a hard-learned lesson from trying to be good, and failing miserably!
hmmm....is what we need are some nice automatons? pleasant positive spiritual egos being good all the time?
bleh!
there is really something genuine and honest about anger. anger is an energy. neither good nor bad.
and guess what...life, GOD, universe, Presence, true self, whatever we call the mystery, can handle it...really! because Life (God, the universe, etc) is totally inclusive.
anger, depression, frustration, grief...they truly have a message and are gifts.
and going into it, not with psychoanalysis or mental strategies for ridding ourselves of it, or rehashing it from an egoic "me" that concretizes around a victim story, but really going INTO it, through the BODY is the cure. ...First very FIRST is FEELING it--without any goal, without looking for a cure, but just to FEEL.
then connecting from that awareness of sensation...where is this anger, what does it feel like, is it heavy, is it sharp, swollen, is it pulsating, spinning, whirling, does it have a color, and what does it say...when I truly Listen from my most open SELF what message does it have for me? of course, i sometimes skip this process and try to ignore, suppress, escape my anger, and am learning that it usually gets louder and more insistent. like the child who is sad or upset and no one listens and it turns into a tantrum...what does that child (anger) need? nurturing and acceptance. the freedom to be as it is...what we all need. unconditional love.
so when i hear a teaching on compassion that advises us to avoid "negative" or "base" emotions, i feel sad and confused. why??? why tell this to people? this was the message i heard tonight--presented as if it were somehow different from repressing emotions. the teaching was we "should control" our reactions...to me this is another way of saying resist what is and feeds into the whole reason why spiritual seekers are as we are. on the path for what...the promise of a way out of the vicissitudes and pain of being human? on the path for our image of what a compassionate or enlightened person looks like. an enlightened person doesn't get angry?? or never expresses it??? hmmmm. majorly suspect to me that this person is still alive.
i'll speak for myself...i had been chasing...outside and inside, looking, looking for a way out of LIFE. i never would have seen it that way, of course, but really, all my attempts to CONTROL what i was feeling, what was happening inside and outside of me (el mismo), were ways i tried to reach this goal of being the perfected human. i used to see it as a mark of my progress when i was happy and my failure when anger or sadness arose. having a background in Vipassana and as someone who has benefited from self-awareness and meditation i see tremendous value in these practices if they are used as an end in and of themselves. the goal of sitting is just to sit and be with all that arises. not to still the mind, not to control or focus. this only gave me headaches. just abidance in the LIFE we are where everything happens without judgement. we find as we inhabit that space our reactions do fall away, and we are less likely to react and more likely to respond, but this can't be the goal, just a side effect of the sitting. it's no less likely that anger would the spontaneous response arising within us but the anger would be clean, unsticky, free because there is no resistance or guilt or control with the anger...just pure authentic anger...allowed to come and go.
from my experience, if there is any use to these teachings on effort and control it is that it leads to absolute exhaustion and the admission finally that we are not in control...that Life is what has always has been and always will be in control....and so there is the irony, as we are--at our core--Life, We not the "we"s we identify with but the WE the person as embodiment of it all, are in control and are choosing everything. may we surrender to THAT.
hallelujah!
of course, i am certainly hearing this teaching from my level of consciousness and so i am aware that maybe there is something i am missing...something more subtle...and the teaching is not direct but came paraphrased from guru to devotee. i am skeptical by nature (and nurture :) and here my annoyance arose, moved me to get up and leave, and was expressed herein. voila.
thankful for the path that Judith and Susanne both brought me into, into myself. sometimes called tantra or vajrayana but i cannot claim to be a practitioner of either, nor want to be, strictly...i have no facts or knowledge of these, just some books that have helped, somatic therapy techniques, and the (inner) body itself (which, mysteriously, when i am really IN is actually so spaciously OUT it is mind-blowing)
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