“The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”
As it stands, all of us are victims of an extremely unhealthy culture. In a culture of conquer-control-consume-repeat we are endlessly conquered, controlled, consumed and forced into repeating and facilitating this diabolical process to no end.
We’re like a bunch of spoiled-rotten, whiny children, taking our vexations out on each other and the environment when we should be digging down deep and transforming our comfortable inertia into courageous action.
The question is: how do we break the cycle. One answer may be through sacred anger
Here’s the thing: You’ll never grow if you don’t get uncomfortable every once in a while. Just like our culture will forever stagnate and degenerate if we don’t challenge how comfortable and contained it keeps us.
Like Anais Nin wrote, “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.
Where people fail, is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” Let’s choose not to fail. Let’s choose not to give into this kind of death. Let’s choose courage instead.
In our culture, anger is seen as politically incorrect. But deep, focused anger can be a boon of sacred energy if we can learn to use it wisely and courageously. Attentive, meditative anger can even be a form of empathy, as anger is often a natural response to horrific situations. Sometimes anger is not only the natural reaction, but the only moral reaction.
This is the kind of anger that lifts us up and compels us to protect the parts inside of us that are being pushed to
The type of charged righteous anger, the type of anger that would rather live a hard life of freedom than an easy life of slavery.
Such anger is sacred precisely because it instills in us an unstoppable courage.
We should not be expected to remain calm and happy in the face of ecocide, rape, misogyny, slavery, and greed. Rather we should be compelled toward righteous anger. We should be obliged to help victims become warriors, screaming from the rooftops, “Take the Goddamned red pill for Christ’s sake!
Become a freedom unto yourself.
You are your own hero.
Allow yourself to be worthy.
Allow yourself to be extraordinary.
Get angry! Get really pissed off!
Then grab the bull by the horns and pin that bastard to the ground!”
Like Gloria Steinem said, “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”
But when push comes to shove, we are just too damn comfortable to care, and too damn polite to speak out. We need to get uncomfortable. We need to rediscover sacred ruthlessness, divine anger, and holy rage, leaving nothing to the inertia of chance and everything to the responsibility of choice; otherwise we fail to be responsible with our power.
“What is the real origin of my own anger?” wrote Jean-Yves Leloup.
“Is it the ego defending its territory, or is it something that has its source in the desire for the well-being of all?”
Sacred anger that spills over into empathy and compassion becomes a very powerful force for moral good.
Hard love is ruthless love. It teaches as it destroys outdated worldviews.
It educates even as it shatters obsolete mental paradigms. It tutors even as it crushes parochial perspectives.
It reveals the wisdom within all wounds. It forces a mirror in front of our victim-hood, screaming at us to rise above being a victim of the world and to become the world instead. It slaps us with the truth while revealing exactly how often we’ve been kissed with lies. It mocks our sense of deservedness: that whiny “I deserve a vacation. I deserve a brand new car. I deserve love. I deserve to be rich. I deserve to be perfect. Wah-wah-wah and woe-is-me!” while exposing us to the absolute fact that we don’t “deserve” anything but what we’ve earned through our own blood, sweat, and tears. And even then we may not get what we want. So it goes.
Break the trance.
Discover the voice of your anger, become a freedom unto yourself, channel clarity through the longing for love anger precedes.
The world needs you to not be crippled by fear, inertia, and comfort.
It needs you to be filled with courage, compassion, and proactive, interdependent love.
Gary z Magee
AHO!