Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Eleven
April 8, 2006
A. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. I've been savoring your excellent new book on Anger, and one thing I feel curious about is how "equanimity" fits into the picture. Can equanimity coexist with emotions, e.g. anger, or does it displace emotions? What exactly is equanimity anyway? Is it an emotion itself, is it a cognitive or existential stance, is it some sort of clearing in awareness, or what? I'm feeling confused about this, perhaps because I'm not feeling particularly equanimous lately. Do you think it's possible to be too equanimous? Other than meditation, is there any other advice you would offer someone wishing to cultivate equanimity?
2. Somewhere in your writings I seem to recall you saying something about the possibility of anger becoming a guardian in a relationship, as opposed to its usual more problematic role. I suspect you will talk about this in your book on Anger at some point, but I haven't encountered it yet. Could you say a few words about this?
Robert answers:
1. Equanimity is a state of unperturbed existential ease and well-being. Though it is not an emotion, its untroubled, spacious stance is usually generously infused with pleasant feeling. Equanimity is less amorphous and more refined than mellowness, more alert and panoramic than laid-back-ness, more spacious and unrockable than relaxedness, more effortless and deep than composure. Equanimity is detached but not indifferent, level but not flat, unperturbed but not uncaring. Equanimity is found not in having, but in Being. When we’re actively resting in the presence and feeling of Being, equanimity naturally arises.
Can equanimity coexist with emotions? With happiness and joy, a clear yes, but with heavier emotions, like anger, fear, or shame, a partial yes, and only so long as it remains central and they remain functionally peripheral to it. Equanimity includes empathy, but does not lose itself in empathy.
Is it possible to be too equanimous? Excessive equanimity is not equanimity. One who is “too equanimous” is stranded on the far shore of mellow.
To cultivate equanimity, one needs to consciously “step into “ Being, and start homesteading there. However, if we do so in order to get away from our pain, we’ll only be cultivating aversion in equanimity’s clothing. Real equanimity is not an escape from anything. It can hold all without breaking a sweat.
What can you do? Meditate more deeply; dive into compassion practices; get intimate with all that you are, refining your ability to hold and touch it all. And when equanimity arises, be grateful that it’s there, and don’t cling to it.
2. Clean anger -- nonreactive, nonblaming, yet still capable of being full-bloodedly expressive -- is a guardian of personal boundaries. If a line is crossed, and we’ve reached the point where our anger is a readily activated resource, we can emphatically and unmistakably make it very clear that we’re not okay with that line, that personal boundary, being crossed. Without our anger being thus available, we’re likely going to either get invaded (having too porous or weak boundaries) or we’re going to get overarmored, walling ourselves away from life.
The degree of caring with which we approach our anger is the degree of caring with which we can infuse the anger we give to others.
For anger actually to be a resource (especially as a guardian) in relationship requires not only that it be permitted its innate vulnerability, but that it also be valued, and valued equally, in both women and men. So long as female anger is treated as something less worthy of respect than male anger (consider the less flattering labels we have for angry women as compared to angry men), relational approaches to anger will remain superficial or unproductive. The creation of empowering relational contexts in psychotherapy — and beyond! — presupposes both familiarity with cultural attitudes toward female anger and a deep recognition of anger as legitimate and useful in building better connection in relationships.
It is also important to cut through the notion that anger and empathy are mutually exclusive. Anger can coexist with empathy and care, so long as relationship itself is rooted in awakened mutuality.
A truly integral approach to anger needs more than apt behavioral assignments, more than cogent analyses, more than expressive practices, more than meditative equipoise, and even more than a fitting blend of all these. A relational element is also needed, so that “anger work” does not occur just for the benefit of an isolated self, but also for the benefit of a more connected (and therefore social) self, a self that thinks and feels “us” as easily as “me”. Then anger becomes not just an emotion to be analyzed or expressed, but also a force of potentially enormous value in furthering relationship, be it dyadic, social, or even global in scope. Creating relational contexts which validate justified anger can provide potent avenues for needed action. Anger that does not destroy — this is the fiery face of compassion, the wrathful shout of the heart.
Clean anger seeks not separation from the world, but raw engagement, in which love (and caring), rather than negotiation, shines at the hub of relatedness. Such anger uses separation to create connection. It is the swordplay of healthy criticism, the firm yet receptive thrust/embrace of needed forcefulness, the guardian of boundaries, the lion/lioness in the relational ecosystem.
Mishandled anger easily mutates into aggression, whether active or passive, other-directed or inner-directed. Thus does a means of communication become a means of weaponry. Anger that masks its own hurt and vulnerability is not really anger, but hardheartedness, hostility, or hatred in the making.
Our work here — a labor of love — is to reverse such processes, to convert aggression, hostility, hardheartedness, ill will, hatred, and every other diseased offspring of mishandled anger back into anger. This conversion, however, does not mean doing away with the energies of such negative states, but rather liberating them from their life-negating viewpoints, so that their intensity and passion can coexist with a caring, awakened attention. In this sense, the world needs not less anger, but more...
