Anger can be an interesting emotion - if you have the ability to pull back from it. I don't always - but recently I had the singular pleasure of feeling anger turn from hot to cold. There was an actual physical sensation of coolness inside my body, a feeling of spaciousness and unflinching power that was strange and heady. This 'anger' felt good. Why? Because it wasn't at all volatile - because I wasn't struggling to control it, and there was no impulse to say or do anything. In fact I felt that if I were to see the object of my 'hot' anger at that moment, I could easily ignore it.
In this state of 'not caring' I felt an exhilarating freedom. So what if things fell apart? Let them. In fact, let's see just how busted things can get. This was new territory, or felt like it. This was a cool green field where I threw down my backpack, and took a load off. It felt so good, I started to wonder whether I was in fact, still angry.
I began to suspect that there might be several cool green fields out there, or maybe there was just one cool green field with everything else splayed out around it: anger and fear, even pleasure and giddy happiness. As far out as one can go, there is the possibility ( maybe even the necessity) of return. I used to think it was defeat - that the paths I took seemed to lead back to where I started, but it might be "the wisdom of no escape". Maybe everything is right here.
"The Wisdom of No Escape" - gratefully borrowed from the title of the book by Pema Chodron.
Photo:mihtiander
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