Tevet - How to Let Your Fire Burn
Well, I finally did it. I told someone on the internet to “f@ck all the way off.” Maybe it’s not a good look for a psychedelic rabbi, but it absolutely felt like the right thing to do in the moment—after weeks of taking in content that seemed to bend the fabric of consensual reality, it felt instrumental to let that fiery emotion out. And yet, it betrayed every internal impulse I have to publicly display anger in any form. How do I honor all of my parts, take care of my own regulation, and speak out strongly when I see harm happening?
Growing up, I think the emotion which was most intolerable to the adults around me was anger, in all of its forms. Being angry meant having an opinion, having agency, exercising power. Too often, anger towards my family or teachers was penalized, and over time, that force of externally expressing displeasure about a certain situation or towards a particular person became internalized—”No, you can’t be angry with me, look what YOU did.” That kind of conditioning internalized so many messages about what feelings were allowed to be felt, how to respond in painful situations, and expanded the window of how much discomfort, injustice, or violations of safety and trust I could tolerate. As I became an adult, I recognized the behavior—”I don’t get angry,” and even valorized it, but couldn’t yet see the reason behind it.
My delight in this seeming superpower was validated everywhere. My first spiritual teacher emphatically stated, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Allen Ginsberg wrote a short note entitled “Anger Advice": At root of intolerance is anger. The medicine for anger is awareness of anger: “Anger doesn’t like to be reminded of fits,” said poet Jack Kerouac.” The first book of spiritual wisdom I fell in love with was Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom of No Escape where she wrote, “…gentleness involves not repressing anger but also not acting it out. It is something much softer and more openhearted than any of that. It involves learning how, once you have fully acknowledged the feeling of anger and the knowledge of who you are and what you do, to let it go.” As a young seeker, I can see that words without teachers were dangerous things. Not repressing but…not acting out? The only reason I acknowledge it is…to let it go? Perfect! I’ve been doing that my whole life! Instant bodhisattvahood achieved!
When my love affair with Maimonides began in yeshiva, I was instantly drawn to his stance on anger throughout his writings. In his Laws Regarding Ethical Behavior, in finding the Golden Path of equanimity between the poles of emotion, he states:
Anger is also an exceptionally bad quality. It is fitting and proper that one move away from it and adopt the opposite extreme. He should school himself not to become angry even when it is fitting to be angry…The early Sages said: Anyone who becomes angry is like one who worships idols. They also said: Whenever one becomes angry, if he is a wise man, his wisdom leaves him; if he is a prophet, his prophecy leaves him. The life of the irate is not true life.'
Not only is anger something to be avoided, to “let it go” completely, but feeling it is akin to one of the gravest prohibitions of the Torah AND pure divine connection is not possible AND life isn’t true life!? Woo-hoo! I’m doing great. I’m a prophet, and Hashem’s best boy, and living my best, true life.
I carried these and other messages along with me into adulthood, truly believing that I had learned the lessons of my teachers very well. Yet, the particular hardships and losses of adulthood in this life, meeting and falling in love with someone with a very different relationship to anger, and my commitment to healing through psychedelic work which finally required me to reevaluate all of the years of conditioning and validation that kept this emotion beyond my reach.
It was my first “big” mushroom journey which put me in anger-filled confrontation with those who demanded that I not feel it. Full on screaming, surges of heat and fire from within, recognizing that their anger and rage had to be validated by invalidating mine, that my anger was an inconvenient mirror of their own pain and dysregulation, a reflection of their own wars “where the spirit meets the bone.” This release was long, painful, tearful, and healing. I was in a safe and caring container which allowed the feeling to be felt in all of its particularity—not leading to the dark side, not just aware, and not let go—in every muscle and organ, the hotness in my eyes and neck. Anger had the floor, and it was mad.
That when I was given a book by the guy who had come up with Non-Violent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg called The Surprising Purpose of Anger. Unsurprisingly, Rosenberg recognizes emotions as outward teachers of inner states, being felt in order to communicate some important response to a stimulus that may be unnoticed or unwanted by the conscious mind. The book is blessedly short and effectively communicated that anger is gift which alerts us to unmet needs and disconnection, and by discerning between the anger and judgements I feel towards those who spark it, I can more effectively advocate for my needs in order feel more connected, and transform my anger into positive actions which benefit myself and others.
But what of prophecy? Of “true life”? Of honoring the unity of Divinity? It should be no surprise that our multivocalic tradition is full of various shades of the surprising purpose of anger. The Zohar calls a particular form of elevated anger “Baruch—blessed,” the very word we call the Holy One at the beginning of most prayers. The great rebbe Mordechai Yosef of Ishbitz, known by the name of his book the Mei Shiloach, understands the necessity of evil through the raven sent out by Noach after the flood: The raven hints at anger. Noach wanted to rid the world of the attribute of anger, yet the Holy Blessed One showed him that there was still a need for the attribute of anger in the world, for sometimes when an evil desire comes to a person they may save themselves by entering into a state of anger. This is the meaning of the verse, “the raven went back and forth until the waters dried from the land,” in other words, when destructive lusts are eradicated there will be no need for anger, for water represents lust. Anger is not only a teacher but a guardian against making unwise, potentially unsafe choices connected to our traumas. As long as anger rises within us, we know there is still healing to do, not only on a personal level but global scale. Like Rosenberg, many of these texts point to elevating or sanctifying anger as a instructive, productive, or righteous emotion, and not one to be “let go,” as dear Pema taught us.
And what of telling a stranger on the internet to f@ck off? I deleted it—the optics are bad. Yet, I wonder if I had taken a moment to breathe and type the same thing with more intentionality—-expressing my anger while sweetening my judgements, how their representation of reality is bringing harm to my community, the discourse, and the situation—perhaps this could have been an opportunity demonstrate the model of an angry Jew ready to bring Divinity into a terrible situation.
But not yet. Not yet.
Hodesh tov,
Z
