Now you’ve stopped preaching and gone to meddling. 🧐
For me, the practice of replacing “am” with “feel” helps me home the feeling without surrendering to it. “I feel angry” lands differently than “I am angry.” It’s about agency, I think.
Swapping am for feel sounds small, but it quietly dismantles the whole takeover. Same sensation. Different center. One is weather. The other is identity theft.
My youngest son has multiple severe disabilities. One of the profound things I learned by being his mother is the difference between saying he is disabled and he has disabilities. Same thing. When I saw clearly that who he is is separate from his disabilities it changed how I see him, how I see myself as his mother, and how I see my grief over his disabilities. It opened a door into presence I would never have expected but for which I am grateful.
Thank you, Marcia - i have “disabilities” (or maybe i should call it “gifts from Long Covid) & most of the time they are invisible until what i physically feel affects my attitude, actions & “abilities”, which especially worsens around people (activity). Describing myself as having disabilities, however true it may be in certain contexts, fits better than saying i am disabled but still doesn’t fit right. And your statement about seeing clearly that who he is is separate from his disabilities changed how i feel about mine 100% - and changed how i see myself. And my grief about it too. I very much needed the reminder about opening a door into presence - i related to that sentence word for word but for the past couple days when i got lost in some very righteous anger, that door disappeared (it was still there, I was just blind to it). I related so much to what you wrote & am grateful & your words were exactly what I needed right now. Blessing to you & your son 💝🥰
My first thought about the fish story was that the older fish must've been caught and released, or perhaps spit the hook and got away. An experience the two youngsters hadn't (yet?) had.
He knew what water was because he'd known what *out* of water is.
I'm not sure that train of thought is relevant to the larger point, though. I *can* say that these days, I feel angry often enough that I worry about it *becoming* identity. And I suspect I'm not alone.
That reading actually feels connected to the point, at least to me. Sometimes it does seem like you only recognize the water once you’ve had some sense of what it’s like not to be in it.
And the worry about anger turning into identity really lands. I find myself noticing something similar, how often anger shows up, and how easy it is to start mistaking its persistence for who we are rather than what’s moving through us.
I don’t have a clean answer for that. But naming the concern feels like it keeps a little space open, which might matter more than resolving it.
Anger needn't always be destructive. It can provide positive motivation ( okay - borrowed that from a Star Trek TNG episode where Data starts feeling anger. Gene Roddenberry's estate can sue me... 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖 ).
What the piece is circling is not “anger bad” versus “anger good,” but the moment when anger quietly becomes who we think we are. That subtle shift from “anger is arising” to “I am angry.” From weather to identity. From signal to steering wheel.
Once anger is identified with, it stops being informative and starts being managerial. It narrates. Justifies. Recruits allies. Builds a small theology. That’s when it runs the house.
When anger is seen rather than inhabited, it can absolutely motivate clarity, boundaries, even necessary action. When it’s worn like a name tag, it tends to outsource our agency and call it righteousness.
So yes. Anger can move things. But presence decides whether it’s a tool… or the one holding the tools.
That reminds me of- I think- Pema Chodröns " We are the sky, everything else is just the weather". She too uses a major element- like you water and foam, like Thay water and wave- to describe something beyond identity. Which is a mind construct. Many identify with that constructs, saying "I am angry, I am this, I am that" And if am not mistaken one of the major problems is, that we learned to detach from the felt sense, feeling. That is mirrored in how we use words. A person connected and embodied probably would say "I feel angry", which is in the end an expression (of many) of life energy moving through and is- as you say- a transient movement within the body and on the canvas of being. That is an image I like too...being understood as an infinite canvas where everything is painted on with colour, or even black and white, which actually disappears after a short time. That is what happens in the body when there is no thought constructing a house on it. What is ever left, if there is painting or not- is the canvas. The space.
Thank you for this talk. I will now look at my emotions from a different place. I will not be angry but I will be feeling or experiencing anger from a different vantage point. That way I can understand what I am feeling while still being the core me.
Awesome!!
I have a dissociative disorder and this process will help me "stay" in me rather than "leave" my core self to escape to my safety self.
