Anger: It's An Energy We Can Use

We're in for a ride in August, with our new theme, Fear and the Furious. What a way to kick it off with a talk about anger!

On Sunday, we welcomed – maybe for the first time here as a speaker - Rev. John Halas, who opened his talk, The Healing Power of Anger, with a simple question: Is anger a spiritual thing?

A lot of us grew up in environments where anger wasn't allowed. Rev. John talked about his upbringing, where every emotion was acceptable – except anger. My upbringing was the opposite – anger was one of the few emotions I saw expressed. No anger, or only anger ... neither is healthy.

For Rev. John, it all came to a head in mid-life, when his marriage was struggling, he'd had a business deal go south that caused a lot of debt, and he started having health issues. He said he was in a lot of emotional pain.

Anger As Energy

One thing I've learned over my years is that unexpressed emotions have interesting ways of showing up, and dis-ease is one of those ways for a lot of people. And that anger isn't inherently good or bad – that's a judgment we apply to it.

Anger is a powerful tool; Rev. John said as much. It fuels action. It’s information, and it's also an energy, as PiL* sang in their post-punk hit, Rise, which sometimes loops around my brain on auto-repeat when I'm angry; it helps me lighten up.

Anger is an energy ... I could be wrong. I could be right. … the cost so high, the gain so low … may the road rise with you.” - PiL

Angry feelings can be uncomfortable; I think that's in part because we aren't taught or given tools to adequately or appropriately express them. Anger gets a bad rap as emotions go, even though it's useful.

Not Pain, Then A Practice

During the time Rev. John was going through all this, he attended a Science of Mind service, thanks to a friend. And for an hour, he felt what he described as "not pain." So he went back the next week for another hour of "not pain."

Over time, he started taking classes and seeing a practitioner, and eventually, found himself in ministerial school. His wise practitioner, who created a safe container (as they do), once said, "John, you have a warehouse of unexpressed anger, and you're afraid to crack the door, because you think if you open it, it's going to blow you both up." That was the beginning of opening the door just a wee bit at a time.

Today, his experience of pain is rare instead of constant. He'll celebrate 53 years of marriage soon, and the debt is long paid. His health, after a recent heart surgery, is better than it's been in years.

Anger's Equation

Rev. John, who describes himself as an engineer at heart, shared an equation: thought plus feeling equals creation. The thought sets the direction. The feeling is the fuel — the fire, the power — and like any power, it can go toward something that helps or something that doesn't. Creation is what we manifest with our combined thoughts and feelings.

Thought (direct) + Feeling (fuel) = Creation (manifest)

He divided feelings into categories: 1) steady, like peace, joy, love, grace, and 2) fuel, like mad, glad, sad, afraid. Fear asks a question about the future. Sadness helps release the past. Happiness reinforces what worked. Anger is the one that's entirely about right now. It's the only one, he said, with the power to change the present.

Preference vs. Harm

Rev. John told a story about driving across the state to see a friend, going about five miles over the speed limit - his usual preference. The car ahead of him preferred to drive the speed limit, which caused some annoyance. Then the car behind him preferred 10 miles over, and got a little too close. These were just different preferences bumping into each other, which is often what sets off our anger in the first place.

Examples of types of anger include the mama bear anger that protects and defends, and the bully anger that takes other people's power away and shuts them down. Both of these types of anger have the potential to cause harm, but for very different reasons.

The Sacred Pause

We all have our "triggers," and many of these were cemented in childhood. There's research about relationship dynamics and how our reactions have little to do with what actually happened. It usually hits something below the surface, beyond our cognition, when our reaction and the thing that happened don't match. Rev. John suggested that when this happens, take a "sacred pause" to move through intense feelings; it'll likely lead to better outcomes. That's not suppressing, nor acting; it's getting curious.

What Anger Heals

Anger, he said, heals when we shine a light on a lie we tell ourselves. If some part of you believes you're not good enough, and something taps into that, anger will keep showing up until it's acknowledged.

Near the end of his talk, Rev. John led us through Ho'oponopono, a Hawaiian practice for making things right when a relationship is out of balance. The four lines, chanted for as long as needed: I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. He asked us to bring to mind someone we'd been angry at recently, and to actually say those words to that memory, first silently, then out loud, together, as a room. We can do this practice anytime.

Reality, Shared ...

Before I close, a couple other things are on my mind. I went back and listened to Justin's Oneness Candle opening ritual (you can, too, right here). It's what I needed to hear on Sunday. He said we can sometimes recoil when we hear "all is good" when talking about the Source underneath it all. Fair. We also don't spiritual bypass here.

Sometimes, the unexplainable happens.

Last weekend's tragedy at Seattle Center – a shooting that killed three people and left more injured – is one of those unexplainable things, and Justin acknowledged it with true grace. I spent about eight years at Seattle Center, a place we used to call Seattle's Living Room. It was - and is - a safe place for people to gather, and gather we did – for celebration, to mourn, to share experiences. This one hits home for me.

I also want to acknowledge the fires in Spokane – I know some of you have loved ones there. It's been reported that the Old Trails fire was caused by arson.

It's hard not to feel angry about these. And that's OK. As Justin said, we teach a practical spirituality here. It doesn't ask us to pretend fear and anger away because they're part of being human. What we do get to choose is the consciousness we bring to the experience. Justin suggested something I really liked: treat the news itself as a prayer request.

He also asked us to consider if we default to being victims of our circumstances. His invitation instead: notice that you can change your mind, your consciousness, and from there, your life. Your life is happening now, in a moment you're co-creating. Don't let regret about the past or fear about the future write it for you instead.

He closed with Ernest Holmes, our SOM founder, on the idea that our own thinking is a gateway to something larger, and that life, taken on its own terms, is meant to be an adventure. The source Holmes pointed to, Justin reminded us, is love itself – what he called capital-G Good, distinct from anything we mean by the word day-to-day. If that causes you to recoil, his invitation was simple: take a class, and go deeper.

We are not helpless. And we are not alone.

With gratitude,

Laura

*(Public Image Limited was a post-punk band featuring members from the 1970s punk group, The Sex Pistols)