Last Updated on August 5, 2015
[Blogged in May 2005]
Anger is a powerful force.
I used to claim that I didn’t tend to ever feel angry. Then later down the track I discovered that this force would arise within my world more often than I’d allowed myself to admit—or, more accurately, to truly feel and embrace. I discovered that what I sometime felt as depression and melancholy was in fact the introversion of anger that I neither wanted to feel nor to express nor to take action on. This discovery prompted me to explore this force and it’s role and purpose within my inferiority. I started to ask myself some pertinent questions about anger:
- What is anger?
- Where does it come from?
- What message does it bring to me?
- Why does it arise?
- Why does it have such an effect on me when I suppress it?
I’ve discovered a few things about this force we call anger. These things I will consolidate and share here with you now.
I have found that within the human mythology (our Collective Dream) anger is the messenger or force of change. Anger is very often that force that screams out “Something about this situation has to change… and change now!!“. Yet change is innate to all things. Change is unavoidable. It is taking place in every moment. It is an innate quality of life. So why then would a messenger of change be necessary?
If change is a simple fact of life, it just happens, right? Wrong.
As a human I can choose—consciously and, more commonly, unconsciously—not to change. I can resist and go into opposition against the forces of change. I can attach and fixate onto things and circumstances remaining as they are. I can try to hold on to a certain belief, attitude, emotional pattern, mental thought-form or construct, etcetera. Why would I do that? Fear.
Therefore, very often, fear and anger go hand in hand. Harbouring fear results in a me taking certain actions (even if that action is a form of non-action). The re-action is Anger. As I said, anger is the messenger of CHANGE—when change is being resisted through fear anger will arise. Now, some time ago at an MKP meeting, I had a few insights into what—for a man— we are very often being asked to change. Within the male archetype of the human collective story, there is this construct / programme / thought-form that says men are not to feel. Feelings present a man with the formidable force of the Infinite Unknown. Because man, in his current collective state, does not know nor remember what it means to be a masculine presence in this world he tries to avoid the Unknown. Man does in fact have a role to play in this regard—that of mapping out the Unknown and bringing it into the tangible realm of the Known. This is Creativity in motion. Some men resist their feelings vigilantly for they are resisting the Unknown. They are resisting their function in the Dream, because they have forgotten their nature and hence can’t live up to it.
What I observed during a meeting with a man exploring anger was that, in my experience, this man’s life-long battle with anger actually came back to resisting his own feelings. I think that by exploring this much will be revealed. Now I can relate this same thing to a period in my life—relatively recently (2004)—where I really experienced full-blown anger for the first time. I shall use that to elaborate on the insight that came in watching this man. This resistance to my own feelings may play out as not loving and respecting my feelings and my emotions. The emotions I might ignore may be about some basic perceived needs that aren’t being met (if I am still identified with my persona); they may be my reaction to my boundaries not being respected; or whatever the case may be. They might also be the feelings that manifest from inspiration and intuition. These are the feelings that come through to move me through the Dream in a way that is Life-giving and congruent with my Purpose and the Intention the drives that Purpose.
Of course all that is just part of my story, but there it is—it’s playing out and I’m participating. As I write this I can see that there are many layers at play, and I will do my best to peel each one back.
Here’s a hypothetical situation to consider:
1) I get home from work and my partner starts ranting and raving at me. I already feel at my wits end after driving in traffic for a few hours, proceeded by a shit of a day at work. My feeling and my emotional state in that moment is “I don’t need this right now. I am not energetically/emotionally in a position to help my partner out with this. In fact I don’t even have the energy to listen to this and hear her out. This doesn’t feel good.” Now, I could express that in a loving and honest way. That would be a clean way to go about it. If I remain in my integrity then that is what I will do. But remaining in my integrity means that I have a basic level of love and respect for my Self and who I am. Without that respect and love of self it’s bloody hard to remain in integrity with myself—because I am already constantly out of integrity with myself if I don’t have that basic fundamental level of love and respect there.
So, in the absence of this basic love and respect, I squash these feelings and emotions down. I might even feel (assume) that my partner will reject me if I don’t give her my full attention and listen to what she has to say. I might feel (assume) that she will reject me if I express that I don’t feel like I have the energy to be there for her and I wish to go for a walk. That rejection that I assume I might get from her is in fact a projection of me rejecting myself. I have already rejected my own feelings/emotions or Truth in that moment and the shadow side of my ego-mind has projected it out onto the role my partner is playing in my Dream in that moment.
