Reiki and Anger ~ The First Principle

With the full moon in Aries approaching this evening, there have been several cautions that anger is not our best resource to work with the explosive energies and revelations that surround us.  I thought I'd share some thoughts on the first reiki principle:

Just For Today, I Will Not be Angry

In approaching this principle, it is important to begin with the understanding that we are equipped with emotions for a reason.  Emotion = E-motion, the movement of energy in the body.  The expression of grief creates continuity and flow where there had been compartmentalization.  Joy opens our heart and expands our awareness beyond the boundaries of self interest.  Depression can indicate a need for the stillness of the element of earth.

Anger clears space of unwanted intrusions.  If you are on a crowded subway and someone stabs your foot with their umbrella, you have a flash of appropriate anger and do what you need to do to protect yourself.  It is a momentary fire that flares up in response to danger.  If we are fully present in the moment, we respond skillfully and our anger dissipates when the danger has passed.

Unfortunately, most of us carry trauma that has not fully resolved.  A perceived threat in the moment wakes the experience of old dangers that we unconsciously relive and project onto our current experience.  So that umbrella on your big toe triggers a memory of all the ways you have ever had your boundaries impinged upon, causing you to respond to this innocent intrusion on your space as though your life were being threatened.  Disproportionate rage and/or overwhelm might result, leaving you furious at something that hasn’t actually happened, or dissociated and resentful at a feeling of powerlessness.

Reiki helps us to release old trauma and come back to the grounded experience of ourselves in the present.  Exercising the principle, “Just for today, I will not be angry,” disciplines the mind to harmonize with that process rather than hinder it, training it to respond to what is happening right now and not joust with the phantoms of our past hurts. 

There is a difference between the emotion of anger and the state of being angry, which is a reflexive and habituated response to unresolved fear.  By embracing this first principle of reiki, we take a breath and ask ourselves:

¨     Am I in immediate danger?

 

¨     Am I making assumptions that may not be true about someone else’s motivations?

¨     Am I behaving in a way that exacerbates or perpetuates the situation?

¨     Am I unable to accept an apology?

¨     Is there another way I could respond that might be more productive of good?

¨     Is there something I can let go of that could make this situation better?

Being angry is an expression of powerlessness, a failure of imagination that limits our perception of the choices available to us.  It is a delusional state that keeps us fighting battles in a war that exists only in our minds, funneling resources, that could be better spent, into our own military industrial complex. Because the battles are not real, they can never be won. 

Being angry creates a state of constant inflammation in the body, a system always on high alert that degrades our wellness and makes it impossible for our awareness to rest comfortably in our felt sense.  The attention is always directed outward, and we hold external forces responsible for our well being. 

If we are not feeling compassion, we are not connected to the truth of what we are.  We might feel as though we are right, but if we aren’t feeling love, we have come unplugged. 

So just for today, just for this moment, what would it be like to choose a different response?  What would it take to decide to ignore the initial kneejerk reaction to life and wait for another possibility to present itself?  If the way you’ve always done things were not available to you, what other tool could you use to resolve conflict? 

Not being at war with anything means you accept things as they are.  That doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion about anything or protect yourself.  It just means that by accepting things as they are, you are not wasting time and energy wishing they were something they are not.  This places you firmly in the arena of life rather than in the land of disempowered resentment; you are in real-time negotiation with the thing itself and not your unfulfilled fantasy of what you want it to be. 

Think of something infuriating.  You won’t have to look far.  Imagine that being angry is not an option.  Watch what happens when your body steps down from the initial impulse to go to war.  The narrowed vision of fear and rage expands to take in more information, and you might observe something you’ve never noticed before, see it from a different angle. 

While being angry perpetuates conflict and limits our efficacy, being present gives us access to resources to create something beneficial and new.  We begin with this principle, the practice of choosing presence over fear, because it retrieves our awareness from the past and plugs it back into the ground of the moment where we have true power to effect change.