In the fall of 2005, I was plagued by a recurring dream of being chased and murdered by lots of men in suits.

Perhaps repeatedly watching the Matrix movies before bed was a bad idea, but there was something so visceral, so real about that experience. They crowded me, suffocated me. This dream repeated night after night for months—until one night I got angry.

I said, “No.”

They would not kill me again tonight. To my surprise, I yelled at them. I stood up and started yelling that they could not do this to me yet again. They laughed. Then, to my further surprise, I turned into a large, beautiful, scaly gargoyle with claws and sharp teeth.

The men in suits were overwhelmed and frightened. I chuckled in my hoarse gargoyle cackle. This was my moment to slash them. A few ran, but the rest stayed. Just as I thought I would violently dispense of them all, I began to lecture them about why we should not kill people. It was a long lecture and a passionate one. I stated that I would always follow them and haunt them, so if they ever tried to harm anyone else, I would be there with my jaws and claws. That was the last time I dreamed of men in suits killing me.

Perhaps you’ve had a similar dream where you confronted fear to have it dissipate or imagined a symbolic embodiment of an emotion. I remember a surge of surprise—a gargoyle? Really? I had no idea my mind could be so inventive and resourceful in a moment of panic and agony. The transformation was complete and so detailed that the wings felt flexible with circulation and tactile sensory input. It was so real. My size was monstrous, yet the shift that made it happen was so small. I chose to be a gargoyle and I chose a different ending. It seemed empowering, liberating.

The more I encounter anger in meditation and daily life, the more I realize it is like a place holder or mask. Insert sadness, fear, jealousy, frustration, loneliness, whatever, anger seems like such a strong vessel to hold them all. But the more I try to look at anger, like the dream, it transforms into something else. The anger gives way to inadequacy, arrogance, and at best, intense humor. Sometimes I like to think about inviting the gargoyle to tea. After all, it only lectures. It’s a non-violent, righteous gargoyle. But listening to a talk recently by Pema Chodron called, “Don’t Bite the Hook,” revealed me.

She recalled muting the angry faces of politicians and those of environmental activists, different people on opposing sides, but who looked and acted exactly the same. I realized that I have demolished people with mere words. Small words, subtle words. Like George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” once the bullet of the word rings out, once hit, you can see a marked difference in the lines on the face of the target. A second before the elephant falls nothing is different, yet everything in its expression, the vitality, is gone. Being right or righteous might be even worse than being wrong. Once your position is wrong, the pressure is off. Righteousness can be consuming.

When I was reading Anam Thubten’s The Magic of Awareness, I came across a quote that made me pause: “Grasping any concept is a distraction from living in the present.” It occurred to me that my expression of anger took a subtle, lethal form when it was combined with concept. Perhaps my form of spiritual materialism is intellectual materialism. Universities seem to be filled with them. Their words and concepts turn to machetes defending the ego in front of such a well-educated audience.

There is so much pressure to sound accountable and intelligent. The implicit message is whatever you do, don’t look like a fool or stumble over your words or not know what to say. Yet Bruno Bettelheim, a survivor of the Holocaust, warned that intellectually distancing ourselves from emotional events is dangerous. He never liked the term, holocaust, which like the term homicide permits us to emotionally manage the atrocities these words point to and then not feel them.

As a freshman in college, I once began a paragraph in a paper for art history with, “I feel…” Art made me feel. It still does. But the professor recoiled. He said, “This is not appropriate for an academic paper. You don’t feel, you think.” He was not alone. Every professor, especially literature professors, encouraged this odd alienation of myself from my experience. It became my mantra for years and it sounded so promising. This carries on into the workplace and spreads into social interactions until there is no space for feeling. It is no wonder people come to me saying they are lonely, but ultimately, when language fails, we see the wall between us.

Now I sit with anger and feel it, my face hot and sometimes tears streaming. After all, the gargoyle in my dream was a marvelous creature. I imagine her flapping her wings gently, sitting cross-legged while sipping from a floral tea cup. I will study her, wing tips, scales, and all. She is my preferred flavor of anger—the crisply, sometimes cruelly articulated concept flung at myself or an opponent. Sometimes there is no flinging involved. She is intimidating just through her sheer presence. She has sharp claws that can cling to concepts so well—and teeth. Her size alone will bewilder others.

Perhaps I need to build up my energy to tackle a difficult work task or to confront a difficult situation in real life. Seemingly anger is useful and does the job. But the more I sit with it, the more forms it takes. The gargoyle snarls, then becomes a bunny, then a bug slowly placing one little leg after another on its monumental path.

~

Author: Annette Novak

Editor: Travis May

Image: Flickr/Hartwig HKD