We are living in angry times.
All of us experience anger, it seems a normal human response to certain negative situations we find ourselves in. But notice that the word mad is often substituted for the word anger, and perhaps anger is a form of madness. It’s not so much the fact that we experience anger that complicates our life but how we act on those feelings is what matters. Anger can be acted upon destructively or it can be used on the path to individuation.
Anger is a complex emotion, a complex constellation of feelings, grounded in fear. Anger results from a series of cognitive distortions and can be considered a thought disorder. Anger is always a response to internal or external stimulus, that activates a conditioned response. The emotion of anger can not exist without its accompanying thoughts. Anger is totally dependent on thoughts, thoughts that generate feelings. These feelings generate more thoughts that tend to amplify or inflame the angry emotion. Therefore anger truly is a thought disorder, and as a result should be amenable to more rational thought.
When experiencing angry thoughts it might be helpful to consider the true source of our anger. Anger is a response to some perceived threat or injury that affects ones sense of self. In other words ones ego perceives a threat or an injury to itself. Ones pride, self-esteem, ambition, financial security, or relationship security is threatened or injured.
Imagine a scene like one seen on TV, imagine a psychotic killer is holding a gun to your head with every intention of ending your life, when in bursts the hero and saves you from certain death. Would you feel angry or would you be overwhelmed with relief? I think most people would be overwhelmed with relief and even experience a deep sense of gratitude for just being alive. So when your life is threatened and you miraculously survive you feel relief, but if someone cuts you off in traffic you feel angry. Anger is a luxurious emotion for those that are still alive. So often in life it’s the little things that drive us mad.
Anger is a fear based emotion a twisted form of Pride, some aspect of our egoic, false-self is threatened or injured. If we take a step back, away from our ego and observe it from the outside, we can get a whole new perspective on the situation responsible for the egos anger and see that the anger is not our own. The ego is angry and upset but I am not. I can see that the ego is injured but I am not. I am not my ego, the ego is apart of me, and my ego is often mad and easily upset. The more I identify with my ego, the more unhappy I become. If I am an angry man it is because I am over identified and attached to my ego, and oh how petty my ego can be. So the next time someone cuts you off in traffic be grateful, it proves your alive!
Always embrace your anger, don’t repress it, feel it fully but don’t act on it externally. Act internally instead. Anger can be used to explore core values, beliefs and the emotional responses learned in childhood. I said earlier that anger flowed from a conditioned response, these conditioned response were programmed into the unconscious in early childhood, and are an infantile response to childhood trauma.
Let’s say I am angry because I’ve been insulted by someone. That affects my feelings of pride and my self-esteem. My pride and self-esteem have been injured. Now all I have to do is walk back through time and look at all the times I have felt this way. If I can work my way back to early childhood I can discover the origins of my anger and conditioned response to it. I can see what values and beliefs I attached to my trauma as a child and better yet I can challenge their validity.
When I was a child and my parents insulted me, it hurt me deeply because a part of me felt what they were saying was true. If my parent said “stop being stupid” apart of me felt I was stupid and that belief hurt me, that belief injured my pride and self-esteem. I felt worth-less, I felt Shame. Shame always causes separation, the Breach of The We. I became Shame based, and now whenever anyone Shames me, or makes me feel worth-less (Raca) I experience shame, hurt and fear, and my response is to throw a temper tantrum just like when I was a child. A child who believed his parents were right, when they were wrong.
In Alcoholics Anonymous to which I owe much gratitude, they saved my life. They have a saying:
“It is a spiritual axiom (truth) that whenever I am upset there is something wrong with me” (AA Twelve Steps and Traditions:pg 90)
This saying has proven in my life always to be true. When I am upset it is because I am over identifying with my petty little ego and not my True-Self.
If I truly want to be happy joyous and free I must set my ego aside and live the True Life out of my Authentic Self.