Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-One

April 16, 2006

A. Jana/Plasmafly asks:

Robert you appear to be the most nondual of teachers around in your "embrace" or facing into the darkness, as I am sure you have an intuition as that being the way to liberate the light, and those in your sphere are perhaps more alive than the average human because of it. I suspect that this talent for acceptance was something you were born with and then cognitively/heartly developed overtime...and especially with your Darkness Shining Wild experience.

I imagine that your acceptance is probably one of the main factors in the success of the healing work you do, and the "rapidity" of shifts in aliveness/awareness in your clients and that it must be grounded on a radical acceptance for yourself first.

Whereas it seems like a lot of teachers/gurus/spiritual leaders are still actually afraid of shadow/thanatos...perhaps because they are still power driven..so they must still be non-accepting of themselves, still dualistic and this in turn would keep followers triggered into punishment/reward--parent/child dynamics which would hinder both nondual realization, health, wholeness and sovereignty...and hence they forfeit their contribution to evolving society itself and are locked hopelessly into personal preoccupation...nurturing and fortifying the shell instead of the Spirit.

Also do you find people in your sphere to be artistically inspired by your open elan? Showing a more perfect marriage between the imagination and cognition...right and left brain.

Robert answers:

The more authority and power we have, the more important it is that we work, and work deeply, with our shadow elements. Paying lip service to such work just does not cut it. Real shadow-work is not some cut-and-dried intellectual process, but rather a viscerally compelling, emotionally raw journey into territories that more often than not elude any neat cartography.

It is, of course, tempting to remain in the shallows of such work, feeling a bit of strange or unpleasant feeling perhaps (but nothing strong enough to truly shake us), gathering a little insight into our darker inner workings and desires, but at some point we need to take the plunge, and really get into working with what’s submerged, ostracized, disowned, numbed, and just plain fucked-up in us, and this is an inherently messy undertaking, given that we’re allowing the surfacing of what we’ve spent most of our lives keeping down.

For a while, we may -- especially if we’re in denial about our own shortcomings -- trot out our good points (and have those who are “loyal” to us do the same for us), obscuring what is not working in our lives with what is working, but sooner or later we’ve got to cut through the bullshit and do our work, whether we initiate the process or not. Especially if we’ve got others looking up to us, or looking to us for guidance!

The good news is that the more deeply we work with our shadow elements, the more liberated energy we’ll have, energy that can be put into serving our well-being and that of others. We don’t have to announce to others that we’ve done some really deep and thorough shadow-work; our having done so is enough, making us a conducive presence and safe place for others to deeply encounter and work with their own shadow stuff.

We’d love to get to the treasure without having to face its dragons, but face them we must. And thank God for them, because they -- through what they demand of us -- make sure, and really make sure, that we are ready for what they are guarding. Our task is get intimate with our dragons, so intimate that we not only can look through their eyes and feel their pulse as our own, but also pass by them without any fuss. Although this is far from easy, it must eventually be done if we are to truly access the deepest treasure of all.

The dragon is not the problem. Our distorted connection to it is. Must we armor ourselves to face it? Must we literalize our adversarial link to it? Must we treat the dragon as a mere obstruction, a lower-brain roadblock in need of dynamite, cognitive rehabilitation, or spiritual remedies? The dragon is not in the way; our lack of healthy relationship to it is. We make it into such a solidly alien “other” that we feel justified in conceiving of it as something to flee, attack, or treat as imaginary. We turn it into an enemy, and it behaves accordingly. Keep something in the dark long enough and it’ll get warped.

If we condemn or flee anything in ourselves, it will multiply and fester and eventually occupy every exit, enlarging itself so as to seize our attention, encoding its outcast will throughout the apparently healthier regions of ourselves.

When we cut others close to us too much slack in working with their shadow elements (perhaps because we’ve got a tacit deal with them that we won’t rock their boat if they don’t rock ours), we’re simply creating the conditions that will eventually rock us (and them) so strongly that we’ll have to deal with what we’d rather avoid.

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B. Liz/Tamgoddess asks:

A friend of mine is having a secret affair. She's the mother of two young children, and married to a man she loves a lot, though she's had a problem with what I would call an addiction to men and the attention she gets from them.

She's aware of this addiction, and doesn't know what to do about it. She is like a junkie, unable to stay away from dangerous activities because of the high she gets from it. She has gotten to the point where she can't even be alone in the same room with men she doesn't even find attractive. She gets giggly and blushes and flirts, yet it seems almost involuntary, and clearly uncomfortable for her. I had to accompany her to a friend's house to pick up a projector for a presentation, and I saw how out of control it's gotten.

