There sure is a lot of anger and fear flying
around at the moment, almost literally with airplanes being shot down and
missiles shooting through the sky. It may seem like it’s all happening a long
way away but anger and fear are insidious: they creep into our unconscious and
begin eating away at our sensibility, sanity, love and compassion, making us
all victims no matter where the cause may lie.
So how do we stay balanced in the face of
destruction, hatred and even war? Violence invariably arises due to repressed
anger and fear, and we all have some measure of both these within us.
Unacknowledged, they can wreck havoc in our own lives and in the world around
us, as we see in gang fighting, rape, or forceful and abusive behavior.
We don’t have to have bitter battles in our own
life; rather, we can make communication, respect and peaceful means our modus operandi. But to do this we first have to recognize and
take responsibility for the violence within ourselves.
We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for
wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence in
ourselves. We must work on ourselves as well as with those we condemn if we
wish to move towards peace. — Thich Nhat Hanh, nominated for the Noble Peace Prize by Martin
Luther King, Jr.
As long as we repress, deny, or ignore fear and
anger then we will be held captive and emotionally frozen, unable to move
forward. In that place we become untrusting of love or spontaneity. So those
people we have a difficult time with are really our teachers because without an
adversary — or those who trigger strong reactions such as fear and anger — we
aren’t motivated to develop loving kindness and compassion.
Making love our priority doesn’t mean we’re
always in spaced-out hippie bliss while ignoring the conflicts around us, but
it does mean we have shifted our focus. Love is the main emotional job of the
heart and it rarely flows smoothly. We all experience difficulties, such as
childhood conflicts, abuse, hurt or loss, and if the pain is too big to deal
with we close our hearts and throw away the key. By remaining locked out of our
feeling center we become mistrustful, defensive, fearful, and even paranoid.
Learning to open our hearts, to listen to,
respect and trust what we feel, is one of life’s most powerful teachings. For
the heart is more than just the center of love, it’s also the core of our
being, the place we point to when we refer to ourselves. When we say, “you have
touched my heart” we are really saying “you have touched the deepest part of my
being.”
We don’t have to go in search of love, or fear
giving away so much that we have none left. We can never lose love; we can only
lose sight of it. Love could not happen if it was not already an integral part
of who we are. How can we lose what is our nature? How can we be left with
nothing when love is the source?
So staying balanced in the midst of fear and
anger is about staying mindful of what we are feeling while keeping our heart
open and loving. To help, practice the meditation below.
Meditation: The Way It
Is
Sit comfortably with an
upright spine, take a deep breath and let it go.
Focus your attention on
your breathing, just watching the natural flow of your breath.
Staying aware and open,
allow whatever feelings are present to arise.
Have no judgment,
rejection or aversion. Accept whatever you are experiencing as simply a part of
what is.
You do not need to
change anything.
Just be with whatever
the feeling may bring up in you.
Be kind and caring to
yourself.
Keep breathing and
accepting, breathing and being with what is.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment