In the last podcast, we learned that we all suffer from three poisons, attachment, anger and ignorance. We looked at the topic of attachment in that podcast. Today we will examine anger and how it poisons our mind and causes us great suffering.
We have all experienced anger at different times in our life. Some of us experience this emotion daily. The more familiar we are with feeling this emotion the easier it is for anger to arise within us. You may know of people that get angry at every little thing or people that are so stressed out in their life that they fly off the handle easily. Our anger can consume us. I grew up in a such a dysfunctional family, and I was angry most of my young life at the unfair treatment my brothers and I had to go through. When you grow up in a toxic environment of abuse, it is easy to have a mind familiar with anger.
On the other end, I have known people that claim they don't get angry anymore and then watched them get angry at some point later on. Be really careful of making proclamations like that, because your ego will almost always betray you. At best you could claim that you don't usually get angry or that it takes a lot to make you angry, but be careful of saying you don't experience anger anymore because you don't know what karma is waiting to ripen on you that could make you angry.
Some people feel anger, but don't show it. They let it fester inside of them growing worse over time. Perhaps they were raised that it was bad to show their anger or they just want to fool others into thinking they don't get angry. Letting anger fester can be very dangerous, as that is a volatile emotion that wants to be released. If you allow it to build up, you might pop one day and go ballistic.
The news is filled with anger. People that protest are angry at how they are being treated. People committing crimes are usually angry people. Some people get angry they don't have something so they steal it. Computer hackers can be angry people. Vandalism comes from anger. Violence is caused by anger. If someone is angry enough they may even kill. Anger causes fights and wars. Just about every news story is anger based. When you watch the news you may become angry at those stories or at the people you think are responsible for committing these atrocities. Anger pervades our societies.
We have terms like “going postal”, “road rage”,and “ microaggression” because anger is so prevalent in our lives. I'm sure most of us encounter anger in some shape or form just about everyday. We may not be angry, but other people around us might be. Simply walking down the street we may witness some form of anger being displayed by someone. We may hear an altercation between people or see someone hitting someone or watch someone storm off in anger. It is rare to have a day go by that we don't come into contact with some form of anger somewhere, even in the television shows or movies we watch, the books we read or the songs we listen to. In fact, the people that produce and publish these entertainments insist that there must be some sort of conflict happening in order for it to be a good story.
Most of the heroes in movies, television and books engage in violence to overcome their enemies. They are angry at their enemies and sometimes each other and seek justice through overpowering them or killing them. Almost all of the video games that are available are filled with violence and crime. Multi-player online games create a lot of anger when a player is killed, robbed or cheated in the game they become enraged and seek revenge or rage quit the game. Player versus player games are filled with angry people trying to harm the other players at all times. They skill up or pay to win to become more deadly and get more damaging weapons.
Every aspect of our lives is touched by anger in one way or another. We can experience or witness anger in our homes, at work, at play, while we are shopping or running errands. No where is immune to anger. Everyone experiences this feeling at some point in their lives and usually many times over. It can happen to us at any age. We don't outgrow anger, even elderly people get angry. You never know when it will happen to you, unless you are an angry person and get angry all the time, then you may expect it to happen all the time.
Even animals become angry. They fight over territory or for dominance. They get angry and ward off any other animals trying to get at their food. Insects can even get angry for the same reasons. You may recall my story about the ant battle I witnessed. Even spirits can become angry. Negative spirits feed off of anger and other negative emotions we have. If someone is an angry person they can attract these negative entities to them. These negative spirits will continually work to keep the humans they victimize in negative states of mind so they can get a good supply of those emotions to feed off of.
We often find ourselves being angry when something goes wrong. We get angry at others because we blame them for adverse things happening to us. It is ignorance that makes us think all the bad things that happen to us are caused by other people or other things, because we lack the wisdom to know it is our own karma ripening on us that is the true cause of those bad things happening. If we had not engaged in negative behaviours in the past, then we would not experience negative things in our life now. We also become angry because of our attachment issues. If something is broken or stolen from us we get angry at losing it. If someone harms us we become enraged because of our self cherishing attachment.
When we act out in anger we add these actions to our karma storage locker and will have to experience those outbursts happening against us in the future. Not only that, but one moment of anger can erase all the good karma we have stored up, so that we will only have negative things left in our storage and will have miserable futures. The more we act out in anger, the worse we make things for ourselves and the more familiar we will become with being angry, so we will experience anger more often. You may know angry people, that anger seems to be their nature because they have sadly become so familiar with being angry.
When we become angry we can feel it coursing through our veins, it often permeates our entire body, washing over us so powerfully, that we cannot ignore it. Anger is a real volatile poison to us. We need to try to learn to overcome this damaging emotion. You can try to come to terms with the knowledge that whatever is upsetting you, is from your own karma and by accepting that you can erase that from your karma storage locker. You can use the energy you get from being angry to get things done that you have been procrastinating over, or to do housework, or go for a run or shoot some basketball hoops. Try to steer that emotion away from any person or target that has upset you and try to use that energy to benefit yourself instead. It can be very difficult, especially at first, but try to counter your feelings of anger with feelings of patience. Patience is a virtue and the more we can show others patience, the better it is for everyone involved, especially ourselves. We gain good karma when we are patient with others.
I am still working on my issues of anger. I know it will take time to overcome them completely, but I know I have made progress. I often get angry at myself and this is a pattern I learned from my parents who were often angry at me, whether I had done something bad or not. It can be difficult to change patterns we have been raised in since childhood. I have high expectations of myself and I get upset and angry at myself for failing to meet them. I don't recall ever thinking I was good enough no matter what I was doing or trying to accomplish. The more tired I am or the more stressed out, the easier it is for me to get angry. We need to take care of ourselves the best we can so that we can help prevent ourselves from feeling negative emotions like anger.
Find the full podcast here: https://youtu.be/jzHZPD2QhG8
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