Defen: I once compared: If someone comes to your house and starts a fire and then runs away, do you go to put out the fire first or chase the person who started the fire? Most people will put out the fire first and then chase people.
In real life, what should you do if someone sets a fire in your heart? Shall we put out the fire first, or go after the man first? Think about what you will choose.
You can face yourself: "Oh, something inside me has been touched and I feel uncomfortable, so I have to review myself and see why I am angry with what he says."
Or, you will say to yourself, "How could he do this to me? Meaningless! How much I have done for him ... "Which of these two ideas do you think is easier for us?
Many times, we will choose the second idea, putting the blame on others instead of comforting ourselves, but in this way, you will never heal. Whenever someone makes you uncomfortable, whenever you have negative emotions in your heart, instead of chasing that person, it is better to treat your inner anger or that uncomfortable feeling.
Someone said something that made you uncomfortable. In fact, this uncomfortable feeling already exists in your heart. In other words, gunpowder has long been buried in your heart. He just lit a fire and let it explode. He didn't throw the bomb, he just lit the fuse, but we all blamed him. Therefore, when anger comes, you should first realize where the smell of gunpowder inside you is, and then prescribe the right medicine instead of complaining.
Martina: When you enter a certain mode, it will block the brain because it will form a synaptic complex. Just like learning to swim, you must keep practicing to really know how to swim. Until a certain moment, you finally learned to swim (or learn to drive, eat, walk, etc. ), and these have become spontaneous behaviors. Emotional patterns can also become habits. In many cases, you will automatically react in a certain mode, such as getting angry. The good news is that this is just a pattern, not you, just like training a dog to sit or walk-if you want to get out of this pattern, you can do it through training. This is what most people don't understand. They all want a miracle. No, there are no miracles in the world. The only thing you can do is to find an effective practice method, and what you need to practice is to change the mode. On the question of how to deal with anger, I want the questioner to understand that he must do something and admit that he has a problem. This is the first step and a positive side. As for how to do it, it needs to be done step by step.
People nowadays don't know that there is something wrong with them, and then they get angry because they are in an angry state. It's like telling others not to judge others, but this is already judging others, so we are caught in this cycle.
Therefore, first of all, we must accept the present state. From my experience, most people are angry because of something in the past, and when you change your present state, you subconsciously heal an important part of the past. It doesn't matter who makes you angry, because that person may be the symbol of many people. Therefore, when you change your relationship with your mother, your relationship with your partner and many others will also change. This is good news, because you are not changing your current state for a specific event, but changing your whole life pattern or changing your reaction to many situations.
On the issue of anger, I think the most important thing is to reshape the brain. So, I will teach people first, if you are still angry before going to bed, and it is like a movie in your head, you should edit this movie. You can start to imagine how you like to react. This is the first step. There are some things you can do about anger. This society often pushes away anger, saying a lot, but never expressing it. We never say how bad we feel. Some people don't even scold or say anything, so they have accumulated a lot in their hearts.
Among many so-called release techniques, martial arts is very popular. In addition, you can say what you want to say to the person who makes you angry with sandbags, or say what you didn't say with pillows. This trick is very useful for many people, and it can release some things accumulated in the heart. Anger is different from other emotions and must be associated with forgiveness. You must begin to learn to forgive. Forgiveness is not for each other, but to cut off the negative emotions connected with each other in the past.
I forgive you, but it doesn't mean accepting what you have done. Forgiveness and acceptance of each other's behavior are not necessarily related, but I don't want to poison myself any more. When we fall into anger, we must forgive, and most people always forget this. Forgiveness is not a mental exercise, but a mental exercise. You can say "I forgive you" a million times in your head, but it's no use if you don't mean it. If you really want to forgive each other, you must understand that people come to this world to learn lessons.
