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PeterParticipantHi Anita
You captured my perspective quite well and thanks for linking to past post as I’m glad I’ve been consistent as I try to come to terms with what we are now thinking of as soul anger. The sense of betrayal is definitely part of that.
I found this statement “I am talking about the kind of shaming that does not allow improvement…” difficult to hear/read. I’ve mentioned before that I feel undeserved shame is the orignal sin not disobedience, a theology that I wonder isn’t a sin itself creating the experience of shame and evil you written about.I was writing up the following before you posted.
Contemplating on my experience of anger I recall the following experience.
My Girlfriend had ended the relationship with me and a few weeks later I was laid off. I was upset, depressed and mostly ego angry, the usual stuff one experiences when such things happen. The anger as I recall didn’t have much energy associate with it and for the most part was directed inwards. The saying that “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have” proved true. I had glimpsed a possibility of who I imagined I could be and a life that might have been but would never be. I was mourning the loss and the anger transformed general into depression. A story as old as time.A few months latter I run into my X and saw that she had replaced me and moved on. The moment hit me like a fright train and that night I tossed and turned. I was angry, really angry with no place to direct it. I could not deny the reasons my X gave for needing to move on. Love required the relationship to end. I even had to acknowledge that my past employer had little choice in letting people go as the project we were working on ended. Still, it hurt. Life hurt
At about 2 AM it started to rain, and I got out of bed to look out the window and watch. As I watched I allowed myself to feel my anger and as I did it began to rain harder. I watched as the rain hit the ground and I wanted it to hit harder. I wanted to punish the earth. As I directed may anger into rain, the ran shower became a storm, lightning and thunder, the rain drops becoming noticeable bigger hitting the earth hard enough to bounce. Harder, harder… I became the storm, each individual drop of ran battering the earth, so satisfying… and the earth laughed…
I fell back on the bed exhausted. I don’t know how much time had gone by and can’t recall ever being so exhausted as I was in that moment. The anger spent the storm passed returning to a light drizzle of rain. The earth unharmed and amused, I fell into deep sleep.
The amount of anger turned to rage scared me. I recalled a time I almost struck my brother… when I woke in the morning I reached out to a therapist.
When I think of that night, I wonder if something hadn’t broken, or if something was healed, maybe both. The moment turned out to be a turning point as this was when I “entered the forest where there is no path” to begin my quest. What was it I really believed, was I being true to what I believed, but more importantly what’s Love got to do with it.
PeterParticipantHI Anita
Your post touches on this distinction when you mentioned anger potentially masking “primary emotions” like fear or shame. While I agree that anger can sometimes be a cover for deeper feelings, I wonder if you might be dismissing anger when it isn’t secondary—when it is instead a direct and valid response to something significant.
That is very possible. I don’t feel I’m dismissing anger as a primary emotion but can’t seem to relate to it as such… I can’t recall a personal experience where anger was the primary emotion. For me the primary emotion has been fear and or shame.
When I look into my soul anger its at God (entangled with Parent early on in life?) or put another way, that Life should not be as it is. I can’t say I have a great relationship with Life and realize now how related that is to my soul anger…. a cover up for fear and shame (the original sin?)….
A Christian mystic one said that the reality of each breath, the arsing and return, is that it is a ‘Birth, Betrayal, Death and Resurrection’. I know this as a truth even as I struggle with the betrayal part. Surly a breath should not be associated with a betrayal… perhaps that is the cost of consciousness? (the knowledge of good and evil – duality the temporal playground).
I wonder if this felt sense of betrayal of each breath isn’t the root of all soul anger that we then project towards others, our Parents and that our Parent project back.Sorry going to stop the fall into the rabbit hole. Was going to delete… but no editing. 🙂
I’m concerned that you my feel my response discounts your experience and realization.
I love your realization and how you arrived at it. I am inspired to to explore my soul anger further and maybe get to a place I can say I appreciate you. I do know that it is though such experiences that we grow… but am I grateful for such method of growth… For now a healthy respect is what I can do.I can say that I don’t “think” I get angry for being angry for being angry anymore. Today when I get Angry the energy dissipates as I tap into other sources to engage with life. I can say thank you anger for getting my attention and not carrying me away.
PeterParticipantHi Everyone
When I reflect back I don’t feel anger like I did when I was young – That said I don’t think I can be friends with anger… I do is have what I feel is a healthy respect for it.
