The emotions were spawned by a Youtube clip of monks. As I watched them describe their life within the monastery, and attribute their union with God to their monastic silence, I felt they were being a bit "coy". When I realized this, I took a soul-check and saw that I still have a little anger toward the established monastic communities for their lack of understanding of me years ago. And as I thought about this, I became amazed that there is still, after all of these years, a vestige of anger inside of me.
That brought to mind a scripture passage about Jesus telling his disciples to "shake the dust from your sandals" (Mt 10:14) whenever they were in a house that would not accept them. Perhaps Jesus was not telling them to do so in contempt or disgust (as I always assumed) or even in some sense of righteousness. Maybe Jesus told his disciples this because he was trying to tell them, rejection is hard, and the results (anger) will cling to you like dust. You cannot just walk it off. You have to take off your sandals and shake them, which could mean to imply becoming humble before your own soul, and then consciously letting go (though shaking seems to imply more than just letting go...more like "struggle").
Yes, I think anger is like dust that clings. It certainly can obscure vision. Like sand it can irritate, and like sand it can creep into everything.
And so, again, I take off my sandals and shake off the dust. I will probably have to do so many times before I am free.
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