anger – Karen's New York Love Affair

Another view of anger

Readers of this blog will recall that one of the themes I have explored through my work in nature and writing on this blog is the phenomenon of anger. New insights keep arising over time, and new information comes to light that I’d like to share with you. Last time I wrote about Gabor Maté’s book When the Body Says No. He explores the relationship between stress and illness, and documents research that links the suppression of negative emotions with the likelihood of relapse or death in cancer patients. There is a very strong link between repressing anger and disease, because repressing anger increases physiological stress on the organism. Not only that, but “the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or, at least, to prolong survival”! (p. 269)

This is a new perspective on anger that I have not come across before. Yet the expression of rage leads to high blood pressure and heart disease. That doesn’t sound healthy either. What is a person to do? The resolution to the paradox is that both repression and rage are ways of avoiding the genuine experience of anger. According to Toronto doctor and psychotherapist Allen Kaplin, “Healthy anger… is an empowerment and a relaxation. The real experience of anger ‘is physiologic expereince without acting out. The experience is one of a surge of power going through the system, along with a mobilization to attack. There is, simultaneously, a complete disappearance of all anxiety. When healthy anger is starting to be experienced, you don’t see anything dramatic. What you do see is a decrease of all muscle tension.'” (pp 270-1) Astonishing!

When experiencing rage, people tighten up, breath shallowly, and tense their muscles. These are all signs of anxiety! Gabor explains that acting out through bursts of rage is a defence against the anxiety that invariable accompanies anger as a child:

Anger triggers anxiety because it coexists with positive feelings, with love and the desire for contact. But since anger leads to an attacking energy, it threatens attachment. Thus there is something basically anxiety-provoking about the anger experience, even without external, parental injunctions against anger expression… Naturally, the more parents discourage or forbid the experience of anger, the more anxiety-producing that experience will be for the child. In all cases where anger is completely repressed or where chronic repression alternates with explosive eruptions of rage, the early childhood history was one in which the parents were unable to accept the child’s natural anger. (pp 271-2)

Gabor goes on to describe the two forms of defence people tend to use against feeling the aggressive impules of anger. One defense is to act out by yelling, hitting, or swearing. This is a defense against keeping the anger inside where it can be deeply felt. The other defense is to repress the anger. Both of these methods, as we have seen, lead to illness. (Gabor documents this extensively in his book.)

Gabor concludes that anger does not require hostile acting out. It is a feeling to be experienced. Learning to do that can be difficult (because of the incredible anxiety that often co-exists with anger), and it is something a trained person such as a therapist can help us learn to do. In the times when I have successfully felt my anger as a physical experience, it is actually quite simply a feeling of heat and energy in my body. It is sometimes even beautiful—a sparkly strawberry-red substance that can even have a sweet taste!

The second thing about anger is that it contains valuable information. If instead of acting out I can consider what triggered the anger, I can learn what is really going on (or, often, what I think is going on but is actually just an old pattern being activated in my psyche). Do I feel threatened and powerless? Unloved? Not considered? Has someone trespassed on my boundaries? Whatever the case may be, the anger can give me the energy needed to effectively deal with the situation. This is much different than unconsciously acting out my rage!

As I have mentioned before, anger and the red essence are energies we can work with in the direction of the south in the four shields psychology. It is very valuable work, learning to protect our inner child through the skillful expression of anger. BC therapist Joann Peterson says “Anger is the energy Mother Nature gives us as little kids to stand forward on our own behalf and say I matter“! (p. 274)

You are what you eat—sort of!

As you may recall, I have explored the subject of anger from many different perspectives—anger as it relates to the essential aspect of strength; anger arising from psychological issues; anger as a defense mechanism and a character trait. I have personally worked on my own anger many times during nature ceremonies, and I’ve told you some of those stories here. I’ve also explored anger with my spiritual teachers, therapists, and even a naturopath. I recently discovered a new key to understanding anger. It is perhaps the simplest method of all: looking at how what and when I eat affects my mood, including such impacts as irritation, frustration, a dry itchy feeling, and plain old grumpiness!

Potatoes not Prozac

My sister Kirsten turned me on to a book called Potatoes not Prozac, by Kathleen DesMaisons. Kathleen describes how what we eat, and when, affects three biochemical systems in our bodies that affect mood: blood sugar levels, serotonin (a brain chemical), and beta-endorphin (another brain chemical). She also advances the theory that some of us are “sugar sensitive,” which means that our body chemistry responds more drastically to sugar and other refined carbohydrates. I was very interested in this theory. Years of meditating, yoga, running, and seeking of self knowledge have had very little impact on the reactivity that goes on in me. It has seemed to be totally beyond my control, no matter how hard I try or how good my intentions.