“Anger has that peculiar quality of isolation; like sorrow, it cuts one off, and for the time being, at least, all relationship comes to an end…’ – Krishnamurti”-
On the other hand, could anger expressed respectfully— perhaps even with empathy— strengthen relationships instead of breaking them? I feel much of our fear of anger stems from how often it is expressed abusively, both in personal lives and on a global scale?I’ve given this a lot of thought and can’t recall a experience where I have been able to use the energy of anger, which I picture as white or red hot, as not isolating.
You asked if I was shamed for my anger and the answer is yes and no. When I’ve been in a moment of anger were there is hot energy of anger, I’m very much reacting vice responding to the situation and in after almost always regret my actions and felt shame. What I would call deserved shame. If you’re asking if I have ever been shamed for standing up for my self (setting boundaries which others may view as a acting out of anger) yes and what I would call undeserved shame.Seems I’m differentiating between the ‘energy of anger’ and a general notion of anger.
Alessa mentioned that anger may be a secondary emotion which matches my experience. I feel that for relationship to be strengthened by anger its when the energy of anger is dissipated and primary emotion acknowledged. My observation is that it takes time to allow the energy of anger to dissipated before the primary emotion can be felt, acknowledged and addressed. It is indeed a strong relationship with good boundaries that allow for that space vice anger transforming into resentments and isolation.
That’s the thing with anger it always transforming itself into other things. I’ve been watching a show called Family Law. The main character marriage and career unraveling seemingly due to a drinking problem. At the root of the drinking problem is anger at unresolved parental issues. This anger isn’t hot though, its subterranean. The character is complex in that her nature is loving and protective yet many of her interactions are reactions and so often cruel and vengeful only feeding the shame, fear and isolation that may be the primary emotions anger is covered up. She is in AA but has not done the work. (Actually, all the characters, even the therapist, have very little self knowledge and seem incapable of learning anything from their experiences, which keeps the show going. These characters are in serious need of shadow work as they are almost pure projection of their past pain. Unable to see their shadow they keep recreating the issues in their relationships.)
If a relationship becomes stronger after anger, was it anger that was expressed respectfully, or was anger acknowledged, and the primary emotion addressed. I think I’m getting lost in language and the difference doesn’t matter.
One of the online communities I connect with is centered on the notion of Contemplation and Action. Richard Rohr saw that Activists responding to injustice often fell into the trap of “righteous anger” becoming, if dressed up differently, that which they were against. Richard added the notion of Contemplation as a way of creating space to transform the energy of “righteous anger” to the energy of compassion. That one can be fully engaged in addressing injustice (motion, life) while centered in compassion (stillness, silence, love – the Eternal now from which all things arise and return – my interpretation). The idea of being still within motion, silent within the noise to bring us back to, and keep us in relationship.
Thoughts to ponder.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
You have come a long way dealing with the experiences of your past and it.
How has anger played a role in your life?
Anger has been a difficult emotion for me as its energy is so strong that instead of getting our attention it can take our attention. Playing on your thought from a previous discussion that “the damaging emotions are the secondary and tertiary emotions that get in the way of processing and healing from traumatic past experiences.”.
I don’t think we have many good role models for dealing with anger. Most of our cultures stories plots use anger to push the story along. The most common being someone ego/honor/sense of self being confronted. Similarly to your experience I associate anger with abuse and loss of control. A something to fear. Yet anger is also a call to action against cruelty against others and ourselves… I wonder if theirs two kinds of anger that I’m wrestling with here…. The mundane ego experience of anger and that which is of the soul. How the two get all mixed together to confuse things. (Your experience with your mother would be a soul anger)
The question I ask myself is once anger has gotten our attention do we need to hold onto it in order to use its energy to move into action and or protect ourselves? (Why does the Samurai not kill the murderer of his Master/Self) out of anger? – If we use the energy of anger is their a danger we become what we our protecting ourselves from? Today world events show that to be a truth.)
I have been investigating Krishnamurti thoughts on the matter.
“Anger has that peculiar quality of isolation; like sorrow, it cuts one off, and for the time being, at least, all relationship comes to an end. Anger has the temporary strength and vitality of the isolated. There is a strange despair in anger; for isolation is despair.” – KrishnamurtiLooking into my anger… yes their is a fear of isolation, separation, shame, lots of shame… even when I was the victim of others anger and cruelty not deserved. That this fear leaves me feeling angry and depressed. An anger that instead of empowering me to action empowered shame.
