Sunday, March 27, 2016

The True Source of Anger

Anger is one of the basic group of emotions that have been explored over the eons by artists, philosophers, spiritual thinkers and common people everywhere.

The typical idea is that anger is normal, but can be controlled and should be controlled or at least managed.  Unlike fear which is sometimes required in order to survive, anger serves no greater purpose than to fog our judgment and raise our blood pressure.

I recently have re-awakened my thinking, regarding anger, after a series of both large and small incidents over the past 3-4 months, probably starting just before our trip to England and continuing on through very recent days.

It is one thing to understand the ideas about anger and anger management, it is quite another to be able to both employ management strategies and more importantly discover the true nature of one's anger and experience it in a purely emotional and almost spiritual way.  I took this deep dive several times during this angry period and have basically come to the same conclusions as everyone else who has thought about this topic, however for me the essence was missing until I finally allowed myself to see myself for who and what I was when angry.

I have realized that all (100%) of my anger is actually directed at myself.  Sure, I may yell at another person or write a nasty email or vent to a friend about a situation that "made me angry", but the fact is that the root of my anger in each and every situation was anger at myself.

Anger at myself for allowing something trivial to frustrate me.

Anger at myself for allowing others to get the upper hand and make me feel insecure or stupid.

Angry that the Universe doesn't treat me with any special significance or deference, but rather all of the rules of the physical world apply to me in amazing equality with all other human beings.

Anger at myself  because I am not as smart, full of foresight or wisdom or aware as I wish I could be.

Anger at myself for making misjudgments and mistakes.

Anger at myself for placing importance on things (material, status, control) which I have no right to have or no possibility of achieving.

I am mostly angry at myself for not accepting the fact that I am human.  One of 7+ billion on the planet and maybe 1 of 50 + billion that ever existed.

I get angry at me for being me.

What a stupid waste of time and energy? - oh shit, there I go getting angry with myself ,,,, AGAIN