2
How to Stop Being Angry in 22 Days KEVIN FARROW 3
Published by Little Wisdom Press PO Box 356 Balmain NSW Littlewisdompress@acuenergetics.com ISBN: 978-1-7641872-0-6 : Paperback National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Farrow, Kevin, 1954- . How to stop being angry in 22 days. Illustrations: Anne Maria Published by Little Wisdom Press PO Box 356 Balmain NSW Printed in AsiaAll rights to this book are reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address the publisher. Copyright Kevin Farrow 2025 4
5
6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you very much to the people who have contributed to this book. Thanks especially to Anne Maria for the illustrations and layout and to Rochelle who really helped me with my understanding such as it is. You guys are awesome.
To begin with, if you want to stop anything, it’s helpful to know what you’re dealing with. It’s just like stopping a car, which involves knowing where the brakes are unless you’re prepared to crash into something to stop the momentum. So, what exactly is anger? We all realize how anger affects our judgment and hence our actions and this is probably why you are reading this. If we’re going to stop being angry then firstly, we need to understand exactly what it is. The American Psychological Association describes it as ‘… an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong.’ However, this is a very limited description. It can also be an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has violated your sense of what’s right. An example would be the feelings greenies have towards forestry 7
workers, and also the feelings forestry workers have towards greenies. How do we stop being angry? One of the common understandings about anger is that all we have to do, is realize and rationalize our actions. Alan Watts wrote a book entitled ‘Does it Matter’ as a philosophical Buddhist approach to being reasonable. The trouble is that we are all reasonable when we aren’t angry. Anger makes us unreasonable. Einstein famously said ‘Anger only dwells in the bosoms of fools’ but he failed to mention that it is the anger that makes us think and behave foolishly. Anger makes fools of us all. It is a reaction to an event that is mental, emotional and physical. Mentally it makes us stupid; emotionally it disrupts our peace; and physically it affects our health. Of course, it is necessary to have some mental picture of what we are doing if we wish to understand it and to get past it. 8
It is great to say that we will just stop, but this is rarely effective. It’s helpful to know that the idea of getting rid of our propensity to anger is not a new one. Teachings on ridding ourselves of anger have been prevalent in different forms in many of our societies across the ages. The Roman philosopher Seneca described anger as the desire to punish and this is a very good basic description. Seneca wrote the text entitled ‘On Anger’ about 2000 years ago. In it he tried to explain the problems associated with anger and the grave consequences it has on our lives. Seneca looked at why we get angry in the first place. He urged us to give up our feelings of self-importance because it is this that causes us to feel wronged by others. He also notes that if we cannot do this, we should search for reasons to forgive those people. The chief reason he notes in favour of forgiving others, is the universal fallibility of humans. This should lead us into a ‘pact of mutual leniency’ with others, which leads us away from our judgments and towards more merciful feelings. This book is designed to help you to overcome anger through 9
10 your mind, your emotions and your body rather than just your philosophical views. It’s designed to teach your mind-body to have some patience, for as Seneca noted; ‘The greatest remedy for anger is delay.’
11 Why 22 Days Well 22 days isn’t a magical number of practice days to stop reacting angrily to situations, but it’s a start in the right direction. It will get you past both the honeymoon period of thinking that this will be a piece of cake and/or the despairing period of thinking that this won’t work - and into the stage where you will have put your understanding into real life practice. From there it’s a matter of practice and recognizing when you are triggered and developing good habits around your responses. Winning the battle over your anger in just 2 or 3 situations in a row is the best catalyst to start the process being second nature. Q. What you do for the 22 days? A. Five quick things. • Read the little text Understanding Anger, starting on the next page.
12 Then everyday; • When you get up (over coffee or tea) read the daily quote about anger then consider it for a minute or two. • Do the Inner Smile Meditation for 10-15 minutes each day (details at the back and there’s a supplied link to a video). • At some point during the day, think about your triggers – that is what’s making you angry. • At night before bed, read the quote again and consider briefly how you went today.
13 Understanding Anger There are two things a person should never be angry at. What they can help, and what they cannot. Plato Anger is always a difficult subject. Many people ask what they can do about their anger, but the truth is that once you are angry, there is not a lot you can do. If you express it, you'll get sick and if you suppress it, you'll get sick. While the type of sickness we get is different, it's not a good choice. While most of us condemn emotional states such as depression, guilt and fear, curiously, there is a lot of public support for anger. As a society that at least outwardly condemns violence, (unless in defense of country and home) we still tend to rate the inner violence of anger as a reasonable response to difficult situations while its precursor, annoyance, is just ignored.