Sugar sensitivity is common for people who have addiction in their families, and as Gabor Maté and others have written, brain chemistry is a strong factor in addiction. Since brain chemistry is affected by genetics, as well as early experiences, it is not surprising that addiction and the type of brain chemistry that is sugar sensitive would run in the family. Kathleen discovered the impact of eating habits, including sugar consumption, on our feeling of well-being through her work with alcoholics. This prompted her to pursue a PhD in addictive nutrition, so she could study the subject more deeply. Over the years she has worked with thousands of people. In some studies she has done, those who follow her plan have a 92% success rate in achieving sobriety. Previously in the field of treatment for alchoholism, a 25% success rate was considered good. That’s a pretty strong testament to the effectiveness of her plan in helping people with addictions to create lasting change!

By now you may be wondering whether you are sugar sensitive. The test that Kathleen offers in her book is to imagine that you walk into your kitchen at home and find a plate of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Their warm chocolatey smell greets you as you enter the room. You don’t feel hungry. No one is around to defend the cookies or observe your actions. What do you do? Evidently, there are some people who would not eat a cookie! Can you believe it? This is hard for me to imagine. For me it’s a no-brainer. In real life I might wonder who had put the cookies there and whether they were poisoned. But in the imaginary exercise, I would not hesitate to eat a cookie. How about you?

Kathleen also has a checklist of ten items to determine whether one is sugar sensitive. Interestingly, one of the items is “I have a history of anger that sometimes surprises even me.” Wow, there it is in black and white. This is probably the first time I have seen an articulation of a connection between sugar and anger. The history part is true for me too, and it does surprise me.

A history of anger

When I was at Monkey Valley I looked through a box of journals, in order to select the ones that contain my record of vision quests I’ve been on. I glanced at a few other journals at random, just to see what I’d written about. There was a journal from grade ten. In it I was raging at my father, swearing in every sentence, angry and hateful. What a shock! I didn’t remember feeling that way, much less writing it down. I flipped open a journal from 1995 or so. I saw an entry in which I was raging at a friend for something she had done. Angry, reactive, hateful sentences filled the page. I looked at a journal from 2007. Rage at another friend. The same kind of angry, hateful language. I was really shocked to discover this. Although I know I am prone to anger and reactivity, I truly did not recall writing these entries, or having those feelings towards my friends. And to see that the pattern stretched back thirty years! What a revelation. And I don’t doubt that my sugar consumption really mushroomed in junior high, once I was earning my own money and could buy sweets whenever I wanted. Add that to sugary breakfast cereals and sweet desserts every night with dinner, and there was a lot of sugar creating havoc in my body. Could early and continuous sugar consumption have had a co-relation to decades of anger?

Reading this book was like finding a life-line that maybe I could cling to and use to pull myself out of the swamp of reactivity that I have been swimming around in my whole life. Obviously I can’t reveal the contents of the entire book here, but I’m going to hit a few of the high points.

Blood sugar level

Some of the symptoms of low blood sugar:

Feeling tired all the time
Feeling tired for no reason
Restless, can’t keep still
Easily frustrated
Trouble concentrating
More irritable than usual
Gets angry unexpectedly

These are all things I experience most days.

Serotonin level

Some of the symptoms of low serotonin:

Depressed
Flies off the handle
Reactive
Craves sweets (some people crave bread, pasta, and cereal)

Again, I’ve selected the ones that I experience the most, including the ones related to anger.

Beta-endorphin level

Some of the symptoms of low beta-endorphin:

Low pain tolerance or tolerance for discomfort (jumpy)
Tearful, reactive
Low self-esteem
Overwhelmed by other’s pain
Feelings of isolation
Depressed, hopeless
Feels “done to” by others (blaming, being a victim)
Craves sugar

She’s been reading my mail!

Optimal levels of these three

Sugar sensitive people have a brain chemistry that is disposed to producing low quantities of serotonin and beta-endorphin, which is why we seek to simulate the effects of these brain chemicals by using sugar. But when all the levels of blood sugar, serotonin, and beta-endorphins are optimal this is how we would feel:

Energetic, and tired when appropriate
Relaxed, clear, focused
Able to deal with problems effectively
Easy going, even-tempered
Hopeful, optimistic
Reflective, responsive
Able to seek help
Sensitive, sympathetic
High self-esteem
Compassionate
Connected to and in touch with others
Takes personal responsibility
Euphoric!

