thus generally speaking, accumulating life experiences will generally guide an angry Self to develop such Self-Awareness. However, sometimes the anger within can be so much that it can blind one from learning from one's life experiences. One can simply end up being too focused on blaming others for one's anger, thus, nothing would be learnt.

That is why the practice of meditation is to useful. The practice of meditation can help one to easily develop this awareness because as one sits close-eyed in meditation, one will become aware of how one's emotions can take a dark turn as soon as angry thoughts come into one's mental space. It's then, one can become naturally aware that one is the Creator of one's anger.

The other way to develop the motivation to develop Self-Acceptance is to learn the reasons for Forgiveness. 

See Catalyst -Forgiveness for more details.

Spiritual Perspective

The following spiritual perspective can help motivate one to develop greater Self-Acceptance

Realize that when you cannot accept someone for who they are, it will always be a reflection of what you cannot accept in yourself.

For instance, if you cannot accept a person for being stupid, it would mean that you would criticize yourself in the same way in moments when you are stupid yourself.

Seeing life from this perspective will help you to realize that every time you choose to accept others for who they are, you are really learning to accept that part of yourself you cannot accept.

So, when you are experiencing anger and find yourself unable to accept others for who they are, what you can do is to ask the following question,

"What part of them I cannot accept in myself?"

And then choose to accept that part of yourself instead of rejecting it.

For some, learning to accept oneself may be easier than to accept others. If this is the case, one can begin their journey of transforming anger by first learning to Accept oneself.

But ultimately, you would want to work towards accepting others as well. Realize that if you learn to only accept yourself whilst rejecting others, it would be like taking a step forward and another back.

The Key Is Self-Acceptance

The key to transforming anger is to develop Self-Acceptance on the inside. Whatever you choose to do on the outside will be completely up to your own choice. Whether you forgive others or express yourself honestly, both will offer catalysts for Self-Transformation as long as you carry the intent to develop Self-Acceptance.

Blockages

The journey of transforming our anger is to completely release it so that one doesn't have to experience it again.

Some may have inner blockages that can hold them back from making progress on such a journey. For instance, some people may think that anger is necessary. Some people may think that life would be passionless without anger. Some people may think that anger is a part of emotion that defines them for who they are. And so forth. 

The mind can always come up with "reasons" to justify one to hold onto their old beliefs. And these reasons will always be convincing because if they weren't, the old beliefs wouldn't be so deeply rooted in the first place.

So, the more one can discover the blockages that is holding them back from releasing anger, the deeper cause of the anger will be discovered; the easier the journey will be. 

Destination

From a spiritual perspective, anger is simply a suffering state of mind that can help one to learn more about the lessons of love. Once the lessons of love are learnt, they will simply disappear. So anger is simply there to be graduated from, rather than held onto. 

Once the anger is released, one will be able to experience life through the lens of wisdom, rather than the lens of anger. One will be able to speak to others not out of the desire to control them but out of the wisdom to express one's honest opinions. And One's passion for life will burn ever brighter because with less unhappiness one will be able to enjoy life even more. 

The destination is towards liberating oneself from one's anger. And when one reaches there, one will be able to be thankful towards all those special situations and people who have helped one to bring out the anger from the darkness into light for them to be seen and transformed.