I believe I have unique insight into anger because I would describe myself as "in relationship regularly" with anger. The energy of anger and I go way back. When I was 10 year's old, I threw all 25 of my 1980's troll dolls at the wall individually in a fit of anger. Last year, I threw a plastic hanger at the wall and put a 2 inch hole in it. In past lives, as I am told in my Akasha, I've had more than one crime of passion due to anger from perceived injustice. And even now, my husband speaks of a look I have in my eyes when I'm angry that's "scary." He doesn't doubt I could physically take down someone double my size if I was called to a duel, and in fact, he refuses to wrestle with me still today, for fun, out of fear I might turn red on him. (Warning: vulnerability moment - these are all true stories).
Luckily for him, the world, and especially me, this life is different, and my embodiment of the path of peace and practice make my anger mutable and malleable. Most importantly, I am awake and fully engaged in accountability for working with this energy. (Edited to add, and for the record, I've never been in a physical fight in this life, and I literally cannot kill a fly.) My anger is not even close to what it was in past lives, not nearly what is was when I was a child, and only familiar to what is was last year. This progress is entirely due to my spiritual practice and to the reality that my soul is now ready to live in the medicine my anger has made, and is still making. I tell you all of this because I want you to hear me when I say, I get it. I get you and your energetic rush of anger that flies up out of nowhere, or creeps up slowly over time that explodes, or comes out sideways, front-ways, back-ways, or passive aggressive ways. I get the anger that's followed by regret, followed by shame, followed by reflection, and so on. I definitely, totally, get it.
Many of you know me as adherent to the living practice of compassion and love; and that's true. But to be clear, I'm not preaching love because I'm escaping anger, afraid of anger, uncomfortable with anger, naive to anger, or missing its value and purpose. I have experienced both the value and destruction of anger. And in those moments when I'm so angry I go for a run in the dark during a thunderstorm, I am entirely aware that love is still the answer AND YET the anger in me also calls for my attention. This article is about the medicine there. And I know the way, if you are inclined to follow.
There's a lot riding on the bus of how we find an expression or resting place in anger: our soul coding, past lifetime injustices, familial environmental influence, karmic ancestral threads, and social events. Anger is the evidence, the path, the location, the through-way towards insights and growth.
Anger is a tool.
Anger is always initially asking you to accept it, and then later asking you to learn from it. When I was a younger social worker working in the victim advocate's unit (VAU) of the state attorney's office I accompanied victims and families of violent crimes to court hearings to face abusers. I learned very quickly what angry people wanted, and it wasn't answers or solutions. They wanted, wait for it...to be heard. Anger is a beautiful tool that shines a light on trauma, worth, boundaries, limits and values that are calling for stage time. Anger is a way to feel into your bold fire energy in your solar plexus that says "that's not okay for me." And it's okay that you're not okay. But just like depression says "I'm sad," and anxiety says "I'm worried," we don't live or inhabit these places permanently even though they have meaning and significance in our lives. If we want to live in a healed way- we accept and honor these feelings as clues to deeper shifts in our lives. They become powerful vehicles for transit. Yet some of us get stuck there. Rumi says "the wound is where the light enters you." Anger isn't excluded in that. It has light to bear, and it's your job to find it.
Anger is a tool.
I also have lots of clients who come to explore spiritual rationales and solutions to their anger and so I also hear a myriad of beliefs and stories about why and how anger is good, bad, necessary, shamed, automatic, uncontrollable and everything else in between. If we can start by acknowledging what beliefs we were taught or modeled about anger, that would help us to become the observer of our thread. Next, we can examine if those beliefs still hold meaning in our lives. Does that process still work for me? There's an ego complexity or shadow-boxing involved with assessing yourself and feeling into change. As humans, we are more likely to fiercely defend our own way of doing things versus consider alternatives. Stretch here, if you dare, and consider these tips.
Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful book poignantly entitled "Anger" with wise Buddhist teachings on coping with anger. He forges the marriage of advocacy with compassion and has a practice for those angry moments in life that goes something like this... "I am noticing anger arise in me, I am doing my best to work with it, can you help me?" To say I've used this a few times would be an underestimation.
