[con]trol and manage anger [exercise]

Anger destroys all spiritual merits in a moment.It is all-consuming and all-polluting, a great enemy of peace, and a direct gateway to hell. An aspirant must control this anger if he wishes to progress in spiritual path and attain happiness .One who has controlled anger , is verily a yogin.That is what Shri Krishna says in gita, 'He who is able, while still here (in this world) to withstand, before the liberation from the body, the impulse born of desire and anger , is a yogin,is a happy man.'

Develop patience to a considerable extent. People lose their temper when they become impatient. Allow the mind to dwell
constantly on the opposite virtue of anger ---- Patience. This is the Pratipaksha--bhavana method of the Raja Yogins. Try to control first the small ripple of irritability when it arises in the subconscious mind. Nip it in the bud. Do not allow to assume the big form of a wave. When you are not able to control the anger leave the place and take a walk chanting Om. Drink some cold water. Count 1,2,3,4,upto 20. Repeat Om Shanti, om shanti, Om Shanti. Do not argue much. Do not retort. Speak sweetly. Speak only measured words. If anyone abuses or insults, keep quiet. Identify yourself with the Atman. Atman is the same in all. It can never be hurt or insulted. Do not give vent to anger. Be regular in your Japa, meditation and kirtan. This will give you a great inner spiritual strength.

Food has a great deal to do with irritability. Take Satvic diet: milk, fruits curd, spinach, barley, nuts, buttermilk etc.. Prohibit carrot, onion, garlic, meat, liquor and other stimulating foodstuffs. Observe Mouna for two hours daily and six hours on Sundays. Occasionally, observe Mouna for a whole day. This will put a check on the impulse of the speech. When a man gets excited he speaks anything and everything. He has no control over the organ of speech. Therefore, austerity of speech ( Mouna) is very essential to combat irritable impulses.

Prana entwines the mind like a creeper. Prana is the over-coat of the mind. Control of prana leads to the control of the mind. Practice of pranayama will put a break on the impulse of speech. IT will give you abundant energy to check anger. A Vedantin denies the body and the mind as illusory sheats. He does Vichara, enquires " Who am I?" and practices " Neti-Neti-----not this, not this. ": " I am not the body, nor am I the mind ; Chidananda-rupah Sivohum ---- I am the blissful Siva or atman." He identifies himself with Brahman or Atman, the Eternal. The world is unreal for him. He chants Om,
sings Om, does Japa of Om, meditates on Om and derives soul-power and spiritual strength from the perennial source of Om. If you always entertain the Mithya-Drishti or Dosha-Drishti, if you look into the defects of anger and benefits of patience, you never become angry.

The combined practice of these methods enable you to control anger and upon you spiritual strength , peace and happiness.

The [Un]conscious

While to most people it'll seem that what goes on inside of them is pretty straightforward, everyone does have an unconscious. This unconscious is a part of us that we aren't aware of, but which does influence much of our acts and feelings. Of lots of things we do or feel, we do not really know where they come from, although they feel compelling nevertheless.

Noticing the unconscious

We can sometimes notice parts of the unconscious, or what it makes us do or feel.

We may start feeling sad, scared or angry for no apparent reason, although it does seem to make sense somewhere inside. We may, as adults, sometimes start feeling like a child (and perhaps try to resist that feeling, as we are adults, right?). We may not feel much at all, having the same flat state all the time, while we can remember that this was not the case when we were young children.

We may stay occupied with particular thoughts for long periods of time. We may fantasize about situations from the past, or things that might happen in the future. We can stay angry about things way longer than seems reasonable. Even when we realize that this doesn't actually help us in any way, we are not really able to stop doing that.

We feel we need to protect or defend ourselves from some kind of emotional hurt quite often. While this need feels quite real, we often cannot quite put our finger on what it is exactly that is happening in us that needs protection.

We have pretty standard ways of reacting to situations, that most of us take for granted. It seems that we just are that way, even when we think some of these patterns are not very helpful to living our lives satisfactorily.

Some people seem to be able to get us to do things we had no intention of doing. When that isn't by some obvious display of force, we may even have no idea what actually made us change our mind. We are susceptible to manipulation.

There are lots of things we feel we "should" or "should not" do or feel. We are only aware that we should, and we feel compelled to comply. We also keep to certain rules without being much aware of doing that, it just seems to happen by itself.

All of these things have some kind of unconscious cause.

Suppression of feelings

When we don't really understand why we are feeling something, apparently, we are not aware of some part ourselves. It is unconscious.

We suppress feelings, trying not to have feelings that are unpleasant, negative, or uncomfortable, or when they are overwhelming. We might, for example, think it's weak to feel fear, and don't want to feel it because of that. Or we may be convinced it's wrong to be angry or to feel hatred, and because of that suppress these emotions. It may be unbearable to feel rejected or hurt. We want to protect ourselves from these feelings.

When we do that, we are making those feelings unconscious. In fact, feelings don't go away when we suppress them, they just go hidden. Although we are no longer aware of them, they are still influencing us. Our behavior and reactions keep being influenced by those unconscious feelings, and we keep having thoughts that are related to them.

The formation of the unconscious

Most of our unconscious was formed during our childhood, from when we were a baby of a couple of months old on (and for some of us even earlier). As a young child, we experience lots of things as too much for us, and we usually then suppress some of the associated feelings.

During our upbringing, we need to learn to deal with other people and society. Learning the rules is a painful process, that leads to lots of suppression of feelings.

All this creates our unconscious, that most of us need to live with for the rest of our lives.

What the unconscious does

It's not only feelings we keep in our unconscious, it's whole views of situations, and ways of acting in them. In the present we take these memories from experiences from the past as patterns of behavior. We habitually take on particular roles from these patterns, in response to situations with people. We react quite automatically and thoughtlessly, exactly like we did in the past.

These patterns are triggered by how we feel in the moment.

When we, for instance, experience a new situation that disappoints us, a pattern may come up from an old situation that made us feel disappointment. We then deal with the actual situation like we did in the old one. If we got angry about the disappointment earlier, we may now become angry again automatically, whether it makes sense or not.

Someone who experienced a stressful crowded situation in a confined space in her childhood, may now become very frightened in an elevator that is nearly full.

These patterns make us quite predictable and not very aware of what is really happening. It makes us susceptible to manipulation by others. It is the stuff our egos are made of.

The reason we don't notice this process of old suppressed memories influencing our current behavior, is that part of the memory is the suppression itself. We also repeat the pattern of suppression. Thus, we keep forgetting.

PAPAYA

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beyond the [horrids] of life

"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible."


The secret of happiness, according to the Buddha is realising the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life is full of dissatisfactions,
2. They have their causes in our wanting (greed) and not-wanting (hatred), that comes from our ignorance,
3. The end of dissatisfactions is possible, &
4. The way to end dissatisfactions is the Noble Eightfold Path.



4Repentance

If we were to all be truly repentant, in a flash, Samsara would disappear. Samsara is the manifestation of unrepentant sentient beings' delusions. Yet repentance has to begin somewhere- the individual. True repentance is simply the clear recognition of all of one's misgivings, coupled with sincere resolution not to repeat the same mistakes. Your personal Samsara will start fading, your wheel of life and death start slowing down-slow enough for you to get off. The common mistake of repentance is the heart of repentance being "true" only for a while. We think we learnt when we never really learnt.










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