Anger Vs. Loving-Kindness (10% Happier Self Care Journey) 3/3/20
- Anger can be very detrimental because it make us suffer, stress and struggle more and longer than needed for most situations.
- Anger, hatred and resentment are expenditures of energy that doesn't serve us or others. Meditation and mindfulness gives us a resiliency to guard against soaking up toxic energy. We may feel it but we can also let it go.
- There's a big difference between feeling angry and being lost in anger.
- Anger, fear, guilt and greed can make us narrow-minded, naive, our sense of possibility limited, and in general be just overall tormenting to us.
- Practicing mentally offering loving-kindness to people who we have both good and challenging relationships offers us the opportunity to be balanced in our growth and application.
- Offering Loving-kindness to someone who has behaved "badly" doesn't mean we condone their actions or that they don't matter but that we can have the courage and the willingness to see them in a way that frees us from the negative effects of anger, bitterness and resentment.
- The first thing to remember to tell yourself when becoming angry is that this is "just a passing state". This can automatically give you the space to experience the emotion while not becoming the emotion.
- Learning to see these as states of aversion we can be free of them. It doesn't mean they won't come up. It means we can sense when they are arising, understand them clearly, and learn not to be ruled by it. As we understand we can have empathy and compassion for ourselves and others rather than judgement. Seeing it clearly allows us to remember that we have a choice with how we will respond.