The Flames of Anger
I might get a little bit spiritual in this post, but this is more of a mental health issue so I'm placing the post here.
I'm currently reading a book by a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He said something in one of the chapters I read earlier tonight about hell being a state of mind and not an actual location like some people think. That really resonated with me because I've long thought the same thing. In fact, I think I've been to the hell states that in reality are allegorically described in religion.
The monk went on. He said that his father, also a Buddhist, told him that it is anger that is at the root of the states of mind that are hell. That really resonated with me as well, because at times in my life I've been a very angry individual. In my experience anger has hurt me just as much or more than it has the people I have focused it on in this lifetime. It's hurt me more because anger is like a poison that you have to take if you want to indulge in it and try to poison other people as well. After the focus of anger is gone it lingers for a long time inside and then turns around on itself and the flames of anger start consuming me.
Interestingly, a little while back I went to see a spiritual advisor who told me after doing an Edgar Casey style reading on my spirit that in a previous lifetime and event caused me to get incredibly angry, and the karma from that reaction had stretched across that lifetime and into this one.
After reading the monk's explanation of hell and its cause. I reflected on it a while and then went to bed. I had a dream that I'm going to describe now that was very powerful and seemed so important to me that I woke up from it and got up to write this post to help me process it and also to put it in a place where I can go back and look at it and remember it when I need to. I also think this has value for other people who might be reading this.
In the dream I was a young man and I was attending a birthday party. I lit a match and was lighting the candles on the birthday cake, but the flame on the match seemed to be getting a little out of control. Then I noticed a very large match, about eight feet long and the thickness of...a tikki torch. I picked up the big match and scraped it across a rough surface and set it ablaze. A friend of mine was there. I became friends with him when I was a teenager and stayed friends with him up until his death a few years ago at age 42. When he was younger he was very angry as was I. I guess like attracts like. We were friends in anger. As I watched the match head burn a white power song started to play. The beginning lyrics were, "White people don't know..." I watched the match head burn while little embers of it fell to the ground and were burning the carpet and starting to set the whole place on fire. I thought to myself, "I DO know," and took the match to the bathroom where I ran it under the faucet of the bathtub. It took a while. The flame was extremely hot, almost like molten lava. But I kept the match head under the water and kept turning it about under there and gradually the fire went out and the heat dissipated.
This dream is an allegory for the anger I've hung onto in this lifetime and that I've worked so hard at to dissipate. I've never been into white power, but my friend had been at one point and an incredible anger is what is at the root of that philosophy.
I still get angry here and there, but nothing like what I experienced when I was younger...the anger that so easily finds expression when mental illness flares up and turns all experience into a hell state. But I still hate getting angry. It ruins my peace and equanimity. I'm hoping this dream signifies the coming end of all of my anger...a long standing issue finally resolved.
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