Anger is an undoubtedly compelling emotion. When something hits that button, it demands some kind of response, some kind of action or expression, whether we’re good at the response (or reaction) or not. Anger is visceral, even when it’s refined or rationalized, even if it’s stacked back behind layers of control and social camouflage, it bites. Might be a Doberman, might the fangs of a viper, but it bites, even if only ourselves.
But when we feel that anger grip, we actually have an invisible choice, right there in the middle of it. Close and lock around the instinctive-reactive object (and actually around a part of ourselves), or let go and ease out, delicately and with awareness.
Believe me, the energy of anger doesn’t go away! We’re not talking “just say no to anger” here lol.
You can let go of yourself, and then you see more clearly, and you can focus intention on changing the thing that’s the problem, that’s “causing” the anger for you. And the energy is transformed, not to less but to more. Like, this could actually be what it’s for. Neither torment nor denial, but clarity. In the moment, that is possible. When the energy is gone, it’s not possible. Without the letting go of the ingrained anger reflex, it’s not possible. But in the moment, it is possible.
See, we’re told we’re wrong when we’re angry, or told that we are necessarily justified in the anger, in its untransformed, muscular or venomous impossibility. But we’re neither of those things.
We may be angry because something really is wrong, really is unfair, really needs addressing, for us or for the world. Or we might not be. But we have a choice within the anger. To give our attention and our assent, our clear, soaring energy, to something truly being changed.
Then without blame, and without the animosity that clogs our psychological arteries, we can say “I will this to change”, and know what it is that we truly want to change.
Just that freedom, just that is enough to give us an enormously increased capacity to actually do it, or to help it happen.
Like many things that we take to be “ego reactions”, it’s a lot less personal than it seems.
Megalodon jaws - pic by Jasper33 at the Wikipedia project. Solarized and modified. Original image in public domain.
