QA188 QUESTION: In the last lecture [Lecture #188 Affecting and Being Affected], you spoke about the barriers of facing the inner negation. When one has faced this angry, raging infant openly, how does one then really change?
ANSWER: As you begin to face the negative emotions, you first of all must manage to feel the tremendous, powerful energy that is in you. You can come to the point of feeling the intrinsic beauty of this powerful energy, the intrinsic forcefulness of it. Perhaps you can think of a thunderstorm on a hot day in the summer and of how all the tension in the air is relieved when the storm breaks loose. This may perhaps feel frightening at the moment for those who have problems in this area. But otherwise this is really not at all a frightening thing. It is a very beautiful process.
Now, if you can learn to release these energies and feel the beauty, like in a thunderstorm, you will then come to the next step that I have not yet discussed or, if so, only very fleetingly because it would have been premature – and I certainly will go into this in the future – and that is how the pleasure of this energy can be converted.
It is subsequent to the feeling of beautiful energy that is in the rage, in the storm, that you choose to express in a way of your own liking, where you know that nothing bad can happen. Then you can feel this energy and make a further choice and ask yourself, “How can this very same energy be expressed in a productive way?”
Even though it is not a storm and a sudden tempest, it is just as beautiful – and perhaps even more beautiful – if it is channeled, not by the mind, not by fear and guilt, but by the greater inner processes of meaningful, creative living.
Let us assume, for example, that this impatient and enraged child in you is very upset and furious because of a specific frustration. Now, this frustration must be recognized. The unrealistic, irrational and unproductive anger must be recognized and felt. This, so far, we have done together, but it has to be very specific.
The step that will then follow after that is that you request in a deep search of inner contact with the divine: “How can I remove frustration by first accepting it and then perhaps learn the patience that dissolves the frustration in a slower way?” If that dissolving of frustration through accepting it is learned, the energy will be even more beautiful, but it will not be a sudden impact.
It will be a slowly melting process. And it comes from the trust of waiting. When this is learned, an entirely new phase is attained. This is a long process, but it is not as long as it may seem before you are even aware of the rage and anger. This is the way out of it.
