Reflections on life, truth, faith, love, introspection, and transformation.

Emotional self-righteousness + narrative of everything is OK + belief in automatic forgiveness = trigger for me. When I experience this trifold combination, which is most often perceived as an imposition on my time and energy that threatens my emotional and spiritual self-awareness, it terrifies me. I judge it to be manipulative, unsafe, and inauthentic.

I know fear and anger to be secondary emotions to sadness. I feel fear, which triggers anger, which is intended to prevent me from experiencing the sadness of loss. I fear the sadness of loss and respond with some form of defensive anger.

Socially, especially to a 3rd party observer such as the parent of two children or the referee in a sporting match, anger tends to demand control and repulse empathy while sadness tends to demand empathy and relinquish control.

Thus if I am anger and the other is sad, then I am cash as the aggressor and the other is cast as the victim.

The longer I stay in anger the longer I am seen as the aggressor.

More importantly! The longer I stay in anger the longer I stay stuck defending that which I am afraid to lose. The longer I stay in anger the longer I avoid feeling sadness and letting go of my attachment.

Thus it is critical to know what I am defending. What is my attachment?

If the attachment is worth defending, then the fear of losing and the anger in feeling threatened are both valid and righteous. Valid fear and righteous anger are signs that something is unacceptably wrong. Abuse, harm, etc. If one is truly under attack, if someone vulnerable is at risk, then fear and anger exist in truth and with noble purpose.

If the attachment is unknown, then the work at hand is to get to know the attachment before defending it.

If the attachment is not work defending, then the anger becomes a (difficult!) invitation to let go and move further into truth through sadness and release.

Where in your life are you defending something with anger that you could let go with sadness? What are you afraid of that keeps you out of sadness and in anger? Is your fear valid? Is your anger righteous?