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A. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. I've been savoring your excellent new book on Anger, and one thing I feel curious about is how "equanimity" fits into the picture. Can equanimity coexist with emotions, e.g. anger, or does it displace emotions? What exactly is equanimity anyway? Is it an emotion itself, is it a cognitive or existential stance, is it some sort of clearing in awareness, or what? I'm feeling confused about this, perhaps because I'm not feeling particularly equanimous lately. Do you think it's possible to be too equanimous? Other than meditation, is there any other advice you would offer someone wishing to cultivate equanimity?
2. Somewhere in your writings I seem to recall you saying something about the possibility of anger becoming a guardian in a relationship, as opposed to its usual more problematic role. I suspect you will talk about this in your book on Anger at some point, but I haven't encountered it yet. Could you say a few words about this?
Robert answers:
1. Equanimity is a state of unperturbed existential ease and well-being. Though it is not an emotion, its untroubled, spacious stance is usually generously infused with pleasant feeling. Equanimity is less amorphous and more refined than mellowness, more alert and panoramic than laid-back-ness, more spacious and unrockable than relaxedness, more effortless and deep than composure. Equanimity is detached but not indifferent, level but not flat, unperturbed but not uncaring. Equanimity is found not in having, but in Being. When we’re actively resting in the presence and feeling of Being, equanimity naturally arises.
Can equanimity coexist with emotions? With happiness and joy, a clear yes, but with heavier emotions, like anger, fear, or shame, a partial yes, and only so long as it remains central and they remain functionally peripheral to it. Equanimity includes empathy, but does not lose itself in empathy.
Is it possible to be too equanimous? Excessive equanimity is not equanimity. One who is “too equanimous” is stranded on the far shore of mellow.
To cultivate equanimity, one needs to consciously “step into “ Being, and start homesteading there. However, if we do so in order to get away from our pain, we’ll only be cultivating aversion in equanimity’s clothing. Real equanimity is not an escape from anything. It can hold all without breaking a sweat.
What can you do? Meditate more deeply; dive into compassion practices; get intimate with all that you are, refining your ability to hold and touch it all. And when equanimity arises, be grateful that it’s there, and don’t cling to it.
2. Clean anger -- nonreactive, nonblaming, yet still capable of being full-bloodedly expressive -- is a guardian of personal boundaries. If a line is crossed, and we’ve reached the point where our anger is a readily activated resource, we can emphatically and unmistakably make it very clear that we’re not okay with that line, that personal boundary, being crossed. Without our anger being thus available, we’re likely going to either get invaded (having too porous or weak boundaries) or we’re going to get overarmored, walling ourselves away from life.
The degree of caring with which we approach our anger is the degree of caring with which we can infuse the anger we give to others.
For anger actually to be a resource (especially as a guardian) in relationship requires not only that it be permitted its innate vulnerability, but that it also be valued, and valued equally, in both women and men. So long as female anger is treated as something less worthy of respect than male anger (consider the less flattering labels we have for angry women as compared to angry men), relational approaches to anger will remain superficial or unproductive. The creation of empowering relational contexts in psychotherapy — and beyond! — presupposes both familiarity with cultural attitudes toward female anger and a deep recognition of anger as legitimate and useful in building better connection in relationships.
It is also important to cut through the notion that anger and empathy are mutually exclusive. Anger can coexist with empathy and care, so long as relationship itself is rooted in awakened mutuality.
A truly integral approach to anger needs more than apt behavioral assignments, more than cogent analyses, more than expressive practices, more than meditative equipoise, and even more than a fitting blend of all these. A relational element is also needed, so that “anger work” does not occur just for the benefit of an isolated self, but also for the benefit of a more connected (and therefore social) self, a self that thinks and feels “us” as easily as “me”. Then anger becomes not just an emotion to be analyzed or expressed, but also a force of potentially enormous value in furthering relationship, be it dyadic, social, or even global in scope. Creating relational contexts which validate justified anger can provide potent avenues for needed action. Anger that does not destroy — this is the fiery face of compassion, the wrathful shout of the heart.
Clean anger seeks not separation from the world, but raw engagement, in which love (and caring), rather than negotiation, shines at the hub of relatedness. Such anger uses separation to create connection. It is the swordplay of healthy criticism, the firm yet receptive thrust/embrace of needed forcefulness, the guardian of boundaries, the lion/lioness in the relational ecosystem.
Mishandled anger easily mutates into aggression, whether active or passive, other-directed or inner-directed. Thus does a means of communication become a means of weaponry. Anger that masks its own hurt and vulnerability is not really anger, but hardheartedness, hostility, or hatred in the making.
Our work here — a labor of love — is to reverse such processes, to convert aggression, hostility, hardheartedness, ill will, hatred, and every other diseased offspring of mishandled anger back into anger. This conversion, however, does not mean doing away with the energies of such negative states, but rather liberating them from their life-negating viewpoints, so that their intensity and passion can coexist with a caring, awakened attention. In this sense, the world needs not less anger, but more...
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posted by adastra at 7:37 AM