Krishnamurti goes on to say “It is the explanation, the verbalization, whether silent or spoken, that sustains anger, that gives it scope and depth. The explanation silent or spoken, acts as a shield against the discovery of ourselves as we are.”
Krishnamurti argues that any labeling create conflict – even the notion of non-violence is violence – so we must examine our labels to see what they may be shielding use from.
This matches my experience as I tend to hold on to anger as a shield and or pretense of bravado. Anything to avoid dealing with the experience directly or looking/feeling week. I need to point out a deference between the first and second half of life where in the former such a avoidance may have been necessary while now in the latter I have more tools to better deal with such things. A bridge to empathy for my younger self?
Krishnamurti notes that the “storing up of anger becomes resentment” suggesting that it isn’t anger were exploring but our resentments and disappointments? That anger or perhaps all emotions aren’t a thing, they are. That our “verbalization” of our emotions should not be confused as emotion?
I notice as I wrote the above that when I have felt angry from a experience where anger was a valid response to the event I became afraid ,ashamed and yes resentful… which “made me” angry…repeat… Krishnamurti notes that the antidote to resentments is forgiveness. Put another way its our verbalization (I am this I am that) that requires forgiveness not the emotion. End the verbalization and I discover the emotion is gone.
I like the idea of forgiveness as a antidote to accumulation, perhaps the accumulation of Karma. By forgiveness I do not mean forgive and forget but the process towards a honest Yes to life as it is.
A final quote from Krishnamurti: “Anger cannot be got rid of by the action of will, for will is part of violence. Will is the outcome of desire, the craving to lie; and desire in its very nature is aggressive, dominant. To suppress anger by the exertion of will is to transfer anger to a different level, giving it a different name; but it is still part of violence. To be free from violence, which is not the cultivation of non-violence, there must be the understanding of desire.”
Something to explore for another day.
PeterParticipantHi Tommy
Just wanted to say I’ve appreciated reading what you had to say and style.
I’ve also wondered about the nature of compassion. To much to little… is it something that can or should be a measurement?PeterParticipantHi Anita
Thank you for sharing that. It was a great example and break down of what I think of as the trap of feeling bad about feeling bad… A kind of infinite loop divided by 0.
You have a gift for bringing such notions down to earth. “I can now see how damaging secondary and tertiary emotions are when it comes to processing and healing from traumatic past experiences”
I suspect that when the Buddha speaks of Maya this trap is one of the ways in which we create it. Seems to be my go-to anyway.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
When it comes to politics, I try to apply the serenity prayer and for the things that are mine to address the idea of contemplation & action. That action arises from and return to a place of compassion.
The challenge is the witnessing the noble truth that we create suffering for ourselves and others. Buddhism and most wisdom traditions address paths towards the cessation of suffering at an individual level with perhaps the possibility that as below so above. That the individual “awakening” might then influence the whole. I know that as a possibility but also a trap that if it becomes an intention or desire itself will create suffering. That I am disappointed that possibility doesn’t manifest as I would like showing its a trap I still fall into.
I feel that the challenge of witnessing isn’t something to fix, its something that is…
In other words, I don’t feel ‘bad’ about feeling ‘bad’ about current happenings. A step forward as that has been an old trap I often fell into – Feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad….I liked your poem
PeterParticipantHi Anita
That is good advice. As a ‘highly sensitive person” I tend to take on the ‘energy of the room’ which over the last few months have been a overwhelming general anxiety and hopelessness – helplessness. Sometimes its difficult to know what is mine and what isn’t.Its been difficult witnessing, even from those even within my own family a crude celebration of… unkindness. Even as I know such measurements creates its own conflict and suffering. A wish that life as it is be other then it is. What is it Kierkegaard said “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I’m feeling better but made a mistake of paying to much attention to the news.Hi Alessa
Nice post – poem. I like the way it moved from “if I could” to doing and noted that in a way you were engaged in the “if I could’s” if not in the ways imagined… it seems in this light their is little you can’t do.PeterParticipantHi Alessa
I appreciate the questions and discussions.
As a young boy I wasn’t great at setting boundaries the end result becoming overly wary of letting anyone close. Such hard boundaries may be reasonable in the moment, but such things can be come permanent if they become “WORM’s” – Write Once Read Many – A type of memory often found in the Kernel of a operating system.