These emotions that arose in me—it’s energy in motion. Motion is about change of state. So my energy was changing state, it was moving. I’ve jumped on it and suppressed it. Where does that energy go? Well, let’s imagine a river. If I dam up a river the the water starts to build up. Eventually a large lake of water—repressed or held back energy / life-force—builds up. If the dam remains in place—during the course of many years in my life—then during the next down-pour of rain (the next surge of emotion / life-force) the river might burst its bank or the dam might rupture or overflow. When the river bursts its banks and a huge flood of water gushes out, well that’s anger. That’s the river of water saying “This is enough. This situation has to change. This fucking dam is killing me and my flow. I can’t flow when things are like this!“
Bringing this metaphor back to a human example. All this life force—which has been trying to express itself as energy in motion or e-motion—has built up due to my fear damming it up. Then when the next surge of energy comes through—perhaps as my emotions arise when faced with the drama of my partners story at a time when I don’t feel like being there for her (because I need to be there for myself in that moment)—then this is like the next downpour of rain. The river swells and something has to burst.
BAM! — I’m in an outrage and God help any poor bastard who gets in my way !!
This anger is not “bad”. Nor is it “good”. It is life-taking. Yes. But then again, if it is turned around—if I apply my awareness to hearing the powerful message it has come to share with me—it becomes life-giving and powerfully transformational. The other key here—a secret to many of us—is that the power of this anger is indicative of a persons capacity to love and be kind and gentle.
2) The next level. In the example above I had fear. I was afraid of how my partner might respond to my expressing my needs in that moment and stating how I felt and what I wanted to do.
Why would I make that sort of choice? Why would I choose to not honour myself? Why would I be living a life that involves me going through a whole day getting more and more stressed out to the point where I get home and can’t be a loving presence for my beloved? Why have a created a life where every day I am coming home to a partner that does nothing but project her drama onto me and throw abuse and criticism at me? Why do I put up with that? Is that what I wish to have in my world? It that something that brings greater joy into my life? Is that something my partner—someone I love—wants in her world?
I would say (again) that this hypothetical scenario has arisen due to a lack of self-love and self-respect—which results in my denying how I feel and the emotions that move through me. I don’t feel good in this life-scenario yet I squash that feeling away. Perhaps I carry around the belief that I must be there for people no matter what, or that I must put other people first. Perhaps I have some sort of ungrounded New Age belief in unconditional love and have in fact placed on myself all sorts of conditions in order to appear unconditional. Perhaps I saw my father beating my mother most weeks when I was a child, and eventually leave her and the family to settle elsewhere. I then saw what I thought (as a child) was my mothers pain around that story and made a choice at that time “not to do that same thing“; and the repetition of that choice has resulted in me taking on a saviour complex with women who play out the story of being a victim to life and to men.
I then draw these sorts of women into my world, feel deeply attracted to them, and then their victim story comes to the forefront and up comes my saviour story and I get to fulfil my belief that I must rescue needy women, and they get to fulfil their belief that a man doesn’t really love them if he doesn’t get angry and abusive (because that’s how their father—their first “loving” male role model—treated them. Are you with me on this? I hope so.
So the deeper element in this is that the whole thing is playing out for a reason. On one level I am not honouring the feelings that arise when faced with the drama of my life. On another level I perceive that I have needs and that these needs are not being met and I don’t honour those needs. On another level I am not honouring my self and staying in integrity with myself because of whatever belief patterns I am carrying around. On yet another level I am forgetting my Divinity and That which I AM. That which I AM has no needs, except one. That one need is to simply have a mirror. So all the other needs I felt I had (in the levels detailed above) are in fact the result of my forgetting who and what I am. My partner is providing me with the mirror that I require.
What a blessing. What a gift.
My reactions within the human story are providing me with the mirror. Another blessing.
My feelings that I perceive within me are providing me with the mirror. These blessings keep on rolling in.
My life story of drawing certain types of emotionally needy “I am a victim” type people into my world is also the mirror. But so long as I continue to approach all of this in a state of unconsciousness—completely asleep to it all—I am just sleep walking. In that state I will continue to bang my head against things, stumble over the furniture, walk off cliffs, and lash out in anger when I suppress who and what I am due to fearing whatever I think the consequence might be if I do otherwise
I said at the beginning of this article that anger is the messenger of change, and that which sheds light upon previously hidden fear. What I have endeavoured to show is that the only thing that ever needs to change is MY RELATIONSHIP TO MYSELF and the actions and choices that consistently result from a false or life-taking relationship to self.
In part two of this article I will explore the fallacy of “anger management”, the nature of confusion, and the dance of the chakras in relation to anger and repression of Self.
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