Wendy – when your only experience of a person is the behaviors you mentioned, it’s probably true that you are better than what/who you understand them to be.
And anger doesn’t have to stay away in order for you to not identify with it and thereby continue your development.
As long as you don’t mind the notion that the person who emptied an ash tray irresponsibly one day might come back to sweep it up later, you can have some confidence that you’re setting a good example.
[QUOTE=wendy;15067]Thanks for all you've written keepitlow, I will have to think a bit before giving you a proper response. Thank you Hubert for taking the time to keep sharing your knowledge, I do think it is slowly sinking in. 
I don't know that I have an anger problem (maybe I just don't see it?) as much as a problem judging. If I do get angry it's fleeting, and then I feel sadness and disappointment in the actions of others.
When I feel that I'm better than someone else, it's not always directed at an actual person. I've felt better than someone (I don't know who) that emptied their ashtray in a parking lot. I feel that I'm better than those CEOs taking multimillion dollar bonuses, as their employees struggle to keep jobs.
I really don't run around constantly feeling anger or judging people, I just wish it wouldn't happen at all. I want to continually grow to be a better person.
I'll keep working on it, with both persistence and patience.[/QUOTE]
The anger post was not written for you. I wrote it years ago. But some of it may be of help.
We all seem to suffer this common trait as humans...that of egoist judgmentalism.
Whenever we meet others we tend to pigeon hole these individuals into the following 3 groups.
The person is either judged better than us or an equal to us or below us.
This is an area I work to be mindful of and reduce it and not promote it, for it stems from the ego. What helps me is to practice humility, practice compassion by looking for insight into the other person suffering and to see these types of judgments as ego based and not useful and to nip them I the bud when they pop up.
The dictionary defines judgmental as: determination, verdict, decree, discrimination, sagacity, wisdom, prudence, taste. To be able to form a judgment is defined as: to have the ability to judge, make a decision, or form an opinion objectively, authoritatively and wisely.
The only negative term I try to avoid in the definition of judgmental is "discrimination."
Prejudicial discrimination is defined as: an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought or reason.
I try not to discriminate against others and subscribe to "live and let live."
But this all depends on how my spiritual condition is within and sometimes such good intentions go out the window. Perfection is the nature of gods...imperfection is the nature of humans...look for direction and forget perfection. Either we are getting better, frozen or getting worse. And in the end we only have to please ourselves.
The anger post comes to mind since some spiritual practitioners try to be blissninnys and accept everything.
This poor fellow was being eaten alive as the egg sacks hatch and the larvae feast on the caterpillar.
Also a good reminder not to be a blissninny and be at peace with everything that comes down the pike. Sometimes we have to get mad and move!
As I said, without feeling anger or discontent we wound not seek out change - as in changing our environment that might be an unhealthy one for us. But if we cannot change, then we must work to accept best we can. But always work to change first, accept later - as a general rule.
...and it all rests on judgments of our environment and of others.
[quote=keepitlow;15072]
…and it all rests on judgments of our environment and of others.[/quote]
Finally. That’s why it is important to develop our discernment to maximum possible, otherwise how can we take the right action ?
Surely there are different levels.
One day, a disciple was walking along the beach with the Master, and they arrived to a scene where a child was drowning. The disciple rushed to help the child, but he was stopped by the Master. So they went on … but the disciple was not at ease with this solution. Finally he demanded an explanation, and the Matser explained that the child would grow up, and become a leader and later on a mass murderer. So it was world karma so he dies, and never arrives to that ill fate.
I would have done everything to help the kid, and the most of us would. Yet we act on behalf of our understanding, and knowledge. If someone has developed to the level that he/she sees karma in it’s immediate and long term unfolding, unusual actions might be taken.
The Master did act. He chose to help not. That is also an action, often much harder to perform. Only by his level of understanding and knowledge, that action was possible.
So let us leave it at this: everyone acts on the behalf of his level of knowledge and understanding of the world. Even a killer has precise motives, urges, or forces what act more or less consciously on his/her mind, and consequently on his/her actions. The most brutal or monstruous deeds form human perspective have their logical, reasonable explanations, and without seeing the causes and effects, how can we ever know what is right and what is wrong ? Because of this, equanimity is the best approach.
