In both cases, the angry loop is physical wiring in my brain that initiates itself independent of my will, and it’ll run, like a default habit, until I become aware of it.  To stop it, I must see it, laugh at it and say: “There you go again.”  I must do this, or else I become that person who lets the angry loop run unchecked for too long, and who now lives in a black pit where angels fear to tread.  I imagine a brain that’s one massive neuronal loop whose angry voice drowns out all other thinking.

 

I am mind and matter inseparable, and anger is both inseparable.  If you looked at my brain when I’m angry, you’d see hormones firing and neurons lighting up, and that’s the bodily aspect of my anger.  At the same time, I’d tell you my reason for being angry, which reason is the immaterial and spiritual aspect of my anger.  Anger always has a reason why.

 

Take hypocrisy for example.  I feel angry at the person who gets on his high horse to preach one thing but does the opposite.  Why am I angry? because I believe that the hypocrite isn’t true and he thinks he’s better than me.  I believe, and so my heartbeat rises and my teeth grind.     

 

We believe that people are supposed to act a certain way (act right), and we get angry when they don’t.  Anger is a physical response to a meaning proposition: this isn’t right!  The hypocrite should (but fails to) honor our common standard of justice and fairness, which Aquinas defined as giving to each his due.  Justice and fairness are about harmony and order, maintaining balance in social affairs so that everyone gets his proper due.  When the hypocrite lies, he puts his due over mine, saying that the rules apply to me not to him.  Anger always has a reason why, and in this case the reason is justice. 

 

Justice is an abstract concept that I feel in my body.  I see hypocrisy and I get mad: immaterial idea initiates neural connections and hormonal firings in my brain.  So how do I control these bodily reactions?  Well, if it’s idea that initiates and maintains the corporeal reaction, then it must be idea that defeats it.  Mind controls matter. 

 

For sure, it took decades of mindlessness for anger to carve this neuronal loop, this riverbed, in my brain.  I let the horses of anger run too long.  I recognize this fact, and now I have work to do, because it’ll take years of purposeful thinking to carve out a new and more positive track for the flow of mental energy.  In brief, I’ve physically wired a lesser self into my brain, the It part of me, and now I need years of mindful thinking and action to rewire me to a higher self, to Thou.

 

Thou is the key.  When I see the higher meaning of Thou, I repurpose the corporeal matter of my brain.  I put those neurons to better use.  For example, the best way to deal with anger at a person is to listen to him and try to understand.  Go to that person and have a conversation, or read his writings with an open mind.  When I understand that person from his perspective, he won’t feel so terrible or so threatening: he’ll feel like me because I’m a hypocrite too.  The next time he preaches at me, I’ll understand him, and this understanding will short-circuit my angry loop and begin construction of a more positive neural loop.  Or for another example, regarding the negative marital loop I mentioned earlier, I can remind myself that my wife and our marriage are more important than my angry loop.  My hard heart softens!