Trying too hard?

[David]

Hi John, thanks for opening this forum, got a lot from your book. A while back I sat and watched an intense bout of jealousy. At first it was agony ('Why am I doing this?!'), but after several 1-hour sessions there was a shift and what had been painful became blissful. The same has happened with sadness. Is all suffering, then, just a distortion of bliss energy? On the other hand, sometimes when I've watched my anger it's left me feeling like I'm grinding metal - I feel a grey tension and exhaustion in my chest, like I'm really not going anywhere. It feels unhealthy. Is that when I'm trying too hard?

[John Ruskan]

Interesting questions. The way I think of it is that suffering is a result of resisting what is, especially on the feeling level. What is is not inherently blissful, but as you successfully move though the process, a blissful feeling results from the experience of liberation from the pain. The bliss is probably also because you have shifted from being attached to the jealousy to being a non-attached witness, a form of higher consciousness, which is inherently blissful. You could say, then, that a distortion or absence of blissful witnessing consciousness results in attachment and suffering.

Remember that the Process is more than watching, although that's a nice way to refer to it. There are all the steps. I've always had success with treating anger. Make sure you are applying all the steps especially keeping a full breath going all the time - 25% of your attention on your breath. Breathe into the anger. Here's a excerpt from the book:

1. awareness. Own your anger. Understand that whatever is
“making” you angry is just bringing up your own suppressed anger.
There is no rational reason why you should choose to be angry.
Your subconscious is just taking the opportunity to project and
clear itself.

2. acceptance. End inner resistance to your anger. Do not think
you have to avoid it. Accept it but do not act on it or blamefully
extend it into the universe. If you blame or attack others who
appear to make you angry, you reject yourself and resuppress the
anger.

3. direct experience. Surrender to the experience of the
anger. Feel it in the body, as the energy moves. If possible, use
bodywork that acts on the Solar Plexus. Feel the anger, in the
moment,with no thought of changing it. KEEP BREATHING.

4. transformation. Activate theWitness through concentration
on the Third Eye. Allow the energy of the anger to be and to
find its own equilibrium. Allow the outcome to be directed by
the Higher Self. Allow change to happen on the inner psychic
planes without your conscious knowledge or intention. The
anger will be dissolved, not suppressed, and creative change will
occur spontaneously.

Work not only with the anger but the feelings behind the anger. What's making you angry - rejection, threat, helplessness, failure, etc?

[David]

John, thanks very much for your previous answer – great to be able to discuss these issues with you. Osho said something incredibly interesting:

“You say anger is bad and you don’t want to do it, but then somebody insults and you became angry and you say, ‘What to do? In spite of myself I become angry. I know very well that anger is bad, poisonous, destructive. I know it, but what to do? I became angry.’

“If you come to me, I will say, ‘You don’t know that anger is poisonous. You have heard about it. Deep down you know that anger is necessary; deep down you know that without anger you will lose your standing, everybody will be bullying you. Without anger, you will not have any spine, your pride will be shattered. Without anger, how can you exist in this world of continual struggle for survival?’ This is what you know, but you say, ‘I know anger is poisonous.’ You have heard Buddha, you have listened to Buddha, you have learned something from him – but that is his knowledge.” (Osho, The Buddha Said…, p.123)

So we say we ‘know’ anger is bad, but actually we have a deep belief that anger is necessary; that it is, in the end, the right thing to feel and express. And so, no matter how we try to work with our minds to will ourselves to be patient, we keep getting angry. Osho argued the solution is to experience our anger, to feel and watch it deeply. When we truly feel the hurt and burning toxicity of it we learn just how awful and poisonous it is. Normally we don’t feel or know this deeply because we rush to avoid the pain of anger by suppressing or venting it, by rushing to focus on the person causing it rather than the anger itself.

So doesn’t this focus not so much ‘clear’ the anger as clear our ignorance about the painful truth of our anger, so that we are then able to respond to provocation with disinterest in getting angry so that we really don’t get angry? It’s like we’ve been nibbling away at anger awareness because of reflexive habits and because we think it’s too painful to face. Only when we’ve really +gorged+ ourselves on the experience of anger do we get so sick of it that we can, finally, push it away and say - ‘Enough! I’m not interested!’

[Inna]

[quote author=David link=topic=6.msg102#msg102 date=1304687478]
Only when we’ve really +gorged+ ourselves on the experience of anger do we get so sick of it that we can, finally, push it away and say - ‘Enough! I’m not interested!’
[/quote]

Is it true? Is it really possible after much self work stop experiencing anger altogether?...