Anger and Its Ramifications

Anger and Its Ramifications

Anger is both ubiquitous and powerfully obstructive to our higher functioning and our ability to experience anything true. Anger centres itself in the limbic/emotional brain and does its work from there. Higher mental functioning, including abstract thought that is required to grasp universal truths and principles, while emanating from our cortex, has its foundation in the emotional brain. So if we are not feeling okay, and are stuck in anger, we are essentially blocked from the truth that can liberate us.

Very often anger exists when we do not feel safe. When we don’t feel safe the unknown and unpredictable become a threat. When we don’t feel safe we become defensive, and anger is a type of aggressive defensiveness that can be turned inward or outward. In our insecure world today there is an escalating level of anger that is directed outward in society and in families in various forms of violent behaviour. Even societal justification of “pre-emptive strikes” is a justification of collective anger and its accompanying fear: ‘Get them before they get us.’

Biologist Bruce Lipton found that from the simplest cell to the most complex, a new life unfolds in one of two ways: it can either defend itself against a hostile environment, or open, expand and embrace its world. It can’t do both. Nor can we. And with human beings the perception of what is hostile is self-determined.

A safe place is created by unconditional acceptance and love – a place without punishment, but also without rewards (as rewards are ways to manipulate and control). A safe place is one without competition because with competition there is always threat of losing. A safe place is one where there is no expected conformity to rules, behaviour or external standards. Self-valuing and self-discipline are supported. A safe place allows one to play, and when we play without competition, anger is never present. It is neurologically impossible to play and be angry at the same time.

The safest place in the world is in your heart, that place of soul-centeredness where you will love to another, where you make the choice for love instead of fear. When you accompany this choice with a smile, anger vanishes. This is a choice for freedom.

Exercises:

1. Think of someone you know whom you like and while thinking of them, will love toward them and smile.

2. Think of someone you know whom you do not like and while thinking of them, will love toward them and smile.

3. Think of a situation in which you might experience fear and while thinking of it, will love toward yourself or the situation and smile.

By Soul Journey