14 This common view gets a lot of philosophical support. In his book Power Vs Force, the psychiatrist David Hawkins reflects this public sympathy by listing anger halfway up his emotional frequencies consciousness list. Hawkins has anger sitting above desire, fear, grief, apathy, guilt and shame. As far as this map is concerned, anger is halfway to joy. It is often portrayed as a motivating force to achieve, as much as it’s seen as a negative force of resentment. We like the way it’s seen as expansive versus the contracting nature of fear and guilt. I gave up smoking 30 years ago because a friend noted that I wasn’t smoking that day and that he had never seen me not smoking. I thought this was incorrect, but he assured me that it was true. His perception made me pissed off and I stopped smoking then and there and I have never smoked again. However, I have been angry many, many, times. I’m not sure if it would have been better for my health to give up anger and keep smoking. They are both addictive, reasonably socially unacceptable and make us ill over a period of time. Not that much difference?
15 Seeing anger as an expansive precursor to action is both incorrect and ignoring of its consequences. The best precursor to action is clarity and anger clouds that. When we think anger is positive it is a misunderstanding of the nature of anger. Anger is not truly expansive. It is the expansive phase of a deeply contractive state, rather similar to a bomb. To make a bomb, we need force expressed in a contracted space. The problem with anger is that we are the contracted space. When we indulge in anger, we are engaging in self-harm. In effect, we are blowing ourselves up. The Sufi mystic Rumi, described this nature of anger in a poem where he wrote, ‘Be careful of anger – it feels good but it burns.’ Buddha also talked about the nature of anger when he said, ‘Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.’ The metaphor of bomb making is applicable to anger whether or not the anger is expressed. Both expression and non-expression of anger are harmful to the body/mind. The only difference being that they harm our body/mind in slightly different ways.
16 Our chief love of anger seems to be our love of the feeling of power. We can punish the culprit either in words or deeds although it’s usually words. These are either direct to the person or indirect through slandering them to others. This feeling of power also gives us the feeling of ‘I am right and you are wrong’ - which is a version of ‘I am better than you’. This feeling of self-righteousness may seem like a salve to the ego, but this is only because we are unaware that the salve is in reality, an acid. This satisfaction of self- righteousness blocks the reality of the real harm we are doing to our body/mind. The satisfaction of being right and feeling right, helps strengthen our ego. We feel bigger. It’s very easy for us to get on our self- righteous high horse and be the one who’s right. Of course, we are all a bit different and not all of us find anger empowering. There are many of us who just find their own anger confronting. In reality, this is not very different. It's really just a fear of consequences in addition to the anger. Anger really begins because we are childish. We’re happy to be annoyed with people for any reason and we enjoy this
17 annoyance for the same ego expanding reason that it makes us feel right. This self-righteousness is multiplied when we express this on behalf of others. This may be defending our children's rights or the rights of a group of people or of a group of trees. Whenever we use anger in a third person scenario, where we are angry on behalf of others, we lose all perspective of ourselves, and what we are doing. Even when we are justifying the anger because we believe we are benefitting others by doing so, the reality is that we are just angry. I saw a huge billboard in Italy many years ago that read; ‘One Billion People are Hungry – Get Angry!’ Personally, I have always failed to see how this can help. If it had read; ‘One Billion People are Hungry – Let’s Feed Them!’ - it would have made sense and could have been constructive. One of our problems is that we tend to think that a lot of our small anger is OK. We think that it’s OK if we are annoyed with someone’s personality or views (even if we don’t personally know them) and
18 we often share this with friends and defend our position by arguing that other people can’t stand them either. This is no different from being annoyed with people over their shape. A friend of mine who was a triathlete, once told me that when he was in serious training, he hated people whose body weight was over 8% fat content. He would go to the beach and be revolted by what he saw. This is like being annoyed with magnolias because they aren’t roses. Who just likes one type of flower? We would find this ridiculous if someone told us that they only liked roses. This is only an opinion that we have decided to defend. Racism is not only based on the same logic; it is exactly the same thing with a different colour. However, most of us don’t like to think that we’re racist. It's become socially unacceptable; so now we just dislike people for other reasons. Either it’s their intelligence, or their dress sense, or their accent, where they’re from or their religion or which football team they follow. This kind of thinking is socially acceptable all over the world.
