The Anger - Stress Connection
Let’s look at anger, for example. Anger is one of our
biggest faults. Anger means that we have judged another. Anger means that we
have reacted--bypassing understanding, and permitting our body to get ready for
fight or flight.
Getting angry may have an occasional useful purpose in
the animal kingdom, but with us humans it is clearly dysfunctional. First of
all, anger results in domestic violence, road rage, and misery. Anger never
helps anything. It only makes things worse, breaking down relationships and
sometimes ruining them forever.
If the above weren’t bad enough, anger also destroys
health. After all, in nature, anger is directed at some tangible enemy animal to
prepare to fight. But how can you fight a traffic jam or a bill? But that is
exactly what we do—we get mad at situations and inanimate objects that are
impossible to fight. So what happens? A build up of adrenalin and other bodily
changes cause wear and tear on the body. We literally self-destruct through our
indulgence of anger. And when we don’t suppress it into high blood pressure or
ulcers, then we express it by dumping on the nearest available victim. We get
mad at traffic and then scream at our kids. This is a terrible injustice.
Once you get angry, it’s difficult to reestablish control
and undo the damage--the water is already over the dam. You either have to
repress, suppress or dump on an innocent person. None of these is good.
The answer is not to get angry in the first place.
Impossible, you say? I say it is not only possible but easily accomplished, with
just a little attitude adjustment and the help of the meditation we offer.
Each soul has access to the Inner Light of Truth, which
is from God. We call it intuition, a wordless hunch, or conscience. It is what
we know in our heart. And intuition is there when we are not lost in thinking
and emotion.
Here are some examples of intuition in action.
A man was going to get in a car with some friends, but
something wordlessly held him back. He didn’t go. He later heard that the car
crashed. He was saved by a wordless warning from his intuition, which, if we are
attuned to it and heed it, protects us from danger and evil.
After we fail to heed our intuition and do something
wrong, it is still there to make us right again. Here’s a little true story to
serve as an example to illustrate what I mean. One time a man was angry at a
lady for cutting in front of him in traffic. He yelled out the window at the
lady. Suddenly he saw the face of her little girl, who was sitting in the car
next to her mother. The little girl burst into tears. When the man saw this he
was shocked into awakening to see his own error (anger). He was awakened to know
in his heart that he was wrong. He stopped yelling, pulled to the side of the
road and quietly wept. His conscience (intuition) made him aware that his anger
was wrong. This time, instead of denying conscience, he acknowledged it and
yielded to it. He became a better man for it.
Here’s another example. A lady’s friend got sick and
went to the hospital. The lady had been so busy rushing around in a huffy way.
When her friend became ill, the lady woke up to realize what is truly important
in life. Her friend got well; and the lady remembered the lesson she learned.
She realized that she had been rushing around but not attending to the important
things in life.
Most of us have wake up calls along the way. But wouldn’t
it be better if we were awake all the time? Living life properly on a moment to
moment basis? That is precisely what proper meditation will do. It puts you in
touch with your God given intuition. Then, going out into the world, already
delicately connected to love and understanding that flow through the intuition,
you are prepared (pre-armed with patience and understanding) for whatever
vicissitudes you might meet in life.