She's always been seriously into making sure she gets men to respond to her in a sexual way. She says she used to feel safer when she was fatter, because she felt there was a bit of a barrier between her and the men she flirted with. But the frequency and intensity of it has gotten unbearable since she lost weight. And now she's even having an affair, which she feels powerless to stop.

She has always had self-esteem issues. She acts like it's all her fault that she's having this affair, in spite of the fact that this man is certainly capable of controlling himself as well, and she's asked him to stay away and he hasn't. It's actually kind of sickening how she defends him and denigrates herself. This is an extremely bright and accomplished, deeply spiritual, loving woman calling herself bad and evil and all sorts of things nobody who knows her (except me) would ever suspect she could think of herself.

She has a crazy, toxic mother who has said things to her all her life like "No man will ever find you attractive." So it's pretty clear where this is rooted, and doesn't seem to me to be about sex at all, but a need for unconditional love. Her father, with whom she had a very close and loving relationship, died many years ago.

How can she reclaim her strength and end this affair? How can she restore her relationships with the men in her life to their proper place? How is it that a person can learn to find that love they need without self-destructing in the process?

Oh, and she's married to a man she loves a great deal, as I've said, but none of her women friends can stand him. He's arrogant and condescending, though he's mellowed in recent years. I don't know what that has to do with this behavior. She does all the work of the relationship, in my opinion.

My efforts have been centered around telling her she isn't horrible and that it takes two people to have an affair-this guy isn't blameless. And of course, trying to shore up her self-image, though nobody can really do that for her.

Thanks in advance, Robert.

Robert answers:

Sounds like you have a good understanding of the dynamics underlying your friend’s behavior. What she’s basically doing is acting-out some unresolved stuff in a highly irresponsible way. Sexualizing one’s need for attention is not uncommon, but she seems to be caught up in it more than most. She needs to step back, strip away the erotic component of her behavior, and take a good look at what’s left. More than likely, she’ll see a little girl aching for attention, and behind that, aching for love. That little girl, that place of aching need and hurt and raw vulnerability, needs not to sexualized, but instead taken into her heart and fully embraced. Put another way, the woman/mother in her needs to totally embrace and love and protect the little girl in her.

This, of course, requires that she really see what is going on, and do what she has to do to adopt a responsible stance toward it. Since she doesn’t sound capable of this, she needs to work with a suitably skilled psychotherapist as soon as possible. More than insight is necessary; decisive intervention is needed. I recommend that you directly direct her toward psychotherapy. I also recommend that she stop the affair right away -- cold-turkey it -- and put her energy into healing herself.

Much of the energy she’s channeling into sexuality could go toward forming and maintaining healthy boundaries. She could begin by telling the guy she’s having the affair with to stay away -- not asking him, but telling him; if he refuses, then she’s going to have to get heavy, underlining her demand with enough anger to make a real impact on him. This is something that she could get great support for and practice in by going to psychotherapy.

I’m curious about her relationship with her father: What exactly happened between them; how did he die, and when; how did he relate to her mother; and so on. Perhaps her hypersexualizing of her need for attention is but the presenting layer of her need to have control over men, for when she has such control (through “making” them want her), she can, so it seems, keep them from leaving her (like her father did). Or perhaps not....but it’s all worth exploring in depth.

It would also be very useful for her and her husband to do some couples counselling, perhaps a month or so after she’s begun her individual psychotherapy.


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C. Maryw asks:

First of all, Robert, I wanted to thank you and Diane again for your wonderful therapeutic work. Since 2001, I had been to 3 local therapists to address my dysthymic disorder [long-term mild depression], and I experienced more catharsis and healing in my individual session with you and during that June 10 IN group workshop than during all those other months of therapy!

I had intended to ask you this while I was in Vancouver and I simply forgot. One of the body-work techniques that you used with me and with several others was a deep massage of the upper abdominal/solar plexus area. You had me lie on my back on a foam pad and take very deep breaths while you massaged my upper abdomen. You also had me do some "sentence completion" exercises during the massage and the deep breathing.

I know very little about therapeutic methods so I was wondering if you wouldn't mind discussing this a little. What happens during the solar plexus massage? Does it help to release held-in energies or to contact pre-verbal wounds? Is it in some way a "diagnostic" technique for you?

I do recall that I felt quite different at the end of that individual session with you -- more embodied and deeply present!