19 As noted above, Albert Einstein said, ‘Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.’ We need to learn to become less foolish. To help this process of de-fooling ourselves, it’s good to see exactly what anger does to us. If we really look at it scientifically, anger is just a self-generated blood and mind poison. Its most well documented health effects are: • digestion problems • anxiety • eczema • insomnia • headache • increased blood pressure • overloads the nervous system • doubles the risk of coronary heart disease* • triples the risk of heart attack1 • increases adrenaline - to the point where the body stops producing acetylcholine, a hormone which tempers the more severe effects of adrenaline. At this point we are constantly angry. The original purpose of the fight and flight chemicals such as adrenaline was to help us to run away from dinosaurs, not punch things and stamp our feet. In addition, anger makes us
20 less tolerant, and also contributes to other negative emotions such as depression and anxiety. 1 (Circulation Journal study involving 12,986 participants. - Web MD) Another of the problems with anger is that it is rarely a one off. Once we indulge in anger, we are easily angry about many other things. If the boss is unfair at work, we get angry and then at lunch we attack the girl at the coffee shop over the wrong change or a spillage. We get home and fight with our partner or our children. We blame this on work stress but the truth is; our problem is not stress, it's our anger. When we are constantly annoyed by this or that; no matter what it is or why - then we have a big problem with our anger. Sometimes our anger is the result of our co-dependency. Many of us find it impossible to be calm when someone else is being angry with us. This arises from our basic insecurity about our own worth. One of my favourite poems is by a Zen monk who was walking down the road one day when he was accosted by a belligerent man who started to abuse him. The monk observed
21 closely and wrote; Very interesting Screaming monkey I love that he was able to calmly and clearly, experience the situation and jot down this brilliant little observation. I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen screaming monkey people, but we don’t always see that with clarity. So what can we do about our anger? Whether we express our anger or suppress it we get sick. The way out is to open our hearts, so that we have more understanding and don't get angry in the first place. The Buddha said; ‘Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.’ What most of us don't realise, is that all understandings come from experience. Buddha had this understanding because at one point, he was an angry man. However, he saw clearly what it
22 was that he was doing and resolved to do something about it. We can all do this. As the English writer Oscar Wilde noted; ‘Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.’ How do we start? Actually it’s not very difficult but it needs daily maintenance. It’s easy to seem calm when everything is going well in our lives, but when the going gets very difficult, we succumb to anger because we get resentful about our situation. This program is based on what I and a number of my clients over the years have personally found very useful. There are three things that do work when you remember to use them on a daily basis. • Firstly - reading something everyday about anger and its effects starts to bring me to a realisation of the harm that I cause through my anger. Primarily the harm to my personal and work relationships and the self-harm that I am indulging in. • The second helpful thing is practicing the Inner Smile meditation for 15 minutes everyday. I know that if I’m not interested enough to put fifteen minutes a day into helping get
23 rid of my anger – I’m not really interested enough to change. • Thirdly if I have been angry, (or I’m getting angry) asking myself ‘What good will come from this?’ This understanding helps me to curb my rationalizations of what my angry mind believes are valid reasons for my anger. Suddenly my narrative about my rights and what someone else has done, loses its meaning. It becomes apparent that I am just hot under the collar and it’s my doing and my problem. If I have been angry, another helpful practice is sitting for a moment or two and letting myself really feel my core emotion about the situation. Most often this is sadness and hurt. There is an old Sufi teaching that sadness is the cure for anger. Just accepting that I’m feeling sad and hurt brings a sense of relief. As we gradually gain calmness and understanding, we will become less hurt by others and our anger response will start to lessen. The contemporary Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, suggests that we use a back-up plan, in the form of a card in our pockets with tips on what to do when we’re angry. I think this is a good start if you actually remember to look at it.
24 My tips on what to put on the piece of paper would be; Side 1 Breathe in then breathe out Side 2 Breathe in then breathe out In Judaism there is a teaching that is called tikkum olam or healing the world. We do this by first healing ourselves. When we have healed ourselves, the world has a different appearance. Our anger disappears and is replaced by compassion and understanding.
