"I'm not angry and I've never been angry in my life" or "I'm not an emotional person." Phrases I've heard from a whole bunch of different people over the past few weeks. Mostly men. And every time it was said with a very interesting energy - a feeling as if it was a universally "correct" position, but there was a hint of pain in the voice when saying it. When many times the universe shows something, I naturally start to explore it... I will write this today from my perspective and experiences about anger, the devil, dark energies and other common "enemies" of spiritual people.
5 years ago I was in Costa Rica in a workshop called "Awakening of Love". One practice was to connect with anger and scream, hit the pillow, etc. At the time, I was really struggling with it, the angry expressions of the people around me were a little scary, and my whole expression was so fake. After this practice, Karam, who had a retreat, shared about his anger. About the fact that many spiritual people (and not only) think that anger is a bad emotion. And that he used to too… and it took a lot of practice to connect with anger. But now, from a state of complete rest, if he has such intension, he can fully connect and express the emotion of anger in a few seconds. And indeed, when we connect with all that we are and all that is (and the whole universe lives in us, and therefore every emotion of the collective experience), we should be able to connect with this emotion (or any other) and express it at any moment. If we can't find it and connect with it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This means that we have suppressed the connection with our anger and are not able to feel it, but it is buried somewhere deep there and is looking for ways to express itself. What we resist, we strengthen. That sharing was one of the most important parts of that retreat for me personally. The seed has been sown. In the retreat about love, one of the most important insights was about anger. It sounds strange.
This seed took time to germinate. But there came a moment when I started feeling angry. Goddess Kali taught me to feel it. I think it is not for nothing that some spiritual teachers consider her the most deeply loving and compassionate goddess, while others consider her a branch of black magic, which is very dangerous. Oh, how dramatic those first times of anger expression were, how strongly I felt the internal resistance - the knowledge that it is necessary to express it in that situation, that the expression is appropriate and also the program that I am bad for expressing it. At first I didn't know what to do with it. There was once such a month at work, when there was a lot of stress, all kinds of nonsense, and several emotional outbursts, which had never happened to me in my life. I have always been such an expert in not feeling, pushing it down... And here that emotion started to explode, the repression stopped working. I went to a Chinese doctor and told him that I feel anger and sometimes I express it uncontrollably like yelling or something. As I was studying Chinese medicine at the time, I knew full well that according to Chinese medicine it was related to an imbalance in the Liver meridian and that acupuncture could help bring it back into balance. That doctor told me "try not to be angry". I needed to stop myself from yelling at him or walking out of the office that second. After all, that's exactly what I've been doing all my life, I was an expert and now it doesn't work anymore!!! I realize now that my coming to the Chinese medicine doctor was again because I appreciated that it's not okay to feel anger, but when you can't suppress it, it means something needs to be dealt with... and that doctor was exactly the part of me that wanted to change that emotion and appreciate it , as an inappropriate reflection. After all, Western medicine also has guidelines on how to feel is right and what is wrong. And when a person feels wrong, he needs to be handled (and if simple methods do not help, then resort to medication).
What if the truth is incredibly controversial? If the emotion you feel is ABSOLUTELY APPROPRIATE AND CORRECT for your present moment with the life experience you had and the current situation? Yesterday I felt anger twice. For the first time it was towards someone who, from my perspective, uses spirituality to escape from reality and disassociate, after expressing that anger to myself first, I began to empathize and explore and realized that the anger arose in order to share these feelings (once I realized this, there was only gratitude to the person who raised that emotion and to the emotion itself for prompting the action). For the second time, I asked Linas to document certain things that had been happening downstream from now on. But there was a hint of anger in that request. Linas asked "why are you telling me this for the first time and I don't resist at all and agree, and you express it with anger?". That question was completely natural. And the answer was completely due to my personal experience - because that thought/request had come to me several times, but I kept suppressing it, and when something that is my inner truth was suppressed, it happened that it "exploded" with anger: Anger becomes a springboard for action and change. It really had nothing to do with Linas, but it was necessary for me to finally express my truth, which I had suppressed and not expressed myself. In both cases, by not running away from anger, not suppressing it, but communicating with it, I gained useful insight and a useful impetus for certain actions.
Oh, how easy it is to use spirituality to resist and run even deeper from yourself. Law of attraction, releases, karmic transformations, conscious use of words to not create what we don't want, plants, everything can be done with the intention of NO LONGER FEELING the way we feel, because feeling that way is BAD and WRONG - thus continuing to deceive ourselves. And how often then all the practices are written off as bad, because after them we feel WORSE than before (probably because they actually removed certain barriers that we had created to fight the emotions that we decided (or, rather, we once were told) are bad). "Don't get angry, good girls don't get angry", "don't cry, real men don't cry", "don't feel, successful people don't" - understand, your natural emotion is bad.
