Anger

by Gangaji

(see more on Gangaji here
as well as in Modern Spiritual Giants: A User's Guide)

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What is normal is to be in a kind of functioning neurosis of sometimes controlling the anger, sometimes repressing the anger, sometimes discharging the anger, sometimes expressing the anger.

I am not saying that any of these mental activities are wrong. There is a time and place for them all. I am saying that an undiscovered treasure remains undiscovered by imagining that these strategies are the limit of what is available in the moment of anger arising. The only way possible to penetrate to the core of anger is to leave behind every idea about anger. To penetrate to the core of any phenomenon you must give up every idea about that phenomenon and the one who is penetrating."

"Q: I have heard certain spiritual traditions say that anger is something that disturbs the mind and is a defilement. I don't understand this.

When anger is spoken about as a defilement or an obstruction, it is because bondage is experienced through the mental relationship with anger. Anger as an obsessive pattern of mind is an entanglement. Anger that is obstruction is anger that must either be obsessively expressed or obsessively denied. Then it is mind-generated and mind-perpetuated.

Natural anger is a great cyclone that washes clean. Natural, useful anger is the anger a mother feels when she sees something harmful happening to her child. Natural anger is not separate from compassion, and it is a great purifying force.

What must be examined is your relationship with anger. Is there some patter of fearing it or of using it to avoid feeling hurt or sad or despairing? Anger must be met. This meeting naturally dissolved the protective relationship, and then you will see you needn't act as a slave to anger."

"I am not speaking about something needing to be done with the anger. I am speaking about directly experiencing anger. For direct experience, you cannot get angry. Getting angry indicates that you still have some story about the anger, either that it should be there or that it should not be there. If you think that anger should not be there, you expend energy trying to get rid of it. If you think that anger should be there, you expend energy trying to express it and justify it.

I am speaking of being devoured by being still. Stillness penetrates into the core of the anger attack."

From You Are That! Satsang With Gangaji, Volume II
by Gangaji at www.gangaji.org

See more about Gangaji in Modern Spiritual Giants: A User's Guide

Talk about it:
info@livereal.com

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