Peace to you,
Mary

Robert answers:

(What I say below is not meant to necessarily apply to you specifically, but to my clients in general.)

Bodywork as I practice it is an intuitive art, so I don’t have a preset way of doing it. Nevertheless, there are certain areas of the body to which I pay special attention, such as the solar plexus and diaphragm. Probing the solar plexus area quickly provides me with an abundance of information about my client: degree of tension, breathing restrictions, sensitivity, degree of embodiment, possible numbness, emotional openness and depth, connection or lack of connection between the upper and lower torso, and so on.

I usually do this in conjunction with working manually for a bit with the diaphragm, sensing how tight or constricted it may be, both in close to the solar plexus and further out toward the sides of the body. As I do this, I often have my clients breathe more deeply, and let some sound out. How they do this tells me a lot. During this, I may also have them finish some incomplete sentences, so as to help them connect what they’re feeling with what’s going on and/or has gone on in their life. If they speak in general terms, I have them get more specific. This usually doesn’t take more than a few minutes, helping to shift the session into a deeper, more openly feeling place.

Those who are physically and energetically restricted across the diaphragm and solar plexus usually have poor communication (nonverbal of course!) between their heart area and abdomen. They may have a lot of heart, but it’s not infused with much energy from below the diaphragm, so that their voice and overall presence is loving, but lacks “guts”. Or they have plenty of gut-level power, but the constriction of their diaphragm keeps the energy of that power from having the heart it needs to be truly effective. When they are feeling or being sexual, the energy of their sexuality may rise to their upper belly, but won’t infuse their heart to any significant extent. But once the arc of the diaphragm is stretched and loosened up, so that energy can flow back and forth across and through it, we feel everything more deeply.

Our sexuality then, for example, will start not only to flow more easily, but will feel much better; a relatively open-hearted man who previously felt drained after coming will now be able to feel rejuvenated after it, because his orgasmic energies can rise up into his chest and heart, passing through his diaphragmatic area easily.

Put your fingers under your ribcage just above your abdomen and press in a bit; if your fingers don’t easily penetrate under your ribcage, you’ve got a tight diaphragm. On your own, you can loosen it some, but for some real loosening, go to a massage practitioner who is adept at deep tissue work, or, if you’re into some really deep structural work, go to a rolfer.

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C. Denis/elconwords asks:

Robert, I wonder if you could speak a little about anger. The more I try and work through this thing the more befuddled I am becoming. I thought I had made great strides in recognizing the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger and the difference between it's use(manipulative I mean) and it's healthy expression but just when I think I can express it to make clear that some boundaries were not being respected, indicate that I am here and back off please, boom I get called an emotional fatty and I am back to square one in the sense that I am left wondering if I am totally oblivious to what is obvious to others.
What is this anger thing. Is it a pathology, something to be healed and then cast away completely? Can one recognize the pathology in oneself or is it only through others that we become aware of it ? Is there any use for it?
I know that if and when I am angry with myself it serves to spur me on often. I feel when I am angry at myself that it is like turning a brighter light on and saying take a closer look or peeling back the folds and looking directly into the wound, no more niceties it's down to brass tacks!
Can any of that apply outside oneself?

Thanks for your continued efforts and participation on this forum Robert and I look forward to seeing you again in July.

Signed: Pissed off!
Denis

Robert answers:

There’s so much I could say about anger here...Some psychotherapeutic exploration of anger would be useful for you. I also suggest that you read my book THE ANATOMY & EVOLUTION OF ANGER. Among other things, it will help you to clarify the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, as well as to illuminate different ways to work with anger. Following are some excerpts from the Introduction:

DEVELOPING INTIMACY WITH ANGER

Not only is anger perhaps our most misunderstood and misused emotion, but it may also be (with the possible exception of fear) the emotion for which we have the most aversion. Given the frequently harmful consequences of acted-out anger — epitomized by violent behavior — as well as the often unpleasant, hotly compelling quality of the sensations of anger, it is not surprising that we might want to distance ourselves from anger, or at least from the actual feeling of anger.

We may find such distancing not only through mental strategies — like calm-inducing reinterpretations of inflammatory situations — and spiritual exercises — like equanimity-inducing meditative practices — but also through anger-releasing approaches (such as all-out woodchopping, pillow-pounding, full-throttle yelling, hard-stomping dancing, or aggressive play).

These practices do not always necessarily distance us from our anger, but their usual intent is to reduce, defuse, or discharge anger, as though it were little more than just some sort of noxious or otherwise undesirable substance for which there was no other suitable remedy — or use — than domestication, muzzling, neutering, or outright elimination.

