Experiencing Anger... for a Change | Steve Beckow

By Steve Beckow, August 9, 2022

(Golden Age of Gaia)

For the first time in memory, I got angry this evening and, instead of hurling allegations at another, who after all “made me mad,” instead of festering with it, instead of revenging myself on the other person, I opened to the experience of it.

It turned out to be a feeling just like any other. I felt it as a burning sensation, as if I’d gulped a large amount of Frank’s Red Hot.

I also noticed that I was very tense in my shoulders and the back of my neck. In its own time, it left.

The burning sensation of the anger and the tension in my upper torso is so familiar to me that it only exists in the background of obviousness. It doesn’t merit discussion as being simply too obvious to comment on, like asking a person if they breathe. When I feel angry, I tense up. Yah? Doesn’t everyone? So what?

But I’d never seen it before or allowed myself to experience it rather than act it out.

The experience of being angry is like heat plus hatred of another. Neither is particularly enjoyable.

If we take it apart, the problem with feeling hatred is we have to feel it. Feeling hatred feels awful. The state is its own punishment. Others have compared it to drinking poison hoping the other person will die. That’s about the situation.

And feeling super-irritated as I would be if I gulped down a heaping amount of Frank’s is again neither pleasureable nor entertaining. I wouldn’t seek it out under normal circumstances. That heat seems somehow to feed my willingness to get behind the hatred and lash out at the other.

So, I was able to simply be with it this time and experience it without allowing it to get into the driver’s seat and drive the car.

This is a red-letter day for me.

I’ve wrestled with anger, derived from domestic abuse, since forever. For the first time in my life I actually opened to the experience of it and remained detached from it until it left.

I feel satisfied.