Transforming Anger into Wisdom.
“The truth was, I didn’t love everyone. I made believe I loved everyone and hid the way I didn’t love them.” ~ Ram Dass
Our primary goal in life is to perceive and understand things that are not readily apparent to others. It is not enough to “know” something - to have contact with it conceptually. We are tasked to “be” with it intimately while simultaneously careful not to hold judgment over it lest we imbue that judgment upon ourselves, for example, “This is anger, it is wrong. I am angry, therefore, I am wrong,” or to withhold the truth or with the intent to lie, and harm the whole without mercy.
Emotions invite us to open the portals in the room of our mind like windows, and allow all the confusion, joy, despair to meet with compassion, refresh the opportunity to understand ourselves better; as we do, we are released from the suffering and pain of what we could not forgive and held captive inside - the aching doubt that we might not be worthy of love that pulls us out of alignment with Faith.
Though we spend our lives looking for worthiness through the eyes of others, and learn about ourselves through those relationships.
This reminds me of a story that Ram Dass shared during a lecture about his relationship with Neem Karoli Baba, a devotee of the Hanuman tradition. Ram Dass was a disciple of Maharaji, and he had cultivated a deep love and devotion to being his servant. Well, just as Ram Dass was really ‘digging this trip of loving his Guru’ as he might say, Maharaji sent him back to the states to write Be Here Now (which wasn’t picked up by any publishers at the time) and then called to return with “Westerners”.
Well, as Ram Dass tells it, he was fed up with having to share his Guru with all these “Westerners”, and he was getting pretty fired up when Maharaji called him. It went something like this:
“‘Ram Dass, love everyone.
Yes, Maharaji, I will love everyone.’ And I went back down, got a little more agitated, and he called me back and said, ‘Ram Dass, love everyone,’ to which I replied, ‘ Alright, I love everyone.’ A few minutes go by and again I am called, and Maharaji says, ‘ Ram Dass tell the truth,’ and I said, ‘I do, I will tell the truth.’”
And this continued a few times, until the next morning when Ram Dass began to walk to the Ashram and a car filled with those “Westerners” offered him a ride, “I hated them and I wasn’t going to get stuck in a car with them”.
Now, the Temple was not closed; it took him hours to arrive, and when he did, boy, was his blood boiling; he was outraged. And so when the same “Westerners” in the car greeted him at the Temple and offered him food,
- “'I threw the plate of food at them and screamed, ‘I hate you, I hate you all!’
At which point Maharaji called me over and said,
‘Ram Dass, is something troubling you?’ and I said,
‘Yes, I hate those people I hate everybody, including myself, I only love you,’ and Maharaji replied, ‘But you love me,’ and I turned and looked at them and they were all full of light and they were beautiful souls, and Maharaji leaned in eyeball to eyeball and said, ‘Love everyone and tell the truth’.
… when you are finished being who you think you are, this is who you will be.”
When we identify with the reasons that justify our anger, everything we do serves that anger, worships anger. Anger furls like a tidal wave.
When we know anger through the “soul”, everything we are is enlightened through the wisdom of this recognition - that we are a part of the whole.
And, when we “know” - when “I know ‘who’ I am - you and I are one” that’s when I am serving my highest power - the Source of this Self-knowledge that is unconditional Love.