Over the past few months, I’ve had conversations with several brilliant beings who were feeling extremely wronged by someone, and didn’t know what to do with all that energy.
Their first inclination was to “take the other person down,” or to seek revenge in order to make things right.
I completely get it. Who hasn’t fantasized about having a triumphant victory against Evil incarnate after our core values and beliefs were trampled on egregiously?
I had two things to say to these people, and I wanted to share this message more broadly because I think it’s so important:
1) Revenge is unnecessary and hurts the avenger
The way karma works is that we’ve either already done something in this life or a previous life to deserve what just happened to us, or if we haven’t, life will take care of evening out the energy on our behalf. Regardless, we don’t need to do anything other than act with integrity, i.e. according to what our inner compass tells us in a moment of clarity.
If we take matters into our own hands and try to embody the law of karma ourselves, we will just create more of the same situation, on repeat. Most likely we will actually make things much worse, since it’s hard to accurately measure the far reaching repurcussions of our actions, especially ones taken out of spite.
It’s not that we have to pretend the other person is right, forgive them or spiritualize the experience. It’s just that we don’t need to DO anything fancy to right their wrong. If what they did was illegal we can press charges, report them, or do whatever is lawful and in alignment, but beyond that we risk harming ourselves.
If we trust reality, we can breathe through the experience and burn karma away instead of creating more of it, which will lead us into a more peaceful existence.
2) This anger is a clue to our next level purpose
If something makes us extremely angry, it’s because we care. We are passionate about it (the word passion comes from the root, “pain.”)
For example, I get so irked when I see people teaching and writing about things where they don’t know what they are talking about. Armchair “experts” make my blood boil, especially when it comes to esoteric wisdom.
I could go around commenting angrily on everything I see that falls into this category, which would certainly take a lot of energy and piss off lots of people.
Or, I could look deeper.
What this tells me is that I’m passionate about going deep and developing expertise and speaking truth.
When I look underneath that, I also see that I am secretly mad at myself for not sharing more publicly, because I have a story that “there are other people who have even more expertise than me,” which is the shadow side of my belief.
There will always be someone with more expertise than me, so I need to loosen my grip on that point of view! And at the same time, there is still validity in there to mine for my truest expression.
As it happens, my most popular article online is in Elephant Journal and denounces shitty astrologers who write BS horoscopes to get attention and business.
5 years later, people read this article and book sessions with me because they resonate with my point of view.
This is a healthy and productive way to channel my passion into my purpose.
I can use my passion and anger to find my voice.
As an entrepreneur in a sea of information, my voice needs to be unique to catch the attention of those who want to work with me. I need to stand out, not blend in, in order to be remembered.
This is how to use anger and passion in a good way.
How about you? What pisses you off that is a clue to your deepest purpose?