I was especially struck by how these three aspects of our physical chemistry can affect our self-esteem and whether we feel isolated or connected to others. For me, I have often avoided contact with others because it triggered so much reactivity, but the price I paid was feeling very isolated, alone, and that nobody cared about me. It is remarkable to learn that eating habits played a role in this dynamic!

Keeping a food journal

The first step towards balancing sugar sensitivity, in the first edition of Potatoes not Prozac (1998), is to keep a food journal. I’ve been doing that for two months now. The idea of the journal is just to actually see what I am doing, clearly, in black and white. Not to judge it. As many of you may know, for the past few years my breakfast has consisted of two bars of exquisite organic dark chocolate. So that is what I put down. I also noted when I ate, and how I felt both physically and emotionally. What a goldmine of information! Kathleen talks about how this journal becomes a way of listening to my body speak to me. And it has been telling me a lot!

What I was struck by, after I’d been keeping the journal for about a month, was how erratic my eating habits were. The times for the various meals fluctuated wildly, with dinner sometimes as late as 11 PM. And when I was too busy to stop for a meal, I discovered that I used sugar to keep myself going. So depending on the day, I might have a chocolate at 6:00. A toffee at 7:00. Maybe an apple at 8:00. Another snack at 9:00. And finally, a proper dinner at 10:00 PM. Now that I knew the effects on my blood sugar from eating sweets (and what the body does to try to re-establish homeostasis), I felt sad to see how much trauma I was subjecting my body to by snacking this way. I also felt sad to see how I was treating myself so badly by forcing myself to wait to eat lunch and dinner. (Accomplishing things and “doing” was more important than stopping to care for myself.) Just seeing the patterns helped me to feel compassion for my physical self, and the desire to treat my body better.

The seven steps

Kathleen’s plan is to gently and gradually shift to healthier eating habits for life. It is a seven-step plan, and I’ve followed a few of the steps now. In the new edition (2008) of her book, step one is to start eating breakfast with protein and a complex carbohydrate (for example, whole wheat toast or oatmeal), within an hour of getting up. It doesn’t even require giving up the chocolate, just adding the protein and complex carb. For me this was a huge step, to shift away from my chocolate for breakfast habit. Just contemplating eating something else first thing in the morning felt distasteful to me. So I waited for a time when my life was making very little demands on me, so I could make this big change with as little stress as possible. I did it while I was at Monkey Valley, earlier this month.

I have now had a breakfast with 1/3 of my body’s daily protein requirements, and a complex carbohydrate, within an hour of waking, 19 times! I have also been following step three, which is to eat three meals a day with protein, no more than 5-6 hours apart, and if snacking, to include a protein and a complex carbohydrate. I’ve done that for 19 days too. I also drastically reduced my sugar consumption. In this time period I’ve had not even two whole chocolate bars. If you can do math, you will realize that with my prior habits, I would have consumed 38 bars of chocolate in this same amount of time!

Beforehand (the first week I kept a food journal), my feelings were all over the place. I looked like the queen of the mood swings. Lots of highs and lows. And some anxiety.

Although I have had many of the same feelings and physical sensations since shifting my eating habits, I haven’t had the buzz or high from the sugar snacking, and overall I feel much more balanced and stable, with less anxiety. Mind you, in the “before” I was working and dealing with a lot of people and different situations, while during the “after” period I am on holiday. That could account for the lower anxiety!

Anyway, it is early days yet, but I believe that by following this food plan I am treating my body much better. I feel that eating a regular breakfast and having dinner at a normal time are huge accomplishments. I like this change in lifestyle and the feeling of stability it brings. I know that my brain chemistry will continue to adjust over time.

I am so excited about the potential for healing and balance that Kathleen offers in Potatoes not Prozac. She calls her plan “Radiant Recovery.” I bought copies of the book for my family members, and I’m sharing the news with you here, because I truly believe that for some of us, this new information about brain chemistry could solve the mystery of why we never feel quite right. For me, I hope it will be the final missing piece in the puzzle of anger.

Gnawing away at that anger bone

It’s been a while since I’ve written about anger, and I’d like to come back to the topic today to share recent experiences with digesting this aspect of my being. As you may recall, I last wrote that I was starting a new technical writing contract, and hoped that I would handle new opportunities to learn about anger with skill and grace!

“Talents are better nurtured in solitude, but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to test my character and grow through interactions with my colleagues in the workplace. It is so clear to me how the arising of Being through various people and situations is part of the perfect unfolding of the universe and my own life path, allowing me many opportunities to actualize myself as a real human being.

