I have been feeling pretty shitty lately. It's been coming on slow and steady for a little while. I hadn't noticed it, but I was starting to get dull. Like the Selkie who lost her skin and began to fade from grief and longing for her home beneath the waves, an emotional grey has been finding its way into my Being. In my session with my mentor this morning, we dug into that.
What we discovered was not the sadness that I expected. We discovered serious rage.
At first when it began to well up I couldn't even look at her (my mentor). I was looking down, swirling a stone on the table, and saying quietly "I'm so fucking angry" while tears began to gather in my eyes. She insisted that I look at her and let it happen. I was so blocked I could barely breathe. She kept insisting. "Stay with it, look at me, let me receive it!" she was holding my eyes as they went everywhere but her eyes, and then when I finally landed in her eyes, I exploded. I began to yell. I almost smashed my teacup on the table and I did pound my fists on the table as I snarled and swore and cursed God and howled with absolute fury.
Heat. Fire. So much energy. Life rushing through my veins like a raging river through the cataract of its canyon home.
I had begun the session slumped over, curled up around an exhausted pain in my body, irritable and flippant, denying myself and resisting the edge of despair behind the grief that wanted to take the anger over before it ever got through my system or out of my mouth. When I was done with that expression of sacred rage, I was sitting straight upwards, seething with power, and my eyes were clear in a way I hadn't realized had gone to grey in the past few weeks.
I had let my own power loose in my Being.
Anger is power. Anger tempered with love and maturity is a profound power indeed. How to temper anger with love and maturity is a deep exploration.
Anger is the most taboo emotion for a woman to express. This is not contained to the mainstream: this taboo is deeply rooted in all the "alternative" and "conscious" communities I have ever contacted or moved through. They abhor anger altogether, and especially in women - "unevolved," they sneer. Conversely, in mainstream society it is the only emotion that men are allowed to feel, while in alternative societies, it is also frowned upon and judged as "coarse".
Bullshit on all fronts. Everyone feels anger: anger is natural and important. Violence and anger are not synonymous, though they become gang members when a healthy relationship with anger is not cultivated. Imagine how it would be to be taught how to manage and integrate our anger so that we can utilize its guidance and its power: we could have all of that power at our fingertips in the most profound and creative way. Instead we are taught to deny and reject it, turning it from a powerful ally into a dangerous monster.
The roots of this taboo against anger have everything to do with control.
Suppressing anger in women has supported the devastation and enslavement of women and the Earth by the patriarchal social system. Encouraging anger in men has turned them into the defacto perpetuators of that system, a system which is fundamentally devastating to all life of all kinds, across the board no matter what (even the lives that seemingly "benefit" from the system). People who have been trained to feel socially endangered by feeling or expressing anger are not likely to stand up to various levels of injustice - from the personal to the global - for fear of seeming unattractive, un-evolved, overwhelming, out of line, etcetera. They may talk about their anger, but they won't act on it, because they have been trained to perceive it as a lesser trait, one to be controlled and suppressed, not one to listen to. People who are taught to have a completely unintegrated relationship with anger are wont to express anger in purely destructive ways, equally useless and self-defeating.
Tidy for the lecherous warmongers and the makers of society who profit from our division from each other and compliance with the dominant paradigm. Tidy as well for the predators and miscreants in "alternative" circles who want to spiritually white-wash their way out of accountability for their transgressions. Very tidy indeed.
Thusly, it seems to me that reclaiming the validity of anger and cultivating an integrated relationship with anger - one that is rooted in self-awareness, responsibility, and tempered by love - is a critical piece of rooting into Soul to embody our essential nature and the scope of our power in this life and in these critical times.
It seems to me that learning to speak Red with love, grace, self-posession, and power is a critical step in our path to maturity as a species.
Anger is a gatekeeper around what we value. Anger arises when boundaries have been transgressed, when what we love, value, and care about has been violated. If we vilify and exile anger, we disempower the part of us that responds to the violation of our sacred being and the devastation of our lives and world with appropriate resistance: we sever that most important signal from ever landing where it needs to and inspiring us to respond as we genuinely need to to the violations, affronts, and dangers that are epidemic in modern daily life and the industrial growth model of civilization.
Anger is also pure passion, it is fire. When we have an integrated and grounded relationship with anger in ourselves, then we have access to its power as a guiding and creative force in our lives. That is an aspect of sovereignty, and runs counter to the agenda of the status quo/dominant paradigm.
When we lack a healthy relationship with anger, it turns against us when it arises, and we tend direct violence towards ourselves and/or to lash out at that which is within our scope of influence. It may also collapse into grief, the power of it washing away on a tide of tears that leaves us spent and exhausted, though not necessarily cleaned out. Makes us much easier to manage by the status quo/dominant paradigm.
So let's make it a point to reclaim the validity and sacredness of our anger and rage. Let's dissolve that taboo. Let's separate anger from grief so that we have access to the power in it. Let's learn to hold it in ourselves with wisdom and maturity, and let's learn to hold it amongst ourselves with wisdom and compassion.
How do we do this?
The answer to that question is a deep exploration. I am going to plan a masterclass for beginning that exploration in sacred space. Stay tuned for that invite.
All blessings to you and the sacred rage in your heart.
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