I had an interesting discussion with my counsellor about control over our anger and it went something like this.
Names of course have been changed in this rendition of our conversation.
George my counsellor:
“Can we control our anger? This question can be thrown back to you as: Can anything really cause your anger? When a situation or someone seems to cause us to feel angry, as it will from time to time, we can still choose what it is that we really want to feel. We don’t have to immediately give into the anger and so allow only the anger itself to completely colour and influence us totally, or even only partly or even if we so choose, we can even choose for our anger to not influence us at all.”
“We can if we realise it, either choose only to feel the anger arising in us right now, or to remember about the love that we should know that we always have behind it. And actually this love is always a container for all of our emotions. For love contains all emotions and all emotions are in love. But love itself is never only an emotion, and perhaps it can never really be adequately described what it is exactly. Love is always greater than our descriptions of it seem to be.”
“Or we might take another different choice again, to think about this love always behind and containing all else, and so let the anger dissipate over time, but without engaging its true purpose for being there. We do this thinking we are choosing love and letting the anger go, and we are usually pleased that we didn’t give into it like that. But in fact, both of these ways of treating anger can be said to be incorrect. Sure, it’s OK to let the anger dissipate like that, but we should always try to first understand the message it always brings to us.”
“And all experiences and all of our emotions and every thought that we have, including our dreams have a message in there somewhere for us to learn from in some way or another. And this is only the love in every experience. Every experience is to teach us more about love, by showing us the love it always contains.”
“We should never choose to ignore a message like this, thinking we are going the way of love. Love never covers over anything, but actually is there to reveal, and to uncover, and then to heal the messages from all these other emotions and experiences that we have in our lives. Love will reveal and heal the often hidden messages our pain, our thoughts and our emotions contain, and contain only for us and so try to bring over and over again to us.”
“Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, if we don’t get the message right away, we usually will have it pointed out to us with an even stronger message that sometimes is containing even more pain or perhaps brings even more trauma into our lives. And that is the way life works and love works. Love is always kind enough and patient enough to keep bringing us it’s potential of healing us when we can read it’s messages in the events it brings to us in each of our lives.”
“Is this really right, and does it really all work like this?”, I asked George. “Can you explain it to me a little more, please?” I said to him then.
And George wisely responded to me something like as follows here, as best I can remember him telling me:
“Anger arises inside of you to counter the feeling of loss that you feel when someone acts unexpectedly to how you are wanting them to act. Or differently to your already formed expectations and assessment of them, or differently from your pigeon holing of them in some particular way for that person. And we all tend to categorise people and even experiences like that.”
“Or a situation arises in the same way, and one where you don’t really want that situation to happen, and maybe also you didn’t expect it to happen in that way, or even to happen at all. When you are completely detached from the situation, this will not happen, as you will never feel the loss, and so love itself will stay in place and in the forefront of your actions and life, at all times.”
“Detachment is the brother of love. Both are closely related together. Love is not an emotion, but a mighty feeling of powerful detachment and then reattachment by that love to the very thing that remains detached from you. This describes then giving and receiving love. “
“So don’t let an emotion block you from love or seeing the whole picture or the bigger picture of anything,” he added to me now.
“We are actually all multidimensional beings. We are running many different bodies on many different planes of existence. The first plane is the physical with the physical body. And then the Astral plane where the emotional body resides and finds it’s home. And a bit higher up still in vibration or consciousness levels is the Mental plane where our thought body originates from and resides as well. There are then many different levels of awareness and of consciousness.”
“And we should all realise this when we have an experience, and not always think that it happens on only one level or dimension. Even on the emotional plane alone, we can limit ourselves, when we to choose to experience only a particular emotion arising from out of a particular situation, while separating ourselves from all other emotions. The truth is that only one emotion is being felt stronger for now, but that all emotions are always present and acting together.”
“Each emotion brings it’s own message to you, but the stronger emotion will usually block out all other messages. This can be missing half the experience and the possible learning’s being brought to us and inherent in the situation. No, try to allow the first emotion to arise but not to allow it to take over. Just sit back a bit and feel the presence of its friends, the other emotions. And then listen to any message that you might feel that they are bringing to you,as well. Finally then remember to allow love to wash over all of these emotions, for love exists on all planes and connects all levels together. Love is the great connector.”
He then went on to talk to me even more directly like this:
“What I would like you to do Arnold,” he said to me, “Is to gain the ability to access all of these levels of consciousness and feelings and thoughts all together as a total picture, instead of being stuck in one part only of it. And so seeing only a small part of the overall picture of what is happening. All of your perceptions, your feelings and your thoughts should be always free to flow with any and all changes of reality that life brings to you to experience.”