Each day, I go to the office with the intention of behaving with compassion towards all. I feel the gentle nature of my soul, and am aware of the innocence and lovability of my colleagues. And then! So often this wider awareness is lost as I fall back into my early self images and object relations.

My Diamond Approach group is doing a deep piece of work on identity, and it is marvellous how I can apply this work to the situations occurring in the workplace. The work of inner realization involves coming to know our true identity as luminous beings that are part of the oneness of reality, and eventually switching our sense of identity to this truth, rather than the conventional ego sense of identity that we all develop during our maturation process as human beings. In the Diamond Approach, the true identity is called “The Point.” I once experienced this as a point of light in my heart. And through my individual and group work in the Diamond Approach I have had many, many experiences of the exquisite qualities of my being and of reality. Yet I keep forgetting! I keep re-identifying with my ego self, which is primarily constructed of the impressions of myself and others that shaped my soul in my early childhood years.

During the past two months I have been working on a technical writing contract that involves going to the office most days, and interacting with dozens of people. During these interactions, my object relations are often triggered. This is what I referred to earlier as a great gift, for it allows me to see and understand the inner workings of my psyche. While I was living and working at Monkey Valley, the opportunities for interaction, learning, and growth were obviously much fewer, though of course incidents did still occur! This is why I gave the quote from Goethe, above. The time alone served its purpose, to develop my abilities and, in my case, heal, in the solititude and safe haven of nature. And then, when my soul was ready, Being propelled me back into the busy world of people to test and refine the qualities of my being.

For those of us who have experienced the trauma of repeated physical abuse in childhood, the defensive structures that we develop to survive this unbearable situation are very strong. One of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder is a continuous hyper-vigilance, in which the nervous system is on high alert for danger in the environment. Since this defensive structure, which is one of many structures that make up the entire ego sense of self, actually formed at a young age (say between the ages of 3 and 6) its sense of discrimination of what is actually happening in the environment is not very well-developed. Let me give you an example!

At work, I developed a plan for providing online help to the end users of the new banking software (which would be most of the employees in the credit union). I developed the plan after discussions with many people and extensive analysis of the current banking software and documentation that the company already had. I showed the plan to the project management team, the trainers who would be training the employees to use the new software, and others. The plan was approved by the project management team, and was in the process of being approved by the Senior Executive Team of the company. Then one day, several people talked about the documentation at lunch and came up with a new approach to the documentation. The new approach was actually something I had already considered and rejected in favour of what I believed was a superior approach, which would make the help easily accessible to the end users.

This probably sounds like a very dry, paper-like scenario, devoid of emotion and certainly not a source of danger! Yet my early patterning was triggered by this situation, and felt that I was in danger and needed to defend my self, my work, my plan (my identity as a competent technical writer)! Before I knew what was happening, I lost control and was practically yelling at a coworker. The defensive structure was in full swing and on the attack. I totally forgot about the truth of my being—in that moment all that mattered was making the coworker back down. I said No and she said Yes, and the angry confrontation went on for a few minutes before I regained enough control to realize this wasn’t productive and backed off. It took a week to unravel what had happened and come to regain some kind of mutual respect. Eventually I realized that my coworker hadn’t really understood what I was proposing. So to her the idea she put forth was better. Pretty simple. Just a misunderstanding. Yet I felt caught up in a life or death struggle!

This situation helped me see how quickly and automatically my defensive structures take control of my being; I identify with the structure completely, believing that this really is a life or death situation. And from this vantage point, any means is justified to protect myself. As you know if you have been reading my blog, anger is my preferred way to deal with the situation and protect myself! But something has changed. After the heat of the moment has passed and I am no longer so identified with the defensive structure, I start to notice the pain of losing contact with my deeper being and behaving in ways that hurt others. This actually feels very uncomfortable. I notice a feeling of dis-ease in my soul. Of course being cut off from my deeper being never feels good. But the part about noticing the feeling of discomfort at harming another—at not treating other beings with the respect and kindness they deserve as equally precious parts of the wholeness of reality—this is so new to me. I first had a glimpse of it at the Diamond Approach summer retreat last year, as I described in an earlier entry. And this piece of work keeps arising, through the outer events and inner experience in my soul.

I feel both powerless to prevent the defensive structure from kicking into action and a deep longing to remain in touch with the truth and treat others with kindness. And in this moment, a deep sorrow about the harm I have caused others, and the pain of being separated from my own heart. As I feel this sorrow, my heart becomes full of a tenderness that is both strong and vulnerable.