25 Forgiveness Forgiveness is great but it’s a tricky thing. The tricky bit is that the concept that you can forgive someone is really a form of vanity. When we forgive, we elevate ourselves to a position I always think of as, the Grand Poobah posture. We think we are the great loving and forgiving person who has never done anything wrong and in our great munificence, we are prepared to grant the gift of forgiveness to the other person. This is pure egotism. Better to realize that we are all a bit short of being perfect and allow a bit of leeway in the behavior of others. Maybe they are just having a bad day or maybe there is a lesson for us to learn. That lesson might just be forgiveness for ourselves and others. So firstly, we have to realize that forgiveness is for us – it’s not for
26 the other person. If we realize this then forgiveness can help us to let go of our resentments and anger and help us to be happier and healthier. So firstly, we have to realize that forgiveness is for us – it’s not for the other person. If we realize this then forgiveness can help us to let go of our resentments and anger and help us to be happier and healthier. Questions and Answers about Forgiveness [These questions and my answers were originally published in an article in Wellbeing Magazine.] Q. What’s the problem with non-forgiveness (what does it do to our health/mind/body/spirit over time)? A. Not forgiving other people is one of the fastest ways to become ill. When we emotionally shut out other people, we literally harden our heart muscle causing anxiety, insomnia and circulatory problems to name but a few. In addition, the anger we hold onto congests our livers resulting in multiple problems including inflexibility. This can easily become a vicious cycle where anger fuels a closed heart and the closed heart further
27 fuels anger. Q. What’s a practical thing people can do to start the process of forgiveness? A. To start with - stop taking everything so seriously. Breathe a little and realize that you’re not perfect either. From here you could progress to the Tibetan Forgiveness meditation. Q. How does this practical technique work to allow forgiveness? A. Letting go a little and realizing a little, helps us to move on and to stop being nailed to the floor of our negative opinions. You are the first step of your bigger journey. Take it and thank your lucky stars that you are capable of forgiveness.
28 Forgiveness Meditation A simple technique to help open the heart is the Tibetan Forgiveness Meditation. In this meditation first sit and find a place of stillness within yourself. If that feels impossible, sit and breathe deeply for nine breaths. Then visualise someone whom you unconditionally love standing in front of you. This can be your dog or cat, whoever gives you a feeling of warmth in your heart. Next, bring your friends into your visualisation and stay with the feeling of warmth in your heart. Then, while still feeling the heart's love and warmth, add your family, then your acquaintances and finally those people that you have issues with. If you can stay with the feelings of the heart instead of the judgements of the mind, you will take a big step towards keeping yourself healthy and making your life beautiful and profound.
29 Breathing Your breathing can help or hinder you in overcoming anger. In ancient times there was a very good understanding of the breath and how it affects our minds. Basically, breathing brings the electricity of the air straight into our bodies. If we breathe into our bellys then we start what is called the ‘Water Cycle’ which calms us down. If we breathe into our heads then we start the ‘Fire Cycle’ which activates and increases thought. In order to overcome anger, it’s helpful to learn to breathe into the belly. This is not difficult to learn. Place your hands on the belly below the navel (umbilicus) and make sure this goes out as you breathe in and goes in as you breathe out. That’s all there is to this. Simple, but very effective. If we take deep breaths when we’re angry and breathe in the water cycle to our bellys, we will
30 become calm. If we take deep breaths and breath upwards into our heads in the fire cycle, we will become more agitated. Breathe downwards – the water cycle is also very good for your digestion.
31 22 days This 22 - Day program is organized into four parts. There are three parts in the morning and the last one in the evening before bed. Part 1 The first is contemplation on a verse about anger for several minutes. Read the verse and then think about it and think about how it relates to you. Part 2 The second part is doing the Inner Smile Meditation or the Forgiveness Meditation for 15 minutes. I recommend that you use the guided versions (click here to download) and that you do it every morning. Part 3
32 The third morning part is how you are feeling about the situation, which caused or causes your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, guilty, humiliated, unheard. Perhaps it not being obeyed by someone and you’re standing on the principle of the thing – which can be rather like standing on the edge of a cliff. Find out how you really feel – you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 The fourth part is thinking about your day and how it has been. The Roman philosopher Seneca noted that ‘We should every night call ourselves to an account.’ Basically, we should examine our lives. Here in this 22 Day program – it’s about how we examine how we let anger into our life on a daily basis. Where have we been triggered and what our responses have been. Have we changed anything yet? Remember the old motto – progress rather than perfection. You won’t rid yourself of anger overnight, but you can make steady progress. You can eliminate the drastic reactions very quickly if you keep on the path.
