The Raging Heart

(part two)


Some years ago, in the process of dealing with my anger, I have discovered that anger was my easiest way to react to any situation I encountered that primarily defied my own notions of order and harmony. Anger was my attempt to gain attention from people who seemed not to submit to my control, which allowed me to harness a kind of power where people around me tend to bend on their knees in fear. With anger, I felt an immense force that later transmuted into an appalling helplessness. After throwing thunderbolts of insults and curses, I was left drained and disempowered, let alone stupid of making a lot of mess out of shattered bottles and chairs I hurled in the height of my reactiveness. I felt I had done a nonsense act, which carved within me a huge void filled with remorse of wishing nothing had really happened.

What used to be my deep-seated anger is an ingrained experience of the first universal form of attachment: hating and rejecting negative emotions. It is so universal that no human being can possibly describe oneself free from this attachment. All of us experience this dark and vile force of anger that can consume us uncontrollably. Like the young monk, we hate that we hate; this is the irony that enslaves us in moments of grappling with our unruly emotional monsters.

Long before running amok, an individual who says "nagdilim ang paningin" (Filipino: the sight has darken) has harmed someone not from sound reasoning but from an overwhelming wave of anger. This is the darkness one experiences that makes him or her a dangerous offender. Whatever degree of offense, from verbal to physical violence, it is the pitch black anger that often pushes us to injure others without seeing the consequence of our actions. In the end, the same anger is not anymore directed to others but to ourselves.

"To understand that you are angry in the moment of anger and fearful in the moment of fear is an automatic enlightenment."

We cannot just sever anger from us. It is impossible. Anger is darkness in its full force, coming from this vast fear. While anger is the gravity, fear is the black hole from where it comes. To find ourselves gripped with anger is basically an expression of our fears. We have tried to refuse the existence of fear by trying to wield external power of anger. Angry people are people filled with fear, and they are seeking connections with others and with themselves. Seeing both anger and fear as a call to vulnerability and openness to Love is a unanimous teaching among all spiritual teachers and ancient sages. They are both manifestation of the same dark energy within us, the energy in which both our uncertainties and potentialities aggregate and arise.

The idea that anger and fear should not be present in our lives is illusion at its best. This illusion is our most common attachment. It locks us inside the cycle of anger towards others, then anger towards our anger, and anger towards ourselves. Our target is not to eliminate them, since they would be as pitch black as ever. The darkness they bring needs the light of our understanding. This reduces them from abysmal darkness to a mere shadow we cast. Like Peter Pan, we must begin to stitch up again our wild shadow with us so we can be at peace and return to the state where our hearts remain young and alive.

The paradox of this is to accept our anger and fear in their pure state, letting them adrift in our thoughts and feelings. To understand that you are angry in the moment of anger and fearful in the moment of fear is an automatic enlightenment. You have already cut the cords of their unwanted consequences. It is the very moment when instead of wallowing on the turbulent edges of the storm, you seek the very eye where there is peace and serenity. The first form of our universal attachment has finally been detached. And it is quite interesting that as we detach from this form, we have also successfully detached from the other 3 forms. This is the mystery of their interconnection that we are yet to discover.

(to be continued)





above photo  from PicApp