6.5 Why is it crucially important to become detached from your anger?

Anger is the single most corrosive emotion you can experience. Anger stems from thwarted desire. Anger results from what you want being at odds with what you experience.

Anger is deceptively dangerous because it is such a satisfying emotion, particularly if, from one’s own point of view, one appears to be in the right. Anger consumes your energies, and, if sustained over long periods, can consume your health. When you act in anger, it feels fulfilling, satisfying and righteous – in reality, it is an activity through which you oppose the natural flow of reality, and the resulting penalties which may be imposed on you can be horrendous.

To act on the basis of your anger is to insist on what you want, in the face of reality. This is the antithesis of the clear setting of yourself face to face with reality. You cannot successfully impose your will on reality without incurring severe penalties: sustained anger leads to sustained ill-health; profound anger leads, in time, to profound penalties.

As with all Implicate Technology disciplines, the remedy to be applied is simple. Firstly, when you are angry, calm yourself with deep, slow, meditative breathing. Secondly, never, ever, under any circumstances or conditions, act on the basis of your anger – wait until you are calm and then decide on your action.

This is not to say that you must passively accept the conditions that caused your anger. If the conditions you experience are unfair or unjust, use the power discipline, as taught in chapter 3, to change your circumstances. Fight, and fight hard, against forces which oppress you; but do so in harmony with the inherent implicate laws.

Don’t act while you experience anger in the circumstances of your domestic life. Always wait until you have regained calm. If your anger is prompted by another person’s genuine selfishness, the opportunity to act will invariably arise again.

The danger you risk is quite clear. If you act under the influence of anger, you will incur karmic consequences of a severely negative nature, according to the severity and duration of your anger. If you act spontaneously, with a calm clear mind, you will be dealing with any situation in a karmically positive way.