Introduction

Welcome to all of you.

• Take the time to settle down comfortably...
• Let your spine find its straightness, its natural axis...
• Let your shoulders relax... your neck soften... in consciousness...
• Let your breathing find its natural ebb and flow...
• Maintain your awareness of the inhale and exhale...
• With each exhale we release carbon dioxide and we can feel the boundaries of our body become blurred.
• The body is a vortex of the environment and all the elements in it will return to their element.
• It is in fact a joyful return to the source: there is a kind of ecstasy in this liberation of the elements of the body:
  • the aerial part in us finds the air, the wind,
  • the earthly part seeps into the ground,
  • the fluid part flows into rivers and oceans,
  • and the fire part burns with the sun.
• As the elements of our body dissolve and return to their respective matrices, let us become aware, on the inhale, that there is a center, an energetic core that survives the dissolution.
• On each exhale, our breath expands further and further as our body melts and merges with the body of the planet. When we reach the furthest point of our exhalation, we don't need to breathe in... because we are inspired.
• The creative breath fills us and animates this center, this energetic core that survives dissolution, which is our resurrection body.
• So the more we deepen the exhalation, the better we experience the creative breath that takes over with the inhalation.
• The whole universe is continuously oscillating between non‑being and being, and at each moment all matter melts and is resorbed into the void, then is reborn again.

Toward the One,
the Perfection of Love,
Harmony, and Beauty,
the Only Being,
United with all the Illuminated Souls
Who form the Embodiment
of the Messenger,
the Spirit of Guidance.

Thank you very much Amina for your beautiful and profound introduction, presenting the main themes to which we will turn our focus and about which exchanges and practices will be shared throughout this retreat. And thank you very much Lisa for this important work with the breath.

Speaking of the profound nature of the elements present both in the physical sphere and in the more subtle planes, Murshid points out that 'even the breath has five different elements, and we act according to the particular element that predominates at a certain moment.

We feel the need to withdraw, we feel heavy when it is earth that is predominant in the breath. One is receptive and sociable when the water element is predominant in the breath. One feels the desire to express oneself, to imagine or to be physically active when the air element is predominant in the breath. Finally one is angry when the fire element runs through the breath.'

At this point in our journey together, we will consider what happens when the fire element crosses our breath, in other words we will ask ourselves what is this fiery ember that is so consuming in the human being?

What is anger?

Anger is one of the fundamental, natural human emotions, which is part of the basic emotions like fear, sadness, joy or disgust. All of these emotions have been refined over the course of human history.

It is an ancient part of the defense mechanisms that have allowed us to survive, adapt and defend ourselves, making it a necessary survival instinct. It was and can still be a completely normal response.

Anger is a living phenomenon, an energy that, once it has surfaced, needs time to subside. It is a mental phenomenon but it is also closely linked to biological and biochemical processes. It causes tension on our muscles and joints. It has consequences on our nervous, hormonal, cardiovascular systems and on our brain activity. The prolonged release of stress hormones that accompany anger can even destroy neurons in areas of the brain associated with judgment and short‑term memory. And it can weaken the immune system.

So every time it comes usp, the energy of anger overwhelms our bodies and minds. It is part of our nature to carry both positive and negative emotions as seeds. If you water a positive seed of joy, for example, you will feel a sense of happiness. If you water a negative seed of jealousy or anger, you will feel unhappy. Joy or anger remain seeds as long as they remain buried in our unconscious depths and are not stimulated. But they become mental constructs as soon as they manifest themselves in our consciousness.

Each of us carries a seed of anger in the depths of our consciousness. When it does not manifest itself, the negative feelings are not experienced. On the other hand, if for example someone stimulates this seed of anger in us by his actions or his words, it will immediately manifest itself in an explicit way.

Thich Nhat Hanh evokes anger as being similar to a flower which, as soon as we take care of it consciously, starts to open. In the same way, it is by taking care of it that our anger will be able to open up and that we will be able to discover the true cause, the root and the intention behind it.

For Murshid 'anger is a rhythm' and he even states that 'a person who does not fight once a week is not alive'. Fighting is a part of life.

