Dive Existentially Into the Phenomenon of Anger

If you feel angry, you have two ordinary alternatives. You can suppress anger or you can express it, right? If the situation allows, you express anger. And if the situation doesn’t allow, you suppress anger. Either you are forcing the energy of anger outwards to the person insulting you or you are forcing the energy inside.

The ordinary advice “Don’t be angry” works only theoretically. It doesn’t work at all in your everyday life. How not to be angry? Anger starts arising inside… How not to be angry in this situation? How not to allow this bubbling stream of hot water evaporate outside? The only choice is the suppression of anger, right? But this is the worst choice.

And you pay an awful price for this unnaturalness. This accumulated suppression manifests in the way you live, in the way you love, in the way you walk, in the way you touch, in the way you breathe, in the way you think, in the way you feel… The more suppression in your life is, the less dance, songs, warmness, beauty and sensitivity in your life are. Life becomes more frozen. Life becomes less flowing, less playful, less dancing and less open to the mystery of existence.

Any suppression is nothing but simply postponing the explosion of unburned, unreleased and not manifested energy that you pushed inside. Intentionally or not, but you put a lid onto a cooking pot with hot water. You cannot continuously suppress your anger. Sooner or later it will leak out from somewhere and somehow. Sooner or later it will bubble up. Sooner or later it will burst. Sooner or later it will move outside to any object to harm somebody else. It can be your family. It can be your colleague or it can be any stranger… This unreleased anger will simply wait for a proper situation.

But wait, there is more… Even if you suppress anger and make a false smile on your face, you really become even more disturbed. You create a conflict between the real anger pushed inside and a false smile. You push the unreleased energy of anger inside and create a false positive attitude to this situation. So you become divided into two conflicting parts: your real anger and your false mask. You can deceive the others with this false smile but can you deceive yourself? How can you be happy in your life if you continuously, day by day, month by month, year by year create such a conflict inside?

Don’t go against your anger. It is the inevitable part of you. How can you fight with yourself? Allow the anger to be thrown away. You may ask, “But if the situation does not allow me to express anger outside into somebody else who is insulting me, then what to do? How not to push the anger inside?” Don’t express your anger into another person. Don’t become focused onto the person insulting you. Don’t throw it into someone else.

Express your anger wiser. You can release and thus dissolve your anger in breathing by changing the pattern from
fast chest superficial breathing to slow deep diaphragmatic breathing. You can dissolve your anger into walking, into running, into dancing, into singing, into exercising… Whatever suitable way for your situation to express your anger you choose, it will still be much better than the suppression of your anger inside.

Realize that these two ordinary alternatives are the polarities of one phenomenon. Suppression and expression are two sides of the same coin. You still have another object in your mind resulting in the arising of your anger. Either you express anger to any object or you suppress anger against this object, right? You still move horizontally in the exploration of the phenomenon of anger. You are still running on the same periphery. You are still running from yourself.

How to move beyond this vicious circle? You can move vertically, upwards. Beyond the games of your mind is your awareness. And the next step of the exploration of anger is to bring your awareness into life. The deep realization of the phenomenon of anger is just a question of a bit more alertness. It is a question of a bit more watchfulness.

Your anger is absolutely natural and intrinsic for you because the main essence of anger is your own energy. And when you existentially realize the phenomenon of energy, then anger will never become the master of your life. Instead of suppressing anger inside you can wisely use this miraculous energy. You can consciously turn it on and off. You can re-direct the flow of anger. And you can dissolve your anger through witnessing into the blue sky. Become the master of your life!