I don’t like feeling angry or resentful towards anyone anymore. I know I have written about this before but felt I wanted to bring just a little more light to it today.
Until the day comes when I can reach an absolute state of peace in my mind, body, and soul, I believe it’s inevitable that at some point or another a person, place, or thing is going to set me off, triggering anger and resentments. The work that’s cut out for me when that happens is to get it out of my system as quick as possible. Harboring those feelings is like saying I want cancer within me, which of course I don’t. The best comparison I have to what anger and resentments do within me if I don’t work on removing them is like telling a cancer patient their chemo treatment is going to be paused for awhile. What this does to that patient is allow any cancer cells left within them to begin to multiply again making them grow more sick.
With all the work I’ve done in my recovery from addictions, as well as the quest I’m on to grow closer to God, it makes me feel very sick, ugly and uncomfortable now when I harbor those feelings inside me towards anyone or anything. Thankfully, one of my spiritual teachers has helped me to learn a few very important lessons around those times this might happen and has also given me a very simple tool to aid in their removal process.
The most important thing this teacher has taught me around anger and resentments is that they are only mirrors for me on some life lesson I haven’t learned yet within myself. In other words, when I get angry or become resentment, it’s just a mirror for something within myself I’ve yet to face. Understanding that has helped me so much to do the next thing she taught me, which is how to remove those unwanted cancer like feelings when they get within me. “Pray for love, forgiveness, and peace for whomever or whatever you feel angry towards…” this spiritual teacher has told me. I know this may sound trite but it really does work. It may not be immediate, but with consistent effort, I have always gotten positive results.
So when something happens to me today where I start feeling those toxic feelings, I immediately look for the mirror first and ask myself what is it about this situation that I am not facing within myself. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying areas of my life now that still need work because of this action. Then, I pray for God’s love to come into the situation for all parties or entities involved. This helps to grow compassion within me and aids in the next part where I pray for forgiveness for everyone and everything involved in the resentment, including my own part in it because I always do have a part. Lastly, I pray for peace within myself and for all of the rest of those involved in the resentment so that everyone may move on from the negative experience. As much as this may sound too simple, it really isn’t. The hardest part in all of it is overcoming my own ego, which only tells me in each of my resentments, “I’m right, and they’re wrong!” And the only way I have found to move beyond that false statement, is to smash my ego by realizing it doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong. What matters is to let it all go and for everyone and everything involved, to move on in life free from all those toxic feelings.
The last place I want to be in today is where I’m a miserable, angry, and resentment person. It’s a terrible state to be in that is no different than getting cancer. The one and only solution that has worked for me to move beyond those times I feel that way is to pray for love, forgiveness, and peace. It may be initially difficult to do as my soul battles my ego for control, but in the long run when my soul wins, so does God, so does my recovery, and so does everyone else.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson