How do you lose anger?

This is what separates the enlightened mind from the unenlightened mind and why enlightenment can't be forced on someone.

Can you force someone to lose the anger if they are not ready to?

Tired of being angry?

Just relinquish control and anger will be diminished.

Anger and control go hand in hand.

Some of these tendencies come from habit other times they stem from ignorance. Either way we can change our habits or extinguish ignorance with knowledge, mindfulness and practice.

The first step is realization that something is disturbing our peace. And for many this realization can come about through writing or journaling.

Putting our complaints down on pen and paper first crystallizes in our heads what needs to be changed or accepted in our lives.

Getting it all out and putting it all down is the first start of this recognition process that leads us to recovery.

Without this recognition, that we are sick or something is wrong in our lives, we cannot develop the desire for change.

We don't even know what is wrong to change! 

Writing your complaints down is the first start to making the roadmap for restructuring your life.

Restructuring our lives is very important if we want to get peace from our addictions.

Those things that cannot be restructured need to be accepted.

Either way we can find peace -- by change or acceptance. 

When you write, it uses a different part of the brain that mere speaking uses and I seem to get amazing results from writing as compared to just talking.

Writing helps crystallize your thoughts, it shares recovery with other addicts and they can know they are not alone.

Just remember what the Buddhists say in the eightfold path about right actions.

We have to use the right thoughts, the right actions and take the right direction with recovery.

Just spinning our wheels in the wrong direction does little for recovery, so write about things that matter to you and your recovery.

Some people use the list for jokes and other off topic subjects.

While it is important to laugh once in while it still boils down to what my father used to tell me about living life "you only get out what you put in."

What I would do with your letter is to print it out and distill what needs to me changed in your lives.

There is no better roadmap for change than this.

On page 90 of the AA's 12 and 12 the writers mention how the addict cannot afford "justifiable anger" and it should be left to those better qualified to handle it.

With reference to this statement -- it is gospel - there is no argument here. We can always settle such disputes by looking deeply into the person, place, thing or emotion in question and ask if it helps or hurts our practice? 

Does having anger and hatred in our hearts ever increase our peace or serenity or does it diminish it?

Even is we are justified, so called, in having this emotion does it suddenly become a peace generator in our life with this newfound license to hate or is it still a peace buster whether we have an excuse or not?

The path is clear about which direction to take and all that remains is the release of the anger.

Some people get confused with this anger question and beat themselves for still experiencing this emotion thinking they should be a "perfectly spiritual individual" and above such lowly emotions as getting angry. They think they can perfect their lives and wipe out natural law with one blow called spirituality.

Due to the diversity of thought we humans are capable of we have all sorts of thoughts and emotions that pop up in our heads. Without this ability we could not think as we do. But, just because thoughts or emotions pop up in our heads the choice is ours alone whether we foster and build on any particular thought or emotion.

Spirituality does not eliminate such thoughts - it just helps decide what we do with them.

Anger is also part of our natural make up. Anger is an emotions that can serve us when we need to summon it up in a life or death situation such as self defense or when our species had to hunt big game for a living - hunt with spears, clubs and rocks.

Even if we are dealing with life or death self defense and must generate anger, the byproducts is still a disruption of our peace as we recover from the circumstance as a shaking and rattled mess. 

So, even if anger is justified, so called, it does not magically become a peace promoter in our lives instead of a peace destroyer.

Anger is also an important emotion for self preservation in less dangerous circumstances than big game hunts, for without feeling anger we wound not seek out change - changing our environment that might be an unhealthy one for us.

So, we should never regret feeling anger, but just as anger and excretion are two naturally occurring parts of being a human, we should let them serve us instead of we being enslaved to them.

Anger comes in two forms.

Nature Based Anger and Toxic Based Anger

Always remember, anger is a nature given tool of defense and living right. But it takes humans to tun this healthy tool into an unhealthy, toxic tool of destruction. 

Besides justified anger, there are HUNDREDS of other things that one cannot "afford" in their life is they desire inner peace.

Sure, we can all white knuckle it and just scrape by with, ready to slip off at a moments notice if we want to put our desires before our practice.

But, learning what fits and what does not fit comfortably in our life is the ongoing battle we all have to undertake if we want peace.