For anger to arise, there are always triggers, whether internal or external. However, everyone's anger thresholds are quite different, as are the situations and experiences that make people angry. We often find that what makes one person angry may not bother another.

Different kinds of anger.

We can identify different kinds of anger:

• Anger as an instinctive defense mechanism when one feels threatened or trapped. It is a very instinctive, basic anger to ward off the feeling of a threat or as a way to discharge a sudden intense fear.
• Anger can occur as an emotional response to an unmet expectation, disappointment, frustration, loss of control, or low tolerance to all sorts of everyday annoyances, etc.
• And there is anger as a weapon to attempt to exert dominance, intimidation, manipulation or control over another person.
• Anger as a repetition of violence passed on by another person, especially in childhood, which one has internalized and identified with, unconsciously, and which is expressed in similar situations.
• Anger as moral indignation at the injustices of the world, such as abusive relationships, all kinds of perversion, or the oppression of human rights in the many forms it can take.
• And the holy anger of the prophets, powerful and majestic anger but loving and merciful as that of Christ against the merchants of the Temple or Moses when he came down from the mountain with the tables of the Law, of the Covenant with God, against the people worshipping the golden calf in the valley... to name but two...
• And of course the so powerful Wrath of God born of His Love and Mercy for His Creation, divine wrath often evoked in the Bible or the Koran...

Anger is deeply rooted in the being. It is when it opens up by itself that we have the opportunity to discover its true cause. Its roots are mainly in the ground of ignorance, of the unknown or mystery, of misperceptions, of lack of understanding and compassion. But its roots can also plunge, in the opposite direction, into the forces of life to better mobilize us in the face of all kinds of corruptions.

However, every time we vent our anger, we nourish its roots which then produce even more anger. This is the danger of the strict emotional discharge. That is, in the back and forth expression of anger discharge, between self and others, the anger gets reinforced and forms some kind of inner knots that will crystallize, knots becoming much more difficult to untie and to transform and taking a long time to disappear.

We have a strong tendency to blame others for our torments. We do not understand that anger is above all our own business and that an in‑depth analysis would allow us to discover that the seeds of anger are within us.

Thich Nhat Hanh offers the metaphor of a fire to better understand what is at stake:

'If there is a fire in your house,' he tells us, 'the most urgent thing to do is to try to put it out, not to chase the one you think is responsible. If you chase him, the flames will burn your house to the ground. It is not wise to do this.

You must do everything you can to put out the fire. Similarly, when you are angry, by continuing to argue with the other person, seeking to punish him, you are acting exactly like the one who runs after the arsonist while his house is being devoured by flames.'

Then to extinguish a fire, the firefighters, once called, need proper equipment. They need ladders, water and clothing to protect them from the fire. They must master many techniques to protect themselves and to fight the flames.

When you are consumed by anger and you come back into yourself, it is like entering a fire. Without the right equipment, you cannot help yourself and you could become a victim of the fire yourself.

Whereas, as Jung says, 'everything that irritates us in the other person could help us to understand ourselves better.'

Later, Nadia Qalbi will lead us in a deep experience of anger transformation. What is proposed now is a different little moment, focused on an experience before the transformation, looking back on a past period of your life when you were confronted with anger, in a strong way with a person or persons.

• Remember the time, the place, the person or persons.
• Now remember the context, remember your initial feeling.
• Choose to observe in this situation, the stage when you were completely carried away in your anger, without any hindsight without any feedback, just carried away in your feeling.
• Do you remember in what physical state you were in ?
• Do you remember the feeling you got ? what kind of thoughts ? ‑ Take a look!
• Can you see where your instinctive reactions led you ? ‑ Take a deep look!
• What kind of anger were you experiencing in this situation ?

For Jung, 'Emotion is that moment when steel meets stone and sparks out, for emotion is the main source of all awareness.'

Can you remember the moment when the very first spark of awareness came about in this experience of anger? Or did it not happen in that case? Maybe it was later in another situation in your life...

For as long as the spark does not come, the experiences of anger will recur until what is trying to be heard can finally be grasped.

Jung says it even further: 'Those who learn nothing from the unpleasant facts of their lives, force the cosmic consciousness to replay them as many times as necessary to learn what the drama of what happened teaches.'