Part 1 If you look behind the face of anger, you will see the face of pride. Bring them under your feet and turn them into a ladder to climb higher. You won’t have peace until you master them. Let go of your anger; it tastes sweet but it’s like poison; it kills. Rumi When Rumi says to turn anger and pride into a ladder, he’s not saying squash them. He’s saying understand them. Basically, he is noting that our anger exists because we’re defending the opinions of our egos; our pride. While this is true, we can’t really reduce our anger feelings through our new opinions – philosophical understandings just don’t work We have to transform our reactivity. If we approach our world in 33DAY 1
34 wonder and curiosity, the transformation happens. This is why meditations such as the Inner Smile really help us become less angry. They transform our view. Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Remember the lesson on doing the Inner Smile begins on page 67. Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses.
35 Your notes:
36 Part 1 You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger. Buddha This is a really key understanding. Anger is instant karma. We get angry and we make ourselves ill - in line with the intensity of our anger. It’s not a maybe proposition. We always become less healthy because of our anger. If we’re in intense rage we can become very ill very quickly … but even annoyance causes health problems. Added to this is the situation we create because of our anger. Are we making the situation better because we’re angry? Are we solving the problem that made us angry? Was it really aDAY 2
37 problem in the first place? A friend told me that after she fully realized that her anger was just her responsibility; her schoolboy son mentioned that he’d left his clarinet behind while they were in the car going to school. Instead of raving and ranting she said; ‘Well remembered.’ It’s a great thing to remember that anger is nothing to do with others, it’s just our responsibility. Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses.
38 Your notes:
39 Part 1 The Classic of Sagely Benefits states: 'The seasonal cycle of transformation begins with the wood phase. … The liver, therefore, marks the beginning of cyclical action, the stirring of spring yang, which all living things rely upon as a catalyst for their growth. By avoiding outbursts of anger and by fostering this particular type of yang energy, your prenatal qi will keep generating forever. The liver is also in charge of color; if its qi is in harmony, the body will exhibit a healthy luster. If its qi is injured, the body will appear dry and brittle. Nourishing the liver, therefore, first of all means to refrain from anger. This is the key for the maintenance of good health. From ‘Medical Teachings Continued’ (Xu Yishuo) 1522 A lot of people are now interested in longevity or reverse aging.DAY 3
40 There are diets and supplements and ice baths and saunas and pills and meditations and exercises and transfusions and all kinds of things around. But the simple truth is that if we were less angry, it would have a greater effect on our wellbeing than any of these. Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses.
41 Your notes:
42 Part 1 A Saint was asked about anger. He said ‘It’s a punishment we give ourselves for somebody else’s mistake.’ It’s a clever observation, although it’s not really caused by someone else’s mistake but rather through our reactivity. It is however, always a form of self punishment. When we start to get in touch with how we feel when we’re angry; when we start to notice the tight belly, the tight chest and breathing, the bulging veins, the tight arms … we are starting to realise that we are voluntarily imprisoning ourselves in a form of torture chamber. Is this smart? Let’s just stop punishing ourselves and ruining relationships for no good reason…because there is no good reason; just emotional reactivity. DAY 4
43 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
44 Part 1 The Sufi mystic Rumi, described the nature of anger in a poem where he wrote, ‘Be careful of anger – it feels good but it burns.’ The sun feels good too if you lay out in it all day, but sunburn and later skin issues arising from too much exposure can be a big problem. Yes, sometimes anger does feel good but unlike the sun which feeds us life, provides us with photons for hemoglobin and Vit D, warms and nourishes us; anger doesn’t have a good side. It just makes us feel good for a moment while it burns us. Rather like drug addiction.DAY 5
45 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
46 Part 1 There is a saying in Buddhism; ‘Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.’ Anger feeds on thoughts of resentment just like a plant feeds on sunlight and water. If you want to starve a plant, you just stop watering it. Anger is the same. If you want to stop it then you need to stop being resentful about others for any reason. They have their path and you have yours. Be curious about what unfolds in your life and if you can’t watch the unfolding, moment to moment, then distract yourself. One of the great Taoist lines goes; ‘The easiest way to solve your problems is to ignore them.’DAY 6
47 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
Part 1 For every minute of anger you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson We live in a busy world. There’s usually something we have to do, and someplace we have to be. We see time as a precious commodity that we just can’t get enough of. And yet we’re happy to waste it in useless entertainments such as anger. Entertainment? Yes, that’s right. It’s an entertainment for the mind – rather a dark entertainment but just as some of us like horror movies, some of us enjoy anger. It still makes us ill but so does too much alcohol. It’s only after a diagnosis of liver problems that many people consider giving up drinking so much. 48DAY 7
