Why are you really angry? Let’s find out the truth.

Music: 0:03

I will not be afraid of the shadows in the dark. They will lead the way to the hidden deathways of the heart and that secret place that is where I find my start.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:20

Welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast with internationally renowned meditation teacher davidji.

davidji: 0:27

Heart healer and psychotherapist Elizabeth Winkler, as we guide you through our unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern psychology.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:36

Get ready to awaken your true essence, heal your wounds and transform your shadow into the light.

Music: 0:48

It’s here we move our teeth and to bring you light. The light, if I move over the deep to take us to new heights. The shadow and the light.

davidji: 1:08

Hi, davidji. Oh, hello there, elizabeth, and welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast. My name is davidji and I’m here with Elizabeth Winkler. We are your hosts to guide you into the darkness of the shadows and help you shine a light on it, to help to take your life to the next level. And today we’ve been exploring this concept of anger. So raise your hand. If you’ve been angry this week, this month, this year, perhaps you’ve scorched the village, perhaps you have some emotional leakage, something simmering beneath the surface. So, as you know, elizabeth has been counseling and guiding people and helping them to release what no longer serves them and simultaneously resist less and take their lives to the next level through so many different transformations on alchemical modalities. And we have a surprise here today she’s going to do that with us right here. So if you have a little anger, if you are seething in any way, perhaps a grudge or a grievance has just got you out of sorts, this is the perfect episode for you. So let’s dive in, elizabeth, guide us into the anger.

Elizabeth Winkler: 2:34

All right, well, welcome everyone. And I thought I would just begin with a story about a monk. So a monk decides to meditate alone, away from his monastery. He takes a boat and goes to the middle of the lake, closes his eyes and begins to meditate. After a few hours of unperturbed silence he suddenly feels the blow of another boat hitting his, with his eyes still closed. He feels his anger rising and when he opens his eyes he is ready to shout at the boatman who dared to disturb his meditation. But when he opened his eyes saw it was an empty boat, not tied up, floating in the middle of the lake. At that moment the monk achieves self-realization and understands that anger is within him. It simply needs to hit an external object to provoke it. After that, whenever he meets someone who irritates or provokes his anger, he remembers the other person is just an empty boat. Anger is inside me.

davidji: 3:58

I love that. That reminds me of Ram Dass’ book Paths to God. When he’s so irritated, his guru has told him get out there and he’s got 20 people and he’s supposed to be hurting these cats as they wander through India and no one’s listening to him, no one’s paying any attention to Ram Dass, and his guru, babaji, is just keep doing it, just keep doing it. He comes back complaining, and here’s what happened today. And then they didn’t listen to me when I did this. And then I tried to get them all to come together here, but they wouldn’t do that either. And then ultimately Babaji, named Karoli, says to Ram Dass Ram Dass is angry, that was his whole thing. So you know they were all just empty boats bumping into him, apparently through that practice. So do we have this inherent need inside to put a face on it? Then it would be okay if I could yell at the boatman or someone who had oared their boat or paddled their boat into mind, and I could say have you no respect? What is wrong with you? And would I not then truly understand the source of my anger? Because then I have someone to attribute it to. I could point the finger Tatvamasi pointing that finger out there.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:17

Yeah, every time we get angry at someone else or a situation, we give our power away. That person holds your power. They are now controlling you.

davidji: 5:25

Right From the hostess at the restaurant to the customer service person on the phone. Happens all the time Road rage it’s to the person in the car next to you.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:34

Right. So this is what happens when you awaken, just like in this story. You laugh. It’s the big cosmic joke. It’s happened to me in certain situations and I just find myself hysterically laughing. I’m like, oh my gosh, it was always here. That’s what the beauty of this story is, so we can all look at how this is true for you. Another thing about anger. We can talk about anger for hours and hours and hours. There’s so many different ways to work with it. You reminded me when you talked about Ram Dass. When I was visiting Michael Singer back earlier this year, he told a story about Mah Yoga Shakti.

davidji: 6:12

And Michael Singer. For those of you who don’t know, the author of the Untethered Soul and Elizabeth is an expert In those teachings. She has studied them for more than a decade and has dived deep with the author, as well as teaching that book club over and over and over and really exploring that we will have an episode on the Untethered Soul, because you’ve got so much expertise and so much depth and breath about that topic. I just wanted to give some background here.

Elizabeth Winkler: 6:43

Right, thank you. When I was there this past time, not too long ago, a few months ago, mickey was telling a story. He was talking about Mah Yoga Shakti, who one of my favorite quotes of hers is problems are the nectar of life, so anger can be that nectar. And he told a story of how she said to him Mickey, don’t you love it when they get angry? When people in the community come to him and they’re angry, she’s like it’s so much energy. So it’s like that energy that when we really can become skilled at working with energy, that’s either coming from within or even from outside, people being angry with us.

davidji: 7:21

I think that might be easier, though, because oh, someone’s angry, can I be defenseless, right? Can I not take it personally? Clearly, what she’s saying is people are angry, know differently if people are euphoric.

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:33

Exactly that’s how she was seeing it. She had that kind of memory. She’s like who cares? She was like it’s energy. Yeah, how can you use that?

davidji: 7:39

There’s energy sparking up here. Someone else would be like are they angry at me? Are they angry at my policy? Are they angry at something I said or did? Or that’s a reflection of me?

