(D)anger - Essay

(D)anger: A Conversation with MySelf About Frustration with the World As It Is, or
How To Stop Being Self-Righteous and Get Out of My Own Way

It’s time for something different.

We all see it; a world in turmoil. Corruption, greed, avarice, unbridled consumerism, addictions galore…we are made for better. I don’t care if you are Christian, agnostic, atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist; we can agree that the world is a mess and that there has to be a better way.

But here’s where the agreement generally ceases and each philosophy starts naming both the reasons and the repairs, centered as much on the “wrong-ness” or “evil” of the other as much as the merits of their own philosophical or theosophical basis. I am electing not to give examples, but if you look, they are prolific. The “problem” is always “them”. That statement alone betrays an error in thinking. For me, a type of self-righteous frustration can arise, and frankly has been increasing in frequency. I think my experience is not unique.

Here follows an idea. It is not a new one. It’s simply a subtle switch from what we are currently prone to do. It doesn’t try to turn Christians into Muslims, or Atheists into Believers, or hippies into … the opposite of hippies (Dick Cheney, maybe?). It takes each of us where we are and works from there. It is ancient wisdom that has been largely forgotten, but whose time has come again, as if traveling in a great wheel. Go figure.

To explain this idea, I am going to talk to myself. You are free to drop in. It goes a little like this:

“Hey Eric, you need to put away your anger.”

When I hear this, I don’t even need to ask, “What anger?” because as I mentioned, I know in the past year or so I’ve sensed a subtle shift in myself, and I am seeing it among others in the communities I run with. A decrease in patience with others. A desire for greater punishment for breakers of what I/we think the rules of a decent society should be, amounting to a desire for increasing karma terms for career consciousness criminals. But it’s not about the choices others make. It never has been, and it never will be. I know this somewhere back there, past where my mind stops.

I glare back at the Voice.

“Hey Eric, you need to put away your anger,” the Voice says again.

This time I reply. Thinking of the things that are most likely to trigger my frustration, I say to the Voice, “OK, so what am I supposed to do, pray Monsanto into oblivion? Am I supposed to allow Nestle to buy the water coming off sacred Mt. Shasta as I smile love into the faces of the water truck drivers? Let the seas continue to be used as a dumping ground from a drum circle safe on the beach?”

The Voice chuckles at this barrage. “No. You are not supposed to do anything. It’s natural for your love of all the manifestations of Life to increase as you become increasingly aware, and then to allow that love to grow into actions. But you’re preventing that from happening.”

“I’m preventing it? What? No I’m not. I get mad and then I do stuff. What’s wrong with that?”

“Of course that’s not what I said.”

I frown. It’s here that my soul explains to me that seeing my own anger is a way to get at the real underlying issue, which is really within myself, not “out there”. It’s easy to spot because it’s what throws a hard angle, a handle almost, into the way I think about the thing or situation in front of me that I want to believe is causing the angst. Anger, which arises from a lack of inner harmony, is stirred by fear like the wind can make a high mountain lake ripple, or create eighty foot waves in the ocean. Fear is deeper, more elemental than anger. In its most camouflaged state, it hides in memory and justifies its existence in urges and desires; anything to protect itself from being found, even though on some level it wants to be addressed, heard. Fear lives in the deep caves of my subconscious, my soul reminds me. It can be big, toothy and dangerous. Anger, it’s dumber, slower little brother, is far more accessible, and far more prolific. Anger, as the main manifestation for our hidden fears, colors the actions we take and shuts out actions that might actually help shift the reality of the world, which can actually only be done through love, mySelf tells me.

“Wait,” I laugh to the Voice. “Changing the world is going to happen if enough of us control our tempers? Excuse me, but that seems just a little simplistic. In fact, it kind of pisses me off that you would even suggest that.”