Clarifying intention – caring for the hurt self

I have been writing in the last few postings about my experience working with anger on a medicine walk in nature the last time I was in the desert. A friend from Ireland sent me an email about this topic, and he said something very pertinent about anger: “It really scares people because when you are angry a person becomes very unpredictable, unmanageable for want of a better word, and most people handle interpersonal conflict very badly. They just want to escape from the source of the conflict and anger.” As I cast my mind back over the last five years or so, I can see this has played out in my life repeatedly. When I have expressed anger, most people do what is called “cut off,” responding in such a way that our contact is severed permanently.

Looking out the window at the heaving, wind-tossed waters in the Burrard Inlet, it seems the stormy, helpless frustration I have felt is reflected perfectly in the steely waters. The outer reflects the inner in the mirror of nature.

The most recent loss of friendship occurred in August-September this year, and it was this event that prompted me to renew my efforts to look at how I handle anger while I was in the desert. A friend whom I have known for 20 years, who said he appreciated me and was glad I am in the world, kept putting me off when I asked him to get together with me at the summer retreat. Three times, I approached him to set up a time and he said he couldn’t talk about it then. Several other times I approached him to chat and he fobbed me off on other people. Then he said he was going to warn his friend that I was dangerous!

By the third time I specifically asked him when we were going to get together, and he said he couldn’t talk about it then, I was feeling really hurt. I owed him $11 and change for a domain name he’d registered for me, and that was part of what we were going to talk about. So my brilliant, hurt, and now defensively angry self wrote “Fuck you. Forget the whole goddamn thing” on a $20 bill, and I gave it to him. I admit, I felt some pleasure in expressing my anger in a way that discharged my debt but would cause him embarrassment if he tried to use the money. I saw a little humour in it, too. What I really expected was that he would realize he’d been acting like a jerk, apologize, and make some time to get together. What actually happened was that in the absence of his apology, I later phoned to apologize to him, left a message of apology, and he sent me an email saying he didn’t listen to my message, had blocked me on Skype and email, and didn’t want me to contact him. Cut off.

This made me really question how important my friendship was to him. Not very, I had to conclude. This was a deep shock, and I think it’s better to know the truth. But it was also painful, and it led to this exploration of anger that I’ve been documenting here. The brilliance of that note was to reveal the truth, and I’m still glad I wrote it! My sorrow is that I must have hurt him, and I regret not honouring his innocent, radiant being, which is a much deeper truth than the surface interaction of our egos that I have been describing. As Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” And at this point in my journey, the ego heap is still bigger than the heap of my true nature. Rumi said “Pay Satan heaps of gold for pain!” I am grateful for the learning.

Writing about this story now, I see a little more deeply into the original template for this defense mechanism. As all little girls do, I wanted my father to love me, care for me, and protect me. Unfortunately, my father had an uncontrollable temper and was both physically and verbally abusive. The hurt I experienced as a young child was much more than I could cope with, and the one who I wanted to turn to for comfort and protection was the one who was hurting me. This is an impossible situation, and the young soul finds ways to cope that build lasting impressions in the body and in the behaviour patterns. For example, a defensive way of curving the shoulders inwards, and the defense mechanism of responding to hurt with an angry outburst designed to push the other person away, which I have been exploring here.

What I have deeply longed for is that when I respond to a hurt with anger, the person who is behaving in a way that hurts me would realize how I felt, and turn to me with love, caring, and acceptance. I wanted my friend to hold me and soothe me. When I was a young girl, after my father beat me, I would lay on my bed crying for hours. Sometimes, eventually, he came into my room to soothe me and comfort me. I had forgotten that part of the pattern until now, so this makes a little more sense to me now. After the big storm, sometimes there would be a tenderness. This helps explain why the pattern has been so persistent; occasionally, at the end, there was a pay-off of love after the suffering.

You might be wondering why I am sharing this here. My intention is to help you understand the type of healing that can occur through doing work in nature, like the vision fast or a medicine walk. So I am giving you an example from my own life, and, miraculously, my understanding is deepening through this process of describing it to you.