Even the practice of trying to be mindful of our anger, neither suppressing nor openly expressing it — as is recommended in particular by many teachers in the Buddhist tradition — may just indicate a subtler aversion to anger, particularly in the sharing or expressing of its more fiery or confrontative energies.

In fact, many spiritual seekers may be largely drawn to anger-negating practices simply because these practices make a spiritual virtue out of avoiding what such seekers would already (perhaps because of past negative or traumatic associations with anger) like to avoid. Or seekers may misconstrue “mindfulness of anger” — which in of itself is not an anger-negating practice — to mean little more than a rejection of anger, especially in its overt expression.

However, instead of getting beyond anger or removing ourselves from it, we could become more intimate with it — but how can we do this if we will only examine our anger from a distance, or insist on emptying ourselves of its energies (i.e., getting it “out of our system”) when it arises? Developing intimacy with our anger enhances self-knowledge, integrity, relational depth, and spiritual maturation, providing both heat and light for what needs to be done, helping us to embody a passion as potently alive as it is responsible.

There is nothing inherently wrong with anger. Anger is not necessarily a problem, a hindrance, a sign of negativity or spiritual slippage, an avoidance of something “deeper,” nor a demonstration of unlove. It is our use of our anger that is the real issue.

Do we blame our anger for clouding or befuddling our reason — playing victim to our passions being one of our oldest alibis — or do we assume responsibility for what we do with it? Do we turn our anger into a weapon, hiding our hurt behind its righteous, fiery, “pumped-up” front, fueling and legitimizing our defensiveness with it, or do we instead keep it as transparent and permeable as possible, remaining non-blaming and vulnerable even as we allow it as full or penetrating a passion as fits the situation? Do we use our anger to get even, to score points, to overpower or outdebate, or do we use it to deepen or resuscitate intimacy, to compassionately underline or flame through pretense, emotional deadwood, and life-negating investments?

It’s so easy to trash anger. It is so easy, in the name of angerphobia, to reject, crush, nicely incarcerate, bad-mouth or otherwise violate our anger, allowing it so few life-enhancing outlets that it, like an animal kept too long in a cage, usually behaves badly when finally released, thereby confirming our suspicions that it is indeed in need of much the same treatment as a savage beast that has somehow found its way into our house.

It is also easy, though far less common, to glorify anger, with equally harmful results. Exhorting the inhibited to “get into their anger” may just lead to a forced anger, an anger of performance, an anger that leads not to healing insight, but rather to an overreliance on simplistic (and possibly aggression-reinforcing) cathartic procedures.

It is, however, not so easy to cultivate intimacy with our anger; getting close to its heat, its flames, its redly engorged intensity, without losing touch with our basic sanity, asks much of us. But if we do not ask — and ultimately demand — this of ourselves, we will surely miss knowing not only the heat of anger’s fire, but also its light. As much as anger can injuriously burn, it can also illuminate — it all depends on what kind of relationship with anger we choose to cultivate.

Violence and aggression remain the subject of heated debate regarding their reduction and cause. Seeming solutions abound — more love, more understanding and tolerance, better social programs, stricter controls, stronger deterrents, and so on — yet the problem persists. The idealism of solutions aside, there is a potentially very valuable step to take: Becoming more intimate with — rather than moving away from or rising above or acting out — our own violence, our own aggression and hatred, our own mean-spiritedness and hardheartedness, not just intellectually, not just in therapy chambers, but fully. And the very intention to take this step begins with investigating our own anger.

THE NATURE OF ANGER

As an emotion, anger is an aroused, often heated state in which are combined (1) a compellingly felt sense of being wronged (hence the moral quality of anger), and (2) a counteracting, potentially energizing feeling of power, both of which are interconnected biologically, psychologically, and culturally.

Can we identify anger — which is not a single emotion, but instead a family of related emotions, ranging from annoyance to rage — through the observed presence of particular behaviors? Not necessarily. I can display none of the behaviors supposedly characteristic of anger, and still be angry. Instead of banging the table, shouting, or cursing the idiot who has dared to impede my automotive progress, I may instead in my anger try even harder to please you, or I may calmly and smilingly withhold a piece of information that I know would help you. Can we recognize our anger through observing our behavior? Not necessarily.

Similarly, can we identify anger through the observed presence of particular sensations or feelings? Two emotions — like envy and resentment — may feel very similar, having much the same physiological characteristics, yet they do differ. This difference is rooted in subjectivity (and intersubjectivity), both cognitively and contextually. We discriminate between emotions by attuning, however unknowingly, to the context of the situation.

