All quotes from
Jeffrey's book
Anger in its many
forms can be like this, an old habit energy suddenly appearing in the present
moment with alarming intensity. Given
the reality of neuroplasticity, this raises two important questions: Do you "practice"
being angry? What would happen if you practiced being mindful?
The way you use your
mind changes your brain. In other words,
just as you have to exercise your muscles properly in order to stay healthy and
for those muscles to do what you ask them to do, you also have to exercise your
brain properly in order o cultivate the qualities that are important to you and
to let the ones that are not helpful or constructive fade away.
Thoughts and
emotions like anger, hostility, scorn, and dislike are not your permanent
identity. They are only temporary and
depend on each other and many other equally temporary conditions in order to
arise and be present in this moment.
Just as nonjudging
can be practiced by simply noticing when judging is present, nonstriving can be
practiced by noticing the feelings of pressure and urgency to change or escape from what is here and
now, and simply allow them to be.
Many studies have
linked mindfulness meditation training to feeling less stressed, less anxious
and depressed, and to reduced overall levels of psychological distress,
including less anger and worry.
Mindfulness practice
helps grow self-awareness of the inner "stories" and habits of
thinking that influence your self-concept and sense of self-worth.
Practicing
mindfulness enables you to enter a dimension of life in each moment that
provides more choice and real freedom.
The chaining of
thoughts (creating and adding more and more thoughts to the original arising
emotion of anger) actually feeds the feelings of anger and your internal upset.
If you want to
control your anger instead of letting it
control you, learn to recognize anger when it is present in your life. It helps to know that your anger can actually
take on many faces and can appear as ill will, dislike, aversion to what is
present, or even boredom.
Beneath anger is
fear, and beneath fear is a fixed belief or idea.
Intention can be
understood as the "command" you give your brain to move in a
particular direction in response to what happens in the present moment,
including what's happening in your mind, body, and the world around you.
Anger is not you but
is a temporary condition that depends on many other conditions, much like a
rainbow or a cloud depends on other conditions in order to appear. Anger does not actually come from "out
there" but arises when a stimulus or situation you meet triggers a complex
set of conditions that live in you -- conditions such as beliefs, fears,
perceptions, and physical reactions.
Remembering that
mindfulness is about "being and not doing" can be very helpful.
When negativity is
present -- as a feeling of fear or alarm, perhaps -- it often appears as a
memory of a threatening experience from the past, or a misperception that
something happening now is like a threatening experience or situation from the
past.
Resentment is the
sense of hurt or indignation that arises from feeling injured or offended.
Anger-- like the
cloud, the shoe, or the ice cream -- is a temporary coming together of required
and particular conditions. In other words, the condition or emotion that we
call anger is made up of "non-anger" elements.
When you are angry,
sulking, steaming, or otherwise filled with ill will and aversion for what is
present in this moment of your life, it is very easy to misunderstand someone
else.
