Why we need the powerful daimon of anger in our lives.

In some cases, simply owning your power, your eccentricity, or your creativity is enough to chase away the mood that kept you dark and quiet.

Thomas Moore

Anger is designed to motivate us to take positive loving action when we encounter injustice, to set right a wrong done to us.

Whenever we encounter that which we believe to be unrighteous, unkind and unjust we experience anger.  The inhuman practice of slavery would not have ended without anger.  Anger is like a red light flashing on the dash of a car.  It indicates that something needs attention.  Anger is a powerful and positive motivator, useful to move us towards loving action to right wrongs and correct injustice.

Anger gives you the impetus you need to change conditions that need to be changed. In this way anger is like a dark guardian angel, a daimonic force- a daimon is an unnamed but felt invisible presence  – that offers guidance and spiritual support. But once thus daimonic anger has done its job, you are left with personal decision.  If you dont act soon, you may forget what gave rise to anger.

Anger can become a raging, uncontrolled force.  When it is channelled correctly it moves us to the other side – to the side of love.  We must make anger productive in our lives.

How do we do this?

1. Consciously acknowledge you are angry.
2. Restrain your immediate response.
3. Locate the focus of your anger… Why am I so angry?  What does this remind me of?  What is the wrong committed against me?  How serious is the offence? Exactly what happened?
4. Analyse your options.  What possible action could you take?  Do I lovingly confront the person or persons?  Do I decide to consciously overlook the matter?  Do I decide to turn it over or forebear?  This sometimes involves recognising the limits of our power to effect change in another thing or person. But it doesnt mean repressing what gave rise to our anger in the first place.

We need to find some way of channelling what motivated our impulse to anger in the first place, we suffer if we dismiss our own or other’s anger as it has a valid necessary existence and reason for being.

Anger has an intellectual component, it isnt only a feeling.  If you know precisely what and who angers you, you know where you stand, some of what is going on, and how emotionally to deal with it. Anger helps you make necessary changes and helps you confront abuse.  It draws out the warrior. It can make you a different person.

Ideally anger leads us to action, to lovingly confront others, to taking action to express our feelings and needs.  Restoration is the aim of confrontation but only if the person is repentant or sorry.

If we dont articulate our angry feelings in some effective way, we may end up turning those feelings against ourselves…A habit of self flagellation can lead to a dark night of the soul that is centred in a kernel of anger…But anger wants to flow through your system, from your first awareness of injustice to your final syllable of complaint.  The feeling of becoming angry may be nothing more or less than the pulse of life asking for expression.

Anger is your spirit flashing out of you.  It is your presence on earth insisting upon itself. It can be overdone, of course, be expressed in wrong ways,  and be confused with many other things.  But it is still the force of your life, your precious daimon letting itself be known.

We ignore what makes us angry at our peril, in stuffing or denying our anger we do ourselves damage, we fail in self definition.  Learning to express rather than purely vent or dump anger is essential to emotional recovery, especially if our expression of anger was shamed or dismissed as youngsters.  It is the only thing that will bring us out of disempowerement, depression and vulnerability to further emotional abuse.  Our anger says categorically “the way you treated me was unjust and unfair.”   Well defined anger articulated helps us set and enforce boundaries which set our spirits free from oppression, disempowerment and negation.  Anger gives us the necessary energy to move away from what hurts and towards what heals.

Note : part of the above blog contains quotes from Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore.