Anger

In the presence of anger, peace is impossible.
-Dalai Lama

Getting Angry

We all get angry from time to time don't we?  Someone says something insulting or steps in front of us in line ...and something inside gets triggered.  We feel the heat coming to the face, the chest tightening and the fists clenching.  The sympathetic nervous system is turned on and we straighten up, tense up and prepare to do the first thing on the agenda...fight! We gear up to fight, don't we?  Testosterone, the aggression hormone, is said to rise with the cortisol during times of anger.  We automatically and instinctually prepare for attack when anger gets triggered.

What?  Someone just stepped in front of us and we are going off to war? That doesn't make sense.

The Reaction and The Waking Beast

Well what is actually happening is that we reacted to some external thing, be it an action of another or a thought...a deeper seated and repressed ball of emotion got poked.  We woke up the little entity inside us, what Tolle refers to as the pain body.  We have given it something to eat and like the Gremlins who get fed after midnight, this sleeping beauty becomes a beast. It feeds off of this minor little thing and possesses us rather quickly taking over our thinking mind.  We then react emotionally or behaviourally as a result. In that moment, peace is impossible.

Attack

We attack. And of course, if another individual with ego is involved, they will react to our reaction  because their pain body gets awakened by ours.  Our pain body will grow stronger and more warrior like with their attack and we will react back. The pain bodies will just grow and grow.

Pain bodies are hungry and cranky when they are awakened abruptly. So it becomes a battle of ego against ego...and in the case of a thought trigger within one individual...it becomes a battle between  self and the world.  We are indeed at war.

And if this is a collective pain body activation...then we see real war manifesting in our world.

Anger is just an emotion

The thing is... anger is just an emotion.  It is nothing more than a wisp of energetic breeze blowing through our psyches.  It isn't good.  It isn't bad.  It just is.  If we just allow it to be and then let it pass through...it is gone and does no harm.  It is when we cling to it, hold on to it, struggle against it, resist it, deny it and avoid it that it becomes a problem.  Stuffed anger gravitates to that ball of repressed emotion inside us, giving it a fire that will burn us alive if we aren't careful.  Anger itself is not the problem. Our inability to just let it be...is.

Calming the Beast

• The trick is to become aware of the pain body within us...just be aware of it.  Know that it is looking for a reason to manifest and fight.  It thrives on drama, war and chaos.
• Be aware of what triggers and activates it for you.  What are your anger triggers? What types of things p*&^ you off?
• Watch yourself when you become angry...just mentally  step out of the situation and become the conscious awareness.  "Oh my look at me...I am getting all rawled up, aren't I? " That isn't always easy to do being that the reaction often happens so fast and is so all consuming we can get lost in it.  Just keep practicing.
• Practice being the witness in other areas of your life.  The more present you become in other situations, the more likely you will be present in the midst of an anger reaction.
• Remind yourself that it is peace you want, not what pain body  offers.
• Accept and allow the anger in this heightened state of awareness.  Be present first .
• Embrace it gently
• Let it go...forgiveness works here.

We all get angry but we do not need to get lost in it and react because of it. We can always choose peace rather than it.  The more peace we can create in ourselves, the more peace the world will experience.

All is well in my world.

References

Eckhart Tolle (April , 2012) Dealing with Anger, Resistance, and Pessimism. Eckhart Tolle TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqX5IFKYFWk