Question: Awareness and Anger

After realizing that being in the present moment and being aware of your own thoughts is the key towards something USEFUL in life, I am facing some obstacles. Like in I am totally in the present moment enjoying my meal by being focused on it, something from outside happens like my sibling pops up from somewhere and starts shouting about what wrong I did in morning in my washroom (I just broke the bucket in which I bath, nothing else). And that too in a way as if I have committed a sin. So inside I got a thought of anger but as I am AWARE about it, I did not express it. But how to not just get that thought of anger, because after that you can’t enjoy your present moments for another half an hour, You may end up saying, becoming totally aware of that thought of anger as soon as it arises and it will vanish, will that ever happen to me, seems strange! Or should I allow that thought too, may be it is in connection with your recent article of “Enjoying the thought”. 

Thank you for your well elaborated question.
Awareness does not imply rejection of an emotion such as anger.
Anger is not “good or bad”. That is the first item to be AWARE of. We have been conditioned to reject anger and to embrace compassion, however; both are different degrees of the same energy. The world of “good and bad, right or wrong” does not apply in Life but only in the “office world.”

“Should I let myself express anger?” Understand anger through your own experience of being AWARE of anger completely, through all phases of it. To transcend something, we cannot repress it, deny it or suppress it. To do that means to establish an inner conflict for the sake of an ideal.

Anger is there. Be it. Become totally aware of it. I repeat TOTALLY AWARE of it: How it appears, how it ignites you, what you feel and how it goes away. Then, you will know that you are an angry person. Accept it. Don’t try to cover it with mental ideals such as: “ I should not be this. I should be a compassionate person. I promise to myself and God that I will not DO it again”.
That is rejection of the energy of anger. That rejection based on an ideal strengthens ego, for then the ideal becomes everything and your “practice” of the ideal is the measuring stick to judge others and yourself.
Acceptance is not intellectual. It is not to say to yourself: “I accept my anger”. That means nothing. Acceptance is at the level of feelings. It takes self-love.

Anger is not a thought (so it is not related with my last article). If you observe it, you will notice that an inner button was pushed. Then thoughts will arrive to support that experience.
To live in the “now” means that once anger is unleashed, (storm) you go back to the “now” which is “anger free” (calmness).
I used to know someone who could get angry while eating his meals, and then a few seconds later; it was as if nothing has happened. That is to live in the “now”.

However, our conditioning is to keep that anger with us for a long time. That is artificial. We are keeping that through our conditioned mind. This is poison for our being.

If you observe a child, you will notice what I am talking about. If you observe a child, then your question will be answered without using words.

If you are keeping anger inside, that means that you are not observing it. AWARENESS is not like pressing the brakes on a car to avoid something. AWARENESS is to go into it fully conscious of what is happening inside and outside, the repercussions and the consequences. That experience has value for it is about knowing to transcend it, not just expressing anger as a reaction without awareness.

The mental goal: “I should be anger free,” will not allow you to understand your own anger. The objective to get rid of it, is the obstacle. In most “spiritual people” the belief that anger is “bad” is lingering in their unconscious. That is a huge obstacle.

When there is no reaction in you, no button pressed whatsoever, then anger will not arrive …but neither compassion. That is known as being a “witness” or a “detached observer.”
That is not something to “practice” but a state of being which will arrive as our inner “buttons to be pushed” diminish.
So, the real question is “how to get rid of those inner buttons?”
There are so many articles in this blog about beliefs, hang ups, taboos, ideals, emotions and judgements that need to be observed to experience a “button free” state, a.k.a “witness of Life.”
All of this “unconditional acceptance” is known as Tantra: It applies to Life, Death, Sex and Love. The “real” things in Life.