14. Anger Part 3 : Escaping Fuming Island

 

So we are heading for the runway. It feels like time to leave. Yet if we leave now without exploring the island I have a feeling we will end up here time after time. We need to venture into the heart of darkness. Lets see what lies at the heart of Fuming Island.

All our thoughts have some sort of positive or negative bias. Our consciousness has a bias that seems to notice the negative ones more than the positive ones. This gravitational pull towards negativity is spoken about by Eckart Tolle in The Power Of Now.  He describes “The Pain Body” as the search for more suffering by the same force that created the suffering in the first place. As it swells it grows in power.

Anger is the build up of unreleased negative energy. Unreleased energy traps us in a place of opposition to the world. It is a defensive position that requires more and more recruits.  There are complicated emotional triggers and deeper feelings that are recruited. Until we learn to be conscious of the activation of these root feelings we will keep repeating the same pattern of stimulus and response.

When I was doing a fire marshal course in my old job they blindfolded me and set me the task of escaping an imaginary smoke filled room. They told me to feel the walls  with the back of my hand. The reason behind this is that an open palm will grip as its default reaction to heat or electricity. If instead, you touch it with the back of your hand it is thrown away. I feel the same care should be taken when sorting through our emotions. We need to look through our feelings with care and not to hold on to any that may trigger more thoughts and send us deeper down the rabbit hole. We need to be the watcher. If we get back to the origin of the anger all the better, but nine times out of ten it will be your ego and your constructed idea of self that is behind it.

Because your idea of self is delicate any fluctuations that threaten it will bring about a strong reaction. These threats can come from an external stimulus i.e another person’s actions or words or it can be self generated where you beat yourself up for failing to meet an artificially high standard.

Why is it important for you not to be angry?

It is important because anger will make you ill. Both physically and mentally. There are several lovely quotes that all point to the same thing. Anger is the burning hot coal. It only burns the person hanging on to it. Anger is the poison that corrodes the vessel that contains it. Being in a state of defensiveness is tiring and erodes our immune system. 

Lets see what lies beneath Fuming Island.

If any of these crop up in your life at the moment or you are drawn to a few, why not write them down and maybe write a little bit to yourself. Write it as a news article where you describe yourself in the third person. Can you trace the anger back to its source? If you can, you have the opportunity of learning from your response. You can cut the wires and diffuse the bomb. So next time you might not react in the same way.

Dealing with other people can be tricky, but try and remember that you are another person.

Ideally I  would like a yellow card that you can hold up and the person annoying you has to back off. I would like ejector seats in pubs that got rid of dicks. I would like cartoon pictures of tunnels you can throw onto walls and a train comes out and runs over self-aggrandised argumentative assholes. I would like fag grenades that only wipe out only nob-heads and awards me a fresh pair of trainers at the same time. Regrettably these things don't exist and we can only control how we think about anger.

The truth of the matter is that the people who are twanging your wires are having theirs twanged by someone else or just may be trapped themselves and suffering more than you. The trick in all this is not to absorb it so it becomes alive in you. The trick is to let the suffering dissolve before you. Unfortunately you have to take responsibility for your reaction and for your feelings.

Talk to someone who can help. When I say help I mean someone who is either in a position of power or someone whose opinion you rate the highest.  I feel that going around spreading anger to random people who are not interested in helping or do not have the tools to help, will just prolong the suffering. It also releases more suffering into the world which will eventually prolong the healing process for yourself.

Be more duck and less human. Have you ever seen ducks on a lake and one starts flapping about and the other duck is like “OK OK its your bit of water there is plenty more bits I can paddle about in”. The duck that submits does not bear a grudge and plan an elaborate revenge attack on the flapping duck. Angry people are flapping ducks. See a flapping duck next you see an angry person. Let them flap. Have a flap yourself then rest, leave it, move on.

Car driving is a big stimulus for me.  I would like to see how the Buddha would have coped in rush hour with a Nissan Micra with a doggy clutch.  If someone gives you shit about your driving in your car they are full of poison. They want you to have a spoon of the shit that's inside them. Don’t take the spoon, its ok mate you keep all that poison for yourself i’m good thanks. 

Breathe, breathe and breathe again. Count to four as you breathe in then hold for one second then count to four seconds as you breathe out. Repeat ten times. Release the tension in your body. Make sure your palms are open and your jaw is open. Make sure your brow is not furrowed. Release the muscles in your face one by one. Fake smile if you have to so you can get connected with how furrowed your brow is, then release tension in your forehead.

Ask yourself, does this feeling serve me? If it doesn’t let it go.

Release the “I”. Stop saying it. If “I” is cropping up more and more then you may be on the road to anger. Stop painting an image where you are the centre of the storm. Stop feeling like if it wasn’t for you the whole thing would collapse. If you are feeling like this your ego is setting you up in opposition and it will bring recruits.

Remember that the graveyard is full of irreplaceable people.

Try not to act on impulse. Give yourself time to respond.

Take responsibility for your own feelings without lashing out and blaming someone else.

Believe there is a solution and believe you will find it then actively seek a solution.

Don’t be the cause of stress

Move away from stressful situations.

A piece of piss right?

As we board the monorail to leave the bowels of Fuming Island I hope you gained some insight. The plane is waiting for us on the runway. To get into the plane you need a passport and that passport is the value you have placed on committing to living your life without anger. We have a limited time on this rock with a beautiful eternal and unbounded consciousness. As the noise of the engines grow louder this is where I have to say good-bye to you. If you have seen Casablanca it will come as no surprise. I have to stay here as I have more work still to do. Bon voyage my friend may you travel with only love in your heart.