Fear and Anger - so what's wrong with that?

So what’s wrong with Fear or Anger? It’s alright!

So what’s wrong with fear or anger. Why do we believe we need to overcome fear when it arises? Why do we believe that anger is man’s worst enemy?

Truth is, anger is an emotion when rightly deployed allows it to be placed where it belongs. It provides the right release of energy against an issue. Anger is ‘frustrated love’ and when not expressed and repressed can actually turn out to harboring deep seated hatred.

Truth is, that it is easier to trust someone who gets angry. You understand his/her emotions on a subject. Yet for someone, who holds back his anger he willy nilly turns out to do more harm and even to himself.

Yet, when anger takes over, the sense is lost, insight is lost, cognition is reduced. Anger is an energy; we should invite the energy of mind fullness to bear. Breathing deeply slowly and becoming conscious of one's anger is anger mindfulness. Watch as a witness! 

Research is now point out, and it is but a new interpretation, that one who holds back his anger is doing more damage to his psyche. Hence, now one is encouraged to direct one’s energy to an alternate source – a pillow, a object, and thereby to release anger.

For anger not deployed where it belongs, it would be displaced and create havoc, where it did not belong. As Buddha said, ' You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger". 

As regards Fear, why is that a problem? Fear is about managing options of imagined consequences or stories we tell ourselves. Fear is ultimately about our loss of ‘self’ of self annihilation. Fear is about death. It focuses our attention on what matters: what happens next? Fears accelerate as we write up one set of the events, for one series of events leads to another chain of fears. These are unpleasant stories we portend of events we expect to happen and with consequences we imagine.

As Buddha said, "we are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world".

Truth is, fear is a story we tell ourselves (Karen Thomson Walker, Ted Talks). The imagined unpleasantness of one story is so fearful, that we wish to avoid it, so we avoid any action towards those consequences. What stories do we listen to? We need fear to generate multiple stories to pick from: to make choices. So what’s wrong with fear.

Fear plays itself out in many ways in our lives. Why do we hoard money? A fear that we would run out of ‘assets’ to survive. A fear that we would not have enough to be ‘attractive to others’. 

Fear and anger are as important as any other emotion. I argue that both are hard wired to our brains. It is there for a purpose. Discover it. Not abhor it.

Unlike animals, that respond to stimuli, our human brains are wired likewise. It is a part and essential process of our primordial brain. However, we have a choice to offer a more sophisticated informed and complex response beyond the stimuli. 

Truth is, that our fantasies, delusions, and defence mechanisms is an essential part of whom we are. They are not to be discarded, abhorred, held in shame. Instead, they act as a 'band- aid' - a temporary support, basis which we can post more complex responses.  Remember, it is not about eliminating anything, nor is it about attaining anything: all that exists is just right. It exists in wholesomeness. 
All we need is to be alert - being aware. When we are aware, there is no 'good' or 'bad'. Then everything will take care of itself.  

Arguably, we can do this under the right conditions. when we are at a temple or church. It seems easier then, to be respectful and caring to self and others, to be alert to each other and self. Question is, how do we extend these 'church moments' - these alert moments, when we can continue to be aware and feel wondrous about things around us, as against pondering around the things around us. 
For when knowledge is claimed, the wonder drops, the facts are known, it becomes un magical. The mystery disappears. 

Fear and Anger - so what's wrong with that?

So what’s wrong with Fear or Anger? It’s alright!

So what’s wrong with fear or anger. Why do we believe we need to overcome fear when it arises? Why do we believe that anger is man’s worst enemy?

Truth is, anger is an emotion when rightly deployed allows it to be placed where it belongs. It provides the right release of energy against an issue. Anger is ‘frustrated love’ and when not expressed and repressed can actually turn out to harboring deep seated hatred.

Truth is, that it is easier to trust someone who gets angry. You understand his/her emotions on a subject. Yet for someone, who holds back his anger he willy nilly turns out to do more harm and even to himself.

Yet, when anger takes over, the sense is lost, insight is lost, cognition is reduced.

Research is now point out, and it is but a new interpretation, that one who holds back his anger is doing more damage to his psyche. Hence, now one is encouraged to direct one’s energy to an alternate source – a pillow, a object, and thereby to release anger.

