Interpersonal expectations, they seem almost a certain recipe for grief, no? I tend to live by trusting a dog to poo on the carpet. It isn’t about any personal assault. It is just how the dog is. Then it’s marvellous when they go outside. It brightens your whole day. If you accept the “bad”, it makes the good seem better. Notice I say accept, and not ignore, or encourage.

Easier said than done? Actually no, I disagree. Acceptance is the easiest thing. It’s the chronic “problem solving” that creates the hardship. Why does a bear poo in the woods? Because the cities are less appealing or is it just observable nature?

Mostly it’s about burying it for me. And burying it is some peoples nature. It’s usually not very deeply buried, and do you want to step there again? Can you just forget that you buried it there? Often when something is distressing to us it’s because a reason is not detectable. “Reason” isn’t really there. If I get irritated and yell at my mother, is there really a reason?

Without reason how do we accept it? You accept it like you accept the rock in your yard, it’s just there. Most peoples behaviour, good or bad, really doesn’t have anything to do with us personally anyway.

You do have a choice. You can either stew about a problem and let yourself get stressed, or you can calmly work out a solution. Indeed, you have choices with the rock too. You can roll it somewhere, or sit on it, all sorts of things.

What do you say to someone that has a very bad temper? I love you. Say things about you, don’t criticise them. There is a very mechanical aspect to anger. I have an anger problem myself, and it does trigger physical defences. How do you calm a skittish animal? Don’t yell, and for a bit don’t touch. You might just have to let the dog bark. You just have to let the animal come to you, and it’s the same with humans.

I gained control of my anger first by accepting that I have an “angry” temperament, that cleared up a lot of guilt and shame. Then with my mind clear of the negative emotions, I saw it as a physical fact, like stubbing your toe.

It’s probably not helping to laugh, but sometimes I can not help it, he ends up laughing with me. If that works between you and he it’s good, and every angry person still has “calming” behaviours. If someone adopts a calm reasoning tone with me it calms me. The anger isn’t a core belief, it’s often not even a deliberate reaction, and often times the angry person does see their behaviour as silly.

I’ve never seen him act out anger violently, but he has said he has felt like hitting something or someone. That feels like it’s a “guilty confession”, it may even defuse any impulse for him to say it. If he bottled it up and didn’t vent, didn’t orient and self manage, he might act out of character. I often joke about doing awful things to cute, fuzzy animals, I have never abused an animal in my life. I find my biological inclination to aggression useful now.  As my tension builds, I can begin to channel it into an enhanced focus, determination.

Anything you declare wrong or unfair can fuel anger. The root of anger is the simple unreasoning r-complex fight or flight response. Anything powerfully stimulating can fuel anger. Knowing the neural map, Tolle calls the pain body, won’t make you immune to anger, but it will change how you relate to it.

Life is very simple and very broad, an infinite canvas of all canvas. Let go by realizing you don’t hold it. It isn’t about you whatever it is. It is an event, place, person, or thing, and you are you. I have let go of a lot in my life, but only in one way. Realizing it wasn’t me. The event, the confusion, the doubt, these were just things, and some of them not even complete things. So I gained closure by realizing the inconsistency was the closure. There was no truth to learn, other than things can and will happen in life.

If the dog does it once. he may do it again? Yes, and it will be the same. What changes is not events, it’s you, and in a way it isn’t even you, it’s just your focus. When you correct for the dog chronically messing on the floor, you didn’t change the dog, you changed you.

Then someone gives the dog its bone and the focus returns. Indeed, life is a big flow. We can try to swim upstream, but the flow is us. If you fight you, it’s a sure thing who loses, guaranteed.

It’s a scary dark place initially to find the stream. It is scary and dark just because we’re conditioned to see it that way. We are told to be human.  To be an adult means we have all these musts, shoulds, oughts. We stray too far from instinct.

Just be, and notice that you are.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~