Whenever we sense irritation, frustration or anger arising in the mind, if we look closely, we will find that we are battling one of the following: another person, the past, or the self.
We fight the past because anger is usually directed at something that has happened, and looking at it we react emotionally when we want to change it, which is impossible. Something that happened a year, a month, or even a minute ago cannot be changed. We may believe that we can change it, because the belief is rooted in the subconscious mind.
Sometime in the past, we picked up and absorbed the belief that the world and its circumstances should be exactly as we want. When our desire for a certain type of circumstance is not fulfilled, or in other words something happens against our wishes, our immediate reaction is one of the various forms of anger, and we tend to try and change what has happened. We repeatedly replay a modified version of the incident in our mind, the way we would have liked it to happen, and keep trying to nullify the actual incident or remain in denial about it.
This is like fighting against the incident. We do all this in our mind, even though deep within we may recognise the fact that what has happened cannot be changed.
We fight a subtle war with another person when he or she does something that we perceive or judge to be wrong, and our anger is part of an attempt to change or punish them. This is the result of another belief deeply embedded in our consciousness – that everyone in the world should do exactly as we want, or what we think they should do. Perhaps we have not yet realized that trying to control or change others by force is mostly futile. Ignorance of this truth, which most people realize at some point in their life, does not let us become anger-free easily. People will always make their own decisions and act accordingly. They can be influenced, but not controlled. When our desire for a certain kind of behaviour from others is not fulfilled, we react with resentment, irritation, frustration, or hatred, which are all different forms of anger.
One of the attributes of a great soul is the complete absence of any desire for revenge, and the ability to forgive someone who has wronged them. We all acknowledge that someone who is completely free from anger earns everyone’s respect and admiration, and we regard them as a great soul.Doesn’t that mean that we intuitively know that anger is a harmful emotion, and peace, good wishes, and forgiveness are the better options,and they are in alignment with the basic nature of the human spirit?
We go to war with the self when we fail to make the world do exactly as we want, or we believe we have let ourselves down. An example of a war with the self is: Wehave been standing in a queue for an hour, and just when it is about to be our turn, wediscover that it is time for the counter to close, and it closes. We get upset, but with whom? Perhaps the person sitting at the counter, or the other people in the queue, and then with the self, for not having checked the closing time
earlier.
There are two failures here that make us uneasy. First, we failed to check the closing time earlier, which would have saved us the time lost. Second, we failed to control our anger. Though wemay not admit to others that we failed, we know it inside. Because of these two failures, we get angry with the self. The sequence of our thoughts and feelings is: to fail is to lose, to lose is to be sorrowful, to be sorrowful causes me to become angry as I look for an external cause of my sorrow, which in this case are the person at the counter and the other people in the queue. But deep inside we know that we alone are responsible for our sorrow.As the anger builds up inside, we find someone at whom weexplode. That makes us feel better, but it is a temporary feeling.
The next time we become angry,we can interrupt the pattern of our thoughts by asking ourselves two simple questions: Who are we fighting against,and, who is suffering the most from the fight? The answer to both questions is: the self. If the anger is directed at the self for our own supposed failure, we can just tell ourselves: “There is no such thing as failure; only a result different from what I expected.All results will not be exactly as I want. That is a rule of the game of life.”
B.K. Atam Prakash is a Rajyoga teacher at the Brahma Kumaris headquarters in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.