Letting Go of Anger

Each day I seem to witness in the news examples of anger which makes the world seem like a very dangerous and dark place to live. So how do we cope with this world of anger and make a difference?

I recently heard a woman on TV recently, whose son was needlessly killed in London, being interviewed by reporters. One of them asked "how angry does it make you feel that this happened" - to which she replied "I'm not angry. It was anger that caused this to happen in the first place so what good will it do if I am angry too?"

I thought her words were amazingly insightful and really illustrated how the only way we can start to make changes in this world is not to respond to anger, with anger.

The irony is that in order to choose this way, we must first of all acknowledge that we have the capacity to be angry and thereby accept that this is part of our energy. Often called/linked to the shadow self/ego, it is an important part of who we are and if we try to deny it or push it away then we only give it more energy and it can gather momentum.

Accepting your anger isn't about saying 'yes it's okay to be angry'. Accepting is to learn how to stand back and become aware of what triggers an anger response. What do you feel in your body - and where. We can spend much time trying to establish a root cause, however accepting that we all have the capacity to be angry then allows us to make a conscious choice. Do you choose to respond with anger or love? It is no longer a reflex action but one where we consciously choose not to respond with anger. Let me illustrate with a story.

Personal Lesson

My own meditation tutor told me last year that in order to heal I would have to accept my own anger. At first I thought "hold on... I teach healing and meditation, I'm not angry." Then I gave it more thought and when I reflected on situations in my past I realised that yes, there was anger there. "But surely that's the past I said to myself - not now!" Then the world started to test this with situations (people cutting me up in the car or a rude person in a shop). I often teach in class that the people in our world are merely a mirror that reflects back to us what we must learn... so there I was thinking about these people and the anger I felt inside when I met them.

With this new level of awareness and these 'anger' experiences it also started to teach me was that I had a choice. I could of course choose to be angry and to shout at them and then moan about them afterwards. Or I could choose differently.

Another story...recently I was cycling in Edinburgh and a car came very close to knocking me off my bike. At first I was indignant and angry at the driver - taking a note of their registration number and determined to go to the police to report them. Then I slowly realised that this decision was based on anger - my own ego was saying "I'll show them, how dare they and they can't do that to me or anyone else". I then did a bit of reflection and decided instead to send distance healing to the whole situation (of course some of you reading this might thing "what a hippy"!) However during that time of sending healing, I realised that this person contained much anger within them and if I responded that way... well the situation would continue to spiral with angry energy. Like the lady who lost her son, I consciously chose not to respond with anger. As a result I felt much more peaceful and grateful that I hadn't been hurt.

It may sounds easy /impossible to do this, but if more of us become aware of when and where we are angry then we have the opportunity to realise that we choose that response. And if we reach this point, then we can choose differently. We can't influence the world around us but we can control the way we respond to it.