“Let go of anger” says Lord Krishna “He who is without anger shall reach me!”
If you go by the literal understanding of this verse in Bhagavad Gita, none of us can reach Lord Krishna because all of us at some point in life, would have expressed anger. What is anger?
The truth is anger is neither positive nor negative. Anger is an energy, just like money, it depends on how you handle it. For example, if somebody does a $10 job, you will not pay him $1000. If you are paying him $1000, you will become bankrupt very soon! Same way, if somebody does $10 worth of mistake, don’t pay him with $1000 worth of anger! For any negative emotion, whether it is anger, lust, greed, fear, when you pay more than the situation requires, you will be depleted.
Quite often anger is the product of guilt we feel inside us when someone points out something we didn’t do right. We move into a defensive position instead of accepting the wrongdoing, we get angry. We would like to keep our wrongdoing as secret and really dislike the other person for trying to bring it out to the open. Getting angry does not resolve problems.
One more important thing about anger, the more times you get angry, the more this pattern becomes solidified in the mental grooves. Anger becomes an unconscious pattern which you respond through a reactive mind. Biologists tell us that repeated behaviour actually rewires the brain. Neural networks get established with repeated behaviour pattern. What this means is that anger breeds anger. The emotions not only rewire your brain, but they also rewire your body. In their efforts to accommodate these repeated and debilitating emotions, the cells lose the capacity to absorb nutrients. They grow less and they rejuvenate less. These changes affect you and more importantly affect your progeny as well, as your entire cellular and DNA structure can be changed by your behaviour. Biology tells us that emotions are chemicals, and these chemicals are released by the brain. We control these chemicals. However, over time, these chemicals can change you and control you if you are not aware.
How do you handle anger?
First, be aware of your own anger, internalize it. Second, look at your anger or someone’s anger issues as a sickness, not as ego or arrogance. Don’t judge yourself or others with this one pattern. Separate the pattern from you or that person. Third, approach that person with attitude – how can I contribute and make a difference in his/her life? Avoid taking the approach of attacking that person as anger only increases and breaks. Through attack, solution can never be found. Your approach, your body-language, everything will be different if you have just this one attitude – how can I contribute? Because every person’s innermost intelligence is intuitive enough to recognize the help coming from somebody. They will not be able to resist and simply they will be transformed.
There is one powerful meditation technique, taken from the Shiva Sutras delivered by Mahadeva (Paramashiva) Himself to His consort, Devi, gives solution for all problems – all psychological problems being faced in relationships. This meditation can directly deliver the enlightenment experience. He takes us to a deeper level of our inner space. He explains how to work on ourselves when a mood against someone or for someone arises within. He says, ’Let you be centered on you. Let you go to the source of the emotion from where it arose.’
Whether we are suppressing or expressing any emotion, for example anger, the other becomes important. Even when we suppress an emotion, in our inner space the other will be constantly remembered, and will be important. Here Paramashiva is not teaching us to show compassion or to suppress the emotion. He is simply teaching us to turn the whole direction and handle anger as an energy, without bothering about the reason or the person. He asks us to drop both and handle the anger as an energy, not as an emotion. Whenever we look at anger as an emotion, we will try to look for the reason and convert it into compassion. If we look at it from the angle of the other person, we will try to suppress it, to prevent pouring it on the other person. Paramashiva is asking us to drop both compassion and suppression. He asks us to go to the source of the emotion within, making us centered on ourselves, without being moved by any emotion, thoughts and engraved memories.
INSTRUCTIONS
Step 1. Close your eyes. Sit with any tension and irritation you already have. Remember your most intimate enemy, the person or people who create anger in you. Remember the people, the objects or situations that create deep anger in you. Allow yourself to create the intense anger.
Step 2. Now, forget the object. Forget the person and the situations that created the anger in you. Just go to the source of the energy, from where the emotion is arising. Go to the source of the heat and the irritation. Go to the source of the anger. Allow yourself to reach the deepest level of meditation.
Step 3. Relax, open your eyes.
This meditation technique needs to be practiced when anger happens in real life situations. Only then the anger will be authentic and then the meditation will become a deep experience in you. Namaste 😀