Can a book help?

Dear quietvoice, I'm not sure if you were asking me or Leo for an interpretation but I decided to take a crack at it and see if I can make myself helpful.

Let me see if I can do justice to that paragraph that you quoted by offering my interpretation of it. First of all I'm really happy that you were open and curious enough to research the author even though you didn't previously know him.. that kind of flexibility on your part makes you the best kind of Seeker out there.

Now let's say that you feel anger at a co-worker.. The thought arises I want to kill him. That's the first appearance of anger. However because a part of you does not like you to feel angry it will come up with an explanation or rationalization for it: A sign that you are resisting this emotion. Depending on your unique personality you may feel a Pang of guilt "I shouldn't think like that.. It's not good for me and thinking about him this way may cause me to blow up at him next time I see him." There was another opportunity to feel an emotion namely guilt.. But our typical reaction to the emotion of guilt is to resist it again with more rationalization and justifications .. Next may come the thought "Well, if people weren't such jerks I wouldn't have to feel so angry.." there's an emotion of disappointment that again could have been felt and therefore released but the loop continues on and on.

The approach more or less that the author is talking about here that at the very first sign of anger.. The first angry thought that arose if you were able to say.. Man I am feeling a lot of anger right now my heartbeat is really fast... My hands are shaking my palms are sweaty..hmm.. can I just tolerate this emotion for a second without having to change it or repress it? Really sit with thus emotion for a couple minutes. You would realize that it's not absolutely essential to go into a spiral of thoughts but rather could just acknowledge it as an angry thought that arose and does not need to be followed up with additional resistance. Sooner or later extreme emotions and the thoughts that accompany them become more powerless because you took the time to see that they did not represent the absolute truth but just one perspective and just because it's okay for them to exist doesn't mean we need to act upon it..

Let me know if that made sense or if you need clarification.