During one of my personal retreats last month, my client came up with an interesting underlying belief. His thought was literally, “It means that I’m wrong if an anger thought comes up.”
He said that it makes him hesitate to do The Work, even though he loves it. Because he doesn’t want to see where he failed again (got angry). He’d rather just not go there.
I could identify immediately.
The mind wants to be right. And it has an idea that anger is wrong. In fact, this idea is reinforced everywhere: internally (I feel bad when I’m angry) and externally (other people don’t like it when I’m angry.
But that’s what I love about The Work of Byron Katie. It turns everything upside down.
My client and I questioned the thought, “It means that I’m wrong if an anger thought comes up.” And it was fascinating to see the other side of the story.
I find that I am actually very honest when I’m being angry. And it’s exactly that honesty that breaks me out of my denial system.
This is not failure to me. This is not wrong. This is actually success. This is very right for me.
Because I don’t want to live my life pretending that things are fine when they aren’t.
This is especially true when I combine anger with The Work.
Anger is a tantrum version of honesty. And tantrum honesty is better than no honesty. It’s a start.
But The Work takes it further. When I write down my angry thoughts, The Work allows me to find even bigger truths hiding behind those angry thoughts.
When I question the angry thoughts that I write on a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet and turn them around, I often find that my anger falls away when I see the pieces I was missing. Then there is no more need to be angry.
But I never would have seen the bigger truths if anger had not called them to my attention.
It means my internal truth detection meter is waking up. And with a little questioning, my angry truths point me to even truer reasons why I don’t even need to be angry at all.
That’s why I get excited when I get angry now. I question my angry thoughts and let them show me a deeper peace than I was experiencing before.
One week ’till the launch date for my new book, Finding the Door to Inquiry, How to Discover a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet in any Situation. The book will be available for sale next Monday, September 15th starting at 9 AM Pacific Time.
Have a great weekend,
Todd
“It’s easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it’s helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, ‘You’re caught in the dream.'” — Byron Katie, Loving What Is p. 8.
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