My relationship with accountability isn’t easy to define. I have often taken responsibility that was not mine to take. Yet at the same time avoiding accountability for those choices.
When you asked the question about – accept bad behavior without having to rely on asking for accountability – The question made me uncomfortable (not a bad thing) I wondered if when I do that ism doing so to avoid conflict. Avoidance of conflict can be a valid response but can lead to trouble if its not a fully conscious one – avoiding accountability for that choice.
As you suggest discernment and being self aware are important attributes to the task of being accountable and or holding other accountable and those things take time to develop. Usually some time in the crucible, “when the pain is the strongest” when the pain asks to be ‘accounted’ for.
Something else that surprised me as I pondered the question was that I wasn’t thinking about the big hurts and wounding’s but the small ones. To die of a thousand cuts. That the thefts to the spirit/soul a usually the small thefts, often unnoticed, until you wake up one morning with WORM’s. 🙂
I relate to your realization that its easier to identify with the noise and the pain. One of the reasons Watts refers life as a playground, is that the ego likes to play and it really really likes to measure. Nothing wrong with playing, though as I get older, I’m trying to remember that there is a time to go home (stillness) to rest and refuel, reconnect.
PeterParticipantHi Alessa
There are ways to not accept bad behavior without having to rely on asking for accountability and responsibility from another person.
I was wondering if you could give an example and what ‘accepting bad behavior’ in this context.
To clarify I view accountability and responsibility as important values in the creating of healthy boundaries and healthy boundaries as a kindness and act of compassion to myself and those I interact with.
When I talk of accountability and responsibility I’m not associating it with punishment, or any other such measurement of “justice”. Nor do I assume to apply such values only outwards but inwards as well… I’m using the words in context of the serenity prayer. To address the things I’m responsible to address… and wisdom to know the difference.
I agree that often when we take responsibility and create boundaries others can take them in unintended ways, feel hurt by them, even experience such things as being punished. I would argue that that is their responsibility to work through.
I wonder If I’m sounding cold and robotic?
The scenario of betrayal and theft was also a metaphor. Based on my own experience the wrongs done to me were also a betrayal and theft of something of ‘my spirit’ taken. Asking for the “key” back involved learning and in learning better creating healthy boundaries.
That’s why I’m starting to feel like asking for accountability and responsibility from others is unnecessary
I see I’ve put things badly when I used the words to hold someone accountable and asking for the “key back” may seem aggressive with a focus on the outer vice inner response. When the “key” is reclaimed I’m primarily being accountable and responsible to myself. True as that is happening within relationship with another it is at the same time holding them accountable and responsible…
I can’t think of a story where healing or change doesn’t happen until some form of accountability has taken place….
I find that simply maintaining my own boundaries, treating people with compassion and understanding is helpful.
I like that. My experience has been that compassion and kindness arise naturally from healthy boundaries and that accountability and responsibility as properties of such boundaries. (When I use the words accountability and responsibility I do not hold them rigidity or righteously but lightly. As you noted those words can be troublesome.)
The sun is perceived to rise and set, but reality is that it simply exists. Similarly, love exists as a constant presence independent of our perceptions and experiences
What do the crucible, and the fire represent in this metaphor?The crucible and fire are metaphors/tools within the temporal, dualistic, linear sphere of experience. This is the “playground” of measurement and judgments. Here the “sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening”.
When we wrestle with such notions of accountability, responsible, relationship, boundaries… we are placing such measurements within the crucible and the crucible over the fire with the aim of deeper truth and authentic self (gold). Perhaps the gold involving a realization of the relationship between the temporal and Eternal, that the “sun neither rises or sets”, a change in perception where Love exists as a constant presence from which All things arise and return (unconditional). That such a realization is “the sense of life“.
Sorry; I tend to lean towards the metaphorical which can be confusing. Language as a property of the temporal measuring experience tends to get in the way.
Thoughts to ponder
Stillness is what creates love. Movement is what creates life. To be still and still moving – this is everything. Do Hyun Choe
“Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.” – “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” – Lao Tzu
“Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.” Eckhart Tolle
The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, stillness is eternity, realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal, not moment, but forever – is the sense of life.
Realizing how this moment in your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience — this is the ‘knowing’ experience.- J CampbellThe beauty of that light, like love, is not to be touched, not to be put into a word…
But there it was – in the shade, in the open, in the house, on the window across the way, and in the laughter of those children.
