Anger as a tool for self-awareness and self-knowledge

Anger as a tool for self-awareness and self-knowledge
by Atman Nityananda / blog

 550. Desire, fear and anger coexist.  If there is anger, you can safely infer that there is also desire and fear.  Anger is a modification of desire.  Fear is an old companion to desire. – Swami Sivananda

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Anger is an indication that some desire, attachment or need of ours is being prevented from being fulfilled or unfulfilled.

Therefore, whenever anger manifests within us, we understand that some desire, need, attachment is being hindered, that someone, some situation or event is preventing our desire, need or attachment from being fulfilled.

So, you can use your anger to investigate and discover what desires, attachments or needs are limiting your mind and causing you to suffer and not experience freedom, happiness, love and peace.

The inner work does not stop at discovery, but continues with investigating, understanding and eliminating anger as well as attachment, desire or selfish need.

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By inquiring myself I found that the ego is essentially desire. And the pride which is another ego’s major tendency is an expression of desire. It is the desire to be superior and feel superior or special.

Thus desire is the foundation of the structure of the Ego and of all egoistic tendencies. By eliminating desire we eliminate the Ego and gain liberation from all kinds of misery and suffering and regain our eternal state of peace, fulfillment and freedom!

Desire, the main obstacle to freedom and happiness

When a man’s desire is not gratified and when someone stands in the way of its fulfilment, the man becomes angry. The desire gets transformed into anger. Anger is only a modification or form of desire. Anger is desire itself. All evil qualities and actions proceed from anger.

    ~ Swami Sivananda

My Comment

In this saying it is very clear that anger is only a modification of desire. As the water can assume the form of a cloud, similarly desire can assume the form of anger. And since anger is the womb of all evil qualities it becomes clear that desire is behind of them as well as all other egoic tendencies. And since desire is an expression of ego, then all the egoic tendencies have as mother the desire.

´The true freedom is the liberation from egoism and desires.

– Swami Sivananda 

“Out of desire comes suffering, out of desire fear. For one who is free from desire, there is neither suffering nor fear.”

 ~ Buddha

All suffering is born of desire.

The entire universe of pain is born of desire.

Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain.’

   ~ Nisargadatta

Verse 276. As the mind becomes gradually established in the Inmost Self, it proportionately gives up the desires for external objects. And when all such desires have been eliminated, there takes place the unobstructed realisation of the Atman.

Verse 277. The Yogi’s mind dies, being constantly fixed on his own Self. Thence follows the cessation of desires.

“Vivekachudamani”

Conquest of desires is conquest of mind, because mind is nothing but a bundle of desires.Annihilation of desires alone is Liberation (Moksha). The state of desirelessness is the highest Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

– Swami Sivananda

 38. As fire is enveloped by smoke, as a mirror by dust, and as an embryo by the amnion, so is this enveloped by that.

39. O Arjuna, wisdom is enveloped by this constant enemy of the wise in the form of desire, which is unappeasable as fire!

26. Absolute freedom (or Brahmic bliss) exists on all sides for those self-controlled ascetics who are free from desire and anger, who have controlled their thoughts and who have realised the Self.

~ Bhagavad Gita

 ‘The spiritual practice adopted by the jiva (the individual, or individual soul) is complete when it destroys the ego in its origin. The Ego must, die, must disappear together with the inherent vasanas (desires and egoistic tendencies).’

“The death of the ego in the unlimited Silence (the non-dual Truth) and the shining forth of the Self is the attainment of Oneness (Kaivalya-Siddhi) In that State of Jnana, pure Bliss will gloriously blaze forth as one’s own True Nature. “

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Conclusion

By dissolving the desire, we are dissolving the ego and all egoic tendencies, and similarly by dissolving the ego we are dissolving the desire and all egoic tendencies as well.

By eliminating desire we eliminate the Ego and gain liberation from all kinds of misery and suffering and regain our eternal state of peace, fulfillment and freedom!

🌺 Peace, Love, Harmony