So, although someone makes you angry, he is actually doing you a favor and reminding you that there is an unsolved problem in your heart. It doesn't matter who makes you angry. The first thing you should do is not to forgive each other, but to realize that this is not personal. As Devin said, you must be responsible for your feelings and emotions. It is with this power that when you are responsible for your feelings, you will understand that what the other person does to you has nothing to do with you personally, but with what he responds from his own life experience and projects on you. Once you understand these things, you can forgive them. You forgive him because he is not important in this matter, what really matters is you. Then you will return to yourself and forgive yourself for being stupid enough not to know how life works.
Forgiveness is part of self-esteem. Once you forgive yourself, you can go back and forgive the person who made you angry, and bless and thank him for teaching you a lesson. Only by sincerely forgiving can we completely let go. Speaking of it, anger is an excellent tool to deal with inner problems. If you can understand this, then when you are angry, such as your father or mother, you will forgive and let go, and understand that it has nothing to do with them, but your inner problem. For a while, you will be angry because you are so stupid, but once you solve your anger, you will forgive yourself. So I think anger is one of the most spiritual emotions, and it is a spiritual invitation to invite you to grow up.
Devin: Martina's explanation of anger is wonderful. Regarding forgiveness, I think he said it very well. First of all, you should take responsibility, don't personalize the other person's behavior and think that he is targeting you. Then, you are responsible for your anger. As the miracle course says, we are never unhappy because of the reasons we think. In fact, it's not what others did to you, but something inside you was triggered by the other person.
Martina also said that anger can be used as a spiritual tool to see what is still unhealed in the heart, and to find the unsolved problems and things that need to be learned. If you can really see things this way, you can really forgive.
No matter what others have done to you, you know that your injured child needs to be cured. The emotional response pattern is formed for a long time. From childhood, you gradually get used to responding to everything in a specific way. But as Martina said, if you want to get out of this mode, you can't expect miracles, you can't suddenly wake up or stop being angry.
Of course, the release of anger is also very important, which is why there are so-called "vent shops" in Japan. After a day's work, some Japanese office workers will go to the vent shop to buy a lot of plates, and then throw them into designated safe places. They can also print the boss's name on a doll or portrait and smash it with a plate. This is a good way to release.
It is also recommended to learn Huang Tingchan to cure emotions. Can you stop others from setting fire to your heart? Can you stop the boss from scolding you? Can you stop the bus from leaving before it arrives?
In fact, external people and things are beyond your control. When someone sets a fire in your heart, you habitually start to put out the fire every day. Huang Tingchan will let you know that the negative thoughts you once regarded as a scourge are actually not so terrible, that is, what Buddhists call "nothing, where is the dust?" Others' unfairness to you, entanglements and troubles at work, worries and anxieties about the future, and inner "gunpowder smell" are just false fantasies, ups and downs in your heart, negative emotions caused by stories made up in your heart and shadows cast by the past in your mind. Realize this, and negative emotions can't hurt you. When negative emotions come, it will be easier for you to be a bystander, see it, accept it, and then let it go.
In short, on the road of pursuing spiritual growth, you must persist in training and face your lessons, just as muscle training needs long-term exercise to be effective. In Martina's and many other people's books, as well as mine, there are many different ways to help you exercise your inner strength and make you change with constancy. Just like swimming in the sea, the waves keep coming up If you don't have another power to catch yourself, you will be washed away by the waves.
Martina: I should add that anger is the most toxic and self-destructive of all emotions. So from a medical point of view, dealing with anger is more important than dealing with other emotions.
In addition, many people say that they have never been angry, which means that they have buried their anger too deeply and they can't recognize it. This is very dangerous. Anger is as normal as other emotions and human reactions. If you can't get angry, that's a big problem. Long-term suppression of anger can make people "passive and aggressive", or make people bitter, and may also lead to disease, degradation or self-destruction.
So anger is more harmful to the body than other emotions. According to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, anger is connected with the liver, which is the mother of the heart. Liver poisoning, heart poisoning. This is why we must forgive when we are angry, because forgiveness can let the heart release the poison caused by the liver.