I am by trade, a change agent, an agent of change or, as my clients sometimes say, an angel of change, while others call me a spiritual pitbull.
Quite a diverse range of terms, and there are others, more x rated.
Our world is obsessed with change, hence I am forever occupied doing my work. Mostly i get paid by those wanting to change themselves because they have become wise enough to know you can’t change others. Usually that wisdom has cost them a huge chunk of their life and money. I’m here to save them both. Of those.
However, I attract the duplicity of my name calling because the work I do is duplicitous. On the one hand I say I will help you change and on the other I say there’s nothing you’ve done or not done that’s not worthy of love.
If we felt worthy of love for how things are, surely we would not wish to change things especially ourselves. That seems to be a contradiction.
Anti inflammatory medicine reduces swelling associated with trauma. It works. But if we drink alcohol, eat red meat, mushrooms, eggplant, sugar and more, we eat inflammatory food while taking anti inflammatory pills. It that not dumb or what? But we all do it.
When we are angry and we say I want to be less angry, change ourselves, we get three medicines:
- Change the thing we are angry about – ie fix the thing (usually others)
- Change our anger management process. (Reduce reaction volume)
- Change our viewpoint in anger – love it so we don’t have to change it
The first two are the same as taking anti inflammatory pills but then eating inflammatory food. There will be infinite replacements for the sources in #1, and Anger management requires that you kill anger and whatever benefits might come with it.
The third option, my preference, along with 1 and 2, is based on a belief that you can’t control something you don’t love. This is a bit of a stretch for some people especially if they’ve used anger their whole life to bully partners, children and employers into submission. They’ve probably used it to bully themselves into action (some call it motivation) – either way, they’ve used anger as a tool and to a degree they are addicted to it. But when faced with loving it, they can’t. Ironic …
Self criticism is a motivator. And, becomes a part of an arsenal of tools people use to feel in control. They use it to beat others up but we never do to others more than we do to ourselves. So they beat themselves up with anger about how angry they are for being angry at others.
Strange twists and turns – an alcoholic will never be sober safe until they love alcohol – but what does that mean? Love alcohol… usually when we say “I love alcohol” it is a sure sign of addiction?
Here is where the duplicity of my work shakes the tree. Love…
A man loved his partner so much he killed her to keep her from leaving. Terrible terrible love.
A man gave his life to save those he loved, a worship form of sacrifice for love. A romantic love. A man sat on a chair listening to music and loved it. A passive love. So how does love heal anger?
The love i speak of is a special love. It is akin to stillness, absolute presence, in the zone, focussed. It has no emotion. Unconditional love is my love. It is condition free. Hence there is no attraction or repulsion in what my love means – they do in fact exist but balance or neutralise each other. Then there is just gratitude.
To be honest, it cannot be explained, only experienced. Like meditation, you can’t meditate, you can only put yourself in a place where meditation can happen. Unconditional love also.
But most important anything you can have unconditional love for, has no power over you. Like anger. You choose whether you want it or not, rather than, as in options 1 & 2 judge it, try to eliminate it, and in doing so, inflame it.