Anger Management Issues?

Just as I sat down to post this, I got called out to the garden to capture a rattlesnake who was hiding amongst the rocks...Hmmm...Leave a comment below if you know what that means;)

Yesterday I got mad.  That might not sound like a big deal, but I’m not someone who generally gets mad.  In fact, before this year, I would have said that I almost never got mad.  And it turns out that during this year, I have been holding back my anger and keeping it in, dealing with it through prayer, meditation, communion with nature, ceremony…but it had not entirely gone away. 

I can see that the things that I am mad about are ultimately for my highest good.  And I know from my meditations and the things I have been practicing for years that my perception of my reality is what makes it so…SO, I have worked very hard to accept, to surrender, to see the positive light in all that has happened to me, all that I have CHOSEN.  I have been stubbornly resisting the temptation to fall into victim mode, to blame and point fingers and…

Let myself get ANGRY. 

I also have a built in mechanism that my friend Josh Radnor calls “I blame myself first.”  Whenever something is wrong or not working and I am involved, I blame myself.  Now, there may be a very noble and courageous side to “taking full responsibility” for everything, and there is a certain truth to this practice.  However, I tend to slip down the slippery slope of self criticism, guilt, and judgement all to rapidly and before I know it I am…well…mad at myself. 

So it’s not entirely true that I don’t get mad, because I can see in this moment that I spend a great deal of time being mad at myself for things I haven’t done, things I’ve done “wrong” or things I have failed at doing.   This year I have been faced with a great deal of what I have been calling failure, and hence, a great deal of inwardly directed anger. 

And ultimately, that is still what I am dealing with, even after yesterday was over.  That is the part I really have to overcome, the compassion I really have to generate.  Compassion and forgiveness for others is easy.  Well, it feels easy to me, at least in comparison with the bigger task of forgiving me. 

But to return to yesterday, which was not a pretty day, I crossed the threshold of withhold…

As Alexander would say, it was a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”

I decided, or rather, surrendered, into letting myself be really mad.  I let myself walk through the desolate and dreary landscape and the inner inferno of getting downright pissy like a cat on a hot tin roof and there was literally nothing I could do to stop it.  Except turn it inward, which felt extremely dangerous, maybe even life threatening. 

I know from years of studying Chinese medicine what anger can do to your insides, like:  stop everything from moving, and create the kind of friction that eventually leads to an outbreak of an internal wildfire.   AND, I know from Shamanism that Anger can also be understood as an Allied spirit, one that comes to visit when our boundaries have been crossed, when we have allowed our boundaries to be crossed, and when we need to stand up and recreate our sacred space.

But all that seemed like gobbelty gook in the face of my fury.   

So what to do when you feel like that?  I don’t know.   I don’t think I had been that pissed off since I was about 4 years old and I felt my mom was being completely unreasonable by my standards and I had a moment where I grabbed a sharp knife that I had hidden under a couch, and thought about turning it on myself to try and stop the pain of being me. 

Mad with a Capital M. 

Well, I guess I haven’t changed that much.  I headed into the only safe place I could think of to let it out, to give it back to the earth to be recycled:  my garden.   I found a knife that (coincidentally?) I had hidden from myself until very recently…and sharpened up that rusty machete.  I had a pile of cutbacks from overgrown trees that has been driving me crazy for months and I went at that mess like I was Kali on the hunt for heads.  I don’t know what I was saying but there was spit flying and I just kept praying that nobody would stumble upon me in this state…I might have ended up in the Cuckoo’s nest.  After about an hour of wreaking havoc in the garden, making piles of firewood and slashing back a few overgrown trees and shrubs, I found myself empty and dissolving, paused without thought and without anyone else to yell at.   

But my heart was killing me.  Like, I could barely stand the feeling of ache that was pounding within. 

Now this is the moment where I may have done something right.  I don’t recommend getting a hold of a big sharp knife when you are mad.   I do, however,  recommend getting into your body moving and finding something that allows you to take out your aggression in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone, including thyself.  And that may actually be a prerequisite to receiving the benefits of the next step in this anger management exercise. 

So, what I did next came like a flash from a brutally scalding sweatlodge I was naïve enough to jump into without appropriately taking stock of myself or the situation.  It was several years ago and my eagerness for the experience overshadowed my common sense and before I knew it I was screaming for help as my face began to blister and melt off  with the intensity of the steam coming off the rocks.  Someone more experienced than me said… “Get down”  Oh.  Seems obvious now.  But in that moment of freaking fear and temptation to point a finger and say “You crazy medicine man you are burning my face off!” the Truth was actually entirely different…

Get down to the earth and pray for your life.  Humble thyself at the feet of the Divine Mother and let go of those fears, angers, upsets, and even the conversation about how stupid you are to get yourself into this mess and PRAY.   Dig into the dirt if you have to…find your way to the feet of the Mother.   Give it all back to her to be decomposed into fertile soil for the seeds of resurrection. 

