In this meditation we will be facing,
Interacting with,
Making friends with anger.
Notice how you felt when you contemplated the idea of making friends with anger.
How did you interpret that?
What did your mind make it mean?
And how did your body feel in response to the thought?
We all have our own associations,
Ideas,
Definitions and limitations when it comes to anger.
As you do this practice repeatedly you may find that these begin to shift and evolve.
And that is appropriate because what we are attempting to do is give you more consciousness,
Freedom and choice.
As you learn to work with your emotions in productive and powerful ways.
Anger and power are connected.
Although we usually connect them in ways that are not quite the truth.
You do not need to be angry to be powerful.
And you do not need to be powerful to be angry.
But anger has a power to it.
And if you reject your anger,
If you disconnect from your anger,
If you squash your anger consistently,
You will also be disconnecting from your own power.
Making friends with anger is not about being actively angry or irresponsible with your emotion.
It is not about causing others pain.
It is not about dominating.
Anger is a healthy emotion that brings you information.
You never feel angry for no reason.
When anger comes up,
It is telling you something important.
It may be that your boundaries have been transgressed.
It may be that a situation is out of balance.
It may be that you are not respecting your own priorities.
It may be that a situation is not for your highest good.
It may be that you feel hurt or misunderstood or sad.
Often anger is used to block or squash those less powerful emotions.
But as you learn to follow the trail of the energy,
As you learn to uncover what lies beneath the emotion,
You learn to heal yourself.
You learn to cleanse things out of your system so that you are not triggered by things in the present moment because of things from your past that you have not yet cleaned up.
Making friends with anger is about making friends with yourself.
It is about reconnecting with the aspects of you that you have rejected.
It is reconnecting to your own wisdom and to your own power so that you can be intuitively guided to what is for your own well-being and those of others.
And as you learn to process your anger,
To be with your anger,
To nurture yourself through the experience of anger,
You will uncover what anger is here to tell you in each and every moment.
And therefore give yourself choice and empowerment moving forward.
Allow yourself to take a deeply conscious breath as you turn your attention inwards.
Take a moment to connect into your body.
Inhabiting your body.
Feeling its sensations.
And opening up to its experience as it is in this moment.
I invite you to be playful with this practice.
And I want you to imagine that anger is in front of you right now.
Allow anger to represent itself in whichever way it chooses.
And this is something that will change as you repeat this practice.
So be with anger as it presents itself to you now.
How do you feel as you face anger?
Do you feel open to it?
Or do you feel closed?
Are you comfortable standing in front of it?
Or do you wish it would go away?
What emotions and sensations do you experience as you allow yourself to commune with anger?
What experiences come to mind when you think about your previous experiences with anger?
They can be experiences of your own anger or the anger of others.
What is unresolved within you when it comes to anger?
And what have those previous experiences that have not yet been resolved for you made you believe about what anger is?
Does it make you think that anger is damaging?
Destructive?
Dominating?
What conclusions have you drawn about what anger is?
And as you imagine anger in front of you,
I want you to ask anger,
How does it feel about the way that you perceive it?
And be willing to listen and be willing to be surprised.
Ask anger if there is anything that it wishes that you knew about it.
Anything that it would love for you to understand about it.
I now invite you to remember a time when you felt angry.
It may be a time where you acted in ways that you do not feel proud of.
Or it may be a time when you were angry but repressed it,
Telling yourself that you shouldn't be angry.
And as you place yourself back in that memory,
Feel that in your body.
And I want you to ask anger,
Who is still in front of you,
What was its message to you then?
What was it trying to communicate?
What did it want you to know?
And as you look at anger,
Won't you imagine that it becomes translucent so that you can see into its depths?
And I invite you to feel the truth of this.
When you feel angry that things aren't going your way,
At the core of that,
At the base of that,
Is your self-love.
You want things to work out for you.
You want people to be kind and loving to you.
Sometimes the anger comes up because deep down you feel hurt.
You wish you had been treated better,
More kindly and with more love.
So know that at the core of anger,
There is always at least a kernel of self-love.
Anger always has information for you.
Anger is a natural and healthy human emotion.
Getting to know your anger,
Experiencing your anger,
Working with your anger,
Is in fact the best way to ensure that you do not create messes in your life.
Consistently repressing your anger is an attempt to energetically squash a very powerful emotion.
So as you learn to be with it,
Work with it,
Uncover what's really going on with it,
Release it,
Heal it,
Love it,
You will become capable of much healthier relationships,
Firstly with yourself and therefore with the world around you.
Find a safe space within yourself to commune with your anger regularly.
Know that anger,
When it presents,
Ultimately wants the best for you.
And know that if you have tried in the past to repress your anger,
So that you don't accidentally attempt to dominate someone else,
What you're actually doing is attempting to dominate a part of you.
If you wish to have healthy relationships where you honour others,
Have a healthy relationship with yourself where you honour yourself first.
That is the foundation for the healthy relationship you want with others.
Next time you feel angry,
Take some time out to allow that anger a safe space to exist within you.
Because the truth is it already exists.
Chat to your anger,
Be with your anger,
Discover what is in it,
What is causing it,
What is beneath it.
And as you do that work,
That's how you prevent it from exploding and causing a mess that you then need to clean up.
Repressing your anger does not work.
It will continue to be triggered by external circumstances.
Exploding in anger also doesn't work because that creates messes that impact your life and can either destroy things or create messes that need to be cleaned up later.
But when you make friends with your anger,
You can get its messages,
Its insights and make active and conscious choices about how to proceed.
Instead of reacting from either disconnection of the self or from explosion and reaction to others.
Now if it feels right for you to do so,
Take a moment to apologise to anger for all the times that you have repressed it and vilified it and blamed it.
Thank it for the work that it's done to try and prioritise you and keep you safe.
And if you feel comfortable with making this commitment,
Commit to being willing to be with it and listen to it and take care of it more regularly.
And as you thank anger for taking time to be with you and communicate with you,
Notice how your body feels.
And when you're ready,
You can blink your eyes open and enjoy the rest of your day.
Thank you.