This is a problem that English has. Emotions and physical states are something we "are" versus something we (generally temporarily) "have". We say we are angry or hungry (or hangry), as though it is an essential part of our being. In French, this is laughable. In French, one has anger or hunger. You have hunger, so you eat, and you no longer have hunger. It's a thing you can put down until your body needs more food later. Same with anger. You have anger - you can put it down for later (though it is usually a bit harder to deal with than something like hunger). If you were to say the literal equivalent to "I am angry" in French, it would imply that is your entire persona all the time, or indeed that it is your name. English moved to using the "be" verb for emotions and physical states all the time, which is too bad. Anglophones might think the distinction is silly or obvious from context, but it is indeed a case of how language influences thought.
A moment of grace occurs when one realizes what one is...this ground of being. Having been blessed in the midst of chaos and exhaustion years ago to experience this was the beginning of seeing and practicing what you describe here. "Neti, neti" was Nisargadatta's reminder, "Not this" which if one practices this with all that arises leaves one in the field of being. And then, there are the triggers, past traumas stored in the body, attachments to image, opinions, and virtually anything that arises that we identify with that makes us smaller...and how to metabolize them and not numb out, spiritually bypass. There's the rub! That's the path!
I appreciate how you named that tension without trying to resolve it.
Yes. Neti, neti clears the field. And then the body speaks anyway. The triggers, the old grooves, the places where “not this” suddenly feels very personal again.
This is good. I will remember the metaphor of mistaking the foam for the sea. This essay made me think of a practice I have of pausing when I hear a bell, then saying, here I am. It helps me to pause and feel centered.
“Here I am” is such a good practice. No fixing, no commentary, just arriving. And it pairs beautifully with the foam and sea image. The foam can do its thing. The sea is still there.
The first paragraph could have been a bio of my early years. Bad childhood produced unhealthy relation with anger. And I do have a vile temper that had a very short fuse.
Then I spent decades learning how to control but unhook might be a better word. I got to a place where I could be angry and express it without loosing myself in it.
More time passed. And then maybe 8 years ago, I was in a situation where the anger exploded. Dang. So I had to do the sorting again but at least I had the clarity that it was an event nor an identity. Still a bit unsettling to realize the force of it.
I imagine that is the spiral giving my a nudge that I has made some progress but the issue will never be totally erased.
I really respect your gift for opening the can and describing the contents with wisdom.
It’s magic really how you weigh in on topics most pressing on my mind. I was reprimanded for watching and keeping up with the distressing news of today. I was told I should watch/listen to something less unsettling. Not the first time. Yet I feel I can see what is really going on without taking it into my being or having it change who I am. At least I think so haha. On the other hand current events have changed my thinking on some things yet I believe I remain the same being. My thoughts are not me after all. All this to say thank you as always.
What a badass breakfast i needed more than a protein bar & coffee…ok, i can’t honestly say that about the coffee. At least that’s the one addiction i alllow myself to
Haha take two. I misspell a word & hit what i thot was the back button to correct it. I’ll leave it at this. I threw a temper tantrum in my kitchen last nite trying to book a flite to see my sister. I was a flite attendant for 18 years so i flew free, had flight privileges, this is all alien to me. And tried for an hour to do it & nothing worked. As usual, all the emotions of the recent past things that upset me came flying out like demons but at least i didn’t throw anything & break it. While i didn’t get my flite booked (yet) i sat down & gave it over to whatever power that be wanted to help me with it. Basically asked for help. And woke up to this article so I’d say prayer answered with much more than i asked for. Let’s see if i can book that flite lol.
That kitchen tantrum feels very on-theme. Not because anger showed up, but because it didn’t get to decide who you are. You let it pass, asked for help, and here you are. That counts.
Also… flight booking tech is a cruel joke. Wishing you a smooth landing today 😄
Now you’ve stopped preaching and gone to meddling. 🧐
For me, the practice of replacing “am” with “feel” helps me home the feeling without surrendering to it. “I feel angry” lands differently than “I am angry.” It’s about agency, I think.
That’s exactly the move.
Swapping am for feel sounds small, but it quietly dismantles the whole takeover. Same sensation. Different center. One is weather. The other is identity theft.
My youngest son has multiple severe disabilities. One of the profound things I learned by being his mother is the difference between saying he is disabled and he has disabilities. Same thing. When I saw clearly that who he is is separate from his disabilities it changed how I see him, how I see myself as his mother, and how I see my grief over his disabilities. It opened a door into presence I would never have expected but for which I am grateful.