For anger not deployed where it belongs, it would be displaced and create havoc, where it did not belong.

As regards Fear, why is that a problem? Fear is about managing options of imagined consequences or stories we tell ourselves. Fear is ultimately about our loss of ‘self’ of self annihilation. Fear is about death. It focuses our attention on what matters: what happens next? Fears accelerate as we write up one set of the events, for one series of events leads to another chain of fears. These are unpleasant stories we portend of events we expect to happen and with consequences we imagine.

Truth is, fear is a story we tell ourselves (Karen Thomson Walker, Ted Talks). The imagined unpleasantness of one story is so fearful, that we wish to avoid it, so we avoid any action towards those consequences. What stories do we listen to? We need fear to generate multiple stories to pick from: to make choices. So what’s wrong with fear.

Fear plays itself out in many ways in our lives. Why do we hoard money? A fear that we would run out of ‘assets’ to survive. A fear that we would not have enough to be ‘attractive to others’. 

Fear and anger are as important as any other emotion. I argue that both are hard wired to our brains. It is there for a purpose. Discover it. Not abhor it.

Be part of community; but foremost be individual

Be part of community; but foremost be individual

The ‘locations’ we take in life gives rise to ‘roles’ even as the ‘self’ adapts to form one’s ‘identity’. The location is the context of the ‘am ness’ of the self, and actions arising from this quadrant are spontaneous and vibrant. They are life positive. Actions acted out of ‘roles’ or from identity are adapted stances, and can be often frozen, irrelevant and meaningless.  For the identity is the persona – our personality that governs how we act within the confines of a role. Over structured, over crystalized, it can be immobilizing, un energizing  and life negative.

Individuation is the proximity to self, Personality a proximity to identity. Individuation is driven by the resonance to the psychological ‘location’ while personality is the over socialization  to ‘role’.

Just as a role creates the character and the script for the identity, the self is a responsiveness that comes from a location that is without a prescription for role.

The location offers actions from within, the role prescribes actions sanctioned from outside. The former is an action that springs from one’s essence, the latter that springs from one’s tradition and society. The first is bereft of judgment, the latter is laced with ‘beliefs’ and normativeness.

The person lives in duality within and outside. Within, is the evocation to act from self and location: outside the demands to act from prescribed tradition. The former is the ultimate freedom to be oneself; the latter is to be ‘appropriate’.

Individuation is personal: even an identity can be communal. It can be laced with religion, caste, creed, geography or institutional. The individual persona can and would be subordinate to communal identity. Here there is real danger for total merger of all the individual identity. Responsibility is lost and so is individual consciousness. The crowd creates the de-sensitisation. It is an illusion. There is no ‘humanity’ or ‘society’  or such collective nouns. The parts are lost in the whole.

For true consciousness one must move away from the crowd. Move away from being a Christian: find one’s Christ; move away from being a family member: connect with each one of its members. Be a part of the personal bond, not a linkage to an identity. In this lies the hope to be universal.

Be part of a community: merge not, but collage: foremost retain your individuation.

As long as the 'other' exists....

On Comparison

Freedom is not choosing one or the other on the same continuum – it is about transcending that line. 

Let's begin with a few examples:

1.     Someone feels she is happier being at home making sacrifices to her career while she attends to her loved ones.

2.     The beggar feels he is happier than the prince for he feels more content with what he has in his humble abode.

3.     Ashok feels he has no regrets working in Dubai away from home. The money is good, it pays for a good life and education for his children.

4.     Anita shares she is prefers to live by honest means, instead of doing what she see her colleagues doing: she believes they will be punished for their immoral acts.

5.     Kumar works as an independent consultant, he prefers this lifestyle, although he admits the money is lesser, and income intermittent.

6.     Andrew observes his boss, who is a workaholic: he has money, cars, travels extensively, but no work life balance. He feels his life is better; at least he gets to spend time with his family and friends.

The list of examples can go on. I am sure you have many more you could add.

Truth is that we are all in search of bliss. Bliss is not happiness, or the absence of unhappiness. Bliss is when you transcend happiness and unhappiness. When as (PD Ouspensky  writes in Fourth Way), you stop the identification with the other.

