So there I was trying to sort through that overcooked stew of emotions of mine and reading everything I could get my hands on to learn how to not be so hurtful to others with my anger. I had tried to manage my anger before, but that had proved to be impossible. I had to get my reason and logic into the mix. I had to stop and think BEFORE I said or did something. We can all justify our anger because we are really good at that. It is one of the ways we defend ourselves. Justification just makes my anger unmanageable.
As I was trying to understand the source of my anger, that is, what I felt just before I became angry, I had a dream. In the dream I was on a train (some say this might be symbolic of life), and the train was full of prisoners in shackles. Some people would say that everyone in the dream represented me. Their arms and feet were chained together with a belt of chain holding it all together. Clearly the prisoners range of motions was severely restricted. As I walked through the train cars, people kept stopping me and asking what they should do with the prisoner in their custody. I was getting more and more frustrated, wondering why they were asking me what to do with the prisoners. I started searching for an authority, someone who could make these decisions about what to do with all these prisoners. As I searched I found a "bench" such as a judge would sit behind. There was no one at the bench, however. The dream continued with me being asked for a judgment on these poor prisoners. I woke myself from the dream, saying, "I AM NOT THE JUDGE!".
My insight about this dream was that I was indeed the judge. I had control over what happened for the rest of my life and what do with "the prisoners". I realized that I had judged many people in my life, including myself, after they did or said something that caused pain. I had judged the prisoners as unworthy of being forgiven. I often shut them out of my life or did not let myself be vulnerable with them. I had, in fact shackled parts of myself by holding those grudges. I had inhibited my range of E-motions. I thought I was keeping those people from hurting me again. In truth I was the one continuing to hurt myself by imprisoning parts of me.
If you think about some of the teachers of universal truth, they have all said things about the need to forgive ourselves and about how we will get back what we give. I remember struggling to understand the verse in the bible that says "as you forgive so will you be forgiven". As a child I thought this meant I MUST forgive others or ELSE. Since it was a sin to not forgive, I had no choice but to say I had forgiven. I was raised in churches that preached about eternal punishment (i.e. burning in hell). That is a fear based thought, and you will learn later in this series, fear is not a thing that results in happy results to our decisions. This world operates best if it is fueled by being loving. I believe that the truth is, if we love (are kind to) and forgive ourselves we will get that back from the rest of creation. If we are kind to ourselves, it is SO much easier to pass that along to everyone else. Siddhartha taught the importance of being gentle with ourselves and each other. Understanding your anger and managing it requires learning to be kind to yourself. Everything flows from that.
It takes energy to keep things "contained". Every time I held a grudge and did not forgive, I put more of my emotions under lock and key. I had done this so many times I had little that was free to be expressed besides my anger. What had been sadness was only free to be expressed as frustrated anger. What had been fear was only safely expressed as anger. Every judgment against another, locked up my range of emotions. When I began to try to see what was on the other side of anger, it was unidentifiable at worst and confusing at best.
In truth, the feelings that come before anger can be refined to fear and sadness. Happiness does not lead to anger. Fear that my happiness will end can lead to anger. Now some would say, I have many more feelings than four - happiness, anger, sadness and fear. I know, its just that we have to start with some basics for that delicious stew of emotions we all own to be as exciting and refined as it can be. I want to taste each lovely morsel of life. I began to do that by focusing on those basic emotions that we see young children express.
Stay tuned for more about how to set the prisoners free.
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