In short, we have to ask if our practice can "afford" the many things we come into daily contact with and the measure of our success will be determined by how well we live within our comfortable means by asking this "affordability" question.

Before I could find lasting and peaceful recovery I had to learn to refuse many areas of my old life that did not serve me any longer.

This is how I coined the phrase, "You are not recovering until your start refusing...refusing the old sick ways that got you here." 

The 3 paths that addiction (Yes, anger is addictive) can take are these: the addiction can be increased, it can be decreased or can be frozen. These 3 paths shows us which direction we are headed in with our recovery at any given moment.

Clarity about affordability comes from a continual orientation of putting our programs wants first and our personal wants or desires second and by asking the question of how any person, place, thing or activity will affect my recovery program?

Once the addict has this affordability mindset in place they can direct their thoughts towards the cultivation of recovery, so that whatever action they are engaged in - it is always evaluated from this perspective and they can find great success from applying this single minded dedication to change. Suddenly they find their recovery practice and life can become as one and asking such questions becomes second nature for them.

But again, this is the textbook or idealistic way of looking at this affordability question, we need practical application in the real world.

Many of us have families and jobs and to be a total renunciate of all things disruptive to our peace and our recovery program is not always possible or desirable when looking at the big picture.

I often hear excuses from other addicts saying they can't stop this or that because of their family, jobs or other obligations, so we need to balance these two extremes of being a total renunciate with the other extreme of being paralyzed and not changing a thing because of excuses and justification.

We have to work towards a balance if we want peace and just like exercise, we always seem to find reasons for not doing what we know is right.

The way I work it is to be aware of what is disruptive to my peace and to change it if possible as a first choice or work on accepting it as the serenity prayer says as a second choice.

I try to stay away from justification or looking for excuses to continue on the wrong path. I either change things or work on accepting them. If we base our decisions of proven principles of recovery it helps takes us out of the decision making process and rests our recovery on solid foundation instead of excuses.

I don't beat myself for not being able to perform well in every given circumstance under the sun. I know that I do not mesh well with everything and everybody in life and I have certain limits and abilities. To do otherwise would say that we have the right to be perfect and violate our make up and that we have no limits or boundaries to govern us and are godlike.

The 12 step programs reminds us to work within our limits by "staying right size" on pages 122-125, so it tells me right there I am not immune to all things destructive just because I work the 12 steps.

In SCA they have a tool called abstention. They abstain the best way they can from people places or things they have found to be detrimental to their recovery program efforts from past experience with them.

My recovery success is based a lot on abstaining from people, places and things that do not mesh well with me and if I cannot avoid them, then I work to make the unavoidable fit better by changing things on my end.

Yes, we cannot change others, but we do usually have control of ourselves and how we participate in dealing with others. Even though we cannot completely change or wipe our many problem areas in our life we can usually change *some* aspects of most problems to make them more bearable.

So, I am always looking for small changes to make in the right direction and this recovery orientation towards the direction of change helps by giving hope of possible larger future change as well.

In addition you can work practice a meditation on the 4 Immeasurables aka Divine States of Dwelling. Radiate the 4 Immeasurables in all 4 directions as well, as above and below you so it emanates from your being throughout the universe.

Meditate on:

Limitless Compassion for all suffering beings.
Limitless Joy for over the salvation of others from suffering
Limitless Peace for all beings whether friend or enemy
Limitless Kindness towards all sentient beings.

But bottom line is either you must change from the inside out - or life will change you 'its way' from the outside in and this tends to rot your insides with the byproducts that a life of toxic anger produces.




Take care,
 
 
V (Male)
 
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
AA#2

The end of Hate:
Hate has much in common with frustration, for each of them are maddening, each of them are struggling, each of them are irritated, each of them are fighting, each of them are destroying, and each of them come soon after a defect. Hate comes down and sets its blade in the right-hand of passion, because passion hath said: "Look here, the contemptible, fore it has become my obstacle." Therein, the obstacle is the hated. The obstruction and the suppression, these are hated most, when put into a sensitive or a sacred place. And so, hate rises up highest towards ones enemy. Hate riseth up taller than the enemy, as it wishes to stomp the enemy flat, and paveth the way forwards, beyond the obstruction. The opposite, the enemy: this is the greatest negation, the greatest suppression. And so, hate is the momentum meant to smash obstruction.