So yesterday, in that moment of clearing, I instinctively laid my body down on the ground, still wet from the previous night’s rain and hot with the morning’s sun.  I dug a hole big enough to fit my face snugly into and I started to yell.  I would have thought I would need like an hour of yelling, but it was really just a couple of good hollers…and then the coughing, spitting, energetic purging of just giving that feeling that was stuck in my chest back to the earth to be composted, recycled, renewed…truly this is one of the most amazing gifts of the Mother, that she receives whatever we have to unload and she turns it back into black gold.  Fertilizer for the next round of flowers, the next season’s fruits, the new seeds about to sprout. 

In a dramatic display of archetypal courage, I buried that goo in the hole and then raised my sword for the final blow.   Dramatic pause…well, not so dramatic, ‘cause I’m still here.  What died in that hole beneath the blade of my machete was the ego of self directed anger…well…at least one or two of it’s ugly faces.  And the parts of me that secretly were still wanting to blame someone else for my fate, my circustances, my life.  No.  I take full responsibility. I’m drawing the line at self destructive thoughts and blame, committing to upholding my self respect and creating new healthy boundaries within which I can begin to grow again.  And…

I forgive myself.  Ouch.  That still has a sting to it.  But I’m sticking to it. 

When I stood up I must admit I looked like I had been through a harrowing fight.  I somehow nicked my cheek with a branch or the machete and a drip of blood was running down my face.  I was covered in bark and dirt and my eyes were swollen like I had been crying for hours.  But I felt…better.  And isn’t that really the metaphor?  Who are we battling in life but ourselves?  I can’t say the rest of my day was a cakewalk, but I can say that today has been a dramatic improvement from yesterday, and that I feel like something large has lifted.    

I did go for a run at the end of my day that pushed me over the edge of exhaustion and forced me into the surrender of the embrace of the Divine Feminine.  She was begging for me to just lay my head down and cry, to rest my weary bones, to allow myself to be held.  And even after all my battle antics I continued to resist her comfort…until I had gone and run hard, pushed my body to the place where it can hold no more...exerted myself to the maximum so that there was nothing left but to let go…  Maybe that’s a man thing.   But it worked.  

Thank you Divine Mother for keeping me safe, for receiving me always, and for restoring to me the virtues that were trapped inside the egos of Anger. 

Today I can feel compassion returning.  New possibility opening.  My perception of the world has shifted subtly but dramatically.  I can feel self love beginning to resurface.  I can sense that forgiveness is not just a euphemism.  And maybe by tonight I’ll be able to look myself in the mirror…

And laugh. 

Happy Monday.  

Eric

PS.  If you need help going deeper, check out the offerings on OjaiMedicineWheel.com

--
Eric Baumgartner L.Ac.
Ojai Medicine Wheel
medicinemanojai@gmail.com
877.820.4845
OjaiMedicineWheel.com

"The power of Love guides us.  The power of Love protects us.  The power of Love illuminates us."

Are you wearing Protection?

(AKA are you being a Victim?)

If the answer is already Yes, and you know you need help, you can skip this message and go straight to the remedy.

I just returned from a powerful pilgrimage to the sacred city of Rome, where, among many reminders of a once great civilization, I was struck by a deep sense of recognition in each of the many facades of a fallen Empire.

Just as our current American worldview dominates the global paradigm in this age, so Rome occupied the center of it’s universe for a moment in time. I could almost glimpse the fast forward to our great American cities in ruins as we follow the legacy of a great Empire in its inevitable decline due to excess, corruption, and resistance to change.

There is no “They”

It has been my recent and longtime practice to take the outer “reality” as a reflection of what is happening within, so I have been looking deeply at my unwillingness to change, my falling empire, my corruption and excess.

Part of what triggers me is the masculine ideal of conquest, the drive to create an “empire” that is ultimately unsustainable and eternally insatiable in its appetite for control and power. All this is done under the pretense of protecting the world from barbarians, communists, rebels, terrorists… Though I cannot claim to occupy the throne of any empire, I recently came to terms with my inner drive to be the Protector and how much I identified that role with my worth as a man.