You named something most people never slow down enough to notice: when identity stops collapsing into condition, presence suddenly has room to enter.
Your son isn’t his disabilities.
And you aren’t your grief about them.
Thank you for sharing
Thank you, Marcia - i have “disabilities” (or maybe i should call it “gifts from Long Covid) & most of the time they are invisible until what i physically feel affects my attitude, actions & “abilities”, which especially worsens around people (activity). Describing myself as having disabilities, however true it may be in certain contexts, fits better than saying i am disabled but still doesn’t fit right. And your statement about seeing clearly that who he is is separate from his disabilities changed how i feel about mine 100% - and changed how i see myself. And my grief about it too. I very much needed the reminder about opening a door into presence - i related to that sentence word for word but for the past couple days when i got lost in some very righteous anger, that door disappeared (it was still there, I was just blind to it). I related so much to what you wrote & am grateful & your words were exactly what I needed right now. Blessing to you & your son 💝🥰
My first thought about the fish story was that the older fish must've been caught and released, or perhaps spit the hook and got away. An experience the two youngsters hadn't (yet?) had.
He knew what water was because he'd known what *out* of water is.
I'm not sure that train of thought is relevant to the larger point, though. I *can* say that these days, I feel angry often enough that I worry about it *becoming* identity. And I suspect I'm not alone.
That reading actually feels connected to the point, at least to me. Sometimes it does seem like you only recognize the water once you’ve had some sense of what it’s like not to be in it.
And the worry about anger turning into identity really lands. I find myself noticing something similar, how often anger shows up, and how easy it is to start mistaking its persistence for who we are rather than what’s moving through us.
I don’t have a clean answer for that. But naming the concern feels like it keeps a little space open, which might matter more than resolving it.
Thanks for naming that concern, which I also identify (ha!) with.
"Anger is a tool. Are you using it, or is it using you?"--Street
I think that line actually fits the article.
The whole point is noticing when anger is something that’s happening… versus when it’s become who’s talking.
Same words, different center.
Anger needn't always be destructive. It can provide positive motivation ( okay - borrowed that from a Star Trek TNG episode where Data starts feeling anger. Gene Roddenberry's estate can sue me... 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖 ).
What the piece is circling is not “anger bad” versus “anger good,” but the moment when anger quietly becomes who we think we are. That subtle shift from “anger is arising” to “I am angry.” From weather to identity. From signal to steering wheel.
Once anger is identified with, it stops being informative and starts being managerial. It narrates. Justifies. Recruits allies. Builds a small theology. That’s when it runs the house.
When anger is seen rather than inhabited, it can absolutely motivate clarity, boundaries, even necessary action. When it’s worn like a name tag, it tends to outsource our agency and call it righteousness.
So yes. Anger can move things. But presence decides whether it’s a tool… or the one holding the tools.
Love it!
That reminds me of- I think- Pema Chodröns " We are the sky, everything else is just the weather". She too uses a major element- like you water and foam, like Thay water and wave- to describe something beyond identity. Which is a mind construct. Many identify with that constructs, saying "I am angry, I am this, I am that" And if am not mistaken one of the major problems is, that we learned to detach from the felt sense, feeling. That is mirrored in how we use words. A person connected and embodied probably would say "I feel angry", which is in the end an expression (of many) of life energy moving through and is- as you say- a transient movement within the body and on the canvas of being. That is an image I like too...being understood as an infinite canvas where everything is painted on with colour, or even black and white, which actually disappears after a short time. That is what happens in the body when there is no thought constructing a house on it. What is ever left, if there is painting or not- is the canvas. The space.
Thank you for this talk. I will now look at my emotions from a different place. I will not be angry but I will be feeling or experiencing anger from a different vantage point. That way I can understand what I am feeling while still being the core me.
Awesome!!
I have a dissociative disorder and this process will help me "stay" in me rather than "leave" my core self to escape to my safety self.
Thank you for this and all of your work.🙏🫶❤️
Mary, thank you for trusting this space with that.
What you’re describing sounds less like distancing and more like staying. Especially when leaving yourself has been a form of protection.
