The destructive impacts of anger are legend. For that reason, most people would agree that it’s not a good thing. But the truth is that life is rarely anger-free. When we humans don’t get what we want, when we want it, in the way that we want it, whatever “it” is, we become angry. What we may not immediately recognize during our periods of anger is the true origin of that anger: pride.
Pride is the mother of many strong emotions like anger, resentment or rage. Pride drives us to say and do things we’d often like to forget later. The reality is that anger is a part of life for most of us. Anger thrives on our attachment to an illusion of spiritual separation from all others.
We are not separate, but one spirit. When we injure others with our words, we also injure ourselves. Pride lies to us and insists that we are better than others, and that we must protect ourselves from the ill will of others. Conversations and relationships become battlegrounds, instead of spiritually guided experiences. Sarcasm and demands, accusations and other judgments spew from our mouths or electronic communications like erupting volcanoes. Pride is ugly, let’s face it. Anger, the child of pride, simmers and stews long after the offending event is over.
Often we are counseled to control our anger, but it’s difficult to control our unexamined pride. We are told to count to ten, or leave the premises in order to avoid the pesky emotional displays of anger. But these “remedies” are Band-Aids that do not address the core issues. Sometimes we’re told to simply practice forgiveness, or get all the facts before blaming or resenting another person. But even forgiveness assumes that the “other” person is the source of our pain and suffering. Sometimes the anger turns inward and we become depressed. The depression response opens us up to feelings of shame or self-blame, and then plunges us into a deep well of recycled and repetitive thoughts.
But there’s another way. We could sit quietly and face the fear and tension that vibrate at the base of our anger. We could pay attention to how anger rises and dissipates as we sit quietly. We could stay with the feelings that arise for as long as we can, until one day through continual practice of sitting with our direct experience, the pride that fuels our anger will cease to have the power it once had. Then compassion will take its rightful place as the spiritual expression in our lives. When we sit quietly we see the anger and pride for what they truly are: stories we tell ourselves about our life conditions.
In the present spiritual moment, we are whole and one with all in the universe. We can truly practice compassion during those moments when we release the illusion of separateness from our consciousness and be the love we came to this life to be.
nine principles for joy 
vis a vis “Pride”..a cool poem by Charles C.Finn (a bit long,but well worth a read)
Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I’m afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me,
but don’t be fooled,
for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm and I’m in command
and that I need no one,
but don’t believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it’s followed by acceptance,
if it’s followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me
of what I can’t assure myself,
that I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare to, I’m afraid to.
I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I’m afraid you’ll think less of me,
that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that’s really nothing,
and nothing of what’s everything,
of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I’m saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying,
what I’d like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can’t say.
I don’t like hiding.
I don’t like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you’ve got to help me.
You’ve got to hold out your hand
even when that’s the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you’re kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings–
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!
With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator–an honest-to-God creator–
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.
Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.
Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.
Pride is one of many masks.
The poem is breathtaking in its passion and vulnerability. Thank you!
Thank you for the poem. It is very revealing as to how I clothed myself.
Ndidi, Greetings! After reading your post, more and more as I grow to understand myself as a human being and life itself, the more awareness I gain of how we’ve been socialized and conditioned to give deference to a system of constructs that only serve to distract us from this naturally occurring and empowering spirit that indwells us. Indeed as the poem expresses, these emotional feelings, changing from moment to moment and experience to experience, are personified in us as real and enduring versus illusionary and transcending; and many of these experiences are in post traumatic shock syndrome status, maintaining a mentality of caution as we tread our path of life lest we be catapulted back into that feeling again, if we ever emerged from it. I am on my 2nd reading of Michael Springer’s book, ‘the Untethered Soul’. On page 128 he states, “You are not your thoughts, you are aware of your thoughts. You are not your emotions, you are aware of your emotions. You are not your body, you look at it in the mirror and experience this world through its eyes and ears. You are the conscious being who is aware that you are aware of all these inner and outer things.” We have the power within us through faith, practice and study and through awareness, understanding, and knowledge to change this through renewal of our minds. For the Spirit of Eternity Evolving and Infinity Expanding is the universe commissioned for the exceedingly abundantly more than all we ask or imagine. Our work is to be consciously aware, reawaken our remembrance (through the model you’ve presented above), and ultimately our oneness. In Appreciation of you.