Rage of Eden

At the 2011 Heaven & Earth workshop in Israel, the old issue of anger came up. In facing the external world, anger means it is time to put a border. It is an instinct and an energy, neither good nor bad. To accept responsibility for our anger - to begin to be able to contain it - is to move into a new stage of development.

After years of work in inner growth, it seems the anger issue never really dies down. Moving as it does in a spiral, our life-time processes will lead us to revisit that old friend called anger again and again, with ever increasing refinement.

Anger has many forms. The classic outburst of screaming rage is just the stereotype. Anger can manifest as jealousy, self-hatred, numbness, silence, sneaky negativity or even depression. Its free movement is vital to vitality itself. In its pure form, It is the manifestation of basic creativity energy - that creates by dividing the waters above from the waters below; the man from the woman and one cell from another. It is the rage of expulsion from Eden - or a state of unity and bliss. As such, it is deeply connected to freedom - the freedom to eat from which ever fruit we feel like, and the freedom to determine our own attitudes.

Because of its connection to freedom, responsibility is a key factor in approaching anger. Anger can be triggered, but it is never “caused” by something from the outside. Our anger - at core,- is never “because of”. It is an integral part of our life-force.

If our anger is “because of” (our parents, our spouse, our financial state, our damaged psychology) we would have to scour every corner of the external world in an attempt to fix everything. Or retreat completely to a cave (where we would surely take our anger with us).

Responsibility as a movement is not heavy. It means that we relieve our belief systems and thought patterns of the “because of”. It means unconditional, loving acceptance of the experience of the energy as it arises from within us. With this kind of responsibility comes freedom. The freedom of the energy to exist opens up our freedom to choose how to respond, and to move in a way that is needed, for as long as is needed.

When we deny anger (because we are so holy), we are actually pushing down an energy that needs to rise from the pelvis, through all fears and into the heart, and outwards or upwards. Our reason for repressing anger is often a social one - anger is “bad”; anger hurts others; anger is unclean; anger will cause us to be rejected.

In our fear of rejection or of not being OK, we jump over the heart and this expansive space of mutual human acceptance and compassion, and flip into the head. There, we start to build reasons for anger, construct stories, set up courtrooms, lawyers, judges... speeches of self justification. Those speeches in turn can trigger our anger still more. We get caught in a loop where the heart begins to close down. There are so many reasons to be angry with the world: to reject life. Does our anger mean make us right? Does it make us wrong? Neither. It just is what it is, for as long as it is.

When we blend with the energy of our own anger, without hooking it onto external cause, we find a refinement of the energy, as energy is all it is. We can also experience an awakening towards the inner attitude we carry towards our anger. Are we angry with our anger? Fearful of it? Is that why we are ashamed, and instinctively try to smother it beyond recognition?

In approaching the energy of anger with love, acceptance and curiosity, we initiate a new kind of movement. Most importantly, the open heart creates a pull of the energy upwards, helping it move through the anger-related anxieties of the solar-plexus area.

We can find that the anger itself is the most curious of old friends - with us perhaps since the universe was created - an old friend, an ally that would create and destroy as part of the magnificent play of the universe. And in polarity, it can bring with it a sea of deep calmness.

The welcome of an open heart helps ease entanglement with the external factors that could have triggered our anger. Through the heart, we can find space for the perspectives of others, and their truth, no matter how distasteful. They can exist, because the heart does not need the “either-or”. The process or state of another person exists. So do we.

To every feeling, emotion or experience there is a purpose.