Anger

Antidote — a medicine taken or given to counteract a particular poison, the particular poison of the day being anger — an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong.

Wow, don’t we all need help with this! The antidote we will briefly explore today has two parts.

Part 1 — Surrender. This one’s a little tricky, so read on…

What does it mean to “surrender?” Initially, it sounds a bit cowardly and something we avoid. The posture we imagine is head down and hands raised, a sign of giving up. The kind of surrender that I’m suggesting is a release, and then a shifting to a new and different way of being. Emotionally, we simply must “surrender” to make the changes necessary to recover our greater selves, and even our sanity!

Surrendering is giving something up, and in this case, I believe it is our ego. I’m defining ego as the persona we’ve developed in order to succeed and survive in this world. We get angry if we feel that our ego has been offended! If we want to become more than our limited egoic self, we must surrender and begin making the shift toward our better, truer self.

How do we do this? We’ve spent almost our entire lives weaving this ego identity into something that appears successful and strong. Surrender would seem like an utter defeat, embarrassment at the least and disaster at the worst! This leads us to…

Part 2 — Meditation! Now don’t tune out, for this is where we find the gold!

Meditation begins the hard work of uncluttering our minds and gets us back in touch with the genuine “me” that’s inside. There’s a precious soul that wants to breathe fresh air, but is being suffocated by that old ego identity.

Here’s why it works.

Brain science tells us that meditation (and there are many forms) is one of the best things we can do to promote empathy, compassion, and inner peace. Here are just a few of the really terrific effects of meditation:

1. The amygdala (smoke alarm of the brain) is down-regulated, meaning that you are not as apt to fire off angrily when your ego gets offended. You simply have less ego to offend.

2. The parts of your brain that produce empathy and compassion for others actually grow. You find you’re more patient, kind, creative, and peaceful.

3. Toxic chemistry (cortisol and its stress producing friends) is lowered, and happy chemistry (dopamine and seratonin) is increased. Lower blood pressure, strengthened immune system, and overall healthier living are the results!

Keep in mind, meditation is a practice. It’s the consistency that pays off. One of my meditation teachers, Jim Finley puts it like this, “Our practice is the stance we take, that offers the least resistance to being overtaken, by the love that has overtaken us.” With persistence in our practice, love spills over into our regular lives. What we do in silent meditation, we now do with each other. We find we are living more and more from that genuine “self” that has always been inside with less and less of that angry ego “self”. It is the posture of surrender!