Protecting the Victim

As it turns out, I was acting in many subtle ways to protect those around me: from conflict, from failure, from pain, from ridicule, from confrontation, from loss, from rejection. This was almost unconscious, but when I began to see how much energy I was putting out to keep others safe, happy, I realized I was exhausted. And, at the same time, I got in touch with a deep sense of failure, because I could see that I was NOT able to protect them from any of the things I was working so hard to avoid. My imaginary empire had already been infiltrated by the supposed enemy.

What’s worse? By holding so much energy around this archaic model of manhood I realized that I was keeping each of my loved ones that I was “protecting” in the place of victim, acting myself as some glorified rescuer, and empowering the idea that they were somehow being attacked by the world, rather than seeing their challenges as opportunities for their growth and personal evolution.

Ooh…wait…I’m doing this to myself, too, aren’t I? Ouch.

And, to add a little lemon juice in the wound, in a fantastically ironical twist, I was also cast in a recent family drama in the role of perpetrator, barbarian, just so I could feel the full insanity of the triangulation of the victim-attacker-rescuer inferno…and finally make the choice to step out of the triangle.


No Exit?

It’s not easy…and it’s not always obvious, in fact, it’s incredibly sneaky.

On the other hand, I realized that if I can look at my life and identify a perpetrator, or anyone I are trying to rescue/protect, or my own wish to be rescued/protected…I am in the triangle. And, I am in the downward spiral of a falling Empire based on the illusion of victimization and protection.

And let me just add…this is not new to me. I have known about this for years, thought I was out of it, beyond it, and above it. Dig deeper.

Look into this Archetype of Protector: Who was I protecting? Myself? My loved ones? Certainly we protect our hearts once they have been hurt, and we tell ourselves the story over and over of how we have been the victims of someone else’s insensitivity or worse. We dress our hearts in the invisible armor of the gladiators, and set out to save and protect the world from the pain we have had to endure.

Roma || amoR

Once we have created a fortress around ourselves, sealed ourselves in the tower, and have eradicated the dangers from our surroundings, we fall into complacency and comfort and the inevitability of our demise. Wow…that sounds cynical, but truly this is not a doomsday prophesy. Rather, this is a call to shed the artifices of a dying worldview, to recreate the way we relate to one another and ourselves, and to begin to rebuild an Empire whose foundation is Love and not Fear.

Rome was NOT built in a day, my friends.

The good news is the Empire is not external, but internal. Ours is the inner work of rebuilding the temples and palaces of our internal world. We need to set about reclaiming, reconquering our inner territories in the name of Love, tearing down the walls of fear and Protection and domination and corruption that have too long kept our hearts in chains. Yes, the less good news is that before we can build a New World, we have to destroy the old. And that can be a difficult and painful process. But as always, the suffering is optional.

AND, the consolation prize is Grand: we are NOT ALONE.

In fact, we are all equally responsible for the remodel, all in the river together, and though the urgency for change is greater than ever so is the level of support and guidance that is available. I have found infinite value in being held accountable, and in committing to a process of healing and transformation during times of change.

If you are in need of a guide, a reflection, a partner, a facilitator, and/or a medicine man to support you on this journey, I am opening up a few spaces in my private practice to accelerate this process of rebuilding. My specialty is getting to the root, so we can lay a new foundation.

The beautiful thing about Rome is that layers upon layers have been build above the ruins of the ancient Capitol, and the modern mecca hums with a new and wisened evolution of it’s timeless beauty. The FALL is not a FAIL, and it is not the END, by any means. Our new inner city will arise from the rubble of this transition.

What IS so:

There is a law called gravity that says what goes UP must come DOWN.

And there is a converse law of Spirituality that says, in order to go UP, you must first go DOWN.

It is time to rebuild the foundations. No amount of effort we make to avoid the fall will prevent us from having to face the consequences of our past.

If you are at the bottom, and needing support to begin to rebuild…
OR if you are at the top, and feeling the castles made of sand beneath you…
OR if you are somewhere in the middle, and protecting yourself from inevitable change…

What I am offering:

We are ONE and the same. And, I am available to help, and I am inclined to heavily discount a powerful series of healing sessions for a few motivated individuals, but I only have a few spaces.
Please check out the offering at the OjaiMedicineWheel.com website.

This is the moment to take advantage of the medicine of the Sacred Ojai Valley as we approach the Summer Solstice and the fullness of our Solar expression. Time to get ready to SHINE.

I honor you as King and Queen, and creator of your New Empire. Let’s clear the palette so we can cocreate this New World together.

In service, in reverence, in gratitude, in Love,

Eric