A: Anger has its place. It can be a wake-up call to rally your idealism to solve an intransigent problem. The goal is to harness your anger and be smart about applying it to effect change. In the high-intensity of the anger state it appears that one has awakened from a sleep to see the truth, as you describe. But if you can't direct that anger, it can produce a self-destuctive condition in which everything you touch, you break; everyone you reach, you drive away. Frustration results. Then the storm of anger passes, leaving you in a weak and resentful condition. Later, the underlying cause of the anger, which has not been addressed, surfaces to incense you again.
This cycle of anger, frustration, self- destruction and resentment leading again to anger is typical of a kind of depression called "The Pessimism." In this kind of depression one feels that anger is necessary and complaint is justified. You think people should appreciate your correction of them, but they never do. They benefit from understanding, and from living examples, but not from anger. Since you can't hold the energy of your emotion you become an enemy of your cause by setting a bad example. You lose your power in an outburst, then fall into a
Meditation would help you to harness your justified outrage without letting it fall into pessimism. The retained energy could be directed at the real problem, and you would make change instead of just stirring up the air and people's emotions. Sit quietly and hold your breath for a few seconds after you've breathed in. Holding your breath for a moment is not only a metaphore for holding the energy of your emotion; it is an actual experience of retaining energy, for breath is energy. By retaining the energy of your inhalation you take a step toward changing your world rather than criticizing it. Then when you exhale, direct your breath's energy, by your thought, toward the real problem, not your allies and friends.
Secondly, meditation helps by giving a view of the world from a "higher" perspective. In the normal state your view of the world, which you take to be objective, is produced by your energy level and then distorted by your personal lens. Breathe out and let your breath touch "bottom," so you're empty, and nothing is very important. Then breathe in like your first breath, and feel the tremendous importance of everything about life. Reality is not somewhere in-between, it is both extremes at once. It is whole, so it has all falseness and all truth, all at once. It is our way of looking at it that makes reality seem good or bad.
When you can see that things are perfectly constructed the way they are, and just as clearly see that things must be greatly improved, then you can be very effective in causing them to change.
By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
© 1998 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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