Anger

I understand disgust and anger ... addiction is a horrible disease and it affects all areas of life and society. However, it is with understanding and compassion that we will have some inner peace to be pro-active and effective, and NOT add to our inner turmoil and spread it out into the world. It is NOT to condone or turn a blind eye at all, but to reflect for ourselves and be a reflection for others that there may be another way. And there is. It just takes a departure from the way we usually think and do, it takes inner work and a broad perspective to address reality as it is, as it is, not the way we think it should be.  We can question what we're believing and find the kind of truth that sets us free to be that other way.  Anger and blameful attitudes aren't going to attract others to listen to us. It is going to repel them and the cycle of disease and abuse continues, in us, in them, and in the world. When does it stop?

So, of course there's anger and all sorts of emotions, but the invitation is to work through them so we can change the course of this disease wherever and whenever possible. And sometimes there are going to be things that are just not within our control.

All people come to their own realizations in their own time, and in their own way, and sometimes they don't. This IS the way of it. It always has been, and it always will be. The point is to be responsible for our own realizations and get unstuck so we're not part of that blindness and paralysis. I call that "my recovery".

Notice ... When we believe "they" are violent" how easy it is to return violence at least mentally with our judgments and condemnation and insistence that they "get it and change". But, they're not and they won't until and if they do. It's like a snake that injects poison into our veins. The snakes do what snakes do, and we carry the poison around and spread it through our veins running around in circles arguing with the reality that the snake shouldn't have done that. But that's what the snake did, and it may again, it's a snake! And when it feels the need to bite it will. It is the nature of things. People are the same way.

We all have the capacity to live out of fear, to avoid, project scary images onto an unknowable future, regret the past, and be scared to make a difficult choice. That fear, when we believe it, is going to make us act. That becomes our reality, and that is the way it is going to play out in us, from us and into the world. It is cause and effect each and every time. And fear will tell us that this is never going to stop. But it can, and it has to stop in our own lives, in our own minds, or we don't stand a chance to create something different in our lives or the world. We remain contributors of fear, stay disgusted, tell someone they're the ones who need to get informed and change, that they should stop enabling, etc. Well, they can't when they believe they should. They are living in fear! They can't because believing the fear does no allow them to see another way! If you believed you had to protect your child, would you? If you don't believe it, you won't. If you believe "protection" means they face their own consequences, then that's the outcome. See what I mean? Cause and effect. This IS the human condition, for us all, it is not an us vs. them. We're all in this together, but it is going to take each one of us to be the change we want to see in the world.

We can take care of our own beliefs and attitudes to get out of our own fear,disgust, anger, resentment, guilt, worry so we are the way to compassion, peace, more effective action, improved communication and change. It has to start somewhere. We have great choice to be the example and show another way. One way is to live in anger, another way is to approach issues with understanding and peace and be a more powerful influence. I know for me, I feel more powerful and effective when acting out of peace and peacefully. I also hear peace far more clearly than anger. Anger serves, it is completely normal, and anger can show us the way to another way. It can show us to a different way that works, and a way that inspires.

I used to live out of anger. It was painful insisting the world and people be the way I expect them to be. Well they weren't and I made my own heart and world suffer because of my unresolved anger, the lack of understanding, the lack of forgiveness. It was just painful!

They should or shouldn't? Not until they do or they don't. You really don't get a vote on what they do or don't. So, the ball is in your court, it's back to you where it always lands to consider what you're believing, how you're reacting, and how it could be when you're more peaceful. My anger made everything difficult. Peace makes a way, it clears a path to possibility. Let there be peace on earth, let it begin with me. How about for you?   

To peace!  With love, Joanne