Anger

It’s easier when you’re angry, everything is easier it seems. It’s the detachment of the feelings that lets you push through the present moment with complete abandonment of what you are really feeling. The reactionary rush, blinded to the inner truth. Everything is easier with anger. Leaving a relationship, digging a ditch, grinding up a hill, arguing your point, so on and so forth.

If I could live on that, summon anger whenever feelings start to rise to the surface, mask my truth. Some people are capable of this, some people can live on the anger, for years at times. Resentful, revengeful, painting themselves as someone’s victim or a victim of life itself. These people, these people can eat endless amounts of this poison and grow immune to its debilitating qualities. They continually grow meaner and sadder as the months and years pass. They feel they have been cheated or slighted, or just simply dealt a bad hand in life. These are the people we need to have the most compassion for, they are the sickest of all. Odds are they are so lost they don’t even know how harmful they are to themselves and the ones around them, they are consumed by their neurosis.

I am not one of those people, I can get angry when hurt or frustrated but it does not last for long. I’ve done too much work on changing who I was I’m unable to spend time there, unable to find a way to summon the anger when needed. I wish I could, I wish I could seal out the feelings, the memories, the thoughts. I wish I could forever forget who did what and how I did myself. But really, is that really what I want. To be numb to it all, dead to the world around me and regularly harming the ones I love. No, that is not really what I want.

I want to be free, free as the birds that fly about the sky, free as the lizards that bask in the sun, free as the buddha himself releasing all he encounters, the good and the bad. It’s the grasping that stops us from being free, that grip we deploy on all the experiences we want to hold close. And why? Why do we want to hold close the good and the bad? A fear of never feeling that good feeling again, not getting the same high we got when we first brushed up against it? Fear of forgiving, of being vulnerable, fear of opening ourselves one more time to the unknown?

Why do I cling…

I feel that if I could figure that out, the why I hold so tightly all the emotional experiences in my life, maybe then I could stop, maybe then I could surrender. None of it makes sense, living in the past, holding what was so close. My father could never hurt me again the way he had when I was growing up, my mother could never let down as she did so many times before. My ex-lovers could never break my heart again, the people that used me will never have the chance to do it again. But yet at times I hold onto these feelings, these memories. I bring them back around for a little resentment ride, I let them stifle my present moment of living. And the same is with the good. The high I got from drugs will never feel the same, the first kiss of this one particular time I fell in love or the first time I felt self-esteem. I hold on to these feelings too, take them for a joy ride to feel love and happiness in the present moment. To change the way I feel.

Is that it, is that the reason for the clinging, the Kung Fu grip I have on times in my life, all to control the way I feel? To wish for something to be better or pray for something to be less? I miss out on so many opportunities this life has to offer by never letting go and living in a time that no longer exists or never did. How do we take every experience we have and make them all positive ones, then let them go so we can make room in our lives for more experiences.

Meditation comes to mind, being fully present in my body one moment at a time. Not present in my heart or my mind, but in my body. Not guided meditation so I can checkout of now, not walking so I have to concentrate on the ground in front of me, but a breathing meditation in silence. Something to train myself to be here now, no matter what is presented… it seems like now all I have to do is sit.

Surrender to the ringing in my ears, the pain in my knee, the voices in my head, the memories of what was, the dreams of what could be. Sit silently and listen to my breathing. Surrendering, releasing, cutting away the spiritual materialism that clouds my true nature. I can become so self-obsessed and not even know I am there, living for me and only me. Meditation is not an easy path, there’s times of loneliness, fear and doubt, there’s wishing and dreaming and fantasy to get caught up in. It is arduous to say the least, but somewhere after the start, right around the corner of self, happiness and serenity start to appear. You start accepting the moment and releasing what is continually brought up by your mind. You become the lotus flower blooming from the muck of the pond you are living in.

I don’t know why or how it works but it does, it’s worked every time I made the commitment to sit. It’s making the commitment that’s the hardest part. Committing to sitting is like committing to eating right, to exercising, to having compassion for all, committing to freeing yourself from all that plagues you. In time anger rarely comes up, fear and regret and resentments and all the bad feelings start to become less and less powerful in your life and a new level of freedom is born.