To: K-list
Recieved: 2000/07/01 13:17
Subject: Re: [K-list] critters, hounds... and anger
From: Ckress
On 2000/07/01 13:17, Ckress posted thus to the K-list:
In a message dated 06/29/2000 9:58:03 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
spikyjaguarATnospamoperamail.com writes:
<< Why don't you both take off the masks and stop performing for us?
Love,
Jag >>
Wim left to be with his dying father a week ago and I've been too busy to
read my email for the past few days. How invigorating to come across a "you
both suck" vote. Can't say I didn't open the door for it, LOL. Never ceases
to amaze me how many people think that ending their post with "Love" or
"Blessings" or some such sweetness and light "I'm a good person" jargon will
cancel out a kick-somebody-in-their-teeth message.
The mark of self-authenticity isn't that everyone will like you. I kept my
"real" persona behind the scenes and mostly presented an edited, relatively
bland and easily digestible El to the public (which means to all but my
closest friends) for much of my life. K has been steadily eroding my masks
for the past 9 years. More and more, I've been showing the world (including
this list) an unapologetic, unmuzzled, self-revealed me. Doesn't mean I'm
perfect. None of us are as individuals.
I used to think I was supposed to be a saint, which to me meant never
expressing anger, being tolerant of anything anyone dished out to me, and
never defending myself (though I could and did intervene for the sake of
others). This distorted notion of saintliness came from a misinterpretation
of sacred literature, plus a reaction to my childhood trauma. I had lumped
together abuse, anger of any sort, and aggressive behavior as signs of
spiritual bankruptcy. K straightened me out on that. I went through an
intensive period of de-programming where in a series of dreams, I was
attacked by vicious entities and confronted by all sorts of antagonistic
characters. Even in my dreams, I'd never before defended myself.
After a few of these dreams, where true to my established pattern, I ran
away, backed down or passively allowed a dream adversary to demolish me, a
bizarre thing happened. My dreams would be interrupted by a spirit-guide
type Voice who would critique what had just happened in the dream, then
inform me that I was no longer to go limp and submit to being anyone's
punching bag. The dreams would then resume, the attacks would recommence,
and I had to learn new responses to anyone who tried to tear me down or hurt
me. It took several months of these nightly drills for me to pass the test
to the Voice's satisfaction. At first, I couldn't overcome my resistance to
inflicting any kind of pain on the dream characters if it was necessary to
ward them off. Even hurting their egos made me flinch inside. But the Voice
kept insisting I had to do it to protect myself.
These dreams began after my spine injury in '93. Among other things, my
collapsed back related to my lifelong refusal to stand up for myself. It was
bodymind symbolism of the toll of taking on some 40 years of undeflected
abuse. Everything in me was saying "Enough!" No more voluntarily colluding
in stick-it-to-El. I also saw that my attempts to be a saint were a kind of
self-deceived inflation, a constant attempt to be better than anyone else I
knew. This was not a real spiritual asset on my part, nor did it convey a
healthy "message" to anyone else. Since then I've become spunkier and
funkier. Nobody will be likely to again mistake me for an angel or a free
and easy dumping ground.
Anger isn't the enemy. My husband lost both his parents last year and has
been cycling through the Kubler-Ross identified stages of grief. For a long
time, he was in a state of shock and sadness. Then he sank into depression
and anger -- deep, life-is-hell, end-the-world-and-stop-the-misery type
anger. Very hard on him and hard on me. Nowadays, this is where
well-intentioned friends and professionals would step in with a cargo of
antidepressants. The grieving process gets aborted, and the final healing
stage of acceptance may never be reached...
Anger is part of the human experience. Getting permanently stuck in
rage-aholic anger creates serious problems for oneself and others. There are
many reasons why this happens. Some people learn that having a hair-trigger
temper and flying into rages gives them power and control over others, who
they can bully into submission. Chronic anger can also be a defense against
fear, grief, or feelings of personal helplessness or worthlessness. In some
cases, there may be a karmic or spiritually purposeful reason for excessive
anger. Anger can be the unrefined energy which later, when disciplined,
fuels the work of the warrior fighting against injustice, cruelty, apathy, or
any stagnant, oppressive force for the benefit of all.
All genuinely expressed emotion is contagious, which is why audiences cry
together in sad movies and shriek together in horror movies. This doesn't
mean that unpleasant emotions invariably keep amplifying and spreading until
everyone infected by them self-destructs. Horia's scenario of anger
spreading like malaria to anyone "who accepts these frequencies into his
aura" sounds much like my old strategy for dealing with other people's
hostilities. I imagined that by not outwardly reacting to verbal attacks, I
was staying clear of the anger. But all that is really being described here
is anger at anger.
Love rejects nothing, including anger. It doesn't armor itself against any
"frequency." And here's the paradox: anger, or anything else accepted by
love, is transformed. The fastest way to make an angry person angrier is to
insist that he/she is wrong to be angry. The fastest way to calm him/her
down is to honestly tell them, "You have a right to be angry." This doesn't
require pouring gasoline into fires of self-righteousness, encouraging
someone to mangle their opponent. It's just our willingness to step back
enough to understand someone else's perspective, even if we don't wholly
agree with it.
It's a different story with power-mongers who use anger to impose their wills
on others. The only thing that can break that addiction is refusing to
submit to it. If you are completely in your heart, your fearlessness is your
refuge. While all around him invading soldiers slaughtered everyone in
sight, a Tibetan monk remained meditating serenely inside his monastery.
When a soldier burst in and found him, the soldier exclaimed, "Don't you know
I can plunge this sword into your belly?" The monk replied, "Don't you know
I can wrap my belly around that sword?"
Since few of us are that detached and centered under stress, we can also say
"No" to power-addict anger through our willingness to fight back, as Lou did
in his childhood when he defied his violent raging father. It's not the
anger that creates havoc, but the clarity of the vehicle through which it
passes. If we're clear of self-exaltant (i.e., wanting to be superior)
intent, we can receive and express even anger in a way that does not violate
ourselves or destroy others.
El
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