Vedantic Wednesday: Reflection and Anger
Last week I shared with you how becoming aware of your anger can be one method of anger handling.
The second method is one of reflection. This involves regularly spending time re-looking at various situations where you did not manage to maintain your poise. These should be done regularly in specified frequency till you gain control over yourself and your reactions. If you can reflect over your occurrences and reason, most often you will figure that what seemed like a really big problem was in fact too petty! In fact sincere reflection over past occurrences of anger episodes and trying to decode the reason for your anger can be quite embarrassing You will be pretty much ashamed at yourself for the silly reasons over which you lost your cool. But you must not stop here. You must make the understanding permanent, by adding a bit more understanding to yourself. At least the next time the same triggers come by, you start recognizing them and with recognition comes slowing down of reactionary response.
These two methods (awareness and reflection) are not permanent solutions to the problem. They are just a starting step in maintaining poise. They are starting steps to not allowing the triggers to upset your balance. They are attempts to make you more aware of your potential to lose your cool. They are ways to allow your intellect to kick into action before your mind responds. The result of all this is you catching yourself early in the process of getting angry and thereby, reducing the harmful impact of its occurrence.
But how does one actually stop getting angry? Vedanta says, it is through the understanding of your desires. Anger is only an outcome of a disruption in the flow of your expectations, which are born out of your desires. A very deep and typical Vedantic thought that seems complex on the face of it, but one that is really simple on deep reflection.
It is really difficult to internalize and practice. But it is definitely worth the attempt for us and our ecosystem!

