I was there. Again. A scheduled date with Bob. He knew what it was for. For the past few weeks, he had been receiving massage therapy prior to his chiropractic appointments to try to resolve chronic neck and shoulder pain that had plagued him for months. The poor man was distraught and that was depressing him. The worst thing for the chiropractor and me was that our applications did not seem to relieve it for more than a few days in a row.
So there we are. Again. Bob on the table describing the same line of pain in his neck and in his shoulder. He could almost see it under his skin, the same old pain that wouldn’t go away. Then something in me rose up against him, as if to say, “Enough.” My conscience observed this response that was not compassionate to a client, but for that part of the treatment, this determined energy that was almost a growl moved my hands and fingers over the muscles and connective tissue.
After that session I didn’t see Bob for several weeks and when he came back for an appointment he said it was just for the massage, that his neck and shoulder finally got better after the last time. I pondered whether this had anything to do with the unusual emotional response I experienced during that session. Over time, I was rewarded with some ideas to convey to you about what I feel is the healing power of anger.
I soon found an explanation for the word “anger” in John Bradshaw’s description of emotions in his book,Bradshaw in the family. Bradshaw considers emotions in a fairly neutral way, saying that they are signals that tell us where we are in a certain situation. I like this definition because it has no judgment. It doesn’t label an emotion good or bad, just an indicator of where we are.
Emotions allow us to know who we are and how we feel about what is going on around us or within us. The spontaneous rise of anger within us is an indicator that we feel that some injustice has been done. So anger is linked in its most positive sense to our internal balance of justice.
Note the word “spontaneous.” This is not the anger that the mind has been feeding on in relation to a person or situation perceived as problematic. This is not the hair trigger, the splinter on the shoulder waiting to ignite, which is paraded under the guidance of righteous indignation. That kind of emotion falls further into the category of resentment and can take over a person’s life and ruin their health if not resolved with forgiveness.
Rather, the first spontaneous surge of the emotion of anger is pure energy. It is more similar to what we feel when we see a person or company guilty of doing something wrong, but getting rid of it. It is the sudden response to injustice when we see an adult abuse a child or a gang torture a weak person.
As a gauge to measure our response to injustice, anger has a legitimate place in our lives. It motivates us to act, to correct a mistake. Of course, what I experienced as anger in Bob’s situation was a mild flare-up against a condition that had persisted for too long and was eroding my client’s health and well-being. But it proved to be enough power to amplify my applications at the time and get a beneficial result.
The first perception of the positive value of anger led me to the second: reflecting one day on anger as purely “an energy”, I realized that there is an element of “command energy” in its power. That made sense, since Cayce’s readings assigned this emotion to the third chakra, the solar plexus, and “ruled” by the planet Mars.
Then I remembered Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It was so clear that she didn’t say softly, “Please wake up.” Rather, the call, “Lazarus, come out,” resonated with the power to revive the cells of man and make possible their re-entry into his body. And I knew without a doubt that, without the full force of Jesus’ third chakra, in concert with his other centers, the return of Lazarus would not have been possible. This same energy, channeled in a constructive way, allowed the expulsion of demons and other more forceful demonstrations of the evolution of our Big Brother.
So before we who are on the spiritual path make the mistake of viewing anger as “unspiritual”, as an emotion to remove or suppress or to be ashamed of, I encourage you to reconsider your higher expression as the power to command, in support of one in need of healing, including ourselves. Clearing our third charkas through forgiveness paves the way for this powerful energy to come through us spontaneously and constructively, as a blessing, to prompt us to correct a mistake, to help in an unfair situation, or to dispel the illusion of bad health.