Practices For Transforming Aggression

The purpose of this talk is for us to look at together how we can use aggression to work for us rather than against us. And this is really a radical notion, as most of us haven't even really explored our own relationship to aggression and how it appears in our own lives. And when I'm using the word aggression, I really mean it in the broadest way possible to include irritation, annoyance, impatience, frustration, irritability, just contracting. So whatever way in which you're against anything at all, let that be included in this definition of aggression. And my experience is that in this culture, aggression is right in there with sex and death as a taboo. And it's something that generally we have gone way out of our way to keep in the closet. And one of the main intentions in doing this talk is to try to bring it into the forefront of our awareness so that we have this chance to have the aggression find some of the positive benefits, rather than be the destructive force that it frequently has been in our personal life and in the world. There really are several stages of development that each of us need to go through to be able to develop our relationship to aggression. And so what we're going to do in this overview is try to cover some of the main stages to set up future talks. The first thing is we need to become much more aware of our aggression itself. And that might sound simple, but being aware of our aggression is really something that has a lot of levels to it. I sometimes call it trying to develop a capital A awareness, which means that we're so aware of the aggression that it actually can have an impact on whether we have to express it, and it can have an impact on really slowing us down and not being as vulnerable to being impulsive. The second stage that we can develop as we become more committed to have a relationship to aggression, is learning how to contain it. Which means that rather than just simply dumping it on those around us, it in the ways that we might do it, whether that be subtle or more overt, we actually start to develop a positive attitude to where we welcome it into our inner lives. And we start to get more familiar with it through that first step of awareness. And we allow it to be there and create a container where we basically say to ourselves, okay, aggression, you have a place inside that's safe, and ventilate yourself. You know, make a sound, allow yourself to really be frustrated, and you develop a conscious relationship with it where you have virtually this large sense of a container, and it becomes a friendly, safe place to be even a little bit outrageous. And in this contained space, you actually give yourself permission to even exaggerate the frustration or the impatience or the irritation. A next step of development, once we really learn how to contain it, is actually sharing it with the people or the person that we most trust around us, where we let them know, you know what? Here are the ways that I actually am angry or frustrated or irritated, that I usually don't let anybody know about it. But you're in my special, trusted, close group of friends, or you're the one person that I trust. And so I want you to know that when I give that look, you know, that's, you know, kind of like frustrated or I smirk or I'm impatient with you. I want you to know, first of all, that it's okay for you to let me know that you recognize it. And I want to tell you all my dirty little secrets about how my aggression shows itself. This requires a great deal of integrity and awareness and courage. Because, of course, by letting your trusted person know, you're taking away your ability to control them as much as you normally would or anybody else around you. And you're vulnerable to having feedback that sometimes you might not want. But from this deeper place inside you, you're actually, by sharing it with a trusted friend, you're actually setting your life up to have more potential intimacy. So that really is a next step of development. Once you really are learning how to be aware of your anger and aggression and you're learning how to contain it, and you're actually potentially sharing it with someone else, then you might be able to also develop another stage of development, which is recognizing that when you're angry or frustrated or aggressive, that it's probably 80 or 90% of the time reflection of some kind of thwarted desires or needs that you have. And you can start to learn and inquire and ask yourself, what is it? What are those needs that are thwarted that are leaving me in this impatient, frustrated state? And it's sort of simple. Most of the time. It's kind of like when you were in kindergarten and somebody didn't treat you nice, so you were mad at them. And what you really wanted or needed was for them to be kind. But as adults, we frequently have lost touch with this simplicity. And so we need to relearn what we intuitively understood as a child, that there are these simple underlying desires and wants and needs that exist underneath our frustration and our aggression. Now, a final, really profound stage of development that, in my experience is incredibly rare, is learning that we don't have the right to just violate other people and invade other people's space by ventilating these forms of aggression. So therefore, this stage will or developmental level has to do with asking for permission with the people that we care for. Is it okay if I express my frustration or my anger or aggression towards you with the attempt to try to understand what it is that I'm really wanting? Now, don't worry if as I'm speaking these words, if you're incredibly discouraged and, and you feel like, you know what, I'm hardly doing any of these at all at any time, because that is the normal stage of development that almost all of us are in. Most of us are perhaps at a goose egg 0% of development in any of these areas. We might have fleeting awarenesses in the awareness stage, like I referred to, where we have a small a awareness, but very few of us have really developed in any of these areas. So congratulate yourself that you're interested in trying to develop your capacity to become more aware of your aggression, that you're trying to develop your capacity to contain your aggression, that you're having the courage to actually share it with those that you care for, that you're trying to understand what it is that you need when you are aggressive, if that's indeed the factor. And then finally you're recognizing that other people in the universe exist and they all want to be treated sensitively, and that it's important to ask for permission before you simply feel the entitlement to launch. Now, as I even say this final one, it is so difficult that it's really something that you deeply should admire, that you're even willing to consider. I ask you to join me on this journey to attempt to develop higher and higher percentages of capacity in each of these areas of development. And as you watch these individual stages being developed in these other talks, that you deepen your practice and that we together can learn how to have our aggression work for us rather than against us.