by Marada
I started finding peace through exploring my relationship with anger. At first this was through asking why it was so hard for me to resist its pull. Then I read a fantastic article on how two hormones are released in the anger process—one that numbs pain, one that energizes—and are part of the flight or fight response. This process can become addictive—feeling out of control or unacceptably vulnerable can become an unconscious way to escape highly uncomfortable feelings. Coming from a family of people who largely do not have a healthy relationship to their anger, I know very well how this potentially addictive process hurts ourselves and others. I can also see that it is a process of making impersonal events personal—a way to feed that big, puffed up ego!
Then, after years of struggling with the question “Who am I?,” I found a self-inquiry question that really spoke to me: “Who is it that is suffering?” I sat down and simply looked at the question. In a few minutes, I saw the familiar woven mats of story brimming with conditioned concepts and feeling tones—a thicket of conditioned confusion around this infinitely patient, compassionate, all-accepting loving warmth and vast expanse that was fresh and self-renewing.
I have known this Love from a distance for a long time, but I had not seen how I could be that, especially not the “me” that unconsciously feeds my own ego through anger. This time I could experientially feel that I am that Love. Somehow, facing suffering helped me see that I am infinitely greater than it is.
Now I am having fun with exploring suffering—the very thing that I was trying to blot out through identification with anger. The “me” complains about feeling cold, and I go within and feel the slight suffering in feeling cold and it maybe gives way to an appreciation of cold; I feel afraid I am going to lose my connection with all-loving presence (that I now cannot deny that I am), and I go within and feel the sense of separation as perceiving parts of the whole.
So what can I learn from each bit of suffering if I go inside and sit with it? My heart has become a suffering-eater!
