I will never forget one time when I was at a Byron Katie event, I can’t remember which, and I raised my hand.
“Katie, I am doing The Work on the same person over and over again. I’ve done The Work so many times on this person, and I’m still very angry. I wish I wasn’t angry!”
Katie replied “How do you know you’re supposed to be angry, Grace? You are!”
We may have spoken a bit longer, those conversations with microphones and hundreds of people watching and listening make me blank out a little (sometimes). It’s a bit…public.
But that comment from Katie was so incredibly powerful for me, because in it I recognized what a ginormous goal I had of making myself “not angry”.
Anger, in my opinion, was bad. Anger caused suffering, it caused other people to harm themselves or hit others, it started wars, it caused tension, heart-attacks, violence. It made people break things.
Anger had to be controlled and squelched. Otherwise…..very bad things could happen.
And I was angry. So I had to “work” on my anger until I was a nice person.
If I had stayed in that framework towards anger, I would still be working on it and hating it, and wishing I didn’t have it inside of me. I would still be afraid of people who seemed angry.
Well, loud shouting or screaming, throwing something, rage…that is all still alarming. They are BIG expressions. But I’m not so scared now that I’ve done the work on anger.
I had many thoughts about anger. I felt so upset about anger that when I even had one tiny little speck of a sensation of anger, something in me got scared.
I even realized that in my twenties, when I suffered so terribly from bulimic binge-eating and vomiting, I was filled with rage. I was livid.
And I was determined to smash my anger to the ground and push it down, like holding my hands over the geysers at Yellowstone National Park. It took a lot of work and a lot of running around, just to keep the geysers from spouting.
Of course, they spouted anyway, and then I would feel horribly guilty and filled with self-hate.
But back at that time that I recognized all the anger inside me and how I was judging it, I went to work doing The Work. It was like a lightbulb went off, and it was time to let anger be free to exist, without my condemnation of it.
“Something terrible will happen if I or anyone else is angry”….is that true?
No. Not at all.
There is an energy that is rising up to say NO. There is passion, creativity, determination.
Marshall Rosenberg created non-violent communication, out of his great desire to express anger clearly and cleanly, with respect.
Anger brings on clarity, laser energy, awareness, brilliance, sharp thinking.
Who would I be without the thought that what I am feeling, this energy I am calling “anger,” should be obliterated rather than expressed? Who would I be without the thought that something terrible will happen if I express anger?
What if something wonderful could happen!?
I turned the thought around and began to find examples of amazing expressions of anger, and how wonderful things happened out of these expressions.
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Aretha Franklin.
And I knew, as a turnaround example for myself, that it was wonderful to be angry with respect to that very person I kept feeling angry about, because my anger was a message that I was believing a bunch of conflicting thoughts that were not true.
I did not need that person to be close with me, I did not have to push myself to like everything about that person, I did not “have” to do anything towards that person I did not feel comfortable doing.
I could have preferences, like allowing myself the same basic respect to eat if hungry and NOT eat if NOT hungry!
I could say yes or no, and attend to the inner answer at the center of myself.
Doing The Work does not always result in peace, flowers, dancing and love songs.
Sometimes the truth is that under the first level of concepts about that awful person you’re doing The Work on, there lies fear about what might happen next.
If I really question this person’s presence in my life, they will leave and I’ll be alone. But I don’t want to be alone, so I will attack that person with my anger and not question my terrifying beliefs about being alone.
Anger is one of the greatest gifts I have ever experienced. An arrow of zinging power that says “hear me now!” Warrior energy. And it is part of reality. I loved discovering that!
The funny thing is, once I didn’t judge my own anger so harshly, and then questioned all my beliefs about that person…I could allow them to be who they were, and I didn’t have to ever talk with them again.
I think of that person now, who I haven’t seen in years, and smile so widely. I absolutely love what I learned in being connected back then. What grand, broad, sweeping learning. Smacking down the walls, breaking apart the beliefs I had about how people are supposed to behave.
Dissolving my angst, rage, and urge to attack what was “out there” (a person).
Dissolving my need to feel division with anyone.
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”~Eckhart Tolle
Let yourself be as angry as you are, and write it all on paper. Now you have your work, your amazing personal project that anger is helping you understand….and as you look, the anger will not be necessary anymore.
“Trust your struggle.” ~ Adyashanti
Love, Grace
Learn About All Teleclasses Here
Click here to register for the Pain, Sickness and Death Class!
- Earning Money: What’s Your Problem? Questioning Your Beliefs About Money, Work and Business. Mondays, February 4-April 1, 2013, 7:30 – 9:00 am Pacific time. 8 weeks $395. No class March 4th.
- Pain, Sickness and Death: Making Friends With The Worst That Happens In Life. Thursdays, March 7 – April 11, 2013. 6:15 – 7:45 pm. 6 weeks $295.
- Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven: Working With Painful Hate, Anger, Fury, Despair, Grief, or Disappointment With Someone You Know; Spouse, Mother, Sibling, Father, Daughter, Son, Boss, Neighbor, Friend. Fridays, March 29-May 17, 2013 8:00 am – 9:30 am Pacific time. 8 weeks $395.