How to Unlock Anger, Adam Anka [web ebook reader .txt] 📗

Reading sample

 

 

 

1. I’m angry!

 

Anger has many expressions. It’s not just explosive rage.

 

It can be seen when we are resentful, uncooperative, grumpy, stubborn, disgusted, annoyed, irritable, displeased, antagonistic, indignant, impatient, sore, overly serious, insulting, abusive, confrontational, gossipy, telling lies about people, overly critical, throwing a tantrum, being provocative, etc. It has a thousand faces each with its own color, you might say, from white hot to black as night.

 

It’s amazing to see how many feelings are in us, and these are just the angry ones! Yes, people are not cartoons. We’re complicated. Each of us is as deep as the ocean.

 

You can see that it’s no small thing to get to know yourself. And it’s another thing to learn to control or master yourself. It’s like being the president of a whole country!

 

Let’s look at anger in general. It’s a big category that a lot of bad feelings fit into. The key you are about to discover will open all the locks on all the doors to the truth about anger because, in the end, what it really is comes from a single and rather simple place inside us.

 

Anger is like a closed and locked door because it imprisons us in a small room. It cuts us off from the beauty and goodness of life and other people. It even cuts us off from our own beauty and goodness, too. Maybe that room would be better used for mops and brooms and not people!

 

Let’s get to know this thing called anger …

 

Anger is like our body is on fire. Feel the heat … just feel it. Be aware that we’re pausing here to feel something deeply. This paying attention helps us get a grip on it.

 

You can invite it to talk to you personally - in primitive sounds or words - telling you how it feels to experience this fire, maybe what it’s thinking or wanting to do. Let it have its own moment … with you standing by as a witness. Just watch and listen.

 

Don’t try to figure out what it might want to say or what you think it should say. Let IT speak for itself.

 

It might seem childish, but that’s okay. It’s a primitive level within us, and it’s been with us since the days when we lived in caves and were dressed in animal skins. Think “Flintstones”! This energy is part of what helps us stay alive and stay connected to the world.

 

Don’t try to fix anything at this time. Some people have a hard time with this because they want to use their mind to figure things out, not letting themselves have their feelings.

 

They may judge themselves as weak or foolish for having upset feelings. That’s not true. That’s just us being afraid of looking bad, out of control or feeling like a loser. Notice if you’re thinking this way.

 

You can choose to just step past your worries about it … just keep walking toward where you can stand and simply watch and listen. You may even feel like you’ve stepped out of your body like a ghost.

 

We can’t get through being upset if we aren’t willing to let it have its moment. We'll end up stuffing it down, trying to control it with our mind.

 

This may seem to work at times, but it can make us sick to do this. It can even cause us to explode in a destructive way. We see a lot of this on the news these days, no? Road rage! Domestic abuse!

 

What we really want is to release this fiery energy, to put out the flames.

 

So let IT come up and speak. Don’t interfere. Just hold there as a quiet friend who cares. Our anger won’t cause any harm unless we act it out. By stepping out of it and being a witness, we’ve disconnected it. It cannot take us over and make us do anything!

 

So we don’t act. We just watch and listen while being patient. It may take a few minutes for it to speak to you.

 

If you give it your voice to speak out loud, you might look a little nutty. So go where you’ll have some privacy or, if that’s not possible, speak softly to yourself - mumble your grumble. Most people do this at some point.

 

 

2. Think of the fire as a curtain of rain going upwards or downwards. It’s like a curtain on a stage only fluid and full of living energy.

 

Remember that you can walk through a curtain. It’s not a brick wall. There is something on the other side of this curtain that is what’s really going on, that’s producing this curtain of pain.

 

 

3. Walk through the curtain. Be open to see what’s there. Bring an imaginary flashlight if you think that’ll help.

 

Behind it is HURT.

 

Don’t try to change or fix it. Just see it, know it and be willing to experience the sensations. It’s very different than anger, isn’t it?

 

HURT is like a child who’s just been in a car crash. Can you feel the damage?

 

It’s like a raw egg that fell on the floor. It’s like a sagging, bent or broken thing. It can feel like we’re being stabbed, or it can feel like we’re in a state of shock, maybe even trembling. It’s like a pool of super-heavy and dark-colored water that doesn’t have the strength to flow.

 

This is “sorrow” or plain old sadness.

 

Every human being has had this experience. Remembering this helps us understand each other.

 

Every living thing, including animals, can be hurt. Even one-celled organisms like an amoeba will react to being poked - they’ll try to get away.

 

This “sensitivity” is the price we all pay for being alive. Even plants, some people will say, experience a kind of pain like when we pull off a leaf or a flower. They just don’t feel it like we do, but there are machines that can measure this.

 

Life would be easier if we were like a feel-nothing stone, huh?

 

Easier but not better … because a stone doesn’t experience any good times! Would you really be willing to trade away the good times just to avoid the bad ones?

 

Some people do, and then they try to live just in their mind, like up in a balcony. It works, but it doesn’t do a good job. From that high-up place, they can never make it on to the dance floor! They’re sort of safe but not having much fun.

 

Now that we have experienced our hurt, we’re ready

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Publication Date: 04-16-2020

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