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.
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