Without that light what you see is of so little importance, for the light is everything; and the light of meditation was on the water. It would be there in the evening again, during the night, and when the sun rose over the trees, making the river golden.
Meditation is that light in the mind which lights the way for action; and without that light there is no love. – KrishnamurtiPeterParticipantThanks Anita. I’ve been in hibernation mode and a little board, breaking my no computer on the weekend. 🙂
PeterParticipantHi Anita and Alessa
Sorry for the mix up I need to pay closer attention.I am feeling a little better Anita but still finding it difficult to concentrate. You summed up my thoughts quite well and put in a way that may be less confusing to anyone following along. 🙂
“The sun is perceived to rise and set, but reality is that it simply exists. Similarly, love exists as a constant presence independent of our perceptions and experiences
I did want to add that there is a time for everything and that I’m coming from these topics well into the second half of life. Someone in the first half of life focus may be more on the filling of the ‘crucible’ then placing it over the fire.
Hope everyone has a good weekend and happy Valentines day.
The heart is the place of union where the luminous consciousness is made. . . . Human existence must reach out to transcend the world of forms that conceal the ultimate reality. This reality lives in the heart and must be set free at whatever cost. . . . Thus to reach one’s heart, to possess oneself of it, means to penetrate into spiritual life. The operation is extremely painful, and that is why the heart is always represented as wounded, and why the drops of blood issuing from it are so significant that they alone are a sufficient symbol for it. The religious imagination reveals the broken heart as the very best means to wisdom and growth, – Laurette Séjourné
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I missed your second post: “I now think-feel-know that every person matters equally, and love transcends exclusivity: loving one person deeply does not diminish the love I can feel for others. Instead, the more people I love deeply, the greater the love each individual receives from me. A paradox perhaps? A move from the Temporal to the Eternal?”
I like that and feel it is so.
Sitting in contemplation of the possibility that Love has no opposite. Like the sun that does not rise or set, Love is, and we are, that. That Life exists at all, and that Life is aware that it is Life, in all its wonders and horrors, is Love. That Life embrace of growth and awareness must also embrace suffering, is Love.
We have been exploring the notion of the Eternal. The Eternal from which all arise and returns. The experience where motion returns to stillness, measuring labeling judging returns to silence and Life in all its messiness, joys and sufferings returns to Love. The Temporal experience in relationship with the Eternal. The Eternal (non-duality) not being a measurement having no opposites suggesting that stillness, silence and Love are also not measurements and so have no opposites.
Can such a contemplation on Love restore the relationship to the word Love. Creating the space to say Yes to Life as it is. I think it can. We aren’t asked or required to Like what we experience nor are we asked or required to fix such experiences. Seeing the experience of the Eternal as Love from which all things, all Life, arise and return. Compassion and self-acceptance naturally arise as a gift to ourselves that we can than ‘love others as ourselves’ as they our ourselves.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
“What do you think holding someone accountable means”?
If someone broke my trust and stole from me: accountability might mean I ask for the key to my house back and end the relationship. I believe this can be done as an act of love that does not need to be fueled by of anger or the rest of the drama we tend to create. Unless it’s what we need in the moment… but are a least a little conscious we’re doing so.
My my experience of karma isn’t about justice or any such measurement but a natural consequence of action. Karma may not feel like love but as the temporal experience of an Eternal realty I think it is.
“To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings—all in the same relationship.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I found that a lot of people mistake unconditional love as having to include unconditional allowing. I view accountability and responsibly an intimately connected to the experience of love. We want what we do and who we are to matter and for something to matter we get to be accountable and responsible. If one loves one will also suffer. Which feels wrong yet Love without suffering would have no ‘wight’, no meaning or purpose.
Jung talked about relationships being the crucible where we discover ourselves as part of the individuation process. Everything we experience is relational whether it is with ourselves, others, nature, or even language. The crucible used in alchemy is where all the stuff and things are added, mixed and boiled. A process to remove the impurities until what is left has been purified (gold). As a psychological process such turning into gold is suffering yet one might argue than that only a wounded heart can be transformed into a pure heart.
It was my thought that because we tend to mistake the ‘map for the territory’, which may explain the tendency towards conditional love, that a healthy relationship to the word Love is needed. It’s also why I suspect Love is of the Eternal non-duality experience. It is in Loves non-duality that it can be unconditional.
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