You say: “I am feeling anger, or maybe just severe frustration. It’s like those closest to me have never truly seen me.” As I see it, feeling anger is a natural phenomenon – part of the instinctive survival system. Indulging in anger is stubbornly and irresponsibly stupid. Very.

Until “The Shift” – anger can arise – usually any time anything is not ‘just the way it should be’ – meaning, just the way we want it. When the shift has not yet been realised, then how we are with the anger is totally up to us. Entirely.

When I used to say this in the talks, we could feel the whole room shut down. “Don’t want to know that thank you.” We don’t want to hear this – we want what we want, And what we want is support and sympathy for our anger. We love feeling a victim – and when we feel uncomfortable it is almost always someone else’s fault. Read more »

A few days ago I found myself heavily involved in an inner dialogue. Something had stirred me early in the morning and even though I had told myself a number of times to move on the reality was that I felt stuck and frustrated.

Whilst there was one part of me witnessing this struggle and wanting to be free with it, there was another part which was very actively engaged and almost juiced up by it. All attempts to detract from this inner fight failed poorly. I couldn’t let it go. The painful discussion in my head continued to go round in circles. My despair grew bigger. Suddenly, as I was standing in the kitchen talking to myself I became aware how much energy was running into the involvement with this fight. Read more »

In the past weeks anger has come up quite strongly as a topic in our weekly Sharing Group. With some people it feels very real, present in the moment and relevant to explore deeper. Some others seem to have an invested interest in the power of this emotion, however, they are not genuinely angry in the moment. It seems like there is an idea that takes over the actual experience. The idea looks for anger, digs it up, looks to express it, exaggerates it, all in the name of therapy or tapping into a source of power. But it’s false power. Read more »

by Clare Finlator

Anger and violence, like sex, are hot topics that tend to stir people up. This was certainly evident in last night’s sharing group where these energies were being experienced in some, and (in my perception) controlled or suppressed in others. I certainly had an exhilarating ride of a group, and this morning woke with some passionate energy to express myself on this topic.

In my view, practically everyone has rage within them. We are enraged by how we are bound, how we do not feel free to express ourselves as we truly are, how we edit ourselves, compromise, negotiate, make excuses,  -  the myriad facets of suppression. Often we project this onto others, they are the controlling ones, they are the ones that knocked the life out of us as children etc. Women also have the whole big story of male patriarchal tyranny, and persecution over lifetimes. Rage is the response we feel when we see our own control reflected in others. You may well have the urge to kill someone who is showing this to you. You may want to tear off their limbs, screaming.  Read more »

Over the last days something’s been cooking here. It’s been going on for some time now in different forms, shapes and words. But with my bike getting stolen in the middle of Covent Garden last Saturday afternoon it popped to another level.

To begin with, I would have refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation if they wouldn’t have left the cut cables which made the fact painfully clear in the very instant of our return. Retrospectively the following moments in slow motion revealed: At first there was a shock, disbelieve that “somebody would really do this”. Then pain, heartbreak over the loss. The thought of “they might have done it for some reason” popped up. Eventually rage flashed. At this point manipulation and control kicked in to calm the situation and avoid an irrational outburst in the middle of the street. I watched myself picking up the remains and making my way to the tube, silently and boiling on the inside. The body was shaking but numbed to what was really going on and busy with the little voice in the head feeding stuff about this all being no big deal.  Read more »

Excerpt from an email from Paul Lowe to his list today.

The anger thing is so obvious – unless we do not want to know. If we do have the realisation, then all our conditioning about being justified about being angry at something outside our self is blown – and we have to be responsible – so we cannot partake in what most humans are addicted to: complaint. Our anger is our anger. Our anger has accumulated because we did not acknowledge it at the time. Often, especially in childhood, it is not ‘convenient’ – spelled trouble. So it has built up, and as it is poisonous to our system, the body is using any opportunity to let flow out.

Read more »

Excerpt from an email from Paul Lowe to his list today.

A broad description of one aspect is that anger masks fear. Almost everyone has fear, so almost everyone has anger.

Anger is a poison to the whole body/mind/emotional system, and as the body is a self-healing system it tries to get the anger out and away anyway it can, as soon as it can. As the ego feels humiliated if it has anger, it does not like to admit it has the residual anger — so it looks for circumstances where it feels as though it is justified for discharging the anger — usually at someone or something else. The other person/thing is seen as the cause of the anger. Not so.  Read more »