When we feel a feeling, where does it come from? Whether it is love or anger, joy or guilt, we often look outwards for the benefactor or perpetrator of our own inner sensations. It is so much easier to say, “you made me angry” instead of “I feel angry.” It is so much easier to attribute love to another instead of love within ourselves. Spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, shares that when we say we are “in love”, we are really touching that place inside of us that “is love”. The other person is just a conduit to this feeling. This applies to every emotion whether painful or joyful.

Consider this for a moment: can someone else transmit a feeling to you? All feelings are your own. They might be triggered by another, but that trigger only reflects what lays dormant within. If someone were to say to you, “you are a purple pineapple”, this would likely not trigger any significant sensation within you. You have no emotional connection with this statement. However, if someone were to say, “you are not good enough”, what feelings might arise? Depending on the context, one might feel anger, shame, grief, or a slew of other intense emotions.

What is the difference between the two statements? The former has no emotional impact because it does not resonate with anything within your psyche. It is nonsensical. The latter, on the other hand, might touch a place inside you that holds self-doubt. There is a place in each of us where we may feel incompetent, unworthy, or doubtful. This place might be hidden underneath layers of pride, identity, and safeguards… but it is there. We know it is there because our anger or grief would not be triggered otherwise.

We can only feel something so long as it exists within us. We feel an emotion to the degree in which a statement or action resonates with the energy within us. We feel love more intensely when we feel greater self-love. We feel anger more intensely when we feel greater anger towards ourselves.

Ponder a moment where you were angry at someone. Maybe it is from a lie or betrayal; maybe an unfulfilled promise or theft; maybe a judgment or an accusation. In the privacy of your own heart, when you close your eyes and meditate inwards, what part of you is prodded by the actions of this perpetrator? Is there some morsel of truth to their statements? Is there some underlying pain of yours that was reflected in their eyes? Perhaps you said “yes” when you could have said “no”.

Anger outwards comes from anger inwards. In this way, anger is a wise teacher because it affords us the opportunity to examine what part of us is triggered. We can learn to be more steadfast, integrous, expressive, discerning, compassionate, and loving. We can learn to be our word, to stay true to our moral values, to direct our energy to pursue our intuition: the voice of our Inner Truth.

Every person is a mirror for us. We are a mirror for everyone else. In one of Ram Dass’s meditations, he says, “Don’t pray at the gates. Go into the inner temple.” By allowing ourselves the grace to be with ourselves, to take ownership of our experience of reality, we can penetrate into the cracks of ourselves that love has yet to fill.