How Anger Can Become Love

Anger can be so destructive. It can rip couples and families apart.  It can make children cringe, cry and become terrified.  It can play havoc with your health and that of the other people in the line of fire.  When you become angry, your body automatically releases a stress hormone called cortisol. Having that hormone released in emergencies can be helpful; it can help to protect you in dangerous situations. However, high levels of cortisol, which can happen when you are angry, can have accompanying negative side effects, such as “causing wear and tear on the heart and cardiovascular system.” (Jerry Kiffer, MA, a heart-brain researcher at the Cleveland Clinic’s Psychological Testing Center.)

Sometimes, days and even years are wasted because the people involved cannot get over their anger. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to be able to change anger into love?

Read what Sadhguru says about transforming anger.

Sadhguru: “It doesn’t matter how much people preach ‘don’t get angry’, when certain situations arise you will get angry. I want you to understand this. It does not matter what kind of human being you become, even if you become a super human being, you will never have absolute control over the external world. Whether it is your institution or your family or the world, you will never have total control over the external situation.

But you can have total control over the internal situation. Emotional states you call as anger – what you call as hate, as lust or as compassion and love – from the lowest to the highest – are certain types of expression of the same energy.

Now, why you are asking if without anger you cannot exist is probably because your anger is the most intense situation you have experienced in your life. Unfortunately for most people, their fear, their anger, their hatred are the most intense situations in their lives. Their love is never so intense, their peace is never so intense, their joy is never so intense, but their negativities are intense. So they experience power in negative situations.

But if you transform your energy in a certain way, it naturally becomes compassion and love – then nobody needs to teach morality. And slowly as this process goes further, you reach the pinnacle of self-awareness and experience a unity with all life.

Suppose you start experiencing yourself as part of people around you; after that no one need teach you to be good and tell you, ‘don’t harm, don’t kill etc.’ Once experientially you are a part of everything then nobody needs to teach you morality. Then you can do something for the situation, but without anger. What you have to do, you do. But when you do it with anger and hatred it is of no value – whatever you do.

The whole process of yoga is based on this. A day will come when even if you are put into the most extreme situation, your energies will remain very calm. How you respond will depend on the situation you are in, who you are, what your capabilities are, and what means you have. When you act out of unity with all life, you act without identity. Only then can you function out of your intelligence.

Yoga means to cultivate your energy in such a way that gradually it breaks the physical limitations and elevates you to the highest level of awareness, the flowering of human potential.”