By Andrew Shykofsky
In deciding to walk a real spiritual path, you should expect to find a lot more anger in you than you thought
Everyone is angry. And in fact, a lot more than they realize. The reason people are angry is that without exception, our childhoods were painful. The vast majority of people either don’t agree with this statement or else want to believe they have accepted what happened, put it behind them and forgiven whomever hurt them.
Those seeking a real relationship with God open themselves for much greater scrutiny and working with a conscious teacher. Sooner or later, that anger will need to surface and we say this is a great thing.
If you take an objective look at your parents and how they did, you will realize that, unless they were diligently trying to follow God throughout while maintaining an inner practice, they likely fell short at times. This is because each of us are unique as souls and would have needed very specific methods to help us grow and mature through our early years.
In some cases, our parents read books and tried to learn good parenting methods. There is nothing wrong with trying to learn though most of what is taught is universal meaning best practices for kids and teens in general.
From God’s perspective, we needed specific ways of being loved, disciplined and guided. There is no ‘one shoe fits all’ method of being raised but only by learning to tune into the will of God could this be accomplished. If your parents had nothing like this going on, you were not adequately seen understood and certainly not loved very well. And as a reaction to that treatment, most of us felt hurt, neglected and often abused which eventually turned to anger.
As adults, we have very strong and well developed coping mechanisms to avoid our wounds being triggered. In extreme cases, we get super controlling and this leads to a sort of rigid life which attracts passive aggressive people who are ok to be controlled outwardly by us but they find ways to neutralize the situations. Likely their ways of acting out will be the very things that irritate the heck out of us. We have a strange knack for picking the people who seem to push our buttons most effectively.
We say praise God for that! The soul is relentless in its desire for liberation and unless we know where our buttons are, it’s really hard to address them and get them fixed. Most of us prefer to avoid this work. We have our ways in place to minimize or avoid emotional upsets and confrontations.
This seems to help us keep our anger at bay. But there is no way to get through life by avoiding the underlying issues. God will make sure that life has its challenges whether you are seeking a connection with Him or not.
In deciding to walk a real spiritual path, you should expect to find a lot more anger in you than you thought. Have no fear, this is actually normal. We got angry way back when because life as we experienced was far off of how it should’ve or could’ve been.
We knew we weren’t being loved right and at the mercy of the adults around us. Especially if you came in as a soul with any sort of consciousness developed, you would have a strong sense that everything was really messed up.
Sadly, there was almost no validation for what you knew was true. Adults do a weird thing by finding all sorts of ways to justify abuse, neglect and mistreatment. As kids, we follow their lead but are left feeling insecure, misunderstood and lonely. Then depending on our soul’s makeup, we get crafty in figuring out how we are going to survive. But underneath it all we have a cauldron of anger covering up some real deep wounding.
Fast forward to the present day and you have found you want to really evolve and be with God. God in His perfect timing prepares to expose in you those areas of wounding that are very touchy. The Light will touch them and you will get angry. Unfortunately, there is no way around this.
In this lesson, we want to provide you practical tools to prepare and deal with what lies ahead on the road to freedom. Think of your anger as a well-honed defense mechanism. Its primary function is protective, as in to serve your heart by backing people off when they begin to approach your wounds. You will find that when the Teacher calls you out for behaviors, attitudes and things you say that are out of accord with God, you will often have strong emotional reactions.
When you know that what you have said or done is off, you have the option to become humble and quietly own or take responsibility for it. This in itself is hard because you will feel the inner burn of the truth within your consciousness. We don’t like to be seen as wrong or especially not mean or dark because of how strongly it clashes with the image we have created for ourselves.
We have invested a lot to make sure people see us in a specific way. Most who commit to a spiritual path have developed reputations as being more spiritual, more aware, healthier and wiser. All of a sudden to have your worst aspects exposed is very uncomfortable and we don’t quite know how to respond. Rather than humility, we often hiss with hatred at the very one who can see us the clearest.
