Developing A Practice for Dealing with Aggression

So in developing our practice in dealing with and optimizing our ability to be with our own aggression, we recognize that we need to do two preliminary steps. One of them is we need to be aware of the aggression itself. And we need to recognize that that awareness is really a good thing. And it's really an enormously protective mechanism because it allows us to have the possibility of going to the second step, which is our ability to contain the anger itself. But of course, we can't contain it if we're not aware of it. And just because we're aware of it doesn't mean we are going to contain it. So these first two steps of being aware of our aggression and containing our aggression leads us to the third one. And in order to deepen this capacity, let yourself now, as you're watching, really take a couple of minutes to go into the place of aggression that's most affecting you right now in your life. And especially look for the ones that are reoccurring, the ones that are in the relationships that you have, that you're most attached to, that are most creating the challenge that would bring up a feeling of impatience or frustration or downright anger or outrage, irritability, contraction. And just give yourself enormous permission and even encouragement as we're looking at this together right now, to sense what your muscles feel like, what your breathing feels like, what your emotions feel like when you have this aggression running through your veins. So just take these couple seconds to go deeper into that experience. And as you're there and you are sensing I'm really frustrated that so and so, or I'm really angry that so and so is doing this, or I'm really impatient because of these circumstances or because this person's doing this or that to me, ask yourself a question that that really is this next developmental stage of learning how to harness our aggression and be able to cultivate a much greater sense of well being, which is to ask what is my underlying need that exists that is being thwarted that's leaving me in this frustrated, aggressive, impatient or angry state? Again, what is the underlying need that is not being satisfied or fulfilled that's leaving me in this state of aggression? Now, just to give you some guidance, a few of the most common needs are the needs to be accepted, to be understood, or to be treated with more kindness or tenderness. And these are the kinds of needs that when they're thwarted, it can lead us to really being greatly frustrated, greatly angry. And when we have the awareness, which is what I'm asking you to do right now, stay in touch with your aggression and keep inquiring, what is this need? What are these needs that I have? Help me understand what these needs are. Utilize that good intelligence inside you. That wants to try to find the source of something good that you wanted. Rather than retaliate against what you didn't get. And this transmutation process or this capacity that we have to inquire to what we need when we're most feeling against something.

Is a part of our essential nature.

That is truly healthy.

But for right now, the most important thing is you plant deep, permanent seeds. That when you are at your most frustrated, aggressive, impatient. That you are tremendously interested in what.

Is it that I really want, what.

Is it that I really need. So that I can have the possibility and the probability. And I would even say the inevitability. Of being able to discover and fulfill that which I really need. And also, as I fulfill what I really need, it deepens the capacity to fulfill the needs of all those around me as well. And it also allows us to develop a certain kind of intimacy and integrity. That can't really be discovered. Until we integrate this aggressive side of ourselves into our awareness and into our hearts.