Below the Rage
Debajo de la Furia
A student encounters rage while feeling into the heart, and discovers the grief and sadness beneath it, along with the possibility of a life that no longer runs from pain.
Below the Rage
A student encounters rage while feeling into the heart, and discovers the grief and sadness beneath it, along with the possibility of a life that no longer runs from pain.
I get what was said earlier about the fear of what might happen if I really feel into something. My voice is a bit sore. I had to turn off my video and scream into a pillow for a while, because I felt something in the heart, and when I went to it there was just a lot of what I call rage. I don't quite know what to call it. Rage, I guess.
I understand. Rage is always tied to pain, and is a response to it: pain that we find unbearable and hard to touch and deal with. Rage is a way we can get close to that pain and manage the energetics of it. But it's important to feel the rage as well, and to express it in a healthy way, which is, for example, screaming into a pillow.
Yes, that felt appropriate, to let it express itself. Fortunately, I'm in a place where I probably won't scare too many people if I make weird noises. And it feels really close to grief as well. As you speak, grief is coming up now.
The grief beneath the rage
That's the heart of it. It's the pain, the grief, the sadness, perhaps, below the rage. The rage is the frustration of our intention to fix. When all of our attempts at fixing without feeling fail, we get in touch with our powerlessness. The rage is the doorway, right before the surrender into the feeling of the grief and the pain and the sadness and whatever else is there. The rage should never be avoided. It should be felt and expressed in a healthy way, and then it becomes a doorway. It's simply the energy of fighting, of trying to fix without feeling.
Yes, there's a deep frustration and hopelessness, and I just want to shout.
That's the doorway. It's stepping out of the energy and dynamic of trying to fix things on our own terms, which is not by feeling.
It's all in the head.
Yes, trying to work it out. And over time we learn that it's so much easier to simply feel.
When thought is needed and when it is not
That's something I've heard recently as well. Someone was talking about how you don't really need thoughts at all. I've heard it over and over, and I resonated with it, but I didn't quite get it. Then it became quite clear that, other than perhaps planning for the future, you could call it intuition, or the body's intelligence, that just knows where to go next in every moment.
There are aspects of creativity and learning that the mind is really great for, but that's a different kind of flow with thought than rumination. Thoughts aren't needed for a lot of what we do. I think we talked about this last time, about the unnecessary use of mind during most normal day-to-day activity. But then there's an aspect of creativity, and it's very tied to learning, because creating and learning are much the same. That's where the mind is very valuable, but it's a completely different experience of thought.
It's not memory-based or any of that.
No. That linear, ruminating inner mentation, the running dialogue about what's happening, all of that is unnecessary.
That's really beautiful. I relate to what you're saying, because I do woodwork, and it's beautiful what the mind can come up with.
Yes. And the rest of life is as if you're walking down the street or riding a bicycle: right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.
Nothing to run from
When you start to discover that your grief and your sadness, all of that universe of heartful, painful experience, deep feeling, when you start to realize it's totally safe and beautiful and you're completely fine, there's nothing to run away from. All of what we're running from is pain and the fear of pain. When you realize you can be with whatever form and shape that pain is taking, it even stops being known as pain. It's just deep feeling, heartfulness, love.
As you said that, it transformed.
Yes, because the label of pain still carries a subtle sense that this should not be happening, that it's not okay, that it should be different. That perspective colors it with the sense of what we call pain. But without that sense of "this should not be happening, this is not okay," the actual direct experience of that sensation, that energy, is beautiful. It's heartfulness.
It's as if the tendency to try to fix it just makes it something else. Something really different. Really small.
Yes. It makes it appear like something horrible, something that is just wrong.
Imagining a life that no longer runs
This is where imagination could be beautiful. Consider this "what if" contemplation: imagine you no longer need to run away from your heart. How is life then? Imagine life without having to struggle and try to control and manipulate your experience in order to avoid your heart, to avoid what you call pain. As we just said, it's something else entirely. It's simply the infinite ways of heart experience.
Yes, I can sense it.
That's why you're here. That's a life that's very possible, which means it's right here. Then it's all about play and creativity, exploring even the depths of heartbreak that may come. But again, no need to avoid that, because when it's there, it's a beautiful opportunity to love and feel, to celebrate the miracle of being.
Wow.