It’s such an easy thing to feel touched by what I read in the newspapers, then make a donation, write a few emails to friends encouraging them to do so too, and yet turn away without really taking it in – all the way.

I have spent hours watching, reading and researching about the Haiti earthquake. Then, I came across this article from Katie Couric “The Human Face of Haitian Tragedy” on the Huffington Post. As if her writing wasn’t touching enough, I went on watching her experience with Pierre Larousse in the video at the bottom of the article. I felt heart broken witnessing this human tragedy, tears kept poring. Seeing my fellow brothers and sisters in agony and fear, fighting for their lives triggered a wave of panic and helplessness in me.

Suddenly I was holding Haiti in my heart. The thousands of people who died or suffer from injury, those who lost their beloveds, the torn apart families. The devastated land, the crashed economy. The shock wave in the hearts of those people, and the overwhelm of the international community witnessing this drama.

I am moved and unable to turn away. I am overwhelmed and yet I am compelled to embrace the overwhelm. So much of my body and my mind wants to shut down and turn away from the pain but my heart continues to open to it whatever the consequences.

Saying yes to life in every moment is embracing everything, the ecstasy and the tragedy.

My heart is bearing witness.

In my view, practically everyone has rage within them. We are enraged by how we are bound, how we do not feel free to express ourselves as we truly are, how we edit ourselves, compromise, negotiate, make excuses,  -  the myriad facets of suppression. Often we project this onto others, they are the controlling ones, they are the ones that knocked the life out of us as children etc. Women also have the whole big story of male patriarchal tyranny, and persecution over lifetimes. Rage is the response we feel when we see our own control reflected in others. You may well have the urge to kill someone who is showing this to you. You may want to tear off their limbs, screaming.

When it comes down to it though, there is nobody else creating your emotions. And it is only you that is feeding this rage, by compromising your own sweet self.

We are often terrified of feeling anger, judging it to be bad, dangerous, unpredictable. And so create even more suppressed energy in ourselves by pushing it away  into a deep corner, hoping it will be safe down there. But this energy is a big force, and it will not just go away.

If you are afraid of violence, take a look inside at what you are doing to yourself. By judging and controlling, you are being violent to yourself, and, as long as there is inner conflict within you, you will find it in the world out there. I am not being metaphorical here, if you are at war with any part of yourself by judging it, suppressing it, denying it, you are LITERALLY creating the wars, conflicts, and violence on the planet.

Until you dare to liberate yourself from all inner conflict, the outer conflict will continue to manifest. This includes any thought or feeling that you keep inside you, however subtle. You don’t even need to express it. So controlling these feelings DOES NOT WORK if you want to live in a healthy, sane, peaceful world.

So what to do about this – how to make peace with ourselves and others? Well these things inside you that feel scary and overwhelmingly intense, can be gone in an instant. No need for suffering and drama. In fully feeling, accepting, and embracing your most violent emotions you will discover their emptiness, their inherent meaninglessness, and they will cease to control you.

If you would just free your fury. Experience your inner killer, and love it to death.

Let the rage enliven your blood with a fire that transmutes it into exquisite unbounded passion for life.

In your rage lies your joy. Do you love yourself enough to feel it? To free yourself from the tyranny of your control?

Then you are also free to feel your participation in the violence you see in the world, without judgement, but with compassionate understanding.

Or

You can keep that energy wound up inside you, protect it, do your best to hide it. But see how it sparks off at inconvenient moments, how it slips out the side. Everyone can feel it anyway, even if you hide it really well.

You can let it eat you up for lifetimes if you wish. But that’s not my choice.

Over the last days something’s been cooking here. It’s been going on for some time now in different forms, shapes and words. But with my bike getting stolen in the middle of Covent Garden last Saturday afternoon it popped to another level.

To begin with, I would have refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation if they wouldn’t have left the cut cables which made the fact painfully clear in the very instant of our return. Retrospectively the following moments in slow motion revealed: At first there was a shock, disbelieve that “somebody would really do this”. Then pain, heartbreak over the loss. The thought of “they might have done it for some reason” popped up. Eventually rage flashed. At this point manipulation and control kicked in to calm the situation and avoid an irrational outburst in the middle of the street. I watched myself picking up the remains and making my way to the tube, silently and boiling on the inside. The body was shaking but numbed to what was really going on and busy with the little voice in the head feeding stuff about this all being no big deal.

Completely remote controlled I arrived at the station and stumbled into the train. The brain started replaying the situation, I felt nauseous. I couldn’t believe this was all about a bicycle! How ridiculous. Ok, it was a really fancy full-suspension super duper thing but strangely enough the physical loss felt pretty ok. It was the emotional attachment which really hit me. My eyes filled with tears and the sickness changed into a burning in my belly.

Suddenly I had a sense that this might not be sadness but rather struggle with anger. This struck a chord. Why anger, you may ask. Well, since this is all about honesty I need to add that after the first shock had faded, it was quite obvious that there was no one else to blame but my very own beautiful self for not locking the bicycle properly. As simple as that. I felt embarrassed and angry for having been so frowsy when locking it (although I had an intuition earlier). The moment the misery was born. The more I tried pushing the anger away the more consuming it became. Missing to own the fact and looking into what made me feel so uncomfortable resulted in the diversion of anger by dumping everything on the thieves. This was completely out of proportion. There was no compassion for anyone, not for myself and not for the perpetrators, no love and no caring. It felt good to finally admit it. Boy, was I angry! I felt ashamed to be seen in this irresponsible and unloving behaviour.

