Releasing Anger for You! "Excerpt From My Memoir"
"Someone once said holding resentment toward another person is like drinking arsenic and hoping the person you are resenting dies. Buddha put it another way: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else—you are the one who gets burned.” This helps put it into perspective, doesn't it? It is the mental and emotional act of resending toxic and negative energy through our own minds and bodies, repeatedly.
This is not to diminish the fact that many of us may have legitimate reasons to be angry towards another person. Sometimes people do thoughtless and even cruel things to each other. However, stop and think about it: Does holding onto resentment serve YOU in a positive, life affirming way? Most likely, the answer is no. In many cases, the person or people we hold in resentment don’t even know or care...or worse yet, some of them are already in the grave but we are still allowing them to hold us hostage to the past.
What I have discovered is that communication is always the healing balm in relationship issues and forgiveness is what sets us free. It’s important to remember that forgiving doesn’t mean we are condoning the actions that evoked our anger--it means we are willing to set ourselves free from the past by not “re-sending” the toxins of resentment through our mind and body in the future. Proactive, clear, authentic, transparent communication and forgiveness will set us free from the energy of resentment, anger and bondage to the past."
