Transformation through anger and grief : thoughts from Tian Dayton

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

Oscar Wilde

We are meant to fully feel our anger and rage, to own it, to embrace it, and feel the sorrow and confusion beneath it, to fully enter into our own pain so that we can transcend it through EXPERIENCING IT. Trying to transcend it without feeling it (a spiritual bypass) just doesn’t work; it then gets lived out in the arena of our relationships in painful and alienating ways. We need to be willing to look bad, to feel bad, to say the wrong thing, to be awkward, to fail, but to try – to do our share in bumbling our way through to the other side of the conflict.

Grief is actually a path to letting go. Letting go is part of the spiritual path – letting go of personal limitations and pessimistic thinking about life and relationships. Shifting thinking into a positive frame of mind.. can enlist help from unseen sources.

When we grow up around substance abuse or trauma we develop distorted ideas about life and living as well as destructive attitude and negative thinking. challenge : to learn to know and feel and articulate our needs that is our major working in healing from a hurtful past.