After ploughing through all the stuff I hit what felt the bottom truth. Simple fear of not being loved if I would have admitted my “failure”; the very moment I connected with this my heart opened and I realised that all that had been going on was ultimately me not loving myself. The terror stopped immediately and I felt in peace. I woke up to how deeply identified I had become with “me”, indulging in a labyrinth of self-pity stories, cause and effect, victimhood and complaint.

When I got of the tube the debris and effects of inner turmoil still felt tangible. I felt shaken by what I had been putting out into the field. I felt for those guys who had stolen the bike. And, it was totally ok for them to have it as they obviously needed it more than me.

Well, those are all very human feelings you might say, and yes on one level I agree. Yet I feel deeply touched by the potential to move beyond the reaction of basic human survival mechanism into expansiveness. For I have a sense that this is an whole other level of being a-life all together.

With the “tube-revelation” it seems I’ve yet come to see another layer of truth in here. Although I would say I am an honest person, the subtle hiding seems vast from what I can see now. Looking at how I’ve been interacting just the past couple days made me realise this over and over again. Mostly it’s a split second or subtle degree or slight convenience skipping over flashes of whatever discomfort I might experience or feel in response to someone or something else.

I am left feeling humbled and deeply grateful for this eye-opener. There’s more understanding of how everything is always affecting everything. It is about purity and transparency because it’s there anyway. I’m excited and ready to step into the whole inconvenient truth. I’m done hiding.

…

The anger thing is so obvious – unless we do not want to know. If we do have the realisation, then all our conditioning about being justified about being angry at something outside our self is blown – and we have to be responsible – so we cannot partake in what most humans are addicted to: complaint. Our anger is our anger. Our anger has accumulated because we did not acknowledge it at the time. Often, especially in childhood, it is not ‘convenient’ – spelled trouble. So it has built up, and as it is poisonous to our system, the body is using any opportunity to let flow out.

What is often asked about now is: ‘Does that mean I am not allowed to be angry.” That sort of question only comes from an immature person. Primitive. It is not anyone’s business but yours how you live your life. It is just that some ways bring joy, and others bring continued unhappiness. Of course, if you are angry, then you are angry. It is what you do, or not do with the anger that creates your consequences. Did you know – every time you express or suppress anger you pollute the whole universe? But the main thing is – you pollute yourself. Consequences.

…

Paul

A broad description of one aspect is that anger masks fear. Almost everyone has fear, so almost everyone has anger.

Anger is a poison to the whole body/mind/emotional system, and as the body is a self-healing system it tries to get the anger out and away anyway it can, as soon as it can.

As the ego feels humiliated if it has anger, it does not like to admit it has the residual anger — so it looks for circumstances where it feels as though it is justified for discharging the anger — usually at someone or something else. The other person/thing is seen as the cause of the anger. Not so.

It is not realised that everything we see and thus experience is a projection. If we are judgemental we assume everyone is. “Judge ye not less ye be judged.”

If you are one of the rare people who do not have residual anger you will not be able to be angry. Ever. About anything or anyone. Even if you want to. It is is not there, so it cannot manifest.

Often angry people get very angry about people who get very angry angry — and feel justified doing so. Their anger is okay, the other’s anger wrong. Silly eh.

Shouting at someone for shouting is a bit daft isn’t it. But the mind always finds a justification for its actions. Has to — or it feels humiliated.

We do not get angry at a lie. Doesn’t sound true does it. Feels as though we have just cause for being angry if someone is lying about us. Is not so. We get angry when, at some level, we feel guilty — because we know it is true and do not want to face the fact. Guilt is the other side of anger. And anger the other side of guilt.

Check it out. If you are angered by something, stop, take a look. No matter how small, does the thing out there that is angering you have any seeds in you? The answer is yes. If you have seen that part of you and accepted it you will not feel anger at the other person, you will feel for them.

In one part of the bible it says something like: An eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth. Good business for dentists and optometrists! Jesus says turn the other cheek. As with many of the quotes from Jesus there is a depth to this that is not usually realised. It is not about being passive, it has a much deeper meaning.

Once you have seen your anger, accepted it and stopped supporting it you will start to feel free. Very free. Wonderful feeling. Check it out.

sending love …

Paul

We have been programmed to believe that once we have attained our goals we will be happy. We continue to believe in that belief even though there is no proof that it is so. To the contrary in fact. But we do not want to admit this, otherwise, we are not in control — plus, what is there to live for! This is the way it is.

We do not feel fulfilled with anything on the outside because — they do not bring us what we really would like — the feeling of safety, security, and predictability. Even although no one we know feels safe and secure we continue to believe it is possible. The reason we do not feel safe and secure is because these states do not exist in this dimension with our present level of consciousness. Nothing is safe, nothing is secure and nothing is predictable. That is the way this dimension is. And we have designed it that way.

We are not here for a vacation — this is a learning/evolving dimension. We are not here just to observe, we are here to participate. We are here to experience. We are here to live. We are here to experience everything that we need to experience in order to evolve. If a species does not evolve it dies out.

As humans we have endless possibilities. That is what we are here for — our possibilities. We can be anything. We have the capabilities of a savant if we want to develop them. We can do, be anything that we can imagine — and more, much, much more. It is is up to us. There is no limit.

The suggestion is — live. Be honest and look at what you would really like to be doing, where you would like to be doing it, and with whom. Don’t wait. Almost everyone dies, and more importantly, lives with, regret. There are awful things happening on this planet — and it is a wonderful place. Disconnect from all ideas of restrictions and find, think, say, act your truth. And have fun.

sending love …

Paul