In 1999, I discovered that I had a common heart arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. If you have atrial fibrillation – or “a fib” – the upper chamber of your heart loses its regular rhythm and shutters and flutters without doing much of anything good. It can happen all the time, frequently or on occasion. I was lucky to have it only once in a while. There can be no symptoms, or one can experience weakness, dizziness and fatigue. I’ve had it both ways. The worst-case scenario is when blood collects in the atrium, clots and hits your brain, at which time you have a stroke. Blood thinners make that next to impossible, thankfully.
As with other health crises I’ve faced in my life, I did my research to try to find ways of getting the problem to stop happening. Chasing down the causes of atrial fibrillation proved to be a very frustrating job. Turned out that for me, it wasn’t due to alcohol; it wasn’t too much or too little exercise; it wasn’t either quality or quantity of food consumed. Finally, however, I noticed a reliable pattern: I found that when I got really angry and held onto it – not just irritated or upset, but enraged – that night I would have an incident of a fib.
It took me a while to recognize that the connection I had made was an opportunity to do some spiritual work. Anger, I realized, had the power to literally go to my heart and sabotage its ability to function efficiently. After having made this discovery, whenever I’ve found myself becoming overcome with rage, I have gradually gotten more efficient at stopping it, realizing it’s not worth having to endure a heart problem later.
If you research cortisol, the naturally occurring hormone in the body associated with the “fight or flight” response, you will quickly learn that my self-generated research coincidentally reinvented a very old wheel. There is much data to support the premise that lingering cortisol has all kinds of unhealthy effects on mind and body for all of us. The following article, which appeared in Psychology Today in 2013, is a simple run through of these effects with some suggestions regarding how to limit cortisol’s presence in the body:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201301/cortisol-why-the-stress-hormone-is-public-enemy-no-1
But, as I said, it is an old wheel. Let’s go back 2500 years for wonderful words from the Buddha:
“You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.”
A wonderfully simple indictment on the internally destructive qualities of sustained anger on all levels, the quote reminds us that despite our misguided notion that the other is not deserving of our dropping the anger, holding onto it is primarily our problem.
What I’m getting to is that the intense political partisanship and multi-leveled conflict in this country right now has produced an ocean of cortisol. Every time you spend a day negatively captured by things in the political or social arena, you are creating that “fight or flight” arousal state in your body that will make you sick, mentally, physically or both if it sticks around long enough.
In much earlier times, there actually was an adaptive, and thus, an evolutionary advantage to the fight or flight reaction. It gave a prehistoric person a bit more of an edge when confronted with a potentially lethal stressor in the environment. Becoming slippery with sweat, all blood directed toward the extremities for fast movement and increased heart rate/respiration all positively changed the odds of a potentially fatal conflict. (If I can’t outrun that saber-toothed tiger, I’ll be his dinner!”) But, since our prehistoric ancestors were much more rooted in their present than we are in ours, they were likely able to put the experience behind them, at least emotionally. The ones who did remain consumed with the memory of the experience and, thus, the accompanying cortisol, must have fared less well.
Regardless of which side of the political fence you are on, the anger that the actions and thoughts of the other side evoke in you will hurt you if you keep indulging in them. Consider instead the words of one of our greatest Buddhist teachers:
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh,
Or if you like it less esoteric, consider the words of Nelson Mandela:
“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
In reference to an earlier article in which I mentioned Yogi Bhajan’s “One-Third Law,” it is not difficult to see that those of us who can learn to channel anger into love, courage and positivity, things that heal the earth, not further erode it, will thrive, i.e., “wake up.” Conversely, those who indulge in their anger, satisfying their unchallenged need to be right will have a much harder time coping with increased turbulence.
Please feel free to address this issue with me if you want to take it further. It is an important message for these times.
