I’ve read Chopra. Some of it, anyway. Didn’t care for much of the some of it I did read. There were a couple of nuggets, though, adopted into my own perception.

One of those is the concept that our thoughts tend to fall into statistical patterns. Given a stimulus the mind responds with a thought that it has likely thought before. It’s a sort of confirmation bias. I see thought as being attracted to certain patterns, drawn to a gravity well it has orbited before, a strange attractor that always pops up no matter how many times one runs the program.

Chopra suggests freedom from this current of thought rests in the spaces between the thoughts, that millisecond between stimulus and reaction. If given a trigger that would normally result in a thought or behavior that might be considered undesirable, that the awareness of that space between the thoughts might allow one to deflect the odds that one would react in the same old way they did before.

I have found this useful in my life. Usually, it’s called taking a deep breath before reacting. But there are times when that statistical thought pattern serves us well, reaction time is as important now as it was in the forests, or on the savanna.

It’s about realizing you can “choose” how to react and how your going to feel about it.

It’s empowering to anyone attempting to be a better person. It goes beyond ‘thinking before we speak’.

There is nothing to “prove” ER. It’s something you try and if it works or gets results, great. Otherwise toss it on the dung heap.

Although I understand it, your emphasis on the need for a “flight or fight’ response is no different than the “redneck wet dream” of defending the country from it’s government. I think you need to chain your inner “Wolverine” lol.

” If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties” Sir Francis Bacon.

I confess that I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the effect of my anger on telephone sales people or bureaucratic types that treat you like a fool. I do care about my family and friends. They have seen my outbursts enough that they are as likely to laugh as they are to cringe.

As for the long term anger, I have gotten better with age.

I think that anger is like anything else. The middle road is best. Anger is a normal human response and we can spend too much time over-thinking it. Don’t hurt people who are not trying to hurt you.

“I support neither the Liberal “turn the other cheek” philosophy, nor the Conservative “I don’t put up with no shit”, attitude. The first is the cowardly excuse of the weakling, the latter the cruel strut of the bully.”

Indeed. I know from where you speak.

You need not warn me ER.
I can handle what you say.

I support neither the Liberal “turn the other cheek” philosophy, nor the Conservative “I don’t put up with no shit”, attitude. The first is the cowardly excuse of the weakling, the latter the cruel strut of the bully.

What is it exactly that I do support? All I can say is that I’m still working on that…

Violent emotions can motivate us to action when we would otherwise be passive. Or cowardly. Most of us aren’t cold-blooded, calculating killers. We need a strong emotional trigger to provoke us to fight. That’s what hatred and anger are for, precisely because we are normally peaceful, and cautious. Sometimes we need to fight, and most of us haven’t been trained to do so dispassionately and clinically, like some Zen master.

In fact, that may be the biggest perversion of all–a man who can destroy or hurt another simply because he has cooly calculated it is in his benefit is not fully human. I submit he is dangerous to the rest of us. That’s why the military must train young men to fight; we are apes, we struggle for dominance in our band, or to intimidate or scare off a rival, but we rarely kill as we must in battle. That is not natural behavior for us, and soldiers must be indoctrinated and conditioned to do it. And it often makes them unfit to be members of a civilized community.

Soldiers, (not conscripts, but true warriors), learn to harness their anger and hatred, to tap into it, to use it as a reservoir of strength and motivation. So do criminals, gangsters, bullies, prizefighters, cops. So do all those who fight, or who must use violence in their lives. In society, these individuals are a threat to our safety and security, we shun and control them, but regrettably, sometimes we also need them.

Its an ugly truth, but it should not be forgotten. Perhaps it might comfort us to articulate it in touchy-feely terms, the way Deepak himself might; you know, embrace your inner reptile.

“We should get in touch with our natural selves, not be fearful of relying on our more instinctive nature. Have confidence that we can react spontaneously, freely, that our inner self has deep psychic resources which can be harnessed, drawn upon in times of crisis.”
Like all New Age philosophy, you can prove anything you like as long as you phrase it eloquently.