Or what we refer to as non attachment.  The only truth is that which emerges from within true knowledge or awareness) and not from outside. All scriptures point to the spiritual, there are by itself not spiritual.

Be it known that the opposites exist together: darkness and light, knowledge and ignorance, happiness and unhappiness, friend and enemies, love and hate.  Our desire for one, attracts us to its counter point. ‘Buy one, and get one free’- it seems.  All sweet moments end with grief, and in our darkest hour, we see the hopes of light ahead. This unending choice to choose ‘one’ and reject the ‘other’ is a pattern repeated through our lives. The other will not drop, it is the ‘shadow’ that lurks with us always. For it exists in the other. In the seeds of immense doubt, there exists trust; and in the seeds of immense trust there exists doubt.

Yet we go on repeating this pattern away from choicelessness, hoping fervently that the next time around, our past experiences will re-emerge with the ‘hell’ taken out. That would be our heaven. That would be when we finally arrive. Yet, time and again, the experience is re surfaced, and with its inevitable drama. We imagine that the ‘other’ has found it. He /She must be happy, we suspect. We see large signboards while driving – ‘Buy the dream house, live your fantasy’. Picture of a welcoming spouse, a swimming pool, children in parks, etc. We cough up huge amounts, borrowed from banks, pay EMI’s: yet the happiness is elusive!

We recognize at some point, we are living a story tale we were once told: do this, acquire this, strive for this and you will be happy! Our life is our Myth we live; what we Have we do not Value, and what somebody gives us, we do not appreciate, for we want it a little differently than the manner it was given.

In the examples I provide above, the ‘other’ is always present. When comparison exists, the soul is in torment. Why the comparison.  Does a river compare with a tree, a lily with a rose, a bird with a snake. There is nobody, exactly like you! There never will be. Yet the stuff that you and I and everything around us is made of exactly the same stuff. We existed before, we will exist always. Our form is what will change - just that which is manifest. 

I reason, that it is neither deny or defy, neither renounce or denounce. But to be in both: experience both in fullness and transcend. We have NOWHERE to go! All we have is NOW HERE.

I like to end by asking, are we human being with a spiritual view or a spiritual being with a human body?

Doubt and Trust - one needs the other.

To relate and to express are the two basic fundamental human needs – on people and on the environment we live in. Given man’s ability to reflect on past experiences, and make abstract and concrete generalizations, it allows him to envision his future, test new hypothesis and allows him to make new meaning, new choices, new actions, new directions, new grounds for relatedness.

As we relate / express the fundamental driver is trust. Trust is built on, ‘biology, physics and chemistry’ that we have with others. Biology – as it is organic, our mirror neurons (read more on Dr. Ramchander’s work) fire away when we are with people, alerting us to trust or mistrust. Our brains are wired for reward or punishment (David Rock). Physics, as it requires structure. The roles we play for each other steer to normative definitions of do’s and don’t’s. We assume, leaders lead, parents love, teachers, teach etc.  And finally Chemistry, where sense and intuitive data combine to forge trust or mistrust.

The ‘self’ which is us over time, through socialization and re-culturalisation becomes the identity we portray – it becomes our Personality. Interesting a persona is a mask. On the other hand, a ‘location’ we find ourselves in offers us a steer to the roles we must play. Obviously, as we occupy multiple locations at home, office, and with society, we have multiple roles we play. When some of our roles come in conflict with the self or the identity we feel anxious and mistrust.

So how do we build trust?

Trust comes from sharing: Ourselves to others and understanding the other even more deeply.  The head can never trust, and the heart can never doubt. Mind is build on duality: as long as the assumptions hold true conditional acceptance is there, when the context changes, the assumptions are no longer relevant, mistrust begins. On the other hand, the heart never doubts. It is unconditional, devoid of any conditions. It is total surrender. True trust comes easier to a young child, as it develops her mind, doubts begin to grow.

Trust comes from providing more information. If you go rappelling, much care is taken to explain the procedures, the safety briefing, etc, which instills trust.

The good news is that we are trusting by nature, yet at the same time imbued with doubt. Doubt allows a scientist to go to work, dissecting and searching for truth, trust allows him to prayer before he leaves home.

We need both doubt and trust – like both sides of a coin.

What do you think?