“You are then able to rather make a more holistic and overall balanced decision, and to make it from a place of total immersion in all emotions and thoughts, including even the opposing emotions and thoughts and feelings without losing connection to any of them at all. You stay connected to the whole you, at all times. So that no particular emotion or thought, no matter how strong or powerful it is, is then able to obscure or cover over your view and perception of the whole picture. And this is when you will have the extra clarity to see things for what they really are in every moment and every experience in existence in your life and in their relation to all life.”
“For at some stage in your life or lives, every experience and every emotion and every thought will come to you in some way or another, for you to learn from and to see how they link together and fit into the bigger picture we are all a part of, and at the same time looking at and observing carefully to find, and to see, and to finally understand our part in it all. You will then use all emotions, all thoughts and all feelings without being enslaved or trapped or led astray by any in particular.”
I then pepped in enthusiastically with another comment of my own as I was beginning to really understand what George had been telling me all along now, in all those past myriads of counselling sessions going on for over two years now. I had been having counselling ever since I had been experiencing periods of severe depression and loss of any real meaning or connection to life.
Losing your job often leads to this, but unfortunately I had also been savagely assaulted and brutally bashed by some petty thieves and a gang of thugs around this same time and period in my life. This led me to having to close my business and losing thousands of dollars in the process. And it is rather strange but after a severe depression like this often will arise a very wicked and powerful form of anger for what happened, against the perpetrators and against life and even against God, anything but against yourself. At least at the beginning I found this to be true. But in the end I found indeed it all came back to myself and I had to discover the many messages the anger was bringing me and hopefully to listen and to learn from them. And then as George had told me many a time, to wash them all over a pure white in the waters of love.
I was beginning to do this and I found that many times, as with me, anger is only really a defence we have constructed against allowing the real us to emerge. My own father was perceived to me as a frightening and angry person. I was always afraid and scared of him. And so my counselling has revealed this to me, and the withholding of my love from him that I then punished him with and am still doing even now in a way to this day.
And this was my way of indirectly being angry back at him. I know this and am trying to love him once more again now, as he reaches the pinnacle years of his life here on earth. He has mellowed over the years and is now a fragile old man of 75 years old. I hope I can totally learn to wash over my anger and to love him completely again before he dies here on our Earth. For now, I am still not quite there. The pain still is my uppermost emotion and that is still stopping me. I have still to see the real meaning of it’s message and the love hiding under this pain. One day I will, for like you, I too am still growing and certainly don’t know it all just yet. And after all, that’s only part of life, isn’t it?
It is so hard to see anything else, yet alone love through this haze and mask of anger that we wear to cover the pain and hurt we are still experiencing. George’s counselling, with his mix of love and spiritual wisdom linked to such in-depth insights into the human condition and relating it all practically back to me, probably saved me in the end from wallowing for another two long years in more depression and more anger.
But even so, there would have been nothing wrong with that, only my time of healing would have been longer. With George’s great help and support and my trust in his nurturing and compassion, I was able to remember the great truths he shared with me and the enormous love he had for me to help me and to assist me through all that I was going through.
And it was a long and painful journey, and probably for him too. But this is the difference love makes to anger, and that a great counsellor and skilled listener can bring to our lives. I certainly appreciated all that George has done for me. And so this too is a great tool for us all to utilise as well, to help us to overcome our own anger and depression and our problems in our own lives. Share it with a good and trusted friend or a professional counsellor like I did. And I recommend this most highly to you all:
So back to my comment and I hope you are all still with me in this what has become a bit of a saga, for me and for you. Only kidding!
“Is this true George, because we also don’t want to be only all the same bland and flat personalities do we? Each emotion has its reason for being and arising and each comes with its particular message at and for that time which no other emotion can bear or carry at that time, but I can see your point too, that anger arises in the beginning, but love is still there and also bringing a linked message to the anger that has arisen.
George then finished his little mini lecture to me with this comment:
“Emotions serve you by arising from the emotional body, but love itself never does this as it is always present and forever in your heart and soul. Love is everywhere and present in all your bodies and is the very reason for all of their existence. Love is underneath all things because it has created all things out of itself.”
“And as you know, Arnold”, he said to me, “Love is only God and God is only Love. This is the point many people miss. Love is far greater than any emotion and all emotions are under the influence of love.”
