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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
In the moment that can be as small as thinking, there you are, instead of, not this again. Pushing it under works for a while and then it arrives with interest. Letting it be present while you decline to act on it is the harder trade and the better one.
lower your wings over the believers (Quran 15:88). The gentleness you are asked to show other people has to start with how you handle what rises in you.
الحجر
لَا تَمُدَّنَّ عَيۡنَيۡكَ إِلَىٰ مَا مَتَّعۡنَا بِهِۦٓ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا مِّنۡهُمۡ وَلَا تَحۡزَنۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ وَٱخۡفِضۡ جَنَاحَكَ لِلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ
Do not look longingly at the good things We have given some to enjoy. Do not grieve over the [disbelievers], but lower your wings over the believers
Qur’an 15:88read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised field experiment, working adults who took up loving kindness meditation had more positive emotion day by day, and those days accumulated into lasting personal resources. Warmth practised on purpose did more than lift the hour it was practised in. This is one study of one practice with working adults, not a general law about befriending your anger.
Fredrickson BL, Cohn MA, Coffey KA, Pek J, Finkel SM. (2008). Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources.. Journal of personality and social psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
What you brace against you hold on to, and what you allow to be there tends to pass sooner.
Bring to mind someone easy to love, a person or a pet, and let the warmth actually arrive in your body. Then send the same warmth outward in stages: a stranger, a colleague, someone who irritates you.
Ask the question twice. What do you see, and what else do you see. What do you think, and what else do you think. The second one does all the work.
If you are still polishing the reply weeks afterwards, the argument is not still running. The injury is, and that needs a different kind of care.