To act on behalf of pacfism is foolish. To act on behalf of warmongery is foolish. To act accordingly to the divine plan, this is the path. But this requires knowledge of that path … and not generally, but specifically in the given situation. Because of this, we have to admit that most of the time, we are blind, and act as inner or outer conditionings or reactions to such conditionings allow. Because of this, human condition, human life is fundamentally unfree. Only through the spirit, imagination, and morality born not from restrictive outer laws, but born from the personal realization of their universal truth we can ever become free.
Yoga is just about that. Not a way to escape this world seen as maya, but to aquire the abilities necessary to work in this world (maya or not) in accordance with the divine plan. Perhaps many do not realize, while yoga is not a religion, it works towards the supernatural, transcendental. Life itself, is supernatural, if by nature we mean what materialist science means, the physical Earth, and it’s inhabtitants (plants, animals, humans).
Science only deals with matter, and things accesible by our senses, and dares not to see beyond these tools. Even up to this day, scientist do not know what life is … because if they knew, they could create living organisms. But they cant. The smallest living organism, a virus, what is on the border between what we call living and organic matter, we can’t create them. We can modify them through genetic surgery … yet even at genetics, we don’t know what 95 % of the genes are there for. We just found a few genes responsible for this or that, but we are far for totally mapping and comprehending the genes of even a very small creature like a virus. And why ? Because the causes of life are suprasensorial. Eeverything what physically exists is just the manifestation of higher levels of existence. We laugh about the stories of gnomes, or fairies, yet, these myths are reminiscent of times when people (or at least some of them) were able to witness the forces, powers, beings I am talking of.
The theory of evolution of life we have is but a theory, what starts on the premise that there is nothing in a living organism but the very complex interactions of organic chemistry and physics, executed by the programming existing in the genes. And that programming was done by trial and error, somehow, throughout billions of years.
Anything what does not fit this theory, is regarded as unprovable, and thus, speculation, fantasy, plain wrong. They say, what cannot be objectivley expereinced (and by that they mean sensorially), repeated, seen by a microscope, such things cannot even exist. Some scientist admit that they might exist, but they push it to the field of religion, or art, and refuse to acknowldge them.
But any advanced yogi will know that they are wrong. Prana is not matter, and it is not electricity. It is something what a yogi expereinces in his soul, in his body, and while science refuses to take such personal expereinces for real, they are real, because they are the same for all yogis. But that requires using as tool not our minds alone, but our whole being. This is where scientists fail, because they do not see that spiritual things can be only learnt and dealt with spiritual tools, and those tools are in the human soul itself. Heck, they even argue the existence of the soul. Such is the level of brain conditioning that a lot of people rather believe the materialist mumbo jumbo about brain waves, and consciousness being the sum of chemical and electrical impulses of the brain, rather then their own hearts. The ability to only live among the borrowed thoughts of our minds is the greatest weakness of humans living today, a weakness what makes an intelectual approach in the process of knowledge of the spiritual worlds suitable and necessary. These worlds are there, the beings are there, they work in us and through us all the time, and yet we fail to see it. There is a great amount of knowledge what we need to learn yet. Basic things, things in our immediate vecinity, things from our own lives, like what is sleeping, why our consciousness fluctuates, why is there death, and what it really means, what is illness and health, why are there animals and plants and minerals, how all this came into being (as I tell you, the evolutionary theory, even the theory of the formation of solar system, and the univrese, as scince imaginaes it, is not right. There is a better explanation what can be approached by the study of the former questions, the basic questions of human life.) It does matter what we think. It does matter how we picture the world. It does matter not from a philosophyical point of view, but becausae only by right knowledge we will be able to build a personal life where this knowledge can become alive, first hand knowledge. You will not need anyone to tell you what God is, what angels or devis or asuras are, because you will know them personally. You will not need anyone to tell you about world evolution, because you will witness it in your own body.
Surley, this is yet far, but it is possible. And it is definitley more close to all of us than we would have ever thought.
Quote from Dhamamapada of Lord Buddha.
Curb your anger
just a charioteer
controls the unruly horse.
Those who lack control
merely hold the reins…
Transform you ANGER with kindness,
your meaness with generosity,
your lies with truth.
These three ways lead to liberation:
speak the truth
give whatever you can,
forgive and relinquish ANGER’s hold.
Do this and you will perfect yourself.
Actually it is said that anger is one of the three main ways to hell.
I have been reading in the last days the Letters of St. Paul. It is totally
amazing to see how his indications to people resemble the indications
given by Lord Buddha and by the Hinduism.
Well, there is only one mountain top.