Today in the Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven teleclass, someone asked me how doing The Work has really changed me. The wonderful inquirer who was asking the question also said that she felt like she had done the Work often, and she didn’t feel entirely peaceful.
We wound up doing The Work in class together on the belief “I’ll never get it right”.
I remember once raising my hand at a Byron Katie event with a lot of internal pain, feeling like I had written worksheets and gone through the process of asking the Four Questions of The Work many times on the same situation….
Before I even got to say “what am I doing wrong?” which was my basic question at the core, Katie said to me “How do you know you’re supposed to be angry? You are!”
GASP! Moi? Angry?!!
It suddenly dawned on me that I was trying as hard as I could NOT to be angry. Being angry was WRONG. Unspiritual, negative, selfish, unhealthy. I had a motive with all the work I was doing “on myself” and “on others” all the time. To get Good Enough.
I had even heard that if a person was angry a lot, they could develop cancer and other diseases. Anger could bring on heart-attacks, made steam come out of your ears. It forced people to pick up arms against other people, to hit or slap.
Walking around feeling anger could create muscle tension, stress, aches, sick stomachs, poor digestion, high blood pressure.
But what if the actual ANGER itself is not terrible? It is, after all, a part of reality. It is an energy, it’s doing something….it exists. Who am I to say it shouldn’t?
Perhaps, I realized at the time, I was pushing so hard against being angry…sort of like having anger against my anger…that I wasn’t seeing its use, or benefit. It was getting STUCK.
But wait! I had a huge gigantic expectation that spiritual, good, loving, faithful people are NEVER ANGRY. I wanted to get it right.
Being a kind, gentle, loving person who is not expressing anger is an image many of us inquirers have in our minds of how we would be if we could “get there”. We would be awesome, cool, holy people. Nothing would bug us.
If you can allow yourself to write all the most vicious, nasty, hateful, mean, angry judgments down about someone who when you think about them, you feel rage…..then you have made the first step, identifying your beliefs.
Next, you can get up and do some jumping jacks and fist punches into the air and maybe yell into a pillow. It’s a lot different to feel accepting, or even grateful, for anger. If that seems like a stretch, just allowing it to be here is enough. This is deep patience.
Then you can get back to understanding what is truly going on here, right in this moment of furious emotion. No looking to replace the fury with peace with the snap of a finger…but looking with curiosity. No seeking some different state.
“To seek something, you must have at least some vague idea or image of what it is you are seeking. But ultimate truth is not an idea or an image or something attained anew. So, to seek truth as something objective is a waste of time and energy. Truth can’t be found by seeking it, simply because truth is what you are.”~Adyashanti
So when you are angry, feel it and appreciate it. What is it saying? What does it mean? What are you afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen? If that awful person keeps on doing what they’re doing or saying what they’re saying, what is terrible about it, really?
“The path of developing loving-kindness and compassion is to be patient with the fact that you’re human and that you make these mistakes. That’s more important than getting it right…If you apply patience to the fact that you can’t let go, somehow that helps you to do it. Patience with the fact that you can’t let go helps you to get to the point of letting go gradually–at a very sane and loving speed, at the speed that your basic wisdom allows you to move.~Pema Chodron
Slowing down, I allow myself in any moments of irritation to look, instead of swat it away like a fly.
Welcome, anger. Welcome, fear. Good that you’re here, so you can be seen. Because once a light shines on the troubled spots, and you can wait, stop, love yourself anyway….you may find people don’t bug you as much anymore.
It could be you are getting it right. Bumbling along, twisting to and fro, being human. In fact, I’m sure of it.
Love, Grace
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