So, back to the Eureka Valley, October 2009, with my guides Ruth and Larry mirroring my intention for the day walk I was going to go on. I had been talking about the anger, and made the connection about the steps I go through (which I described last time), and how I needed to change the order of events by inserting the step where I care for my hurt self. I forget exactly how it happened, but I’d also been talking a bit about the work I’ve done relating to my inner man (which is also work of the west shield) and Ruth suggested that I need to be both mother and father to my inner child. This was a revolutionary idea! I had never thought of the inner man as a father. I’d always related to him as a lover. But what Ruth suggested made total sense the moment she said it: what I needed to do was be both mother and father to myself! The idea of being father to myself had truly never occurred to me, and I could see how this was what I’d often wanted from the men I’d been in relationship with. I often chose men who were great fathers to their own daughters, in that unconscious way that we all have of trying to work out our unresolved issues through relating to others!

So part of my intention was this: I am mother and father to my hurt self. But this still isn’t the whole story. There was another piece in the mirroring of intention, which I will talk about next time.

Understanding the cycle of anger

As I mentioned last time, when they mirrored my intention for my day walk, Ruth and Larry helped me clarify something about anger. I have long understood that when I have a very angry, charged response to a situation, it is usually because I am feeling hurt about something. The anger is a defense, which for me feels more comfortable than the feeling of hurt. (This is not so for everyone; for some people feeling angry is a very uncomfortable feeling, and they might have a different defense mechanism for helping them not to feel angry.)

So I have learned that anger is the clue that I am feeling hurt. It also provides the strength I need to take care of the hurt, as well as to respond to the outer situation. So I have known this for a long time, but since I don’t like to feel the hurt, I usually still go with the automatic response of the anger, discharging it to try to get rid of the person or situation that hurt me, rather than attending to the hurt. It’s only later that I get around to feeling the hurt, and maybe calm down and talk to the person in a constructive way.

Anger diagram 1

event that hurts me – angry outburst – go away and be alone – feel the hurt – understand what happened – apologize to the person and try to undo the damage of the outburst

Sometimes the final step is expensive, if I actually damaged an object, and sometimes it is not possible to undo the damage and I lose a relationship. It is also interesting to learn over time that the “event that hurts me” is often not as bad as I thought. Due to my own history, I can interpret things inaccurately, feeling hurt when there was objectively no hurt intended. As I described this sequence of events to Ruth and Larry, I could see that I need to make a change in the sequence.

Anger diagram 2

event that hurts me – go away and be alone – feel the hurt – take care of my hurt self – understand what happened – talk to the person if necessary, saying what happened, how I feel, what I need, and what I want from them (this last point describes the four steps of non-violent communication, by the way)

So you can see that the angry outburst is missing from the second diagram (darn!). Instead, I take care of my hurt self. Also the nature of talking to the person at the end is different, since it is not about damage control but about asking for what I need.

So this is part of what emerged with the mirroring process. But there’s more to the story, and I’ll tell you that next time!

A lifetime of anger – breaking the cycle

As I have written previously, the south is the place where we feel our emotions and act on them in an unmediated way. When we mature from childhood into adolescence, moving around the wheel from the south to the west (from summer to fall), we start to be aware of the effects our actions have on others, and gain deeper understanding about why we feel the way we do, and who we really are.

I’d like to illustrate this movement by sharing something of what I have learned working with anger. This has been a long process of discovery, involving years of healing and deepening understanding. My latest trip to the desert to assist at the vision fast brought a new layer of healing, growth, and maturity. So over the next little while I’m going to share with you what I have learned, both because it may be useful in your own inner exploration of anger, and because it illustrates so beautifully how the ceremony of the vision fast and the teaching of the four directions can help us on our inner journey.

Intentions and claiming

When people go on a vision fast, at least in the form of ceremony that we use at The School of Lost Borders, they state the intention of their fast before they start their solo time. Usually the guides will spend some time with each faster, helping them clarify their intention until it is in the form of a sentence or two, beginning with I am a woman… or I am a man… and followed by the qualities the faster is claiming.

During the time in basecamp, Ruth, Larry, and I worked with each other to clarify our intentions for a solo walk that we took while the fasters were out fasting. So when it was my turn, Ruth and Larry listened while I said what I wanted to claim, and they helped me clarify my intention. This was a magical process, because through talking and exploring with them, a clarity and understanding of what I needed to do emerged that was completely unexpected…

As I have mentioned previously, I went to the desert hoping to do some work with my anger. I have lost friends in the past when I expressed my anger, probably because I didn’t do it skillfully and it scared them, or hurt them, and the feeling of fear or hurt was stronger than the feelings of caring for me that they might have had. The fascinating thing about this is that my anger usually has arisen as a defense because I was feeling hurt or afraid because of what the other person had done! So it is perpetuating a cycle of fear or hurt.

