Yet Another Run at Anger

. . . remembering what we are in Truth

Why do I write so often about anger? What am I learning that I must share with you over and over in order to learn it?

Anger - like certain ideas or people, certain places or practices - is seductive. It lures us into taking life personally. The stakes escalate all at once; there's a lot of "fix this now!" energy. We're hyper-focused on what happened - the person who cut us off, talked over us, stepped on our toes.

But anger is not what happened. It's not an event. Anger is a response to what happened. It's an interpretation and a judgment of what happened. Anger sets up camp in our sympathetic nervous system and takes over the mind, sucking both into the fundamental egoic vortex: *this is about me.*

A Course in Miracles says a lot of radical things, things that will take you on a journey if you give them even a little attention, but one of its most radical is this: "anger is never justified" (T-24.VI.1:1).

So, you know. Folks who facilitate genocide, folks who traffic in arms, folks who scam senior citizens, folks who vote against food for kids . . .

. . . A student of A Course in Miracles cannot be angry at any of them. Ever.

Anger is never justified but pardon - a natural effect of ACIM forgiveness - always is. Forgiveness teaches us how to see our anger as a cry for help and pardon enables us to respond to it as a cry for help. The truth is, we aren't angry because somebody violated our space or insulted our person; we're angry because we are confused about what we are in truth. We think we really can be hurt.

The course teaches us to understand forgiveness as "the natural reaction to distress that rests on error, and thus calls for help" (T-30.VI.2:7). Forgiveness means not seeing what is not there (T-30.VI.2:5) or, positively, seeing only what is there. Tara Singh wrote sometimes that he didn't want to change or improve anything, he just wanted to see what was, whatever it was or wasn't. Forgiveness - right seeing - is "the only change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror" (T-30.VI.3:1), and pardon proves that "forgiveness is quite real and fully justified" (T-30.VI.3:3).

The "real world" is the relationship - really, the sum of the relationships - that arises when, by consistently forgiving all our brothers and sisters, we remember what we are in truth. Since what we are does not interpret or interfere, the "real world" is a state of communication with the other that does not depend on judgment for its existence.

Being is . . . a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real . . . [Y]our own reality . . . becomes total only by recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to you . . . This is your real home, your real temple and your real Self (T-4.VII.4:3-6, 8).

Awakening don't means that we won't perceive both vanilla and chocolate ice cream and a need to choose between them. We will. Rather, the suggestion is that the value of those distinctions will collapse, making distinction itself meaningless and thus unnecessary. We believe in what we value, and if we are scared (and if our fear takes the form of anger) it is because we are valuing wrongly (T-2.II.1:6-7).

What does this look like in practice? This forgiveness and pardon, this re-evaluation of what matters?

Say that I am angry at you. You insult Emily Dickinson, steal prisms from the hayloft, and chop down our apple trees. Anger says - ego says - I've been harmed, and you did it, and now it's time to right the wrong, avenge my honor, reclaim my property, et cetera.

But the Holy Spirit introduces an interval in that pattern. Or, if you prefer, the Holy Spirit is an interval in that pattern. In that moment, I remember that anger is a clue (a symbol, a symptom, a sign) that my value system is misfiring because a couple of turtles down I've bought into mind/body dualism. I've confused myself with a body, with God, with God's favorite son, et cetera.

I am acting not from clarity but confusion.

In a sense, my practice as a student of A Course in Miracles is to rest in the learning interval offered by the Holy Spirit. There, I learn how to see differently. I learn how flawed my own judgment is, how unreliable a narrator I am. I learn - in a felt way, a visceral way, an experienced way - that the secret to salvation is that I am doing this to my own self (T-27.VIII.10:1).

This means realizing (and accepting) that my anger is my cry for help. It is my responsibility.

Forgiveness is not graciously overlooking what you did. Nor is it tamping down or denying my own response, over-the-top or otherwise. Forgiveness reaches beyond both of those perspectives. Per Tara Singh, it isn't about fixing anything. It's about seeing - in the broad sense, with as much clarity and compassion as possible - what is happening now.

In this way, forgiveness turns us gently but surely in the direction of self-remembrance. Beneath what is broken, lonely, weary and in pain is . . . what exactly?

Well, holiness in the form of relationship, and the open, honest and intentional vulnerability upon which true communication - and by extension holy relationship - rests. Healing is mutual aid, mutual relief, mutual play. How happy we become when we realize separation is an illusion!

. . . every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. Joy is unlimited, because each shining thought of love extends its being and creates more of itself. There is no difference anywhere in it . . . (T-22.VI.15:7-9).

In love there are no distinctions. In love we are all the same. In these bodies in this world, perception can align with love. It can be brought into harmony with the underlying order that applies to all equally. The rain falls on the just and unjust alike. Love guarantees all our innocence. That is why miracles are "a sign of love between equals" (T-1.II.3:4).

Therefore, anger is a shroud over the prism we are. Anger keeps the light from us, and without the light, we cannot create the beauty, happiness and peace we were created to create. Anger is the opposite of miracle-mindedness.

Seeing the anger shroud undoes the anger shroud. Accepting that anger is never justified allows us to perceive the One Relationship at the heart and as the ground of all relationships. As we see the sinlessness in each other "shining through the veil of guilt that shrouds the Son of God" we also recognize "the face of Christ, and understand it is but our own" (P-2.V.7:8).

Thank you, always, for so patiently allowing me to remember myself in you.

Love,
Sean