“Here’s why it works,” the Voice says to myself, shaking his head in amusement. “Letting go of anger works because everything, simply everything, is made of energy and potentiality. The way we manipulate these is through our intention. This is true on any plane of existence. Emotion, including anger, colors intention. We can do great works, necessary works, but if those actions are held in an intention that is skewed by anger, the actions themselves will have limited benefit at best because the Creator is made of, and responds to, love. At worst, because of the Universal Law of Opposition – that whatever we resist persists and gains strength – we actually make that which we are angry about grow in size and dimension. Which, as you’ve experienced, increases your capability for greater anger. This creates a railroad – or neural pathway - to feed the monster fear in those dark caves you don’t want to venture into. That’s where we find ourselves in the world today. “Justified” anger has been feeding our un-addressed individual fears for so long that we as a world society act in increasingly unconscious ways, with increasingly devastating results. This has resulted in issues so serious that the survival of the species is in question.”

“So,” I say to my wiser Self, “let’s say I put away my anger, and...”

I interrupt myself, “It’s not quite that easy, but continue…”

“I put away my anger and, I don’t know, get involved in a prison outreach program. You’re saying that I will be more effective in a state of “no anger” than if I did it because I was angry about career criminals?

“You glossed right over it,” the Voice says.

“Over what?”

“The point.”

Predictable anger begins to arise again. “Explain please. Dammit.”

“You are not going to just “put away” your anger. This is going to seem a little counter-intuitive, but your anger has a voice and needs to be acknowledged. As the voice of your un-addressed fears, it is sacred. Try to squelch the voices of those fears and they will ooze out the corners of the box you keep them in. Instead, see the anger. And if you can trace it to the fear it is attached to, do that. See the fear and hear it with compassion if you can. And then – actually this will happen simultaneously – love will replace it. The soul, like all of nature, will not tolerate a vacuum. Like air, love fills every empty space where it is not pushed out.”

“But…”

“Let me finish. You generally can’t say “I love, therefore I am healed and can now be effective because my energy has changed and my intention will be pure”. At that point, Love is still likely a mental concept, a nice idea. Better than anger certainly, but ultimately it can be just as attached to fear as anger is. In a relationship, that looks like co-dependence, where each party feeds off the other in ways that make each feel secure, but that ultimately support a state of non-growth. What we want instead is to see the world, not as a place of trouble and “things that piss you off”, but as a field of beauty, where beautiful things happen at will. It requires a complete shift in paradigm where the world is seen as having Innate Beauty. The difference is that the truth of Innate Beauty has to be FELT. Right now, what is “felt” is anger and frustration, and we know in a mental way that the world can be a beautiful place. We have to switch that around. We have to FEEL the beauty and harmony around us, and acknowledge that fear and anger can look really real. But the reality is the beauty, not the fear and anger. Does that make sense?”

“It’s starting to,” I say to the Voice. “But it still sounds totally contradictory in some ways. You say that emotion colors intention and action, and that anger is the voice of my un-addressed fears. OK, I can accept that. But then you say I have to acknowledge them and hear them but I guess, not act from them?”

“Right. The way to use that anger is not in an outward motion, directed at what you think you’re mad about. The healthier way is to go inward, and see what it is that is triggering the anger- which fear is speaking - and sit with it compassionately. When the fear is heard enough, when it is done speaking and understood and accepted, love naturally fills that space. But the key is to sequester yourself when addressing your fears – do it in a sacred space at home or church or in nature – so that your fears don’t end up coloring your intentions and actions. Make sense?”

I think for a while about this. “So you’re saying that when I get all worked up about the Syrian refugee crisis and I want to get mad at the governments of the world that caused all this pain, the thing to do is to see where within myself the anger or frustration is arising and address that rather than working directly on the problem itself? Rather than writing a congressman or giving money? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that unless you see the roots of your own fear first, your efforts will be of limited effect. You will, to put it I the vernacular of the Toltec shamans, be buying into the same “dream” that created the refugee crisis in the first place. You will be giving it energy, fighting it and therefore, strengthening it to an extent.”

