Joy is the recognition that happiness and freedom from suffering are possible for oneself and for everyone. Immeasurable joy is when this energy manifests as something deeper than belief and becomes a knowledge as steady and intuitive as knowing that the sun is still there, has been for as long as we've existed and is unlikely to end in the lifespan of our species.We can be free of all the baggage of manufactured and constantly re-manufactured stress, fear, loneliness and anger.
But something in me recoils from this certainty. To be certain of this would mean giving up one of the great addictions of my life, anger. Slow burning, constantly flickering and bickering anger. This reactionary acid that destroyed my parents well being, and for much of my life, my own. Anger is like any bad addiction, smoking and drinking, we do a lot to justify its existence. We believe that it's healthy in small, constant doses. We even believe that it's necessary for survival.
Is it though? The more I know of joy and equanimity the more anger seems like such a puny weapon. Like a baby's cry when most of the time, for so many of us, there's no real reason to cry.
To be liberated from anger still feels like such an impossibility for me. But it's not going to happen if I can't even imagine being free of anger.
This week I've been reading an article in the New Yorker about inflammation, and how it is an increasingly popular medical theory that inflammation, the state the body goes into when foreign toxins are present, is the root of most if not all of our diseases. This constant anger feels like inflammation. I hate it, but I don't hate it enough to get rid of it, or I don't have the courage to sit with it and let it go.
Still, I know I want to be liberated from my anger. The first step is cultivating the habit of feeling that want, and then the belief that this liberation if both possible and powerful. The next step is allowing it to become joy.
