The concept of anger feels like willpower to me, I’m often unsure of its point. I kind of lean towards destiny and peace as prevailing forces of truth and get stuck on feeling the purpose of anger and willpower; I suppose because both states have brought a huge amount pain and suffering to me and society at large.
Anger does have a purpose though. It’s meant to show you what’s not okay, where you have lost choice, given your power away, et cetera. It can help you to move your energy in a new direction. As someone with a lot of anger, I can tell you it’s hard to know what’s old anger, what’s old unprocessed anger, and what’s anger asking for new expression.
I must admit I do love anger as a state. It makes me feel energy and power. I feel motivation to make change. I feel my worth, unlike its underbelly of grief that renders me powerless in pain and loss.
A lot of people write that anger is a form of grief dressed up, that under every angry gesture and feeling there is a huge well of hurt, sorrow and pain. And though I tend to agree and have experienced the truth of this many times. This is usually because I am not recognising my anger and its amazing resources when it arrives. So, the constant diving below anger into the grief has started to feel like a form of spiritual bypassing.
And I don’t say this light-heartedly, as I do believe that we must really know ourselves to know that they’re not bypassing with anger. I work a lot with the element of fire in my practice and I talk on the shadow of anger frequently in my spaces.
Just like a person can get stuck in grief, so can one get stuck in anger. You know those archetypal people who just seem to wear anger as their personality? And gosh, isn’t that a fear of mine? Having been in the presence of anger and rage as a child, I have a huge fear of its destructive qualities. And the last thing I want to be is the scary person. Yet when someone or something crosses a boundary, or a not yet discovered boundary in me, my claws shoot out, my scales prickle, and the heat surges in my chest.
I can deeply relate to the dragon, phoenix, and jaguar. All as totem guides, and I pray/work with these energies regularly. I even created a course named, The Phoenix from the Ashes. So, this journey to understand and work with anger is a life’s work.
There has been so much shame in admitting I’m not done. It’s still work in progress. On a physical level, I’ve developed skin rashes and digestive issues because of too much heat in my system. I have burnt out many times in the past and my need for release has led to many an apology. I seek deep understanding of my process. I spend many an hour in deep contemplation of my behaviour. It takes me on crazy journeys into the memories of my ancestors and collective history. I crave to understand the distortion of anger on our planet and in our beings.
I feel the echoes of division, betrayal, exile. And recently I have been exploring the perpetrator within, allowing myself to understand and relate to the least favourable aspects of humanity: the bully, the dictator, the narcissist, the pervert, the manipulator, et cetera. Which, by the way, live in all of us. Anger has such a large role to play in society at large and understanding how it works within each of us is a gateway to begin to heal and realise that to seize anger without distortion can be: protection, fear, embodied power, sexual passion, motivation, and choice.
It can carry a flame of truth and love within it which has its rightful place. Anger can be the flame in the dark. Its heat can burn us if we do not respect its power. It has its own rules its limitations. By working with anger, we begin to work with our inner fire. We are ignited, and from there we can begin our initiations to tend to the fire, to become fire keepers, to learn how to harness its power to keep us warm, safe, and provided for. Anger is not bad, and it isn’t always just a defence to our pain. Anger can be showing us what’s not okay, how to act and set a boundary.
Again, there is not a formula for truth. The distortion around anger is so vast due to our inability to process the vast amounts of trauma we each carry. Whether from this lifetime, another lifetime, our ancestral line, DNA, or from the effects of just being born and living in this society, we have a lot to be angry about. And yet, if we use our anger as a tool to project dissatisfaction out into the world, it will only lead to more destruction and a repetition of the original trigger to anger we experienced.
So today, I call my guides. I ask for guidance on my anger. Today, I feel my needs are not being met and this causes me to feel angry. As I sit here, I feel a simple solution arising from my inner fury. I need to burn some of this anger off. I need to move my body more. I need to process while in momentum enough. Instead of sitting still with tea, it’s time to move some energy. And I realize what I am afraid of is my capacity to destroy all that I love, but that’s not true. What is true is my power to truly make a difference.
I accept my anger as my teacher, my ally, and my consort. I rise like the Phoenix with laser vision on what needs to be done. I don’t have the answer or the completion of the process that I’m in with my anger, but I know that’s my next step. And that’s what anger can do. It can cause me to take another step, to carve a new path, to forge something new in the fire.
Today, I feel deep respect for my process. I wish you all blessings on your journey to bring your anger to the light; to talk about it, share it with others, and not see it as something wrong. We can each individually go on a journey of healing the distortions of anger, right sizing it as the amazing medicine it can be. For those of you who want to work in a deeper understanding of your anger, I recommend my four-month container Phoenix from the Ashes.
I have one space left starting in September. And P-S-I have just painted my bedroom deep red. So, I’m welcoming in the full spectrum to be lived, loved, and right sized.
Blessings,
Annabelle.