Sooner or later we all get to meet Mr. Anger.

It is a part of the emotional kaleidoscope that comes with a package of being a human being.

What makes this inevitable, yet powerful emotion so attractive is that we can transform it into something positive and sacred. Can we do that? Is that really so?

Oh, yes. It can be recycled and turned into something we all could have more of: Strength.

If you are a really busy bee and have no time to read the entire article, yet feel intrigued by the tittle, here are the outlines for you:

How to make friends with anger:

1. Once visited by it, say “Hello” and sit with it.

Be nice to it. Do not run or turn away from it. It never worked for any of us.

2. Wrap your arms around it. 

Feel, feel, feel.

3. Stay one-on-one with this honorable guest.

Do this until you acknowledge the fact that you are angry. Start processing as soon as possible. Involving innocent others, or worse, making them a target of our unprocessed anger is not a graceful way to be. Yes, this requires a lot of awareness, but so is being a human being.

4. Give yourself some time and space. 

Talk to yourself. Record or video yourself if you have to. Listen to what is playing on the inside. Screaming and hitting something soft (like a big pillow) works miracles too. Let me know if you made a video of that, I want to see it.

5. Be honest about being angry.  

Be honest with yourself and others. Honesty is the most powerful healing any of us can have or offer to each other. Honesty might save you from getting sick and having bad taste in your mouth. Swallowed anger will give you that, plus terrible emotional indigestion. People with unprocessed anger are “leaking” their energy all the time and they are serious pain-in-the-butt. I would know, I used to be one of them.

6. After you’ve processed it and acknowledged it, talk about it.

Share your experience with someone who loves you, tell them your anger story and watch if there is still an emotional charge to it. If there is, tell it again…(and again and again) until you can speak about it without any feeling at all. Same friend or a different one each time, does not matter, as long as they are happy to assist. This way we stop identifying with it and become free.

7. Make peace with your self!

Allow no judgment. There is a little Hitler in all of us who have not done the work. The sooner we hug that unloved bugger, the sooner we will all heal.

8. Once you make friends with your own expression of anger, there will be less of it in the world.

Each of us is a mini Universe, walking around affecting our consciousness grid more than we realize. Every time we clean our emotional debris we bring more light to this world. Every little self-victory makes a big impact on our Universe.

So, here you are, beautiful human being doing the work.

9. Love yourself enough to choose to channel love, compassion and kindness.

 

My anger story for you.

Now, allow me to share with you one of my most outrageous anger attacks I have ever had the privilege to experience, and how I dealt with it.

There is also a bigger reason why I am so keen to share this unflattering experience of me.

The deeper truth is that I am another you and you are another me. We are different versions of the same Spirit, the same Humanness, so to speak. The Mayans had a term for it: In Lak’ech. They would lovingly put their hands together and say In Lak’ech to greet each other.

So, beloved, let me mirror you and connect to you on some invisible subatomic level. Let me encourage you to look deeper within yourself and face what you have got there. We are in this together, sparkles of light moving through space and time, cooking in the same steamy, spicy human soup.

I was on the phone when anger visited me. I felt I was right and the guy on the other side was wronger than the wrong itself. I was expressing the truth as I knew it, speaking loud and clear. My passionate nature was showing its full bloom.

My blood was boiling.

I heard my own voice rising higher and getting stronger, I could hear my heart beating fast.

I heard powerful judgments that kept pouring out of me as if I was someone else. I felt I am being tied up by some invisible wires. I resisted that feeling, and the more I resisted the angrier I felt.

There was a part of me that felt entitled to this rising rage.

From my perspective at that time I was fighting for a good cause:  I was standing up for my human fellows, for friends and families who needed our help and attention. I was fighting for justice and truth. The guy had a different perspective, he wanted to be handsomely paid for demonstrating his Human gene and was not willing to help just for the sake of love.

That is where I lost it.

As it became clear to me later on, it was that feeling of entitlement that was firing me up each breath I took, each word I spoke. While passionately speaking about the state of our world to seemingly cold and uninvolved person who was on the other side of my innocent Lenovo… suddenly I felt there was no me in me any longer.

Raging wiped me out, and I felt like I was becoming someone else.

It became deeply uncomfortable and did not feel right at all. Here I was, removed, kicked out, from the very peace that I was fighting for.

One of my favorite minds George Carlin said:

 “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”

Unfortunately for us, human species, our intellectual knowledge has very little to do with our emotional intelligence. We know a lot of good stuff, yet we remember none of it in moments when we need it most.

The anger attack did not stop once I hang up the phone. I was consumed for days, raging just about everything that went wrong in the world we live in. None of the comforting words kindly offered by my loving  friends did any good.

I was in the process of recycling. It was my work and mine only.

I was spiralling down in every way, every day. My heart began to hurt physically. I reached a dead end. There was nowhere to go from there.

Pain, bitterness and despair were waving at me as if we were buddies. I might have not had much clarity at that point, but I knew I wanted to have different kind of friends.

Deciding to be Free.

I told myself yes, I feel angry, yes, I got really out of control. I accept that. I am a human being who has the right to have negative response to a negative event. I can do this, I will process this and I will move on.

And that is when anger turned into my friend and became my strength.

Am I embarrassed about  losing my cool like that? I have decided not to be. I gave myself permission to be free. There are more important things in the world to be concerned about than little human fuck ups, yours or mine. What matters is where we go from here.

I also decided to be nice to myself. After all, if I want for all of us, human fellows to be nice to one another and care about each other, I might as well start with myself. That felt really good. My heart stopped hurting, at least physically. I could breathe and felt at peace again, somehow stronger than ever, and more in alignment with the Truth that I so wish to live.

I could not sum it up better than my beautiful soul siStar Sara Sophia Eisenman did:

“What is really magical is that once you have fully felt and processed the rage, it tends to automatically subside and integrate into a form of strength that will serve you for the rest of your days. You needn’t go around being angry forever; the energy of rage has come to perform a particular sacred duty and once it has done so, it will transform without effort into an elegant, regal, aligned form. It will also permanently transform your energy, such that people show up for you in a more aligned way.

Do not hold on; release all; burn clean; and be free.”

Thank you for spending time with me here, I hope my sharing had something in it for you.

 

 

 

 

 

Author: Anna Suvorova

Apprentice Editor: Jennifer Dowdy / Editor Renee Picard 

Photo: martinak15/Flickr