Magic and Mystery
Victor MacGill's website
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Chaos
and Complexity Magic and Mystery Victor MacGill's website |
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My first book.. |
 
The Courage to be CompassionateJellyfish have no sense of fear. When a fish comes along to eat them they just happily keep on swimming until they are gobbled up. Eventually some hundreds of thousands of years ago our pre-human ancestors developed a bodily sense through the release of chemicals like adrenaline that told us we were in danger and set us in a super alert state ready to respond. The response is called fear. We also developed a bodily reaction that gave us extra energy and strength to respond to a threat to our security. It is called anger.Today, we still react to threatening situations with anger, but it operates in a far more sophisticated way. Our anger is altered by many cultural, mental and emotional factors that were not a part of our pre-human ancestors’ world. The threat today is not usually a sabre-tooth tiger about to pounce and devour us. It is more likely to be our boss, partner, bank manager, some imagined event or something in the past. Anger is very complex, so we often don’t know what to do with it. We don’t like it, but we’re stuck with it. There are several ways we can try to cope with anger. First we can suppress it. I am sure all of us here tonight realise that suppressing anger is not a good solution, even if it is one we actually all use often. Suppressed anger doesn’t go away. It goes underground and it reappears even stronger as rage or surprisingly, depression. Sometimes our response to a threat is to withdraw and not respond. From the outside it can seem like a calm and peaceful response, but in fact, it is a form of anger and is just as destructive as an outburst of directed anger. We can try to express our anger in a constructive, positive way. First of all, feeling anger tells us there is something wrong with the world about us. We can use it to get the problem out in the open so it can be resolved. Anger shows other people that we have strong feelings about the issue involved. It gives us the motivation to want to change whatever angers us. These benefits of anger, I believe however, come at a cost. Firstly, when we are angry at someone, we threaten their picture of themselves, their self-esteem and that generates a resentment towards us. We must now not only resolve the initial conflict, but also resolve the resentment and anger we have added to the situation. Secondly, and more importantly, anger separates us from what we are angry at. We say, “I am angry at you” or “I am angry at what you did” or “I am angry at myself”. If you think about it carefully, you will realise that we have already made a judgement that “I” am right and “you” are wrong. I have already assumed that “I” am separate from the cause of the problem. This is true even if we are angry with ourselves. This part of “I” is angry at that part of “I” that has caused the problem. We are now unable to look at any solution that does not mean I win and you lose. Our actions are then based on proving that I am right and you are wrong. This judgment comes from our ego. Our ego is the image we have of who we think we are. We need this image to build an identity for ourself that allows us to interact with the outside world. The problem is that humans make mistakes and often the image of who we think we are doesn’t match up with who we really are. As humans we also need to feel that we are worthwhile beings, so we often blot out or distort reality so we can keep up the “nice” image we have created of ourselves. When our ego drives our behaviour, the image we have of reality becomes more important than reality itself. It becomes more important to justify being right to ourselves than it is to perceive the world as it really is. It becomes more important to be "RIGHT" than REAL. The image becomes more important than the reality. The ego often uses anger as a tool to help it maintain its distorted view of reality. Anger separates us from what threatens us, so the ego often generates anger to justify Itself and distance ourself from the threat. We cannot solve the problem by killing off the ego, because without an image of ourself as an individual, we have no identity and no existence. We must slowly work to allow the ego to see the world as it really is and change its image to match the reality it lives in. In order to maintain a distorted picture of reality, the ego must exert pressure on the world to pull it into line with its needs. This pulling is violence. Violence is not only physical but includes all form | |
