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ANGER IS DAIMONIC
by
Thomas Moore
When you
have been done an injustice, anger flares up before you have the chance
to understand what has happened. It's as though someone else is looking
out for you and let you know immediately that you have been wronged.
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
this daimonic anger has done its job, you are left with personal
decisions. If you don't act soon, you may forget what gave rise to anger
in the first place. The first task is to show your displeasure, and the
next might be to examine the situation and task, "Why am I angry? What
exactly has happened?" Anger has content, but if you let it dissipate
without reflection and action it may enter a pool of discontent that
swirls and stagnates over time. This chronic anger is a corrosive
emotion that uglifies everything in its vicinity.
Anger can
be so suppressed that you feel a vague discontent, but you don't even
know that the root emotion is anger. You have to bring this core feeling
to the surface and see it for what it is. It might help to remember the
stories of injustice done to you and to make some headway changing those
conditions. It also help to find a new reason for being angry, for
channelling the rage you feel into a cause worthy of your emotion.
Notice that in none of these cases you try to get rid of the anger but
rather give it a strong reason for being.
You need
some insight into your anger so that eventually you can deal with its
specific focus. Anger is only partly an emotion. It has an intellectual
component and helps makes sense of your life. 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 sorts out a complex life and
constantly restructures it. It may take considerable anger to change
jobs or decide on divorce. It's obvious that social wrongs are only
corrected when the abused get angry enough and resist.
Anger can
draw out of the knight and warrior in you and transform simple emotion
into an effective persona. It can make you a different person. Many men
and women going through a dark night described how they were changed by
it, often by becoming more of a warrior. By warrior I don't mean a
violent person, but someone whose has taken on an edge and has
discovered unknown power. In some cases, simply owning your power, your
eccentricity, or your creativity is enough to chase away the mood that
has kept you dark and quiet.
If you
don't articulate your angry feelings in some effective way, you may end
up turning those feelings against yourself. This is a subtle way of
avoiding the anger - by disguising it as self-annoyance. A habit of
self-flagellation can lead to a particular dark night of the soul that
is centred on the kernel of anger. You block your feeling, choosing this
form of depression over the risk of revealing how you actually feel. The
anger wants to flow through your system, from your first awareness of
injustice to your final syllable of complaint. That feeling of becoming
angry may be nothing more or less than the pulse of life asking for
expression. The Sufi poet Rumi once wrote:
Don't use your anger to conceal
a radiance that should not be hidden
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 the wrong
ways, and be confused with many other things. But it is still a force of
your life, your precious daimon letting itself be known.
Extract from DARK NIGHTS of the SOUL: A
guide to finding your way through life’s ordeals
by Thomas Moore (2004 Piatkus. ISBN 0
7499 2557 4) p224-5 www.careofthesoul.net
Reproduced with permission of the author
by email 03/12/04 |