But, I also want to remind you that anger also contains passion, aliveness, and creativity. So although expressing anger in an unmediated way (yelling, swearing, throwing things, hitting a rock with a hammer, thrashing around in bed next to your partner, kicking or punching the wall) may have undesired consequences, it also has a hidden treasure that is worth retaining. I feel the excitement of the passion I feel for this treasure as I write, and look forward to continuing this exploration over the next few postings. More to come!

The wheel turns to fall again

Before I leave for California I need to make formal recognition that the wheel of the year has turned once more… another fall is here.

This is the time when the child of summer grows into the self-reflective adolescent. Where the child is pure emotion, the adolescent is more hesitant to act freely, more concerned with what other people might think. And, concerned about the effects of our actions on others.

For me, this is a maturing of steeping the red energy of summer in the black cauldron of self-awareness. What effect does my anger have on others? Does it serve me? Does it really serve the truth of who I am? Lately friendships have been falling away like sequins off a wedding dress. Does being true to who I am mean letting go of these friendships because people don’t appreciate me the way I am? Or am I being loyal to an old self-image that no longer serves me? As I look back over my life, most friendships and romantic relationships have ended with an angry scene. Although it’s true that sometimes we need that angry energy to separate, and sometimes anger is definitely the appropriate response to being treated badly, neglected, or abused, the maturing part of me is beginning to question the way I express the anger.

Sure, it’s fun to let it rip… It can feel very satisfying, especially when someone has behaved in ways that I felt hurt by. I’m thinking of one event in particular that occurred this summer… Sometimes the energy of expressing anger can reveal the hidden truth in a situation. And yet it makes most people uncomfortable, and the loss of a friendship is a high price to pay. My friend Dorrie was the only person I’ve ever met who seemed to love me fully when I was angry; it didn’t phase her. What a gift to have that acceptance.

So this is the exploration I am taking with me into the Owens Valley desert region in Eastern California. What inner exploration are you doing this fall?

Here are some entries from the past about the energies of the West, which is the fall quadrant of the wheel:

The mystery of the West

Falling into the West

The West

Returning from the retreat: innocence, security, anger, and a good burger

As I mentioned previously, I just returned from the Diamond Approach 10-day summer retreat in California, and I’d like to share some of the learnings from that, because they tie in with the summer part of the wheel. Summer is the time of childhood innocence. In fact, Bill Plotkin writes in Nature and the Human Soul that innocence is one of the gifts children give to the world. And it is the parents’ job to maintain the safety of the home-nest in the early years, to allow this innocence to flourish. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen. But we all are innocent at the core of our nature. Even George Bush, Hitler, and Charles Manson. Although innocence wasn’t directly the theme of the retreat, I found that when I was working with people, and being a very allowing, clear space of openness for witnessing their work, their innocence is something I kept seeing, over and over. And I also felt in touch with my own innocence. This is part of the radiant preciousness of who we are. I felt it was a gift from the universe to be able to experience this and know it directly, in myself and others.

So when I left the retreat, I was in quite an expansive, open state, after 10 days of working in a deep way with people during the exercises, meditating, and having many satisfying connections with friends that I only get to see once a year. I arrived at the Air Canada security line at San Francisco airport in this open, friendly state. Although the line was quite long, and only one belt was open, and they kept letting people in first class go around the side and to the front of the line, I was in my open state, had four hours before my flight, and didn’t want to get caught up in my usual reactive judgement about this situation. I spoke to the woman behind me, who was from Calgary, and we shared some airport security experiences. When I got close to the front of the line, a man asked if he could cut in. I asked if he was crew, and he was, so I said sure, and we had a nice conversation too. He was from Montreal, and we talked about different cities. It was very pleasant, and I was pleased to be enjoying this potentially frustrating situation.

I guess this is where the universe wanted to test how grounded and connected to being I really was, because suddenly my bag was halted, brought out, and the security guy asked who it belonged to. I said it was mine, and he said there was a liquid in the bag. I had thought my water bottle was empty, but it wasn’t, and that was why it had been flagged. I pulled it out and dumped the water in the bin, and put my bag back through. Then my laptop was halted, and the security guy asked who it belonged to. I admitted it was mine, and a jerk in the line who was late for his flight said “Have you got anything else in your luggage that doesn’t belong there?”

Huh! Snap! I was totally out of my open spacious peaceful place and into a defensive response that came to the fore automatically. I said “It’s not my fault security is so fucking anal.” Luckily for me, they weren’t actually that anal, because they let me go through and didn’t say anything about this statement. But the passenger continued to heckle me as I collected my belongings at the other end of the belt, and I lost it again and said “It’s not my fault you’re late for your flight.” And he said “It’s not my fault you’re a stupid *&%&!” I said “I didn’t call you names and I would appreciate if you don’t call me names.” He called me another name, and then took off down the hallway.