But wait, and just with a flicker of they eye, take note: There are things which do not block the road, but they instead suck the fuel out of the car, and these are even greater obstructions, because these make even the postponement eternal. But depression, pity, defeatism, and terror are not hated. They are seen as uncrushable, unbeatable, and are out of hates reach. These bare down upon man with even greater hellishness than hate would, for man has lost more to his sloth and his to his waste than he has lost to his thief and his enemy.

Take hold of the hateful blade, calm its fire so that it does not burn up all of thy fuel, and then merely cut any tubing which draineth the blood of you. This, my friends, is self-preservation, requiring more effort and more energy than self-defense. It requireth the virtue of a mother, and not the glory of a warrior. It requires time, not sparse outburst. Keep watch of the explosion, and see how it merely resists gravity for a few seconds, and then the wreckage comes back down. But a bird flies with short fluttering, a light heart, a light body and a perpetual song of happiness. It also does soar higher than dibris of a powerful bomb; it does not shock, and of-course, it lives far better, far longer, far more efficiently. In this case alone, patience in a minor degree is more mighty than intolerance of the absolute degree, for life does not live by brute force, but by stable process.

A virtuous mother not hateth or abuse her child. For hunger, she gives food, and not a beating. Therein, hate none of thy hungers, hate none of thy own tears; bare instead the invisible glory of patience. Vast is hate, because vast also is unfaced defect. It is seen throughout all the land as shame, and as the overly impressive. A man does not hate or fear that which doest not wound him. But if it should so happen to make him hateful or afraid, therein, HE IS ALREADY INJURED BEFORE THE STRIKE.

Hate and frustrations, and even the terror or the fear -- these are each merely the symptom. Fortitude would have not caused these. Fullness would not have caused these. They crash only because they fall down. They break only because they are catastrophe. In the same way that vomiting is a sign of bad food, anger is only a sign of bad circumstance, and not the existence of enemies.

Beholdeth man, to him even a corpse may be frightening... Even the defeated, the broken, the lost and the dead have sparked both fear and rage in the observer, because he himself is obstructed. Most likely, that obstruction is not a direct blockage, but instead, it is an emptiness and a lacking. One cannot fly because ones wings have been smashed, or the muscles have ran out of fuel, but gravity is not wicked, even if it is also stopping thy desired flights. Phenomenon and circumstance are not the enemy, but instead, they are the signs and the reminders of condition.

The virtuous mother is much like the true doctor, whom heal only with gentle and gradual support. He heals via feeding, cleaning, in heed and in note. So also, self-empowerment, self-cleaning and self-awareness are the cures. Though the sick are the problems and the responsibilities of the doctor, the true doctor does not hate them for being sick. In this same way, though the people around one are thy problem and thy difficulty, their failure and their sick, sick degeneration does not need hate poured out upon it. Instead, the remedy would be a solid and refined focus upon re-empowering, re-fueling and re-balancing the vehicle. An enemy is rare. A failure is daily. And a hunger too is daily. Therein with reason, anger would become rare, and constructive actuations would become daily, in one whom has replaced failures with successions.

Hate comes up in mild doses, or in large bursts, but each time, it is destructive. It may even be watered-down so greatly that it becomes a passive-aggressive gradualism, which only erodes indirectly. It is still disease. It is still contagious. It is still growing at the destruction of its own home. Deaths shall never cure it. Instead, the malformed need fulfillment of form. Such disease only ends where constant healing begins.

I tell churchjerk what a tool he is.

I liked the way you gays talked about anger and hate... although the posts were a little bit too long. You make me think that philosophy is much more valuable than religion, in oredre to fix someone´s issue.

Mey Min, it seems that churchy´s gone, now. I think you´ll miss him anyway... Who else would debate with you the " 4-step-perfect-proof" ?

Sorry, It´s YOU GUYS, not you gays... just mistyped some words

Not at all, Leo.  He was an immature fool.

philosophy can be a great tool to sooth yourself, but it is a double edgded blade. if you go philosophical on every nail that doesn´t want to be "nailed" where you want to nail it...you will probably never nail that thing on.

You mean... it may become something like religion?

So what is wrong with anger?

It is natural human emotion.

Every natural emotion may become destructive if not controlled.

tHe only thing I want to lose, Churchwork, is my ANAL VIRGINITY - Howaboutit?