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Holy buckets!!! This universal virtue business of “I never speak or act out of anger” is a doozy!! 

From the outside looking in, I’m not a person who displays anger very often. Many people I know haven’t seen me exhibit anger in an outward way.

But. Wow.

On a micro-level, I am noticing how my blood pressure rises during the day and how my mouth and body are reacting in ways that, while indiscernible in most cases, are reactivity in action inside my body. And these reactions keep me from living at harmony with myself and others.

Today, two instances occurred within a very short time of each other. In the first, I felt like I was being taken advantage of (a biggie for me because I shut my voice off for many years and let people cross boundaries). In the second, I found myself in stark disagreement of a friend’s actions. 

In both cases, no one on the outside could see the reactivity brewing inside of me. My mind was in target-lock mode and my vision narrowed into a very small perspective with little to no ability to see other perspectives and other choices.

Not speaking and acting out of anger is an inside job.

So, I went inside with the focus of my awareness.

Literally, I decided to lie down and meditate by finding my breath, deepening my breath, feeling the natural relaxing chemical elixir that follows such breathing.

Then, I decided to look around and feel what was going on inside. 

I noticed a lot of constriction in my neck and throat area, accompanied by an unsettled stomach and a sense of high frequency movement in the body.

So, I just felt them.

I turned the spotlight of my attention on them and just felt into the center of the sensations, feeling around them, their perimeters, their cores. 

As I did, I noticed that my breathing deepened again and the feelings began to migrate and change and transform into other feelings. 

I also noticed that my mind allowed itself to unlock from the targets. I didn’t try to figure out why I was thinking the way I was or solve any problems or write any new stories.

As soon as I felt into the sensations, they morphed, and the attached thoughts morphed with them. I noticed a whole world of possibilities within my cognition and belief systems that literally had not existed in my awareness 5 minutes before. 

The creative unconscious at work.

Wow.

Jack Kornfield says, “If you become aware of your feelings, they don’t last very long. We feel like we’re angry for a day, or sad for a week, or happy for a month, or grieving for a while — as if those feelings lasted that long. But if you look closely and you let yourself feel what is here and pay attention — feelings rarely last more than thirty seconds, maybe a minute, and then turn into something else. Guaranteed. If you have some feeling that feels like it’s lasted much longer than that, you haven’t paid attention to it. This is how loving awareness frees us.”

I first read Jack’s words while I was doing the ice bath meditations. I have done extensive work with feeling sensation in the body through my TBI recovery and training/practice with yoga nidra and mindfulness meditation. But I had never had someone talk specifically about the potential brevity of the sensations when we look at them and give them our loving awareness, our welcoming presence. 

So, I’ve been watching and feeling feelings with Jack’s words in mind/heart as these months have progressed in 2024. I haven’t found an exception. 

Including today.

As soon as I stopped creating stories, trying to think my way out of the feelings, trying to problem solve, trying to get away from the feelings (all while being in target-lock mode), as soon as I stopped and simply and intentionally allowed myself to feel what I was feeling, the feelings evolved. In fact, some of them had the sense of dissolving. 

Today was one of many incredible moments, but brought more into focus because of this universal virtue I am working with: I never speak or act out of anger.

Inside, where the anger was today, was a part of me just waiting for attention, waiting to be heard and seen and connected with. And as soon as it was, it was able to finish its job and move along, no longer dammed up within me.

Target successfully unlocked. Reactivity transformed into responsiveness.

Wise action followed this sequence and my next steps were performed out of a sense of calm, clarity, and peace. Wow. 

Wow.

Peace