“Do I really have time to address all my fears before I do anything? I mean, that might take a minute…”

“You are not alone and “fixing things” is not your job. You are here on earth to heal, period. As you do, love will fill you. And then it will inform you. It will tell you what to do. You will operate outside mores, convention and even in some instances, the law of the land because you will answer to a higher law. Not one that is written anywhere, but your own law, the law of love. It’s the law that Ghandi and Mandela answered to, that of Jesus and Harriet Tubman. You’ll know it is love because it harmonizes with people, even if it creates disharmony with the established order and those tied to it, blinded or distracted by it. Your actions will bring beauty. They will inspire others because their own souls will recognize the voice of your actions. Harmony, rather than disharmony, disunion, anger, will begin to fill the lower spaces occupied by pure souls like water, a drop at a time. It is done an individual at a time, a moment here, an afternoon there.”

“Wow, it sounds so beautiful. So organic, and clean, and healthy. But that’s what I was going to ask again. I mean, I don’t have time to do all this… healing, do I? I mean, as the world goes to hell I’m supposed to go walk on a trail?”

“Remember, you are not the doctor of the Earth or the Universe! Both are self-healing. But if you want to assist, heal yourself and the Universe will then direct you about what to do because you will no longer be fighting it, swimming angrily upstream. Take a moment and see where you spend your time. Facebook? Popular music, or television, or movies? I think you’ll see – in fact I know you will – plenty of areas where you can insert stillness to use to address fears or cultivate love rather than constantly distracting yourself.”

“Huh… it sure seems like a lot more fun to go blow up a dam.”

“Well, yes… but do you want to have fun and create pain or be aligned and healthy and happy and full of joy?”

“I think I see your point.”

“There’s a woman named Gabriela Andreevska. She is a woman dedicated, for now, to helping the Syrian refugees. She is motivated almost entirely by love in this regard. You can google her.”

“Has she addressed all her fears, then?”

“Oh, not by a long ways. One doesn’t have to be without fear to look fearless. Perfection is not required. She came to a point in her life where love had filled, drop by drop, the seemingly empty places in her soul that vacated by the fear she once felt. She still has a long way to go to lose ALL her fear, but enough has been heard by her scary monsters that it changed the balance of power within herself. She sees now with another set of eyes far more often than she did with her old eyes that saw only problems caused by others.”

“Oh that reminds me, I know I’ve felt the truth of the teaching that our problems are never about other people. But I don’t understand it. If a guy comes and punches me in the face for no reason, it seems like that’s a problem caused by someone else, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not easy to grasp from where you sit, but the guy won’t come punch you in the face for no reason. Ever. There is always a lesson to be learned, a truth to be reiterated, a dream to be fulfilled, or it does not happen. He doesn’t come hit you unless you create him first.”

“A dream to be fulfilled? That’s a laugh! I don’t think…”

“Nightmares are dreams, are they not?”

“Oh. Right. And I guess to your point, what society has collectively dreamed, so to speak, is a nightmare. So I guess that what you’re saying is that if enough people address their own fear by hearing their anger, by doing the solitary work, it will work the same way as the little drops within ourselves that eventually turn us more to love than fear. It will be like that for the world, where enough people have healed that it just changes things; a new reality will simply emerge. And it will happen organically, and won’t make sense to people who are fear and anger based.”

“Correct. It’s what Jesus spoke about when he said the meek will inherit the earth, and that the foolish things of the world will confound the wise. It’s the real meaning behind the 2012 prophesies, Hopi lore, Andean shamanic wisdom and the second coming of Jesus.“

“Wow… well, it makes sense when you say it like that, I guess. Sure pisses me off that it took me this long to figure it out though,” I said to myself with an ironic smile as I sit alone in the late afternoon, pine-filtered sun on the bank of a small creek in the foothills outside my home in Bend, Oregon.