One of the areas that each of us have enormous needs that usually get unrecognized is to become much more aware of our own aggression and all the different ways it expresses itself.
Video Transcript
One of the areas that each of us have enormous needs that usually get unrecognized is to become much more aware of our own aggression and all the different ways it expresses itself, including frustration, impatience, irritability, contraction, just being uptight in any way. So, as you’re reading this right now, just let yourself go inside and start to scan where and how do I express my anger, my frustration, my impatience? And let yourself get a feel for what it’s like for you to be in your most aggressive, frustrated, impatient states in your very personal life.
So, take a few moments, take a couple minutes and just let yourself free associate to where it is that what normally might be too subtle to notice, exists inside your muscles, where they tense up. Maybe your tone of voice gets a little bit tight. Maybe you breathe in a more constricted way. Maybe you’re not quite so fun to be with at those times. And allow yourself to have the courage and the honesty and using your capacity to see yourself. Really go in and recognize. Here are some good examples of where my anger, my aggression, my frustration manifests itself in my world.
Now, as you’re doing this recognize that this is an enormous act of peace, that this is tremendously paradoxical because when you have the awareness of your anger or aggression or frustration, it doesn’t own you. That awareness when it really coexists with your aggression gives you a chance not to just act out, not to just be unconscious. So even though this sounds like an easy-to-understand concept, it is something that is one of the most powerful tools that can affect the quality of our lives.
So, continue to just become more alert. Where is that sneaky little aggression? Where does it hide out? Where am I not quite as friendly as I think I am? And as you, again, continue to investigate, appreciate the fact that you’re deepening your integrity. You’re deepening your integration of an emotional side of yourself that often stays out of view and that paradoxically by you really being able to stabilize a more witnessing presence, a more observing capacity that you really are giving yourself a chance to be harmless, and to be able to develop a healthier relationship to yourself and a much healthier relationship to those that you love.
So, as you get the knack of how important it is to befriend your anger and aggression and gift it with your awareness and see that it’s really something that the awareness of your anger is completely paradoxical in this devotion that you’re deepening will give you the capacity to find much greater fulfillment in your life. It will teach you how to not be a destructive force in your life, and instead to be so much more creative and intimate. So, as you just let yourself settle into this, just let yourself have a reminder. I want to become more and more aware of my aggression and be able to have that awareness, be even more powerful, even more powerful than the aggression itself.
With practice, this will give you a chance to respond in new ways that are ways to generate harmlessness, helpfulness and peace.