Anger
Working With Anger by Thubten Chodron
This post is going to be part book review and the other part an pondering and exploring my thoughts on why I picked up this book in the first place. There now you are warned... proceed with caution.
When you raise a child with spanks or physical pain as the main source of their discipline it drives a wedge deep into their soul. A wedge that divorces them from their emotions (I am speaking from experience here). Depending on the parents mood certain emotions can elicit a response in a vast range - from benign to down right terrifying. How is a child supposed to explore and decipher those emotions when there is a ominous dark cloud hanging over them that threatens pain? This is how repression is created. Many angelic children are just repressing their emotions with extraordinary guile. This creates in a child a rage - an anger that cannot be quenched.
As I grew older and became a teenager I became increasingly alarmed at how my anger expressed itself. I was primed from years of repression to be easily set off. I would react and then feel guilt and shame afterwards. All of the emotions I felt were scary. Joy, peace, happiness, etc... weren't really there. Sure they were in small doses but the heavy ones the scary ones well those were prevalent. Combine all of that with nine years of PTSD causing experiences in the Marine Corps as a twice deployed infantryman and it only got more stifling. The cherry on the cake was christianity - that bogus belief system that teaches its adherents that if they pray enough, read their bibles enough, and maybe fast that god will grant them there every wish. I wished for a lot of things - to be a better person who wasn't so vile and shameful was at the top of the list. I was told that prayers that brought god glory were more likely to be answered. So, I put myself through all manner of mental contortions and gymnastics to find a way that me being less horny, angry, frustrated, and fearful would bring god glory so he/it would answer my prayers.
Buddhism
Then I discovered Buddhism - it was as if I had walked out of a nightmare filled dank and pitch-black cave into the most beautiful of meadows filled with wild flowers, a babbling brook, and docile forest creatures. As my Buddhist practice grew I spent more and more time meditating. Meditation was like a salve to my weary soul. Buddhism was to me more life giving in a month than a decade in the evangelical church.
I began to voraciously read book after book about Buddhism. One of those books was Working With Anger by Thubten Chodron. It did not take too many pages before the advice began flowing like the brooks at the base of a ski resort under the warm late spring sun.
Thoughts
One way is to acknowledge and accept our anger, along with the pain and fear that propels it, and to note that all of these are mental events-temporary feelings that arise in our minds but do not define who we are. In Buddhism, we practice observing the arising, abiding, and disappearing of such mental factors without either rejecting the feelings or letting them overwhelm us. Whether we reject a feeling or become attached to it, the result is similar - that emotion controls us. When we can allow an emotion to be, without either pushing it away or buying into its storyline, it will gradually lose its power over us. Feelings dissipate by themselves because they are transient by their very nature.
Chapter Six was especially profound - Learning to Evaluate Ourselves
One reason others' criticism affects us so deeply is that we are afraid that it may be true. This occurs because we have never learned to evaluate our actions. Since childhood, we we have relied on others to tell us if what we do is good or bad. As children we needed to do this but now as adults, we need to develop the ability to evaluate our own actions. Otherwise, if we simply rely on others to tell us who we are we will become very confused because their opinions differ.
As I de-converted from christianity I began to evaluate my own actions. The discovery that I was not a worthless vile being whose only saving and redeeming feature was that I was chosen by god to be his child was profound. I have the divine in me, I already have everything I need. With this realization I began to do my own work on myself - not sitting back praying that some "god" would do it for me (to be fair the church is FILLED with stories of god freeing people and answering their prayers. Part of me wonders if all of this is just very strong willed people manifesting changes into their life... The fear of an eternity in hell is one HUGE driver for change. Another major need is to prove to oneself and others that you are loved by a god who can keep you out of hell. The narcissism (I am holy, I am chosen, be like me) that the church cultivates is sickening! However, it is absolutely critical to keep the whole vile machine running).
Love is the wish that sentient beings have happiness and its causes; and compassion is the wish that they be free from suffering and its causes. Since we, too, are sentient beings, our love and compassion must encompass ourselves as well as others. The Tibetan words which are translated as love and compassion, unlike the English words themselves, imply having these sentiments towards ourselves as well as others.
Closing
I barely scratched the surface of this book here as denoted by the rather large bank of Obsidian that I accumulated as I read this book. If you are in the process of de-converting or deconstructing from a phobia indoctrinating high control religion than I cannot recommend this book enough. It is so much more than a book about anger and how to overcome it. It is a book about love, compassion, honesty, healing, and freedom.