Because bodily sensations are usually so obviously involved in emotion, we may confuse them with emotion. There is, however, more to emotion than just the feeling of it. Anger is an attitude, not just a feeling. We evaluate emotion, but not feeling — we may speak of our anger as “justified” or “unjustified,” but would we speak of our feeling like vomiting as “justified” or “unjustified”?

Also, we can cease being angry, and yet still feel the very same feelings that a moment ago we identified as anger. For example, I am angry at you, raging angry, for breaking my prized drinking mug, and suddenly I find out that you are completely innocent of doing so, and I am no longer angry at you. My evaluation of the situation has radically and instantaneously changed, yet the feelings I was experiencing just a moment ago — pounding heart, facial flushing, adrenaline-charged torso, shoulder muscles knotting — are still present, albeit diminishing slightly. Can I now call these angry feelings? No, because their evaluative framework — or emotional basis — has changed.

ANGER VERSUS AGGRESSION

Anger, contrary to popular opinion, is not necessarily the same as aggression. Aggression involves some form of attack, whereas anger may or may not. Aggression is devoid of compassion and vulnerability, but anger, however fiery its delivery might be or might have to be, can be part of an act of caring and vulnerability. Nevertheless, anger in general remains all but synonymous with aggression.

Aggression is not so much an outcome of anger, as an avoidance of it and its frequently interpersonal nature and underlying feelings of woundedness and vulnerability.

Viewing anger as aggression — or as the cause of aggression — gives us an excuse to classify it is a “lower” or “primitive” emotion. Or something far from spiritual. But anger is far from “primitive,” though what we do with it may be far from civilized. Rejected anger very easily mutates into aggression, whether active or passive, other-directed or inner-directed. Thus does a means of communication become a means of weaponry.

Anger assigned to do injury, however subtly, is not really anger, but hostility. Anger that masks its own hurt and vulnerability is not really anger, but hardheartedness or hatred in the making, seeking not power with, but power over. But there is a potential healing here: to reverse the equation, to convert aggression, hostility, hatred, and every other diseased offspring of mishandled anger back into anger.

This conversion, however, does not mean eviscerating or drugging the energy of such negative states, but rather liberating it from its life-negating viewpoints, so that its intensity and passion can coexist with a caring, significantly awakened attention. In this sense, the world needs not less anger, but more. Especially anger coming from the heart.

Violence — the brass knuckles of neglected or abused wounds — tramples or dynamites boundaries, but anger in many cases protects or guards boundaries, at best resolutely exposing and illuminating (or perhaps even flaming through) barriers to intimacy or integrity, without abusing those who are maintaining such barriers. As such, anger is moral fire. Anger that burns cleanly leaves no smoldering pockets of resentment or ill-will. Violence is not a result of anger, but rather is an abuse — or violation — of anger.

ANGER AND “I”

To study anger in real depth is to study more than anger.

The very “I” that is busy being angry, or that appears to be “behind” anger, has such an impact on the formation and delivery of anger that it cannot be left out of any serious consideration of anger.

Like anger, “I” is not an entity or thing, but rather a process. (However, “I”, as egoity in action, can still be usefully conceptualized as an entity — for example, a “cult of one” — at least with regard to its usual behavior.) Therefore, to investigate anger’s anatomy and evolution is to, among other things, also investigate the anatomy and evolution of “I.” As untidy or complex as this may be, it cannot be bypassed without stranding the understanding of anger in explanatory shallows or reductionist ruts.

When I “have” an emotion (or when an emotion “has” me), who am I? What then is my sense of self? Mainstream developmental psychology speaks about the evolution of the sense of self, but it does not consider, or even acknowledge, the transpersonal dimensions of that self-sense, as if the only dimensions of it that exist are prepersonal and personal. Nonetheless, emotions, including anger, arise in transpersonal realms. So who then is busy being emotional? What is the nature of the “I” (if any) that is apparently feeling sad or happy or angry?

“I” may get angry, and may feel a very solid sense of self in doing so, but who am I busy being then? And who am I when it’s not just “my” anger, but “the” anger (or anger that is more collective than individual)? What differences, if any, are there between the “I” who is angry, and the “I” who is seeking to reroute or bypass that anger?

WORKING WITH ANGER: FOUR APPROACHES

The four approaches to working with anger introduced below provide a framework not only capable of making sense out of the diverse, complex, and enormous amount of material concerning anger, but also sufficiently inclusive to cover both personal and transpersonal considerations of anger.

