Q: I would love to ask you about anger. It’s hard for me if someone is mad at me and it’s hard for me when I feel it. I don’t know exactly what to do with it. During my childhood, when I lived with my parents I didn’t used to talk about my feelings. They didn’t talk and I didn’t talk. Sometimes I feel like a child when I feel angry. I don’t know what to do, whether it’s with my friends or with my husband and with my girls. I feel I lost my way there. I lost my self there.

John: Write on a piece of paper the words “you don’t need your raging story.” Fold it up, put it in your pocket. As soon as you feel angry, pull out the piece of paper and read it. Open as you read it.

When you are angry you are in a misuse of power. When you’re angry that means, in that moment, your bottom line is that you want what you want and something is taking away your power to want what you want – to have it. So the power that you feel that you don’t have, you put into your emotions. When you’re angry you’re upset with your lack, and you’re putting it on to someone or something else. Wherever you are even a tiny little bit annoyed or frustrated – before it even turns into anger – the annoyance, the irritation, the frustration highlight your issue with power, and that you’re holding power in a way that isn’t the same as your being. Holding power that isn’t in the same way that your being is with power makes you suffer.

What does deeply reach you is when you are quietly okay, nurturingly okay, with not getting what you would like to have. As soon as you’re in that, your heart opens. As you stay in that, your heart opens all the way through your self. It’ll make it look like you’re patient with people. You’re not being patient: what you are is deeply, quietly, open. When you are in the experience of anything that doesn’t nurture you, then right there, without changing yourself or someone else, without changing a circumstance, quietly turn within to what directly nurtures you.