49 Be smart with your anger – give up now. Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
50 Part 1 When we feel humiliated, then we automatically block our capacity for kindness. So, if you humiliate someone …. don't expect them to be kind in return .... it’s not possible. In ancient teachings, the throat was considered to be the place of being human and the place of mercy and love. The heart was the beneficiary of this energy and so the throat was called the first gate of the heart. Feelings of embarrassment and humiliation block the throat and then this gives rise to anger because we lose the capacity for kindness –the act that make us human. Next time you feel embarrassed, try singing to open your throat.DAY 8
51 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
Part 1 ‘Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.’ Seneca Seneca’s insight is similar to the ancient understanding of the Wish Fulfilling Body. Basically, this understanding was that we create our emotional environment through our perception, and then the body endeavours to give us the experience that we want through the breath and chemistry. If we want anger for example, our breath will shorten, and our adrenals would pump to keep us in this mood. What you wish for; that is what you actually do …. predicates the response of the body and helps us to fully experience the situation. It also predicates us, to repeating the phenomenon. 52DAY 9
53 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
54 Part 1 There is an old Buddhist story about a samurai who went to a Zen master to seek enlightenment. The master said to him; ‘What would an idiot like you do with enlightenment?’ The samurai hastily drew his sword. The Zen master said; ‘Here open the gates of hell.’ The samurai replaced his sword in his belt and the master said; ‘Here open the gates of heaven.’ Yes, you will be provoked – that is a given. What you do then is the interesting bit. You can follow along on your unconscious path to rage and self-righteousness, or you can become aware of yourself and your unconscious reactions. Reactions are like allergies. Just as some people have an allergic response to gluten, while others have an allergic response to lactose; we allDAY 10
55 have allergic responses to situations and topics. If we have kids, we’re usually very allergic to their ‘failure to obey’. But rather than skin rashes or coughing – we get red faces and high blood pressure. We try to solve this by attempting to get them to change rather than becoming less reactive. Essentially, we think it’s their problem that we’re solving through our anger. Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses.
56 Your notes:
Part 1 ‘Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.’ Buddha This is just another way to say that you can’t get angry with someone without negative consequences that will affect your own mental, emotional and physical health. If you’ve heard of giving something up for Lent (an old Christian tradition representing Jesus going on a 40 day fast in the bush) you might try giving up anger for 40 22 days instead. It’s a lot more beneficial than giving up bacon. 57DAY 11
58 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
59 Part 1 Your strength is not your anger - your strength is your love. Anger doesn’t make you strong or mean that your strong. In the Tao te Ching, one of the ancient Taoist texts, it notes; ‘He who overcomes others has force; He who overcomes himself is strong;’ The strength people see in anger is a mirage. What it really means is that we’ve weakened and lost our grip on mental and emotional clarity. Anger causes it to slip through our fingers. Love is the strength. The Inner Smile Meditation was born in ancient martial arts where it called Pure Mind. Why did it come from martial arts? Simply that fighters are like everyone else – they’re better when they are calm.DAY 12
60 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
61 Part 1 In Judaism there is a teaching that is called ‘tikkum olam’ or ‘healing the world’. We do this by first healing ourselves. When we have healed ourselves, the world has a different appearance. Our anger disappears and is replaced by compassion and understanding. You don’t have to work on compassion and understanding – it’s our inner nature. You just have to work on not being so enamored of your anger. Realize it’s just an addiction to a mind poison and gradually ween yourself off it.DAY 13
62 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
Part 1 The Roman philosopher Epictetus wrote; ‘We don’t know all the stories behind another’s actions, so we should be patient, not judge them and realize that our understanding is limited.’ The American Indian Cherokees had a similar saying; ‘Don’t judge a man unless you have walked for a mile in his moccasins.’ These are great insights but the real problem with judgement isn’t that we are unaware of the background reasons for the actions of the person we judge …. it’s that we suffer from our judging. Simply put …. if you don’t want to live with a judgy prick, then stop being one. 63DAY 14
64 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