Anger as a tool to help you feel into your pain can be powerful. Anger as a tool for accomplishing a push of change, or to bring light to an injustice on any scale can be useful, when done so honestly, respectfully and in mindfulness. Conversely, anger established as an identity, or used as manipulation, can be toxic. It's not a home you live in forever because it will burn itself down from the inside. Which brings me to this...
Anger is not a weapon.
Anger begets anger here. It's no good as an intentional or manipulative tool to achieve outcomes. It's like throwing a bomb at a bomb to try to prevent future bombs. That's not peace, it's just more explosion and destruction. For all those slinging anger at the hate they see are only adding to the fire of hate. Do you feel peace by giving hate? Are you accomplishing what you want? Do those hate-filled people finally say "oh thank you for throwing hate back at me, now I see I should be kind?" Martin Luther King says "Returning hate for hate multiples hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Not to mention the consequences you accrue as a result of carrying around a heavy load such as this. The consequences are many. In my work with clients I observe significant hurt in families as a result of anger, deeper karmic contracts, and an inability to get things done because of a stuckness in the pain and anger. As a result, we begin to manifest heath issues that lodge in the body due to the toxic nature of anger: high blood pressure, heart, liver, colon and intestinal problems are all common physical manifestations as described by clients and reflected in the Akashic Records.
Again, anger is not a weapon.
But what about "if I don't get angry, then I don't get things done..." Don't worry, I have something for you too. Consider Mahatma Ghandi, who walked 239 miles with thousands of people in 1930 in the famous historical event, the Dandi March, to protest the salt tax imposed by the British. He was 67 year's old and organized an unprecedented movement to display peaceful solidarity. Through this act of nonviolent civil disobedience, he initiated a change in law governing the tax. Spiritual, awakened, enlightened, loving people can make a difference in our world by showing up and being seen without violence, anger, force, aggression and disdain. Some may incorrectly assume that love means inaction. Nothing can be further from the truth. Love as the impetus for change, has happened many times in the history of the planet. It can happen again with you.
And so, there is an invitation to embolden your greatest courage to feel right on through your anger and make the most of the light waiting there. Know that you can be a bearer of anger medicine and transform it into action, worth, and value but that you can also let it sail through intentionally as a tool you access to support movement and change. If anger is a force that drives you without your consciousness, then you are ruled by it. Be instead the ruler of your anger and take hold of the medicine. Be also the ruler of this life and take hold of its potential. Know that as I continue to stay the course on my own path, I am rooting for you too.
Blessings.
Learn more about my work in the world here. Read more of my channeled blogs here.
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| Credit: Game of Thrones (HBO) |
Luckily for him, the world, and especially me, this life is different, and my embodiment of the path of peace and practice make my anger mutable and malleable. Most importantly, I am awake and fully engaged in accountability for working with this energy. (Edited to add, and for the record, I've never been in a physical fight in this life, and I literally cannot kill a fly.) My anger is not even close to what it was in past lives, not nearly what is was when I was a child, and only familiar to what is was last year. This progress is entirely due to my spiritual practice and to the reality that my soul is now ready to live in the medicine my anger has made, and is still making. I tell you all of this because I want you to hear me when I say, I get it. I get you and your energetic rush of anger that flies up out of nowhere, or creeps up slowly over time that explodes, or comes out sideways, front-ways, back-ways, or passive aggressive ways. I get the anger that's followed by regret, followed by shame, followed by reflection, and so on. I definitely, totally, get it.
Many of you know me as adherent to the living practice of compassion and love; and that's true. But to be clear, I'm not preaching love because I'm escaping anger, afraid of anger, uncomfortable with anger, naive to anger, or missing its value and purpose. I have experienced both the value and destruction of anger. And in those moments when I'm so angry I go for a run in the dark during a thunderstorm, I am entirely aware that love is still the answer AND YET the anger in me also calls for my attention. This article is about the medicine there. And I know the way, if you are inclined to follow.
There's a lot riding on the bus of how we find an expression or resting place in anger: our soul coding, past lifetime injustices, familial environmental influence, karmic ancestral threads, and social events. Anger is the evidence, the path, the location, the through-way towards insights and growth.
Anger is a tool.
