Mid-way through a peaceful ramble through
the bush at Wentworth Falls a few weeks ago, my friends Maddy, Tess and I came
to a standstill when our conversation got on to the topic of how much anger is
expressed, in sometimes astonishingly vitriolic forms, when unpopular views are
voiced in the media. Writers of opinion pieces regularly devote columns to
expressing their shock and dismay at receiving floods of abusive and
threatening messages after touching, sometimes quite innocently, on a topic
that unleashes unrestrained fury in a large number of their readers. It’s a
disturbing phenomenon –we found we weren’t capable of walking and talking about
it at the same time. Maddy’s little son Zeke looked on quizzically from his
vantage point in a pack on Maddy’s back while we gesticulated. At one point,
attempting to move along the track while still conversing, I fell off the
wooden walkway into the reeds on one side. What’s going on, here?
An obvious point is that it is difficult to
do tango philosophy, bushwalk backwards, and maintain your dignity and physical
safety all at the same time. I don’t suggest you try it at home. Another
obvious point, which is more to the
point, is that the possibility of instantaneous, electronic communication with
strangers (as well as friends) means that anger can be expressed with fewer
inhibitions than ever before. You can let yourself go when writing an email or
contributing to an online discussion, and send the message while passion is
still running high, in a way that you wouldn’t normally do in face to face
communication, or if you had to wait until the next day to post a letter, and
certainly not if you had to get the message past an editor in order for it to
reach its audience. The restraints that operate to keep anger in check in other
communicative situations aren’t readily available online.
Another, slightly less obvious point is
that many people seem to contain a reservoir of anger, that has been filled
drip by drip, day by day, until it’s ready to overflow, so that the next
irritant that triggers it, however minor or impersonal it may be, can break the
restraining wall and unleash a wave that comes crashing towards the person who
provoked that final drop.
Jungle Yoga |
You might think that it would be practically
impossible to get angry, or to sustain any anger that might somehow arise, in
such a blissful and well-supported situation. But of course, you would be
wrong.
After my first personal interview with the
male teacher, I found myself crying tears of fury and frustration into the
delicious green pawpaw salad I was eating for lunch. The retreat was held in
silence, so no one asked me what was wrong, but the woman who was sitting
closest to me later said that when she saw me crying she thought to herself,
“Wow, that woman is really in touch with her feelings.” My own view was that I
was way too much in touch with them. Who wants to spend ten days in an earthly
paradise getting up close and personal with anger?
But this was a situation in which there was
no easy outlet for aggressive emotion. I couldn’t send an abusive email, or
even have a bitch to a third party about the way the teacher had spoken to me.
I had no choice but to get still more deeply “in touch” with my anger. It was
an interesting investigation. One thing I realized pretty quickly was that my
reaction was out of all proportion to the apparent cause. It didn’t seem
plausible that I was really this angry, purely over the condescending,
dismissive attitude a man whom I didn’t even know had taken toward me. Why
should I even care about what he thought of me, especially on first,
superficial impression?
I recently told this story at a dinner, and
a woman at the table jumped in at this point to tell me I was right to be
angry, that intelligent women are constantly treated this way by men in
positions of authority, especially in spiritual circles, and that too often we
accept this demeaning behavior, or blame ourselves, feeling that we have somehow
failed in the exchange, rather than recognizing that anger is an appropriate
response: women shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of thing, and they
shouldn’t support it by accepting it. Too often, you see a man playing the
dubious role of guru in front of twenty women in leotards who treat him like a
minor, or even major deity. Obviously the women involved get something out of
the exchange, too, but respect for women’s intelligence, and for intelligent women,
is a likely, early casualty.
She had a good point; I recognized the
scenario she was describing (which can manifest with or without leotards, or
even any kind of spiritually signifying fashion statement). At the same time, I
knew it wouldn’t have been helpful or just for me to unleash my anger over this
kind of thing on the teacher I met in Thailand. He was only the last in a
series. Alone he wouldn’t have provoked more than mild frustration and
surprise.
It turned out that “getting in touch” with
my anger meant realizing this – seeing the structural causes, and the long
chain of events that had contributed to the store of anger that I carried with
me to Thailand. At this level, anger becomes understanding, even wisdom, an
energy that can drive action rather than reaction. It takes restraint to resist
reacting to anger while it’s raw, but it seems to me that if you manage to do
this and stay “in touch” with the feeling rather than suppressing it, you can
get to a point of understanding where it’s possible to let the anger move you
in invigorating, positive ways that don’t do violence to anyone.
A few days after the dinner, I did a yoga
class taught by the woman who’d intervened so passionately when I was talking about
my experience in Thailand. I watched and followed as she demonstrated breathing
exercises and yoga postures surrounded by a group of about twenty women wearing
leotards, plus a couple of men in similar outfits. She herself was dressed in loose
white dance top and shorts, of very thin, soft material, worn over black tights
and a tight black top, and although she was sitting on the floor like the rest
of us, she seemed somehow elevated. She had the rapt attention of the whole
group, whether she was simply drawing her hand slowly toward her chest,
exhaling, or executing an impossibly perfect upward dog (that last bit is not a
abrupt departure into automatic writing, it makes quite ordinary sense in the
language of yoga). Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to say that we were
gazing at her as if in the presence of a goddess, but there was certainly an
air of devotion in the room…
In this season, traditionally known for
festivity and family tension, I won’t go so far as to wish you a cranky
Christmas, an angry Hannukah, or a simply furious solstice (summer or winter)
but may you recognise the divine in yourself and others, and give your anger
time to reveal its deep and supple intelligence.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete[url=http://www.opticmarket.ru/] Cолнцезащитные очки оптом [/url] от
ReplyDeletewww.opticmarket.ru
EXENZA , FISCHER (GIMADAN SNC Italy). Коллекция 2013 года и стоки с
огромныим скидками !
Информация по теме: