Anger Management

Anger as Positive energy

“I was angry with my friend I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow”. –William Blake

“Paradoxically someone had also said: “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you’ll ever regret.” So, how should one deals with emotions like anger, which if expressed wholeheartedly, can have negative implications and if these feelings are suppressed they eat away at us from within?

For every truth, the exact opposite is also a truth and balancing our lives between these paradoxes, is the middle path that spiritual seekers aspire for.

Anger, if it is recognized and acknowledged, can become positive energy to enable us to change the circumstances we are angry about. If we look closely at anger, it usually stems from a deep of hurt or rejection and the wrath is the defense for what is actually a very vulnerable state of mind.

For many years, approx 18 years of my lifetime, I didn’t know how to express anger. In fact, I was not really aware of this eating away at me. When it started surfacing, I found it difficult to deal with this angry and unpleasant person that I now saw myself as. Even today, there is a sense of guilt or venting my feelings one someone else, when I am aware that people are only instruments in the hands of God. I find it difficult to tell someone that what they have just said or done is not acceptable to me, because at some level, I do see that life has put this person into the orbit of my existence to do exactly this. Yet gradually the understanding dawned that if God has ordained someone to do something that is intended to teach me, then why was I not according to myself a similar role in their lives? This really opened up my mind and thereafter it has become so much easier to express my views, and feelings, especially anger.

Feelings can only be expressed, if they are accessed. Feeling emanate from many stimuli but anger arises essentially when we find that we do not get out way. If we have enough sense of ourselves and attach an appropriate value for the way we feel, for what we believe we need, then we do discuss things. Situations get out of control when the people around us are not open to discussion, when they feel insecure in acknowledging our point of view or need.

This is when anger becomes a powerful tool. Through our expression of this we destroy someone’s sense of self so that they give credence to our feelings and need. Depending upon the legitimacy of our view, this is sometimes necessary. It requires courage, thought and wisdom. Anger which is expressed from the gut is not the same as it is being expressed from the heart. This is another dimension of love, emanating from love for yourself and your needs and their validity in the face of denial and rejection, extended as love for other people and their place in our lives, which we do want to keep. If we did not, then we would distance them. This could be a way too. Being detached from achieving what we wanted in the first place, and also our self-image and its projection in any circumstances, is the key to responding appropriately to what the moment demands.

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Think Critically

LEARN TO THINK CIRITCALLY
Have you ever wondered why in the country of Ethiopia or Ruwanda or Iraq a two-year boy was 'sacrificed'? Why, just why you consider to be Hindu, Muslim , Christian or Indian, American, Russian , Nepali or whatever else you will? Or, for sometime think of something or someone you really believe in. Now ask yourself why and how did your belief come into being?
At some point of time you must wondered why even 'educated' people-poepl with doctrates and hard-to-get-degress-fall into ridiculous traps. Why?Possible because during their so-called education they didn't or were not told to ask fundamental queries. They answered questions in school about the lines on the world map separating countries but didn't analyse the hows and whys behind these lines;they mugged up the dates of wars but never pondered about the causes of war,and what they can do to eradicate them if they have to. Even moral values which were earlier cherished in formal education,and are again gaining importance, were more of an imposed drill,or handed down moral platitudes rather than being critical and promoting self-awareness. We've been given our commandments and various do's and don'ts but rarely are the reasons behind them critically discussed.
The modern mind is not trained to think critically and authentically. Our thinking is mechanical and purely functional. Those few original thinkers who still have 'a mind of their own' do so not because of the education they received in school but often, in spite of it. In fact, academic knowledge in schools today are largely superficial, much less a critical and aware outlook towards onself and the world around us. We've harly gone beyond scratching the surface of things. Cliched as it may sound,in countries like India, the education system is still colonial and geared to produce "babus" who are trained to handle files efficiently and not look into or to fundamentally question them. So, our education helps children to grow into unthinking, mechanical workers instead of helping them to develop into individuals with character, strength and independent thinker.

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