A few years back, I was driving home from somewhere when, all of a sudden, I got cut off while passing through an intersection. I was just about ready to let loose with a few curse words and just generally boiling mad, when I realized something. I’ve done this same thing to other people by accident… I have no idea what the other person was thinking or doing when they cut me off. At that point, I realized that I simply can’t get mad at someone for doing something that I, too, have done in the past. How can I? Wouldn’t that be hypocritical of me?
This is why I (mostly lol) don’t get mad or angry at people anymore for doing something that I would have once called them “stupid” or “an idiot” for, because at one point or another I was probably doing the exact same thing.
So what do I do instead? I take the advice of a wonderful Spiritual Teacher named Adyashanti. If you’ve read my posts lately, you’ve definitely heard or seen him.
The advice is to simply allow everything to be as it is. In this instance, it means to simply accept that what’s done is done. Regardless of the intent of the individual who cuts you off, it’s done, just accept it and move on. No amount of you getting angry is going to change what happened, nor is you getting angry going to make the other driver not do it again.
Eventually, you’ll actually be able to observe the biological processes happening AS they happen. I had an instance, and Adya recalls something similar in one of his videos, where I had something like this happen to me again, except someone almost drove into my car, and as it was happening I was able to observe what was occurring in my body. The biological events that were occurring within me, but since I wasn’t reacting to them, they kind of surged for a minute, then dissipated slowly.
It’s all about recognizing patterns in your life and then allowing them to be as they are. You can apply this to ANYTHING. Everything from the people around you to the simple daily activities we do. Whenever you pin point something as a trigger for you to get angry, ask yourself why you’re getting angry, then try to just accept it. This allows you to let go of the anger.
Something else I realized is that being a Spiritual person doesn’t mean you don’t get angry, frustrated, upset, etc…
It means you don’t hold onto the anger, the frustration, etc… you’re able to experience it, then immediately let it go. Quite often I’ll get frustrated at something where I’ll seemingly get really upset, then the next second I’m happy as ever again. It’s not that I’m bi-polar, although sometimes it could really seem that way (LoL), but it’s because I’m able to let go of things that upset me.
Anyway, back to the point of this article… if something someone does gets you angry, try to look back into your past actions and see if you’ve done the same thing before. You can hardly get angry at someone for doing something that you, yourself have done at some point. Instead of allowing your emotions to control you in this situation, why not tell the individual about what happened to you when YOU made the same mistake. That way, two people can learn from one persons mistake! Isn’t that a much better use of your energy instead of getting mad and calling someone stupid?
This kind of action moves you closer to becoming Love, which is, in my opinion, the goal of experiencing this physical reality in the first place. You’ll also find that as you become closer to Love, that things like Meditation and Astral Projection come, not only easier, but happen more often and spontaneously as well!