(1) ANGER-IN refers to strategies that favor the restraining and redirection of the energies characteristic of raw anger. Not surprisingly, advocates of this approach emphasize the importance of not directly expressing our anger. Self-control, subduing and recontextualizing our anger — these are the cornerstones of anger-in. Anger-in “experts” tend to equate the expressing of anger with “venting,” a lack of self-control, violence, and aggression. Anger-in therapies teach one not only to identify those perceptions and interpretations that catalyze anger, but also new habits and skills, such as relaxation and cooling-off techniques — hence the “cognitive-behavioral” label for therapeutic anger-in strategies. Reinterpreting supposed provocations is essential to anger-in; such reappraisal reduces the probability of anger being openly expressed by removing or at least shrinking the perception of being under attack.

Though anger-in may make too much of a virtue out of controlling, managing, and non-angrily “expressing” anger, it does make a strong case for learning to step back from anger so that its more extreme or irrational impulses can be reconsidered or given more contextual space. Nevertheless, anger-in has a difficult question before it: How successful can a way of working with anger be that does not include openly expressing the actual feelings of anger? Would we, by analogy, consider a grief therapy to be successful that did not include the actual expression of grief?

(2) ANGER-OUT refers to approaches that emphasize the importance of directly and fully expressing the energies and intentions of anger. At the very core of anger-out theory and work is the notion of catharsis, which remains a controversial topic in therapeutic practice, despite evidence that incorporating catharsis in anger-management work makes it more effective. Skillfully facilitated catharsis is an essential element of various cutting-edge psychotherapeutic approaches.

Advocates of anger-out say that suppressed anger is not healthy — better to bring it to the surface (or “dig it up”) and release-express it, they claim. As appealing and apparently medically sound as such “down-to-earth” logic may be — and it provides an easy target for anger-in supporters — it can tend to overemphasize a merely physical approach to anger, as if it was just something to discharge or eliminate from the body. The emotional-release work that characterizes anger-out practices can range from mere licence to “run amok” (or irresponsibly “act out” anger) to profoundly healing, integration-promoting release and illumination.

(3) MINDFULLY-HELD ANGER refers to practices in which anger is consciously contained, not emotionally expressed, and meditatively attended to, with a key intention being neither to suppress anger nor act it out. This approach, not surprisingly, is strongly linked with Buddhism and its “Middle Path” philosophy. In its emphasis on neither repressing nor acting out emotion, this pathway appears to offer a solution to the anger-in/anger-out dichotomy. In being wakefully present with our anger, thereby closely witnessing the actual process of it (in its feeling, cognitive, perceptual, and social dimensions), we also bear witness, at least to some degree, to the very “I” who is busy being angry. That is, our perspective shifts from how angry we feel to who it is who feels it.

At its best, the mindful holding of anger is not so much a containment of anger as a deliberately intimate embracing and investigation of it, a willingness to stay with our anger without expressing it. Through such loving alertness, anger can be transformed into the energy of understanding and compassion. However, this practice carries its own dangers (as suggested by the more negative connotations of the term “holding”), especially when it is engaged in prematurely or in order to flee or suppress anger, as when we are not so much sitting with our anger as on it.

(4) HEART-ANGER refers to approaches in which openly expressed anger and compassion consciously and beneficially coexist. Put together the virtues of anger-in, anger-out, and mindfully held anger — healthy rationality and restraint, emotional openness and authenticity, meditative openness and compassion — and minimize the difficulties associated with each, and heart-anger emerges.

Heart-anger is rooted both in full-blooded aliveness and in genuine caring for the other. It can be life-enhancingly shared in its rawness.

As fierce as heart-anger sometimes can be, it is but the essence of wrathful compassion — a potent, often fiery caring. Here, the expression of anger is not necessarily rethought or kept to oneself, nor always given free rein, but rather is deliberately infused with wakeful, investigative attention, without any requisite dilution or non-expression of its passion. It is “clean” anger, incisive, non-blaming, mindful, contextually sensitive, heated yet illuminating — rooted in both the personal and the transpersonal.

As such, it could be called soul-centered anger (by soul, I mean that depth of individuality in which egoity is clearly and functionally peripheral to Being). Such anger has a broad enough sense of human suffering to embrace a radically inclusive morality; it possesses sufficient faith in Existence to persist in its fierce caring; and it has the guts to carry this all out. If all that was necessary was that it shine, it surely would, but it knows that it often must also burn. And, because of this, it knows that it must also weep.