Just for today, I will not anger.
This is probably the most difficult Reiki principle to integrate.
But once ANGER is understood for what it really is, mastery of this principle becomes effortless.
Anger is simply a movement of energy. All the emotions, anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, etc., simply lose their potency when we just experience the feeling without attaching a label to what we are feeling. Our lifelong habit of describing every little thing and analyzing every feeling and sensation that occurs has made us victims of our own descriptions!
Next time a situation arises and you feel the emotion you call anger, let yourself feel the sensation and just let it be. Allow it to live. You will find that it is self releasing. It arose out of nothing and dissolves back into nothing.
It's best to disengage from your story of the hows and whys of the anger. Embellishing the description of the circumstances, whatever they are, will only fan the flames.
Forget the story! Who are you without that story?
No one has ever been angry at another human being - we're only angry at our story of them.
~ Byron Katie
Another useful way to look at anger is that it is simply a point of view. When it appears, instead of focussing on it, relax your perception and focus on the entire view. Just rest in the space that includes all points of view. Then that measley little point of view is not such a big deal! And pretty soon, when anger comes, it is seen as a friend. It's just a little temple bell that lets us know we are not seeing clearly!
Candice O'Denver reminds us that none of the afflictive states we experience have an independent nature. In other words, anger has no substance to it. It's like a breeze blowing. You can't separate the breeze from the air in which it occurs. Similarly, anger is nothing but an ephemeral feeling and will soon disappear all on its own. Watch this beautiful video:
Here is an awesome quote from The Revelation of Oneness by Jeff Foster:
"Really, I cannot feel "your" anger. Because your anger isn't yours. My anger isn't mine. There is no "mine" and "yours". Just the isness. Just what is. Just the energy of it. And the mind comes in and calls it "yours" or "mine", and weaves a tale around that. What you are experiencing, what you did to me, what I'll do to you, and so on. That's the story of anger. That's the story of separation.
In reality, there's just anger arising, and it's already arising for no one. It's arising in emptiness. And in the absence of the person trying to manipulate it, it just burns up in its own time.
And what's more astonishing: it's seen that anger really isn't anger at all. Really, it has no name. It's just energy. And it's fully there and it's not there. This is a place the mind could never, ever go. The mind has no hope of understanding this."
"If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?"
~ Rumi