65 Part 1 ‘Demonising and dehumanising people gives us a self- righteousness that allows our anger to grow. Anger causes liver qi to rise and burn, depleting upward energy and so leading to the excess of downward energy for mind and body which is the hallmark of exhaustion and depression.’ This is just biophysics – the movement of energy in the body. If you want to be happy and full of zest for life, you need upward movement which extends to your body, mind and emotions. Anger stops this movement so that we get too much downward depressive movement of electricity in the body. Hence eventually, the zap of adrenaline from anger turns into depressive lethargy. The easiest way to be healthy is to have real love in your heart.DAY 15
66 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
67 Part 1 Being angry in someone’s space and then being critical of their reaction is like feeding chillies to someone who doesn’t eat them, and then being upset when they complain. Their response is really just saying; ‘Stop putting chillies in my food!’ Don’t make it about them. Being angry with people who don’t appreciate our anger is a double whammy. The only reason we indulge in this is because we think our anger is somehow justified. Stop justifying it and just remember that you are justifying self-poisoning as rational. Taking responsibility for your anger is a big step in letting go of it. While we keep blaming others for our reactions, we keep the pain of anger.DAY 16
68 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
69 Part 1 ‘If anger occurs during or after eating it injures the stomach and spleen.’ Zhang Jing-yue - Ming dynasty physician 1563 - 1640 In ancient times, physicians as culturally diverse as Buddha and Mohammed and the Taoist sages, described the stomach as the most important system in the body. This is because it binds molecules to the electromagnetic field of the body. The Taoists noted that as soon as this stops working, you die. Until it stops working you will live. Eating while you’re angry is the fastest way to get it to stop working.DAY 17
70 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
Part 1 Anger isn’t an elevation from depression - it’s the other end of the seesaw of depression. It’s simple physiology. When we get angry then we congest the liver. A congested liver stops us from getting upward energy movement, so we lose bounce and start the slide into depression. (As an added side effect, we increase fat in the liver predisposing ourselves to Type 2 diabeties.) Anger gives us a sudden kick of adrenaline fueled energy, but then it increases the liver congestion that sees us slide even further into downward movements and depressive tendencies. Don’t use anger for energy …. it’s self-defeating. 71DAY 18
72 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
Part 1 The Sufi mystic poet Hakim Sanai wrote; ‘Humility suits you …. violence doesn’t. A naked man frantic in a beehive is out of place.’ When we’re angry we are violent, and so we lose perspective, clarity and understanding. Then we try and make our way in the world like a blind man navigating a maze of thorns. Breathe. 73DAY 19
74 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
75 Part 1 There are two things a person should never be angry at. What they can help, and what they cannot. Plato Essentially there is never a good reason to be angry. Just like there is never a good reason to drink poison. Stop rationalizing your anger and start responding to situations instead of reacting. This may cause you to take you a few breaths and a little time to let clarity seep back into your overloaded angry mind …. but it’s worth the wait.DAY 20
76 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
77 Part 1 Anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. (Anon) Our anger is due to our mind and heart being full of misconceptions. We believe we know the truth, or we believe that we know another’s motivations, or we believe this or that; or we’re just uncaring because we can’t deal with hurt. Many years ago, I watched an inmate of a mental institution punch himself in the face repeatedly, because he was angry and blamed himself. We do the exact same thing when we’re angry. Our anger reaction is just like unconsciously punching ourselves in the face, except that it has a worse effect on our health.DAY 21
78 Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses. Your notes:
79 Part 1 ‘To quell anger nothing is better than poetry. To dismiss cares, nothing is better than music. To moderate joy, nothing is better than reason. To observe reason, nothing is better than attentiveness. To maintain attentiveness, nothing is better than tranquility.’ - Taoist 4 century BCEth This begs the question; who wants to read poetry when they're angry? The answer is anyone who doesn't want to stay angry. However, essentially this verse is about distraction, not poetry. Distraction has many admirable uses. To acquire the understanding of useful distraction is one of the arts of growing up. Distracting ourselves can be a useful cure to the ceaselessDAY 22
80 revolutions of a negative mind dwelling in useless patterns of resentment or negative emotions. The best distractions are those involving attentiveness rather than inactions like watching TV or listening to music. Playing a musical instrument; reading something beautiful rather than the news; and going for walks and admiring nature are all good healthy distractions for mind. Part 2 Inner Smile Meditation (10 – 15 minutes) Part 3 Feel how you are feeling about the situation, which caused your anger. Do you feel hurt, sad, humiliated? Find out how you really feel …. you already know what your reaction feelings are. Part 4 In the evening - think about your day and how it has been. Have you been triggered and what were your responses.