So that’s it, huh? That’s the limit of my capacity to stay open and nonreactive. Less than an hour from arriving at the airport. Altercation. Irritation. Feeling caught up in reactivity, which is very familiar, and feeling hopeless about being a slave to it. Why am I getting triggered so easily, all the time? Here I’ve just finished a 10-day retreat and I’m totally caught up in what some idiot stranger said to me. It was an attack, but I got caught in it. Where is the benefit of the practice? The openness and spaciousness? If you are familiar with the entity known as the superego, you will notice it at work, making the situation even worse by attacking me for not being more equanimous.

But I have learned something after these many years of various practices, so the next part of the story is how I worked with the stew of anger and reactivity I was caught up in. And, no coincidence, anger is also one of the qualities connected with the red of the south part of the wheel. It is a form of the red essential aspect which can be experienced as strength, and the heat, fire, and aliveness of it can help us to protect ourselves and others. It has often motivated me to take action in the world. But in its less purely flowing form it can be felt as irritation, frustration, rage, and so on. Which is one of the things I worked with over and over at the retreat. The movement, like here at the airport, from openness to frustration or rage.

As I walked down the corridor toward my gate, pulling my well-examined luggage behind me, I saw how I get caught in this uncomfortable place all the time. I felt the discomfort of it and the desire to move away from it. It feels so awful to be caught in this reactivity. And it happens to me all the time. This made me wonder what I’m doing to keep getting caught in this. Is this a familiar, comfortable pattern from childhood? (Well, yes.) Is that why it seems to happen over and over? Am I creating it? And I noticed how much I wanted to escape from the discomfort of it. I don’t want to feel this way. I want to control reality so I never have to feel this way. I wished I’d said something even more annihilating to completely shut the stranger up and stop him from making me feel this way. I spent a moment or two trying to think of what that might have been—what I could have said. I noticed again how the feeling was so uncomfortable that I wanted to move away from it. But it was inside me and I couldn’t. So I went to have a pee, and tried to remember to sense my belly center—the Kath meditation—a practice I had been doing for the past ten days (and nine years). As I was sitting on the toilet, sensing my belly, I suddenly flashed on my spiritual teacher, and how she probably doesn’t get caught up in this kind of reactivity.

The feeling was as if I’d done something wrong and the passenger who attacked me had told everyone about it, so I guess a kind of shame. I am normally very together, and follow all the procedures for passing through security correctly, but this time I was still in a somewhat expanded state from the retreat, floating along a bit, and didn’t realize there was still some water in my water bottle. Also I didn’t know I had to take the laptop out of its case. I had already taken it out of the suitcase, and put it in a separate bin, and I thought that was all I had to do.

So the shame I noticed mainly by the reaction to it—defending myself, as if I hadn’t done anything wrong. In my head telling him my IQ was higher than his, because he had called me stupid. But just seeing that my superego was involved didn’t really shift the experience of discomfort and an inner, red irritation that felt very difficult to be with. But as I was sitting on the toilet, I realized that the difficulty was that I was trying to maintain a self-image. My teacher wouldn’t care what her image was—what people thought of her (or so I imagined). But I was feeling so bothered because my self-image of being together and doing things right was challenged.

Seeing this started to bring me more of a sense of relief, inner space. I still noticed some superego activity as I went on to a bar & grill to have some dinner while waiting for the flight. Feeling sensitive and raw, seeing how many times I’d been reactive in the retreat and carried away by anger. But I noticed the table I was given by a window facing the sunshine was very nice, and the food was quite good, and I felt very fortunate to be in this amazingly quiet place in an international airport. Feeling some sense of the surroundings being safe and supportive helped me relax into my true nature, and the awareness of myself as an innocent and precious being. The reactivity dissolved completely and I enjoyed my meal.

Anger is a very potent doorway for learning for me. In this instance, seeing how it was working to maintain a self-image is what allowed the whole experience to shift from the almost unbearable heat and irritation to shame (which the anger was protecting me from feeling) to a sense of inner spaciousness and quiet enjoyment of my veggie burger.

P.S. The exploration I just described is an example of the practice of inquiry—the main practice of the Diamond Approach. Staying with our experience, being curious about it, and letting it unfold. The movement of the unfoldment, when we allow it to just happen, can go anywhere. In this instance, it went to spaciousness and a good burger.