Experiencing anger from a different vantage point, without abandoning the core you, feels like a quiet kind of courage.
This is a problem that English has. Emotions and physical states are something we "are" versus something we (generally temporarily) "have". We say we are angry or hungry (or hangry), as though it is an essential part of our being. In French, this is laughable. In French, one has anger or hunger. You have hunger, so you eat, and you no longer have hunger. It's a thing you can put down until your body needs more food later. Same with anger. You have anger - you can put it down for later (though it is usually a bit harder to deal with than something like hunger). If you were to say the literal equivalent to "I am angry" in French, it would imply that is your entire persona all the time, or indeed that it is your name. English moved to using the "be" verb for emotions and physical states all the time, which is too bad. Anglophones might think the distinction is silly or obvious from context, but it is indeed a case of how language influences thought.
A moment of grace occurs when one realizes what one is...this ground of being. Having been blessed in the midst of chaos and exhaustion years ago to experience this was the beginning of seeing and practicing what you describe here. "Neti, neti" was Nisargadatta's reminder, "Not this" which if one practices this with all that arises leaves one in the field of being. And then, there are the triggers, past traumas stored in the body, attachments to image, opinions, and virtually anything that arises that we identify with that makes us smaller...and how to metabolize them and not numb out, spiritually bypass. There's the rub! That's the path!
I appreciate how you named that tension without trying to resolve it.
Yes. Neti, neti clears the field. And then the body speaks anyway. The triggers, the old grooves, the places where “not this” suddenly feels very personal again.
Wisdom!
Loved reading this.
And impeccable timing, I just finished two podcast episodes about anger and love the parallels between our vantage points
Thank you. That’s good to hear.
Different angles, same distinction. It’s always interesting when separate conversations land on the same fault line at the same time.
Dory says "Keep on swimming, keep on swimming."❤️🙏🙌🖖
This is good. I will remember the metaphor of mistaking the foam for the sea. This essay made me think of a practice I have of pausing when I hear a bell, then saying, here I am. It helps me to pause and feel centered.
“Here I am” is such a good practice. No fixing, no commentary, just arriving. And it pairs beautifully with the foam and sea image. The foam can do its thing. The sea is still there.
The first paragraph could have been a bio of my early years. Bad childhood produced unhealthy relation with anger. And I do have a vile temper that had a very short fuse.
Then I spent decades learning how to control but unhook might be a better word. I got to a place where I could be angry and express it without loosing myself in it.
More time passed. And then maybe 8 years ago, I was in a situation where the anger exploded. Dang. So I had to do the sorting again but at least I had the clarity that it was an event nor an identity. Still a bit unsettling to realize the force of it.
I imagine that is the spiral giving my a nudge that I has made some progress but the issue will never be totally erased.
I really respect your gift for opening the can and describing the contents with wisdom.
It’s magic really how you weigh in on topics most pressing on my mind. I was reprimanded for watching and keeping up with the distressing news of today. I was told I should watch/listen to something less unsettling. Not the first time. Yet I feel I can see what is really going on without taking it into my being or having it change who I am. At least I think so haha. On the other hand current events have changed my thinking on some things yet I believe I remain the same being. My thoughts are not me after all. All this to say thank you as always.
What a badass breakfast i needed more than a protein bar & coffee…ok, i can’t honestly say that about the coffee. At least that’s the one addiction i alllow myself to
Haha take two. I misspell a word & hit what i thot was the back button to correct it. I’ll leave it at this. I threw a temper tantrum in my kitchen last nite trying to book a flite to see my sister. I was a flite attendant for 18 years so i flew free, had flight privileges, this is all alien to me. And tried for an hour to do it & nothing worked. As usual, all the emotions of the recent past things that upset me came flying out like demons but at least i didn’t throw anything & break it. While i didn’t get my flite booked (yet) i sat down & gave it over to whatever power that be wanted to help me with it. Basically asked for help. And woke up to this article so I’d say prayer answered with much more than i asked for. Let’s see if i can book that flite lol.
That kitchen tantrum feels very on-theme. Not because anger showed up, but because it didn’t get to decide who you are. You let it pass, asked for help, and here you are. That counts.
Also… flight booking tech is a cruel joke. Wishing you a smooth landing today 😄