Luckily, real Priests and Teachers aren’t phased by this temporary show of nastiness. Likely they were guilty of having done the same thing back when they were in the hot seat. But the Light does not withdraw and relinquish to your reaction. It holds solid and waits.
In that waiting period, you will feel a lot and it is very uncomfortable. The anger surfaces because someone has come in to an area and we are worried about being violated, abused and hurt again. In that moment, we forget that our prayer is to be with God and can’t see how necessary this step.
A good plan is to make that realization now and prepare for when the moment comes. It’s a lot easier to set yourself up before the reaction hits because once in the thick of feelings, decisions won’t be very rational.
Remember that under the anger is where the nugget of truth lies. The anger is a reaction to feeling hurt, violated, misunderstood, abused, neglected etc. If our history is one of abuse, we will be on a hair trigger when we think abuse is coming. Certain activities will incite anger in us and it won’t make any sense. Our minds move in to find a way to explain it all.
I want you to train yourself to recognize when you are angry and make it a priority to meditate as soon as you can. Learn how to sit in the anger, calm down its fire and find out what the feelings are underneath it. This is where the healing work takes place. Anger management is an essential tool on the path. Instead, the bulk of the people use anger to manage the people in their lives.
This is totally manipulative, selfish and unkind. This manifests in someone threatening to get angry and withdraw if you do or say specific things. Some may give you the silent treatment, decide not to fulfill their duties or chores around the house, or become bossy. Even something simple like leaving the toilet seat up when you know it irritates your partner is a form of anger expressed.
The anger leaks out in ways that try to invoke it in others. That’s the essence of passive aggressive behavior. It can also be seen in how we carry out certain tasks. If you are asked to do something and you are angry that you have to give your precious time and energy, you might do the work with an attitude. Energetically, you’re injecting your anger into what you do and it’s almost better you not do it at all. Those with spiritual sight can feel the anger deposited in the physical matter long after you are gone.
Anger breeds inconsiderate behavior, lack of concern for others and meanness because we stop caring. In people pleaser types, the anger gets directed inward and they begin hating themselves because being mean or angry to others is too risky. If they act out their anger, they risk losing all the love and care of people so they find other ways to let it out.
Ultimately, the anger can mostly come to an end because your wounds are addressed and healed. The next level is dealing with longer term soul conditions. A soul condition is one which you have had for lifetimes and is not merely tied to this one life.
All of what we deal with is just because God is Love and His Cosmic Systems in rooted in Love. I want to urge you to etch this idea into your mind and heart. What happens on the planet, with you personally may not be what God wants for you but it follows in accord with the energy you have put out or the prayers and intentions you have decided.
Your inner mantra should be something like this; ‘I don’t always understand what happens in my life but I trust that God is with me. Either I am experiencing the consequences of what I have put out or God is putting me through something that will ultimately serve my highest good. In any case, I praise Him for this experience and do my best to move through it gracefully.”
Anger is generally an instantaneous reaction. Something happens and boom, we flare up. But as soon as we recognize it, we have choice. It is a decision to let anger dictate your mood or action. It is much better to develop the discipline to quickly determine why something triggered you and then decide to process it quickly.
Find out what concept, wound or place in you was touched. It might be something you will have to sit and look at but in the short term, you can decide you will come back to it and give the immediate anger over to Jesus.
Make sure you come back to it because your integrity is at stake. Your emotional self needs to know that when you make a promise, you will follow through with it. When you do look at it, you have to dig a little deeper and find out where you felt violated. While it might be true that what was done to you was not right, as a disciple of God, that no longer matters. You train yourself to turn to God and forgive the person who hurt you. This will liberate you the fastest.
In other instances, your judgment is clouded and you believe wholeheartedly that you were violated but because of your wounding, you can’t see straight. This is really common on the path as you begin to let yourself be dismantled by your Teacher. Your defenses are weakened and you are vulnerable. For a period, you will be very touchy so make note and catch yourself before you blow a gasket.
Teacher: Andrew Shykofsky