Anger washes over, followed by relief

I have been battling with the internal forces of anger and hatred lately, though I think that rock bottom was reached today thanks to a chat with a long-time friend and another chat with a more recent acquaintance. There are just so many reasons that I feel the need to be angry, not just because of the national crises that are occurring with greater frequency every day and the endemic corruption that plagues the world, but also because I feel that many of the people I have known over the past few years have revealed their true hypocrisy to me in recent weeks; this has a dis-illusioning effect on me and often leads to anger and then to hatred.

How can we deal with anger? We really must deal with it at some point, since anger can cause short and long-term health issues, as well as a downward spiral of spiritual devolution. There are, of course, a variety of ways to deal with anger: we can bury anger and try to contain it, we can release the anger in a ball of hateful rage, or we can calm down and attempt to discern the source of this anger and eliminate it.

What is the cause of all of this anger? Is it the inconsiderate person who is making trouble for you? Is it the government of the United States of America? Is it the spoiled, self-absorbed and materialist numb-skulls that seem to be everywhere these days?

Although I deplore all of these things, I have come to the conclusion that, although these often take the blame for the anger that they are the cause of the anger. In other words, they are not the anger, in and of itself, they merely provoke anger that is already within the self.

The cause of anger is deep within your self. It lies in a part of our psychic world where few enjoy exploring because the mindful exploration of this realm reveals things about ourselves that we do not want to believe are there. What I am speaking of are the material egos that are attached to us, egos that we developed in this life and in many lives past; these are the true cause of the anger problems.

In order to eliminate the anger, we must take a mindful look inside whenever we notice anger arousing in our lives. We need to notice what is going on and take steps to recognize it for what it is, not simply focus on the unpleasant thing that we are concerned about.

Although we may have great disgust for someone, to the extent that we want to return to them the dis-favor that they have brought into our lives, we need to remove anger from the equation before doing this, since anger is the tool of evil. That doesn't mean that we simply turn the other cheek and allow another to take advantage of us. It means that we clear our mind before deciding what actions to take in order to eliminate the problem.