Subject: patterns in anger

From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 10:40:38 -0500

Some thoughts on anger:

Perhaps as part of learning a healthy level of assertiveness, we learn to
[re]act constructively with healing action before we've actually reached
the point of anger in many instances... 

Anger can supply the energy needed to move us through the difficult places
of discouragement we naturally and cyclically encounter when we try to
change the status quo... IF the anger is directed through constructive
circuits in our psyches. We are given few enough constructive circuits, and
anger is a powerful enough energy, that I think it is easy for anger to
spill out of the postive modes we can creatively direct it into... then it
can become actively negative or passively dissipative. 

Anger is so often keyed to something WITHIN us that we don't like... so
often the disdained external is pressed into service as something of a
smoke screen. Anger can be an excuse or a way to distance ourselves when
there exists less actual distance than we are comfortable with. It seems
that often when we can love and forgive OURSELVES sufficiently (which can
be surprisingly difficult) we find that a lot of our anger is 'transmuted'
(hi, Vicki!) into compassion. We are so little trained in being loving that
it's fairly speculative on my part, but I think love and compassion are
more powerful working places than anger, in terms or effecting positive
changes.

Back to work,

Jack

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 05:37:49 -0800 (PST)

Hi Lee and all, 

Guess I'd like to jump in here for this discussion about anger. Certainly in
the love-and-light phase some people go through (whether it is a Christian
paradigm, New Age, Buddhist, whatever!) anger has been the 'nemesis' to be
avoided. What I preceive happens at this time is a suppression and denial of
anything that looks or feels like anger and so the very unhealthy 'stuffing'
of this powerful energy flow occurs. Then the suppression can result in pent
up rage and harmfully explosive outbreaks, any number of addictive patterns
and/or high blood pressure and various other  health problems. 

Ideally, through realizing emotions need to have their expression,  we find
a healthy way of feeling our anger and, more importantly, ways of expressing
it that are responsible and constructive... What an artform!! 
That is the transmutation that can happen...not a denial, not a suppression,
or 'sublimation', rather, finding a healthy way of using the 'charge' of the
anger for purposeful good. It's the difference between beating your kid when
you're angry versus using anger at what the kid does to create a consequence
(s)he grows and learns from.

Of course, this is the discipline that creates from anger, sometimes anger
is anything but disciplined! Venting anger can clear the air, clear the
circuits and can leave a sense of calm that just wasn't there before. I have
observed and experienced too many situations where irresponsible rampant
anger has brought great pain to others and so I do not feel that unbridled
anger whenever it rises inside a person, needs to be 'expressed'
indulgently. Perhaps at first, when one is just coming out of anger
suppression mode (from guilt), the 'allowing' anger one goes through can be
excessive, but healthy anger finds balance.

When anger stirs me I let the intensity of it move fully through me and feel
it completely. I attempt to be mindful and watch that , as it discharges, it
doesn't do harm to others and that I am NOT in judgement of myself for
feeling what I feel.(It seems the judgement of ourselves that get us stuck)
My intention is 'to do no harm" so I trust even though I may ' lose it',
that no great harm is done. When I trace the feelings, usually I find a deep
sadness from which the anger sourced, a sense of powerlessness and
frustration that somewhere ignorance 'won'. 

Lee,I loved your telling of the shouting matches with those you feel the
closest to. I have expressed anger to those that simply can not handle any
form of confrontation and the wall of that denial feels so frustrating.
Likewise, there are those who use their anger when confronted to 'put up' a
protective barricade to refuse to feel another's anger. I agree heartily
that anger has a healthy place when we work with it.

In reading Daniel Quinn's work, in reading Riane Eisler's work, God, the
anger I felt was crippling.  For days I moved between eruptive anger and
paralyzing depression. And then there was hope and a sense that all of it
could be transmuted through the *passion* that was ignited in me to DO
SOMETHING! The power of anger for me is that it will transmute
(metamorphose) when it is allowed to live in you fully and become an
ignition of passion and activation of purpose... Hooray for permaculture!
Hooray for any of us who are following their passion to create change! 

Vinca

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 05:37:49 -0800 (PST)

Hi Lee and all, 

Vinca

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From: CK Valois/B Brummitt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 08:40:51 -0600 (CST)

...It seems a problem stems from folks feelings of shame, rather than guilt.
 With a healthy psyche it's fairly easy to recognise when we screw up, make
amends and move on.  When the psyche is wounded and we feel like "bad"
people rage often takes over.  The difference between guilt and shame is "I
screwed up" versus "I am screwed up"...

Learning to argue sanely is possibly one of the best gifts we can give
ourselves.  Teaching the method is an art-form.  

Bruce

  Cheryl Valois and Bruce Brummitt
           <[email-masked]> 
             46N56' 95W20'
   Visit the Natural Building Gallery
   <http://www.zianet.com/blackrange>

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From: [email-masked]

 Perhaps at first, when one is just coming out of anger
suppression mode (from guilt), the 'allowing' anger one goes through can be
excessive, but healthy anger finds balance.