Anger is a wild beast. She flares up like a volcano shooting lava blasts into the sky with a force so untamed, so unrefined, she burns any attempts to control her blaze.
Yes, I call anger ‘She’ because of my own personal experience and exploration around the Dark Goddesses like Kali. But truly anger is beyond gender, beyond sex, beyond reason. Anger takes a stand for the wild, the primal, the innate need to be aligned with our true power.
Anger does not back down. She is a fierce teacher. She teaches through the darker shadowy spaces where our power is leaking and she shows us how to mine those leaks for diamonds.
It has taken me 4 years of conscious work to write this article and harvest the true lessons of anger. I had been caught in her fiery blaze one time too many and after licking my wounds from yet another bout of rage I surrendered and asked, “What do you want me to learn?”
This is what she taught me…
I hope these 10 Spiritual Lessons of Anger will bring insight to your life and empower you to cultivate your true power to whatever degree you are ready. If anger has ever burned your bridges, or squelched your dreams, let this be your personal invitation to receive some of the greatest lessons of your life!
10 Spiritual Lessons of Anger
1. Release repressed emotions
The force of anger holds nothing back. Things are said that may have been sitting under the surface for years. Feelings are expressed that never had the chance to see the light of day. In a flash of anger the carpet is lifted and what you really think and feel suddenly comes flooding out. If you’ve ever experienced this you know how damaging it can be to yourself and to your relationships. Not because the truth is hurtful, but because repressed truth becomes polluted truth, meaning it has the stench of something that has gone past its due-date. Anger teaches us to address our true thoughts and feelings as they arise so they don’t reach this point of fermentation. Anger can feel like a last resort to release any repressed emotions. Learning this lesson is about learning how to express yourself honestly and completely in the moment rather than burying it for a later date.
Are you holding back any thoughts or feelings from being fully expressed?
2. Uncover where you’re ready for healing
Anger arises through trigger points. Something happens and suddenly you’re angry. What happened? What was triggered? Those questions will lead you down the beautiful path to uncover where you’re ready for healing. The wounds of our lives can be blow holes for the volcano of anger. When anger shows up, it is easy to spot those holes and start to invite the deeper work of healing and transformation. You’ll know you’ve healed your wounds when those trigger points arise and you experience them in a completely new way.
Where are you ready for healing?
3. Complain to clarify
Sometimes anger feels like a washing machine on the spin cycle, looping and looping in the same old story and list of issues. When the washing machine of anger starts chugging, take note of all the things you’re complaining about and let the laundry list of complaints clean up your awareness so you can clarify what you actually want. For example: if anger has sent you into a tirade of complaints about someone’s behavior, or something that happened, ask yourself: “What do I actually want in this situation?”. Perhaps you want to speak up for yourself, perhaps you want to go for your dreams, perhaps you want to feel relaxed rather than wound up all the time.
What are your complaints trying to clarify for you?
4. Listen to yourself
Have you ever noticed how we get louder and louder when we feel we’re not being listened to. Anger is what happens when you don’t listen to yourself. When you ignore your impulses and intuition and let yourself be swayed against your inner guidance. Anger won’t let you get away with going against yourself. Anger requires a thoughtful, attentive ability to listen, to truly hear how you feel, what you think, what your instincts are. When these essential pieces of information get pushed aside anger will yank you back and demand your attention.
Listen to yourself, what is your inner guidance saying?
5. Claim your true desires
We humans are funny. Sometimes we don’t let ourselves have what we want, then we’re mad when we see someone else getting what we want. When anger flairs up I immediately ask myself “Is there something I want that I’m not letting myself have?”. Asking this question brings your true desires into the spotlight so they can be claimed. Claiming your true desires requires the ability to clarify them as well as give yourself permission to have them.
Are you willing to give yourself permission to claim your true desires?
6. Direct your energy
Anger will show you when you’re going off track and moving far away from your true desires. It will blast a big fire sign in the sky saying “You’re going the wrong way”. If you’re angry and you’re going the wrong way, how then do you figure out the right way? The right way is the path of your true desires, the path that is in alignment with your soul’s calling. Anything short of that will awaken the wasps nest of anger and sting you until you remember. Remembering is like resetting your GPS to the correct destination.
Where do you want to go in your life?
7. Identify misaligned beliefs
Despite our best efforts to move in the direction of our dreams, set our intentions for positive outcomes and joyful experiences we can be blindsided by anger sometimes. When anger spits despite your best efforts to listen to yourself, direct your energy and claim your true desires, there is most likely some deeper subconscious belief system fighting against you. Anger will expose the deeper subconscious beliefs with brilliant precision. Simply ask yourself what you believe when you’re angry and you’ll uncover a whole host of misaligned beliefs. When this happens, be grateful for the opportunity to unearth such deep drivers and shine a light on them so they can be part of the remembering. Exposing misaligned beliefs gives you the opportunity to update the shadow maps to dream constellations.
What beliefs are you harboring that are misaligned with your true soul’s path?
8. Create safety to grow
Remembering your true soul’s calling and bringing clarity to your desires can be scary. Often we keep ourselves in a muddy haze so we don’t have to face the risk of actually going for our dreams. Anger will show us where we’re holding ourselves back from living the path we’re called to live. In order to move through this kind of anger we must learn how to create safety for ourselves and our dreams. Safety creates permission to grow and risk living the life you’re born to life.
What do you need to feel safe?
9. Cultivate respect
Respect is something that is earned through listening, understanding and honoring the truth by aligning your actions accordingly. When we disrespect ourselves by going against our truth or outright ignoring our intuition we will feel angry because our inner being knows this is the wrong direction. Cultivating respect is the practice of honoring your truth all the way into embodied action. As you cultivate respect for yourself, you will naturally respect other people.
How can you cultivate respect for yourself?
10. Own your power
The ultimate teaching, that all other lessons are priming us for, is the ability to own our power. Our power is our true aligned energy. When we honor this power, we listen to our truth, we act in accordance with our inner guidance, we risk moving in the direction of our dreams, we speak our truth, we let ourselves feel what we’re feeling. When we honor our power anger bows to us and she softens her gaze with respect because she knows you are the most willing student of all. You have received her teachings and she is grateful. You are no longer driven by anger, you are driven by your dreams. Anger no longer needs to burn you but light your path instead. When you own your power you have befriended anger in mutual respect and appreciation.
How can you practice owning your power today?
The 10 Spiritual Lessons of Anger offer some tough lessons, but ultimately they are all lessons in power.
Imagine if our culture knew how to process anger with love and respect. I believe our world would transform dramatically! I also believe it all starts with the individual. As each of us learns to empower ourselves through the teachings of anger, we naturally relate with others in more empowering ways.
I’d love to hear about the lesson you’re going to focus on today to cultivate your power. Post in the comments below (let yourself be heard)!
Let’s empower our world to learn from this difficult emotion. Share the 10 Spiritual Lessons of Anger with your community.