- Foreward
- Introduction
- My Journey
- Adversity
- Anger
- Body Wisdom
- Love Knocks
- Money Tree
- HealthLoveWealth
- Simplicity
- Generosity
- Shock! Treatment
- Responsibility
- Grateful
- Growth Notes
Surrender inner battles
Sometimes I feel at war with ugly parts of myself: my weaknesses, flaws, bad habits, compulsions. We get so caught up in our internal battles that we forget the outer world. Today I realize that the world is larger than my self. I begin to move into this larger world.
Coax out irritation
When I feel angry toward someone and cannot express it, the anger leaks out in strange ways through biting humor or unintentional slights or insults. Suppressed anger dissipates my vital energy. Today I take stock of my low-level anger and let others know if I am upset or irritated about something.
Find Light in Dark Times
Chapter 3:
When Anger Swirls
(sample excerpts)
Find Light in Dark Times gives you philosophical and spiritual tools to help you recover from
losses of all kinds, then emerge into the light. These are sample sections from Chapter 3.
What are you mad about? Victim of abuse? Victim of troubled childhood, mistreatment in your job? Someone get the better of you, betray you, trample your spirit?
Many people find themselves susceptible to emotional turbulence or even tantrums at any age. Anger and its companions—bitterness, blame and resentment—can wreak havoc in all of us if we let these emotions run wild in our lives. Some people spend most of their time angry, fighting with themselves and with others. Anger saps their strength and health. Peace eludes them until they die.
Anger sometimes serves as a beneficial catalyst. When injustice or unfairness has occurred, warranted anger can stimulate actions needed to right the injustice or restore fairness. Anger can propel a depressed person out of a funk and into doing something useful. In this case it’s better for the person to spend time angry than to remain depressed. At least anger can be channeled into productive movement. Anger contains emotional fire. Depression remains stagnant for years, inhibiting the affected person from doing much with his or her life.
Many angry people develop passive-aggressive ways of expressing their nasty feelings. They don’t return phone calls. They block the sincere efforts of others through inaction or delay. What could seem like inattention or neglect is really misdirected anger that festers like an ulcer. The passive-aggressive behavior can sabotage others and give the angry person a twisted satisfaction. By subverting another’s progress, the angry person feels less badly about herself. But what she really does is drive her anger deeper into her own innards. Every move she makes to sabotage another tends to subvert herself even more. Passive-aggressive behavior usually backfires.
. . . (Cynicism section)
Prolonged anger at injustices in the community or workplace leads frequently to long-term cynicism. You give up believing that life in such an organization or culture will improve. You begin to believe that unfairness pervades many institutions. Your energy decreases and you abandon hope. Your spirit declines under the blanket of cynicism.
Whole countries can succumb to pervasive cynicism, especially when most of the people in those countries live under the dominant control of a tyrant. Think of Germany or occupied France under Hitler’s rule, Spain under Franco’s regime, Russia and other former Soviet republics under Stalin’s fist. When repression reigns, people coat their consciousness with a veneer of foul resignation, a form of anger.
Spiritual freedom can actually flourish under such conditions. In occupied France, for example, underground resistance to Nazi rule grew strong and resilient as a hidden counterpart to the oppression on the surface. It was not only possible to be kind and generous to those who were most persecuted, it was immediately gratifying. People living under such dire conditions could readily help others in need; they could literally save lives by taking great personal risk. Their spirits could leap out of their own circumstances into the larger social realm where their kindness was most needed.
When a company is similarly ruled by a tyrant CEO or owner, much of the organization may descend into cynical funk. People simply get by, doing minimal work so they don’t get fired. Their spiritual energy goes dead. They lose initiative, rarely innovate, abandon teamwork. They see no connection between working hard and reaping rewards.
Cynicism can become a tool of growth, a springboard for positivity. Think of a field covered in manure: smelly, slimy, yucky. Out of that crap-covered turf springs the most delightful flower, astonishing in pristine beauty. That flower can be you. Manure fertilizes your growth. Whatever crap blankets your life, you can burst forth nourished by a clean, strong channel to the most potent sources of light. You can become the one person in the midst of gloom who shines with good humor, hope and kindness.
