I’m curious as to what everyone thinks about this Feeling or Emotion. I’ve been working with and through it for awhile now.
Do you get angry?
Do you wish not to get angry?
Do you know why you get angry?
How do you deal with it?
Has your anger ever erupted in verbal or physical violence?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Sometimes
Verbal
[QUOTE=FlexPenguin;49826]Yes
Yes
Yes
Sometimes
Verbal[/QUOTE]
Would you care to elaborate?
Later. Quit pissing me off!
Do you think you should repress anger as like the yam niyam?
Is anger ever an appropriate response? Why is it so powerful?
Anger is a byproduct of fear, one of the most powerful, deeprooted human emotions. A lot of energy there.
Do you get angry?
Do you wish not to get angry?
Do you know why you get angry?
How do you deal with it?
Has your anger ever erupted in verbal or physical violence?
Do you get angry?
Sometimes, but it doesn’t last long.
Do you wish not to get angry?
Sometimes anger is an appropriate response. But I wish to not get angry over petty things.
Do you know why you get angry?
I know as much about why I get angry as why I say “ouch” if someone steps on my toe.
How do you deal with it?
If the anger is proper, then I deal with the situation, or wuss out. If not–if I’m angry because I’ve been slighted or because my coffee wasn’t made just right–then I strive to come back to reality and not make such a big deal over something so small, and make apologies if I’ve been offensive.
Has your anger ever erupted in verbal or physical violence?
No. But I can see an appropriate anger and physical response if someone is harming an old lady, a child, or torturing an animal, for example.
To understand anger, you have to witness it directly in the moment. To witness it means to see without either attraction towards or aversion from, neither liking nor disliking, without any prejudice at all. The moment one raises a judgement about it, one has become entangled in it. One has become the slave rather than remain centered as the master.
It takes some time to learn how to remain a witnessing consciousness. That is the whole spirit of meditation. But the longer one can remain a witness in the present without interruption, is the more and more whatever was there starts disappearing. Eventually it becomes just like a whisper of wind before it simply fades away as it had arrived. In fact, if the mind was left to itself, nothing would ever last for too long. It is because of one’s identification with whatever mental state that may arise, that it starts lingering in one’s experience like a ghost.
Well, actually I’m coping with a kind of revival my mind “loves” to perform with past clashes and violent episodes.
Looks like my mind needs to unearth all that scum and play the lead once again but resulting victorious this time.
It’s nasty. I’m fed up with it.
Yesterday during my nadi shoddhana session, I suddenly could see all that aggressiveness absurdly popping up with no apparent reason, like enveloped in a kind of black radiation around me. Yes, it was black, it was evil. Am I possessed?
A constant thought watch is necessary for getting rid of it. A 7x24 meditation.
And as to momentary anger rushes, I totally agree with you Amir. I think the key is broadening the scope of that experience, one has to philosophize and throw light on the issue, one has to give room to or make flush that energy that has fallen entrapped, otherwise it explodes as anger. A trick that works with me consists in “visualizing” my lifespan and thinking about I still got much much time for doing tones of things.
[QUOTE=FlexPenguin;49853]Anger is a byproduct of fear, one of the most powerful, deeprooted human emotions. A lot of energy there.[/QUOTE]
A by product of fear?
Hmmm. I don’t see that.
For me anger is a stronger expression of annoyance or displeasure.
Not a good one. Relaxation techniques are best for this. Alot of young men like myself used to suffer from this.I think I managed to get some of it out of me when i started yoga…the angry young man kinda faded a bit… i think i had a certain amount to be angry about…society, perceived injustice…etc etc.
I don’t really get angry any more…at least not really. I’ve never really been an angry person but i think in men it is more common. Women seem to have an outlet for it.Young men are taught to bottle things up in alot of cultures… be macho about it etc.
That was hatha yoga i was doing when i started…
I think also if you’ve been around a brutalised culture or injustices it does’nt help.Not that i necessarily was but i think i blamed socety to some extent for some of my imagined misfortunes at least growing up that is… through school and early adulthood.Macho cultures are not a bad thing but they could produce angry men that can’t express themselves as well… have fewer outlets for their emtions. I think once you hit thirty you really do tend to mellow out and have calmed down a bit… or quite a lot. The enjoying yourself attitidue to life for it’s own sake tends to go… you become more settled as to what you want out of life and how to spend your time…
As i say a certain amount went when i started a hatha yoga practice… al those savasanas at the end of an asana sesssion must have had some effect.
When a surge of challenging anger arises the trick indeed would be as Amir said be to witness it with the luxury and vantage-point of the witness consciousness sstate if you have the luxury of a deeep meditation practice.Luck you indeed if you do!
[quote=The Scales;49825]Do you get angry?[/quote] Of course, I’m human 
No biggie. There are times where being angry is quite understandable.
Over trivial things that don’t matter, sure, I’d prefer not to get angry. If you see me smiling while someone is being physically assaulted, then I’m not enlightened, I’m broken.
Most of the time. Sometimes I observe my anger and think, “WOW! Where is THAT coming from?” Which is nice, because I usually end up laughing about it.
Sometimes I express it, sometimes I go punch a punching bag, sometimes I sit with it, sometimes I rob banks.
Yep. shrug
[QUOTE=The Scales;50063]A by product of fear?
Hmmm. I don’t see that.
For me anger is a stronger expression of annoyance or displeasure.[/QUOTE]
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda
Behind anger always lies fear even if the angry person appears to be strong and in control fear will always be the reason for his anger.
bEaware of the Dark side i guess… in all of us
Where there’s darkness you’ll also find Light especially if you look for it.
I was going to say I hit someone about 8 months ago but they really did push my button and i told them to stop and i had stopped meditating also. The witness state was’nt there. Now it is not really in my i would like to think relatively chilled cerebral-type personality to be violent or like that. In one life-time this can’t have occured that often but sometimes one lacks the wisdom to deal with a situation that arises and one thinnks one is protecting oneself perhaps.It was a spontaneous thing and i told them to desist…I pretty sure it would’nt have happened if i had still had a serious meditation practice at the time…The anger can be possibly cumulative without such a practice in place to give one the luxury of being able to watch and witness mental and emotional states as they arise,come & go.Slightly embarassed to admit that, confess to it, that but there you go…It’s not really me but it just shows you that one can have one’s buttons pushed…
Hath yoga or meditation practice should definitely help and maybe even clear deeper-seated emotional make-up blocks and envirronmental/cultural iinheritance.
If only you knew me…hahahahahaha.
[QUOTE=FlexPenguin;50090]?Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.? - Yoda
Behind anger always lies fear even if the angry person appears to be strong and in control fear will always be the reason for his anger.
*[/QUOTE]
You really believe that? Fear?
Somebody does something annoying (I identify with the thought) I get pissed.
How is that fear?
Off on this one Yoda is.
Ask yourself why it annoyed you. If you are honest you may be surprised at the answer.
Do you get angry?
Yeah, at people who are dishonest and do not face facts.
I also cannot stand hypocrisy and discrimination and prejudice.
Do you wish not to get angry?
Yes, anger is not a good response. It corrupts ones objectivity
and reasoning with emotions. I try to remain calm most of the time.
Do you know why you get angry?
Yes attachment and aversion to concepts.
How do you deal with it?
Take a pause, compose myself and try to become objective again. Sometimes, to simply be with it, till it dissipates.
Has your anger ever erupted in verbal or physical violence?
It is rare for me to be violent. I would sooner punch the wall and hurt myself, than punch somebody else.