And this program was probably ingraied in us very early. Maybe when you were a couple of years old, there was a drama in your parents' life that should raise emotions. Your mom or dad stamped them and you felt it. You felt that something was happening that shouldn't be happening. And felt the anger, because anger says something is wrong. You expressed anger and that expression of yours caused great irritation to father and mother, because they are making great efforts not to feel, and the child is making them feel. Also, if they admit that they feel anger themselves because it comes from within them, not from outside, they would have to admit that they are not the "good boy" or "good girl" they have been trying to be since childhood. Our ego is looking for any way to protect us from the perception that we are "bad" and therefore looking for an explanation for this emotion that would allow the fact that "only bad boys feel irritation or anger" to be somehow maintained without letting go of the desire to hold on to the truth that " I'm a good boy." And then they decided that what you tell them is not about them, but about you. Then they started recording the same program for you. That as long as you feel angry, you are a bad boy or girl, that you need to be taken care of, treated, rescued, etc. - maybe you understood very quickly and clicked, maybe you resisted until the program was finally recorded. And you gave away a large part of your authenticity and inner compass and put on a fake, "correct", "good" mask.
And yet, you felt that simmering somewhere deep down. You went to some practices, with the intention of not feeling anymore. And how angry you were when you saw that the more you practice, the more you feel! What is this nonsense? "Until I did this practice I felt better!". Yes. The practice began to break down the barriers and protections that you put up against yourself, your soul.
And then comes the second wave of using spirituality to oppress. I feel it now. But I still want to remain a "good boy". How can the mind and ego explain it this time? "This practice was bad." "The wrong guide". "They opened me to the astrals, where I gathered dark energies", "I was possessed", "the devil is working through me", "this or that person is sending me bad energy" and many, many such things. And when you give this person tools to get rid of those "bad energies" or "obsessions", he doesn't even want to do it because "Obsession is stronger than me", or "nothing works and doesn't help". Because in order to help, you really need to take responsibility. But we have the freedom to choose.
I once walked past a statue of the devil and it made me nervous, I wanted to get rid of it somehow. After that, someone talked about the devil and I realized that I feel conflicting information - that I understand that there is no devil who makes me do something and at the same time I feel some kind of rejection of that devil. So I decided to dig deeper, and what the hell is that? I went into a meditative state and it showed me that the devil is the creation of people who do not want to take responsibility for their actions, words and thoughts, about "this is not me, this is where the devil seduced me" and it is just such a scapegoat, an energy that allows people to have free will to be a victim. Kind of like "well, if you don't want to look inside, that's your choice, I take responsibility for those actions, words, and thoughts of yours." I saw an excerpt from the series Lucifer, where the "devil" says "people annoy me so much when they blame me for all their nonsense. In general, my job was to punish those who sinned and I hated that job, after all, it was my punishment - I would much rather take a vacation if no one sinned...". Then I asked "well, who are these Satanists?" - the answer came "these are people who are in a lot of pain and they want to give meaning to their pain. Because they turned away from God in trying to escape the pain, they decided to turn in the opposite direction. But there is nothing there. There's no real energy there, and if they actually met what they're trying to summon and what they've created in their minds, they'd piss in the pants. (here I saw another scene from the same series where Lucifer appeared to some group of satanists who tried to summon the devil and they completely ran away in great fear). All it is is just a show of mirrors and fears. And of course, you can create in your mind that there is something huge and terrible here. But this is only a creation of the mind - and the mind sometimes unconsciously creates very strange, terrible realities...
Ok, I see the problem, so what to do? First, you will have to do one of two things. Either come toan agreement with your mind/ego that "bad" emotions are not bad after all, OR let go of the desire to be a good boy or girl and allow yourself to be bad sometimes. Well, the second part is quite simple: indeed, if you had to try so hard not to feel, apparently the natural thing is to just give in and feel. Allow yourself to feel. Letting yourself fall into that black, horrible hole of emotions, letting yourself die in it. And you will see that there is always a rebirth behind it. It is important to learn first of all to be that father or mother who will now sit down with that inner child and his emotions - who will remain loyal to him even in that "difficult period" and will not leave him alone to figure out how to get rid of those "bad" emotions, will not judge him, not say that how it feels is bad.
And this does not mean that after doing this practice you will no longer feel those "bad" emotions. Most people have more than one of those black holes... In addition, even everything that is felt inside, the "bad" emotion remains your compass. It tells you when somewhere you haven't been authentic with yourself or someone else. It allows you to find your inner truth through contrast. It encourages research and deepening, improvement. Every time you feel a "bad" emotion, you are really given a great gift and an opportunity to discover new lotuses and pearls in yourself and in that "mud". Through this, you can grow wings and enormous compassion for yourself and everyone around you - for every "dark" or "bad" corner in yourself, in society or in the astral world. You can learn to feel love and compassion for everything and through this transform even the most horrible things into what they all are at the deepest level - love and light. This is one of the strongest forms of alchemy... And yet, you are a free soul. You can choose what you feel, write it off to the devil, the forces of darkness, or the imperfection of your children...
9/1/2020