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Many people are unaware of how to deal with anger. Instead of always interfering with situations that we believe cause us anger, we must look to the true source of anger to fully heal it. This source of anger is inside us. Once we are aware of it, acceptance and nonresistance free us from it.
You are the awareness of anger, not the anger itself.
Our response to anger is often to try to change something in what we see as the exterior world, or to express the anger. This does not permanently heal this toxic emotion. It may cause it to subside for a while, but later on something else triggers it and the cycle begins again.
True change must occur on the inside using conscious awareness. This permanently heals anger so that you experience less of it.
Why Do We Feel Anger?
Part of us seems to believe that anger is necessary. I am not referring to the anger one may experience in an emergency that may be mixed with adrenaline as a defence mechanism of the body. This involves little thought and is more of an instinctive response.
The anger I am talking about is anger that is out of alignment with the present moment. One that is based in thoughts rather than a direct response to an immediate threat.
This anger is based in your thoughts about something rather than the thing itself. It can continue in your mind for a period of time after the "anger-causing" event has passed - even for years.
We could call it conceptual anger. Anger based on thoughts and concepts. It could come about from your judgement and conceptual reaction to many things such as people's actions, events, situations or circumstances for example. It is another example of pain energy/pain body.
This anger is not who you are. It is just an egoic emotion.
This kind of anger only does you and others harm. It has no beneficial purpose. Although it acts as if it has a purpose and is the only sane response to many situations, the opposite is true.
It is insane. If you get angry about something, this clouds your judgement and makes your actions of poor quality, lacking any consciousness on your part. You have become unconscious and are now in the control of the ego or pain body.
It comes from complete resistance to the present moment and serves two functions:
To strengthen the ego/false sense of self.
To keep the undesirable situation in place (even if it is only in the mind), so that the anger can be prolonged - which then loops back to strengthening the false sense of self even further.
Anger is not required to take any action. If a situation requires action on your part, absence or at least awareness of anger means that right action occurs more naturally and spontaneously. Anger lowers the quality of any action you take.
Anger can have a very negative effect on the body. Holding on to anger pollutes the body and serves no useful purpose.
Noticing Anger
Noticing anger is a key part of dealing with anger. Your awareness of it in yourself separates you from the emotion and begins to heal the anger.
Notice to begin with how anger in yourself or in others arises with no decision on the person's part. It just arises by itself, as if it is a separate entity.
If you feel anger about a past event, notice how futile all of these thoughts and emotions are. They only keep you stuck in your mind, and actually prevent any useful solution or action arising if one is needed. It seems to be designed to simply keep you trapped in your false sense of self, which requires time (the past).
When you see that this emotion and thoughts linked to it are of no use and only cause harm, you can begin to break free since you no longer desire to be attached to them. Smile at them, do not take them so seriously anymore, they are just trying to get your attention.
Many seem to think how to deal with anger is to express it, get it out. This can certainly release the emotion and is certainly better than keeping it alive in you, but it is not a permanent cure. The same thing will make you angry again at a later point, possibly even angrier.
It seems at the time that the way to deal with it is to dwell on it or express it - but this is the trap of the ego. It becomes a continuous cycle of anger, trying to heal it through expression, then just getting angry again later on when the same thing happens. Even when you do express it, your anger does not suddenly disappear, something is still there, the seed.
Have you ever acted in anger and then regretted it or realised your wrongdoing? This is because at that moment the anger (which is not you) has acted through you. After this happens and some of the anger has acted out and temporarily left you - you see the madness of what you have done. But you did not do it. The anger did. This is why we must bring conscious awareness into how to deal with anger.
This is the permanent cure - an actual inner shift in consciousness rather than just a cycle of anger and expression. A realisation that you are the awareness of anger, rather than the anger itself. Once you realise this, how to deal with anger becomes easy.