81 Your notes:
82 Inner Smile Meditation The Inner Smile is one of the great heart practices, showing a rare understanding of the real functions of the heart. Like any meditation, right understanding helps practice, and practice helps with our right understanding. The inner smile is based on the Taoist principle, that the mind becomes what it perceives. When we do this, we choose the feeling of love over our opinions. We choose yes over no. Understand that yes is not literal. It is the feeling of the open spirit. We can say ‘no thanks I don’t want a coffee’ and be in the open spirit. It’s about how we are in ourselves. Practicing the Inner Smile is one thing but understanding it is another. When we start to understand it, we can see that the Inner Smile is not even a practice but a way of being. A way of being profoundly present and completely unencumbered of our
83 mental and emotional baggage. The real nature of every living thing is love and openness. It’s our mental and emotional baggage that separates us from each other. When we let this go then we are an intrinsic part of the divine perception of everything…and we smile. If you stay aware of the feeling of your breathing then the Inner Smile will be easier, deeper and more stable. The word spiritual comes from the Latin spirare meaning to breathe. This connection of breath and spirituality is the same in many languages including Chinese, Scandinavian, Slavic and Baltic. We have this connection because our breath contains a link …. a link to the universal awareness. Not that we are always connected. While our breathing is automatic, connecting to consciousness is elective. Close your eyes: feel your breath… The breath brings oxygen to our lungs and it brings the link to the spiritual, to awareness, into our hearts. We breathe in oxygen and we live. We become conscious of the feeling of our
breathing and we connect to the universal energy and we flower. The connection of our heart and our breath is the connection between us and the universal awareness; the mind of God. Our mind separation keeps us tiny …. but our heart connection makes us grow beyond the size of the infinite. This phenomenon of connection happens because the heart is always a part of the one great heart of the universe, but only when it’s open. Feeling is a heart function and when we feel, we open the heart. Feeling is receptive, opening, non-verbal and non-judgmental. The inner smile is a profound practice but to use it to avoid our inconvenient attitudes is a mistake. While it is part of our popular culture to believe that all you need is love – as Rumi pointed out, ‘We are not here to discover love but to find all the things that prevent this state from occurring.’ Love is the natural way. The subconscious patterns of mind and emotion that cloud this, are what we need to unearth and bring into the light. Then love will shine easily …. free from anger, fear and greed. 84
85 The Inner Smile practice has amazing benefits of transforming the heart, body and mind …. and how we feel. However, we need to do it every day to experience this beautiful change. It doesn’t take a lot of practice, but it does take practice – usually practicing daily for fifteen minutes a day. If you’re not prepared to practice for fifteen minutes a day to be happier in your life - then you have to ask yourself if you’re really interested?
86 How do we practice the inner smile? • Sit upright in a comfortable position, close your eyes and feel the breathing as it moves the body. Don’t focus on the nose or the chest – just be a little bit aware of the small physical movements in the body that accompanies breathing. • Don’t be in a hurry to relax. Allow some time to slow down and be still. The head should be reasonably straight. • Use a trigger to help you smile. There are a few things that work in evoking a smile regularly and all of them involve having a heart connection to someone you love unconditionally, like a friend, baby, or your cat or dog. You could pretend that your best friend who always makes you smile, is walking down the street towards you. Or remembering what it felt like to be in love – truly in love - for the first time – when you loved not just that person, but everyone
87 and everything. You loved dogs, cats, trees, butterflies, taxi drivers – you loved being alive. • However you use a trigger, allow it to help you remember the feeling and feel it in your heart now. Let it make you smile … remembering that smiling is where the corners of your mouth goes up. You can tell if you’re doing this properly by noticing your smile. If someone was taking a photo of you doing the meditation – would you be smiling? • When you can feel the feeling of smiling, drop the memory, drop the trigger and just feel it. • Keep smiling on the outside but don’t just force a smile. Smile just because you are happy. • As with any practice, it’s almost inevitable that you will get distracted at some stages. That ok. If your attention wanders, just come back to the smile, come back to feeling.
88 Inner Smile Advice My advice is to go online to Acuenergetics.com … go to the shop section and invest in Rochelle Taylor’s Inner Smile Experience ($39.95). It’s a 14 day program and it will really help get you started.
89 Conclusion ‘If you know that you are angry, and have hatred, you are no longer in ignorance but possess knowledge.’ The 20 century Burmese monk Taungpulu Sadadaw; known as the Wildflower Monk th I hope that these 22 days of practice have been beneficial for you and have helped you to let go of attaching to anger and to understand it and be able to be less serious. However, this is a little like learning the piano – 22 days of practice will be great, but you probably won’t be able to play the Moonlight Sonata. More practice is needed. Remember that anger makes us ill so strive to be healthy.
90