Thursday, August 16, 2012

Overcoming Intense Feelings of Anger

Some of us are so angry that we have become time-bombs of self-destruction. Our anger has become so intense that it's difficult for us to control.

We begin our days with anger and end them the same way. And during our waking hours, we focus our anger on people we don't know anything about, except from their images on our television or computer.

It's important for us to remember that while anger is treatable, it is also a deadly disease of the mind. And like other deadly diseases, if we leave them untreated, then we have to be prepared for their deadly consequences.

Similarly, we cannot ever forget that anger is a psychological disease transmitted to us by our parents, society, and our life experiences. It begins with the development of our ego or individual awareness of being an individual.

 Moreover, as individuals we seek to protect our uniqueness by fighting others who challenge our beliefs and values.

We protect our anger by protecting our beliefs and values, which are responsible for our anger. And in doing so, we insulate our minds with toxic distortions about ourselves and others.

After awhile, and after years of playing mind games with ourselves, we become numb to our actions.

Unfortunately, some of us believe we're too civilized or spiritually awakened to become killers. And  when our lives explode in fits of anger and rage toward others, we misinterpret this behavior as an anomaly.


Nevertheless, whether we like it or not, if you place us in certain situations where we have to protect our children, loved ones, and ourselves, then our moral perspective on killing becomes different.

Furthermore, if we are placed in positions for our anger to explode in murderous force, we would undoubtedly not hesitate to use deadly force against a car-jacker, robber, or even purse snatcher. While we are taught to control our anger, most of us are not very good at it.



For some of us, anger is just another form of victimization to rationalize our feelings of powerlessness. So the shock some of us feel over the rampant murders in Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities represent many of our own fears about killing another person. 

Nevertheless, for those who are fighting to control our own anger, we just want others to stop killing people for apparently no reason. 

We assume that since they live in the same country, and were taught similar beliefs and values to our own, they should know it's sinful or amoral to kill people without some fears of losing their own lives or the lives of their loved ones.

The problem we face is that the individuals who are murdering people senseless, at least according to our beliefs and values, are operating from beliefs and values that are diametrically opposed to our own.

In other words, they might believe it's okay to kill someone who has challenged their beliefs and values about respect, love, and social order

We cannot stop the killings by wishing them away. Nor can we stop them by incarcerations. They can only be stopped by those who are willing to do the work to remove the toxic beliefs from their minds.

This means that those of us who have worked on our minds to the level where we can control our anger enough not to kill someone over petty disagreements about drugs, respect, and social order, we must begin the process to develop new beliefs and values.


When we can teach others that our anger comes from the development of our egos, then our conversations, our efforts, and our perspectives on anger are  transformed. This means we have reached the point where others are willing to listen.


Now we are ready to develop effective neighborhood organizations and groups to teach children and wayward adults enlightenment beliefs and values.


Whenever we spend too much time judging others without understanding ourselves, we neglect the work we must do on our own minds.

Our minds are the source of our anger, and also the source of our liberation from it.

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