Anger is always initially asking you to accept it, and then later asking you to learn from it. When I was a younger social worker working in the victim advocate's unit (VAU) of the state attorney's office I accompanied victims and families of violent crimes to court hearings to face abusers. I learned very quickly what angry people wanted, and it wasn't answers or solutions. They wanted, wait for it...to be heard. Anger is a beautiful tool that shines a light on trauma, worth, boundaries, limits and values that are calling for stage time. Anger is a way to feel into your bold fire energy in your solar plexus that says "that's not okay for me." And it's okay that you're not okay. But just like depression says "I'm sad," and anxiety says "I'm worried," we don't live or inhabit these places permanently even though they have meaning and significance in our lives. If we want to live in a healed way- we accept and honor these feelings as clues to deeper shifts in our lives. They become powerful vehicles for transit. Yet some of us get stuck there. Rumi says "the wound is where the light enters you." Anger isn't excluded in that. It has light to bear, and it's your job to find it.
Anger is a tool.
I also have lots of clients who come to explore spiritual rationales and solutions to their anger and so I also hear a myriad of beliefs and stories about why and how anger is good, bad, necessary, shamed, automatic, uncontrollable and everything else in between. If we can start by acknowledging what beliefs we were taught or modeled about anger, that would help us to become the observer of our thread. Next, we can examine if those beliefs still hold meaning in our lives. Does that process still work for me? There's an ego complexity or shadow-boxing involved with assessing yourself and feeling into change. As humans, we are more likely to fiercely defend our own way of doing things versus consider alternatives. Stretch here, if you dare, and consider these tips.
Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful book poignantly entitled "Anger" with wise Buddhist teachings on coping with anger. He forges the marriage of advocacy with compassion and has a practice for those angry moments in life that goes something like this... "I am noticing anger arise in me, I am doing my best to work with it, can you help me?" To say I've used this a few times would be an underestimation.
Anger as a tool to help you feel into your pain can be powerful. Anger as a tool for accomplishing a push of change, or to bring light to an injustice on any scale can be useful, when done so honestly, respectfully and in mindfulness. Conversely, anger established as an identity, or used as manipulation, can be toxic. It's not a home you live in forever because it will burn itself down from the inside. Which brings me to this...
Anger is not a weapon.
Anger begets anger here. It's no good as an intentional or manipulative tool to achieve outcomes. It's like throwing a bomb at a bomb to try to prevent future bombs. That's not peace, it's just more explosion and destruction. For all those slinging anger at the hate they see are only adding to the fire of hate. Do you feel peace by giving hate? Are you accomplishing what you want? Do those hate-filled people finally say "oh thank you for throwing hate back at me, now I see I should be kind?" Martin Luther King says "Returning hate for hate multiples hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Not to mention the consequences you accrue as a result of carrying around a heavy load such as this. The consequences are many. In my work with clients I observe significant hurt in families as a result of anger, deeper karmic contracts, and an inability to get things done because of a stuckness in the pain and anger. As a result, we begin to manifest heath issues that lodge in the body due to the toxic nature of anger: high blood pressure, heart, liver, colon and intestinal problems are all common physical manifestations as described by clients and reflected in the Akashic Records.
Again, anger is not a weapon.
But what about "if I don't get angry, then I don't get things done..." Don't worry, I have something for you too. Consider Mahatma Ghandi, who walked 239 miles with thousands of people in 1930 in the famous historical event, the Dandi March, to protest the salt tax imposed by the British. He was 67 year's old and organized an unprecedented movement to display peaceful solidarity. Through this act of nonviolent civil disobedience, he initiated a change in law governing the tax. Spiritual, awakened, enlightened, loving people can make a difference in our world by showing up and being seen without violence, anger, force, aggression and disdain. Some may incorrectly assume that love means inaction. Nothing can be further from the truth. Love as the impetus for change, has happened many times in the history of the planet. It can happen again with you.
And so, there is an invitation to embolden your greatest courage to feel right on through your anger and make the most of the light waiting there. Know that you can be a bearer of anger medicine and transform it into action, worth, and value but that you can also let it sail through intentionally as a tool you access to support movement and change. If anger is a force that drives you without your consciousness, then you are ruled by it. Be instead the ruler of your anger and take hold of the medicine. Be also the ruler of this life and take hold of its potential. Know that as I continue to stay the course on my own path, I am rooting for you too.
Blessings.
Learn more about my work in the world here. Read more of my channeled blogs here.
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