How do we move towards transformation?

So how do we go about it, how do we move towards transformation?

• When anger arises, the first step is to recognize its presence and to accept to take care of it. It is advisable not to say or do anything under its influence, because if you do, everything you say or do usually makes the situation even worse.
• Return to yourself in consciousness, a consciousness that does not try to fight it or make it disappear.
• Then, as a next step, resort to the practice of a deep look. This will allow to apprehend the situation in consciousness, to better understand the difficulties of the others and their deepest desires.
• From the understanding can come the greatest appeasement. Another energy can be invited and here, at this stage, thanks to the attention paid to our breath, our "appropriate equipment" is then compassion which can be nourished and kept alive.
• It is by being fully present, attentive, aware of what is happening, that we can connect to the energy of Buddha, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or Full Awareness... through being aware of the breath.

'When we practice mindful breathing to control our anger,
we are under the protection of the Buddha.'

says Thich Nhat Hanh. We can also imagine that Tara, Mary, Jesus, Mohamed or the Saint or Prophet of our choice, envelops us with his her great compassion and love.

'We can turn our inner sea of fire into a lake of coolness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

• We are going to practice the breathing of purification with fire. (Inhale ‑ through the mouth, Exhale ‑ through the nose)
  • On the inhale: a flame rises from the base chakra into the hara, (two fingers below the navel) and then into the solar plexus.
    We are aware of the combustion within us. The oxygen that we inhale allows the combustion, in our cells, of the carbon that we have absorbed through our food. We let the fire intensify in the ember‑red base, in the orange hara and in the sun‑yellow solar plexus.
  • On the exhale : it is in the heart that the fire will be transmuted into light.
    Thus, what is increased heat in the lower energy centers will be transmuted into light from the heart as by rising along the spine. Fire has the ability to transform what we believe to be (our ego) so that our inner light becomes active, and reveals itself, so that the Divine Light manifests itself.
• There are divine qualities that can be developed that can help in the transformation of anger. We will invoke the names of these divine qualities by repeating them.
  
  Pîr Vilayat Inayat Khan used to tell us: 'When we repeat a divine name, a wasifa, we think that we are discovering the divine in our personality, but we should add that we discover the divine nature by actualising Him.'
  
  The Sufis indeed affirm that by actualising Him, we discover Him. The divine attributes are the bridge between the divine Splendour behind the Universe and His Manifestation in the Universe. This is why Sufis attach so much importance to wasaif.
  • Al Tawwâb The One who keeps returning is the One who makes one state return to another state. He who makes man return to conversion. It is also the quality of God who accepts repentance. And among the servants who are clothed with this quality, the one who returns unceasingly is the one who renounces himself and everything else, returning to his Lord.
  • Al Shahîd The Witness, He who is present and sees you. He is the Witness who bears witness to all things and is present to all things. 'Worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not see Him, He sees you.'
  • Al Sabûr God Patient. He who, even if He is very offended, refrains from retaliating to their offenses, although He has the power to do so.
  • Ya Tawwâb ‑ Ya Shahîd ‑ Ya Sabûr (11x) then fikr and fikr‑as‑sirr.
    And then of course, in the process of transformation, comes forgiveness, Al Ghafûr, anbsp;great step, so essential that it will seek throughout life, and until the end, to find anbsp;way to actualize itself...
  • Al Ghafûr He who forgives all, He who unfolds the protective veil of forgiveness that covers the faults. 'Resentment imprisons us on anbsp;personal level, forgiveness frees us to approach the light beyond the limitations of the existential level. We have anbsp;choice.'said Pîr Vilayat Inayat Khan.

'One who wants to ascend into the worlds of heavenly light must first overcome his resentment, then change his conception of light by shifting his attention from the physical basis of light to its indescribable and sublime dimensions beyond the existential condition, and then, instead of identifying with his aura, identify with the light of his intelligence. One then brings, through the brilliance of his eyes, a heavenly light to the earth.'

Pîr Vilayat Inayat Khan

• Ya Alî The Most High, The Exalted, The Sublime.
• Ya Nûr The Light, The One who illuminates.
• Ya Alî ‑ Ya Nûr (3x)