Do you imagine the universe is agitated?

Go into the desert at night and look out at the stars.

This practice should answer the question.

 

The superior person settles her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky.

By connecting her mind with the subtle origin, she calms it.

Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.

                                    --Lao-Tzu

 

Wouldn’t it be helpful if we could follow Lao-Tzu’s advice when we’re angry?  We can, but it takes a deep level of spiritual development and commitment to develop the ability to “calm our lives.”

 

In the meantime, anger can be a devastating emotion.  It traumatizes our psyche, physically engulfs us, and can ultimately hurt others.  Indulging anger often or unleashing it on others can be hurtful, even destructive.  At the same time anger, whether mild or intense, is a part of most of our lives.  So how can we work with anger in a spiritual way?  I’m going to discuss how we see anger, what we can do when we experience anger, and how we can work with it when it arises.

 

Many spiritual and religious traditions teach that anger is “wrong.”  You are told to love your neighbor, and to be compassionate and loving.  The problem is that anger can come up for you, and your first reaction might be to vent it on a person, or label yourself a bad person for even feeling angry.  Unloading your anger on others is not very loving and compassionate, but suppressing it may also not be productive.

 

            It’s helpful to realize first that anger is often a secondary emotion:  just before you experience anger, you often experience another emotion that is even more difficult to acknowledge.  Hurt, disappointment, confusion and embarrassment, for example, may be so uncomfortable for you that you instantaneously and unconsciously move to anger.  Those first emotions often feel disempowering; at least when you’re angry you feel powerful!  So if all of these emotions are painful, what can you do when they arise?

 

The first step is to become conscious that you are experiencing anger:  feel the heat on your face, your racing heartbeat, your discomfort.  Go inside yourself for just a moment and ask yourself what emotion the anger is covering for.  (There is such a thing as righteous anger, but assume for the moment that is not what’s occurring.)  You may recognize the hidden emotion, and that recognition, in itself, is very empowering:  Ahh, this is embarrassment.  It’s very helpful to just note that underlying emotion; by simply acknowledging it, you may defuse it, as well as the anger.  Then just breathe.  And take another breath.  By taking that brief moment to reflect and breathe, space is created within the tight space you moved to, in order to protect yourself.  That expanding space allows you to be less defensive and more open to responding in a productive, perhaps even a loving way.

 

You may discover over time that you continue to think about the incident, and even obsess about it.  If this happens, you can try to fully indulge the obsession, but if you finally tire of constantly thinking about it, you can decide to go through a letting-go process.  When the incident comes up for you, allow yourself to experience the original authentic emotion (rather than the anger).  Without thinking about the “story,” just feel the emotion.  Even expand the emotion and make it as big as you can.  You will find that gradually the emotion begins to dissolve, and soon you are back to the present moment, rather than within the lines of your story.  Every time the situation arises, practice with your emotions that stimulated you at that moment.  Over time, the story will lose its emotional intensity.  If the situation was an especially difficult or intense one, you may never forget it, but it will lose its grip on your emotions.

 

You may need to do this exercise over and over again, but the benefits are that you may reduce your hurt or disappointment; you may eventually find that you can even let go of the situation.   Depending on your spiritual tradition, you may also realize that the person you are angry at is just like you; he or she has the spirit of Jesus, or the Buddha, or the Infinite Energy that is within all of us.  Since both of you “danced” in the situation, the question is:  can you not only forgive the other person for the role he or she played, but can you forgive yourself for any damage you may have done?  When you have reached this place, genuine healing can begin to take place.