Burning

I seem to be angry a lot lately.  When my family worries about me, my reaction is to get angry.  I feel boxed-in, judged, doomed to be saddled with my past mistakes and crazy behavior.  Under that, I’m angry that I’ve given my family so much to worry about, and that they have every right to expect the irrational behavior to cycle around again.  I’ve racked up thousands of dollars of debt, left my husband, attempted suicide.  While I like to think that my spiritual practice and my daily tools for living have moved me beyond insanity, the impulses are still there.  I’m still sneaky about money.  I still bolt when situations feel too stressful.  Hopelessness and despair can still swallow me whole.

And that really pisses me off.

There’s no cure for bipolar disorder, so there’s no point in the future when I can say to my family, “Look.  I’m okay now.  You don’t need to worry anymore.”  There’s no endpoint.  No goal to reach.  There’s only this endless process of riding the Wild Horse, falling off, and getting back on.  The whole situation really burns my butt.

Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about anger in practicing mindfulness.

Our practice is based on the insight of non-duality.  Both our negative feelings and positive feelings are organic and belong to the same reality.  So there is no need to fight; we only need to embrace and take care.  Therefore, in the Buddhist tradition, meditation does not mean you transform yourself into a battlefield, with the good fighting the evil.  This is very important.  You may think that you have to combat evil and chase it out of your heart and mind.  But this is wrong.  The practice is to transform yourself.  If you don’t have garbage, you have nothing to use in order to make compost.  And if you have no compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you.  You need the suffering, the afflictions in you.

Mindfulness does not fight anger or despair.  Mindfulness is there in order to recognize.  To be mindful of something is to recognize that something is there in the present moment.  Mindfulness is the capacity of being aware of what is going on in the present moment.  “Breathing in I know that anger has manifested in me; breathing out I smile towards my anger.”  This is not an act of suppression or of fighting.  It is an act of recognizing.  Once we recognize our anger, we embrace it with a lot of awareness, a lot of tenderness.

Today, I breathe and feel the resistance in me.  I breathe and feel the wanting for a different life, a different burden.  I breathe and acknowledge that this is my life, my situation.  I breathe and visualize my anger as compost.  I breathe and visualize my anxiety as compost.  I breathe and visualize the delicate flowers of my creativity rising from the rich soil.  I breathe and visualize compassion sprouting.  I breathe and feel gratitude rise up from my belly—gratitude for my family and their endless love, gratitude for this illness and the opportunities it gives me to See.