Looking Back at the Trail
Just as falling rocks and precarious footholds threaten a mountain climber, recurrent anger threatens those fortunate people on the trail to tranquility...
We now begin the final chapter of The Trail to Tranquility. While summarizing our journey we will also emphasize the key points and benefits to keeping our inner world (and subsequently our outer world) peaceful and therefore effective.
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Lasting Happiness
Just as falling rocks and precarious footholds threaten a mountain climber, recurrent anger threatens those fortunate people on the trail to tranquility. If a climber isn't careful, he or she is liable to suffer a dangerous fall. Likewise, if you're not careful, recurrent anger can catch you off guard, trip you, and destroy weeks of hard work and spiritual effort.
This chapter is designed to reinforce your emotional and spiritual resistance to recurrent anger. Section One is a review of the previous nine chapters, while Section Two demonstrates the life-saving tools for both overcoming failure and for successfully handling recurrent anger. These tools will enhance your confidence and self-image, and will open your door to lasting happiness, even in the environment of a turbulent world.
Section One – Looking Back at the Trail
We began our journey with the ten diagnostic levels of anger, beginning with the level of total anger and turbulence, and ending with the level of total tranquility. Peek back to Chapter One; look at the progress you've made, and set your future sights on the goal you'd like to attain.
Then, we moved on to Deer Haven. There, we learned about the two main causes of anger – arrogance and lack of spiritual awareness. Knowledge and spiritual awareness enlighten our lives and bring us happiness. Arrogant people live in the dark; since they think they know everything, they have no access to knowledge, and therefore never learn. People who lack spiritual awareness consider the world a random planet of chaos with no rhyme or reason, whose unfortunate inhabitants lay at the mercy of the elements. No wonder that the arrogant and the spiritually unaware are always subject to inner turmoil.
At Bear Ridge and Lupine Valley, we saw the damages of anger. Immediately afterward, we learned that spiritual awareness is the key that releases us from the jail cell of anger. With our seven-day plan, we learned the basics of looking at the world from spiritual eyes, and set out sights on seeking true inner peace. The more we internalize the principles of the seven-day plan, the more we achieve spiritual awareness. The greater our spiritual awareness, the happier and more tranquil our lives become.
Do you remember that bluish-green patch of forest with the wild raspberries and the mountain roses? There, we learned that everything the Almighty does is for our ultimate good, a principle that enables us to make peace with our Creator. Can you recall the quaint little cabin with the trapped pigeon? That's where we learned about the troubles we bring upon ourselves; correspondingly, we also learned the three stages in eliminating self-induced suffering – observation, self-evaluation, and implementation. Hopefully, these three stages, together with the principles of the seven-day plan, will soon be second nature to you. Don't forget to continue monitoring your progress with your own personal implementation of the Enhanced Spiritual Awareness (ESA) Workshop.
Having made peace with God, we continued to learn how to judge others fairly, thereby making peace with our fellow man. Remember irate Mr. Weatherbee? He was willing to execute a fellow human because of circumstantial evidence and a few lost eggs! Giving our neighbor the benefit of the doubt is a major key to our own inner peace.
We made peace with God and with our fellow man, and then came the tough part: From the lessons of the Flakefoot Falcon, we learned the principles of proper self-assessment in order to make peace with ourselves.
By the time we reached Purity Springs, we had learned how to rid our lives of anger and turbulence. By establishing our own personal relationship with God and speaking to Him daily in our own words – what we termed "Personal Prayer" – we add true inner peace to our lives. Thus, we fill the void of our eradicated anger with a new tranquility. Let's review the wonderful benefits of uprooting anger from our lives, which we discussed throughout this book:
The Benefits of Uprooting Anger
1. Prevention of damage to the soul.
2. Immediate relief from existing self-induced suffering.
3. Better interpersonal relationships, both with family and acquaintances.
4. Improved productivity and career satisfaction, more success and therefore an improved income (in the long run, angry, overpowering, and aggressive people don't remain on the top of success's ladder – we'll soon discuss this point).
5. Improved vitality, better mental and physical health.
6. Increased longevity.
7. Improved physical appearance.
8. Increased happiness and a major improvement in the quality of your life.
9. Less worry, more self-confidence.
10. Less sadness and fear.
11. Less stupidity and impulsive decisions, more rational behavior and decision-making.
12. A more truthful outlook on life.
13. Increased memory capacity.
14. Increased spiritual gain.
15. A closer relationship between your body and your soul, and therefore a closer relationship between you and the Almighty, who's waiting for you with the open arms of a beloved father.
16. No more turbulence – a peaceful existence!
Fifteen of the above sixteen points, which we discussed in Chapters Three and Six, are most likely clear to you by now. I'm sure that point four leaves you with a few nagging questions in your mind. Even though we showed in Chapter Three how anger is detrimental to our income, let's elaborate more on the relationship between anger, aggression, and success.
Ask your questions, and with God's help, I'll do my best to answer.
(The Trail to Tranquility is available in the Breslev Store.)
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