One of the things I remember from many moons ago when I was a regular attendee at a substantial number of spiritual and self-development retreats is the constant reminders of how to "be calm and balanced," and how "not to let your ego flare up."
Undeniably, I did learn a lot of things during those years but from my vantage point of some 30 years down the road, I have to admit that there were also a lot of things that were omitted from these sessions... including the fact that healing old wounds is both painful and can make you really angry.
The cynic in me leans towards the simple explanation that it's harder to sell tickets and workshops that don't promise that we are all going to sit around the campfire singing kumbaya, but instead we might come away potentially filled with rage.
Regardless, I also have to be fair and remind myself that most people who are seeking self-development tend to be looking for some version of peace, authenticity, balance and inner calm as an antidote to extremely stressful lives where they feel like they're being pushed relentlessly in directions that don't necessarily match up to what they feel they want their lives to be.
So what is this anger I'm talking about?
Well, if we engage in self-searching on a deep enough level, what we invariably will learn is that we were somehow forced to become something that was not ourselves as it was the only potential means to survive in a possibly dangerous or abusive environment.
Now, I'm not going to get all woo-woo and woke about this, and start pretending that we're all victims of something... however, it is often very true that our early years shape our adult lives. And if those early years are dominated by assertions that we are — for example — useless, stupid, clumsy or unattractive human beings that is something we're going to take into our adult lives and perhaps it'll cause us to become nasty reactive people.
Of course, many of us believe that we've "done the work" and that we have "worked through our issues" from earlier times in our life... so that anger starts to boil up within when we discover that maybe we really haven't done the work.
I have seen this surprise moment sometimes referred to as discovering that you've actually only been "remodeling your ego". Basically, you became aware of what your problems were, added some window dressing to make that look prettier and then basically went about your business pretty much like you did before... except wearing "fancy dress."
The anger comes when your mentor, or therapist, or wiser friend points out that you're "still wearing fancy dress" over something that's not really working.
Another source of anger tends to arise when we discover that a lot of things in life we thought we made conscious choices to do (or not do) turn out to be a little more than automatic survival strategies carried forward. Feels a little bit like somebody showing you that you actually don't have free will!
It makes us angry!
One of the things we must be careful about is to not poo-poo that anger away because there are lots of people in the spiritual healing field who will tell you that anger is "low vibration" or something like that. Consider instead that the anger you were experiencing — at not having had free choice and not making your own decisions — is actually an honest response!
Hell, you've probably been told that you need to "let go" of anger and negative thoughts, and somehow "translate that anger into gratitude" but quite honestly it was probably genuine anger you felt when you were quite young and re-stuffing it without fully experiencing it is not really doing anybody any favors.
The thing about stuffing away anger before you have actually experienced it is that it just goes back into your body and then you go straight back to repeating the same old patterns. The so-called "repetition compulsion" can be very hard to get past.
So, experience that anger, and learn to be OK with it... because then you can move on to real inner peace.
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Sunday!
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2026.09.20 01:49 PDT
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