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:49

Yeah, exactly, so you made me think of that. We always talk about the shadow and the light here on this podcast. Obviously, if we look into the astrology of anger, like Mars, aries, we’ve done different episodes that go into the moons so anger can and it’s a brightest form, I guess you could say or it’s light is creativity. So I had a client I was working with who had incredible rage and people who identified that way, who find themselves to be very angry. She had a lot of Aries energy and a lot of Mars aspecting her chart. So that’s a very fiery anger. It can be, in its shadow side, it’s very angry or rageful. So what I did with her is we created a creativity practice and the anger dissipated and actually evaporated. So when you understand the shadow and the light of something of a particular energy, so with anger it would be. Creativity or physical exercise is another way that anger can be worked with. Now I’m not saying that you’re avoiding your anger by doing physical exercise, but it’s just another way to harness that energy, to use that energy. So I’ve had clients who were in board meetings. It was getting hot, anger was rising. And when my client came back to me and said, I just said, how can we be creative? Instead of going with the anger piece piling on with anger, he just offered, how can we be creative, totally shift the energy? So this is just an interesting way to look at anger. But there’s also angers about boundaries. It’s about someone’s boundaries being crossed often. So looking at that and also anger can be a cover for more vulnerable feelings hurt, sadness, grief. I just the other day read this quote, cs Lewis. I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief. For those of us that are relating to anger in any form, maybe there’s some undigested grief.

davidji: 10:13

Right. So it’s not dishonoring the fact that we’re saying, well, here’s the source, here’s the seed of the anger. And we know in the most ancient healing modalities, always going to the source versus the symptom is going to be your best relief or cure or return to wholeness. The sadness is simply a symptom that somewhere you have gone against the Tao, the balance in your life. It seems that anger also is simply a symptom that somewhere in your life there has been a string from the thread of balance that guides you. But I want to go back to this thing because I think that’s like a really important aspect. So does this mean that we can never be angry at someone for their behavior? Of course not. But if it’s resting inside of me, where’s the culpability? Whose responsibility for the anger? If I’m looking for the source, Maybe it’s in both.

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:19

Maybe there’s pieces that are responsible for if I’m angry that there’s something that was crossed in me, it might be a boundary. There’s so many ways to look at this, as I mentioned, that it’s hard to answer that in a black and white way, because I don’t think that there is one, but it doesn’t mean that there’s no responsibility. Okay, let’s say that I had someone left me, left me. I’m doing that in air quotes and I have a history of fear of abandonment. Okay, so I’m going to probably have a larger reaction than someone that doesn’t have that, because we have bigger reactions to things that we’re sensitive to, which are connected to our deeper trauma or whatever from childhood, etc. Etc. Right, the bigger the reaction, the deeper the material. If it’s hysterical, it’s historical. Okay, so my anger might be hysterical.

davidji: 12:11

I don’t just gloss over lines like that. They’re like these amazing mic drop lines. If it’s hysterical, it’s historical. We have referenced this in the Brahma v Haras, those four divine abodes or kingdoms of God which Tic-Nut Han used to refer to them. The fourth one, the final one, is equanimity, which doesn’t mean that you don’t care. It means that you’re proportionate in how you respond to whatever wind blows on you. Originally, these ancient teachings of the Buddha, equanimity was described as the response that we would have to the eight worldly winds. The eight worldly winds, and if you’re not sure what the eight worldly winds are, gain and loss Think of those polar opposites there Honor and dishonor, another pair of opposites, praise and blame. And the fourth pair is pleasure and pain. And so, if we think about it as we go, loss and gain Are we responding proportionately to gain and loss in our lives? Or is one of those outsized Same thing with honor and dishonor? Get put on the pedestal or get knocked down off the pedestal for whatever that reason is Praise and blame. Oh, you’re so amazing, oh you suck. Are we responding proportionately in equal directions? And finally, pleasure and pain. Are we dancing on the table and doing belly shots Proportionately? Are we down in the abyss in agony, or can we float more closely to the median line, to that middle thread that runs through all things in life? And I think this is a very important component when we talk about anger. One of my friends he was a CFO in a company that I worked at for a while and people would be so angry and so strident and righteous and militant about stuff. His response would always be no matter what, his first response would be not defensiveness or anything along those lines. He would just say what are you? really angry at. They would say there’s a flood in the basement.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:33

What are you really angry at or what’s hurting if you go into a more vulnerable space? When did you get hurt? You might not say that.

davidji: 14:42

What are you yelling at me about? Something else is adding fuel to this fire. There’s a previous wound. He and I meditated together right before this episode. We just sat here in stillness and silence and I used a particular mantra, and I haven’t even asked you what you’re, I used the same one. Oh, okay. So we both used om ah hum, this ancient Buddhist healing mantra. And then you told this story about the monk in the boat. And the first thing I thought of when you were telling that story is do we feel better when we can put a face to the irritation? Because in that moment where the boat was empty, it’s like oh, I have no one to complain to, you’re empty. And if there had been? But then he laughed, he laughed, he woke up, Right, but if there had been someone sitting in the boat, he would have said can’t you see where you’re going?

Elizabeth Winkler: 15:33

A whole other thing Right, but it wouldn’t have resolved his experience. What if?

davidji: 15:40

He thought no, it would have fueled it Exactly. So putting a person in there as a figurehead. I remember the killing of Bin Laden. I just remember how the streets in the United States and I understood the relief, I guess, in the killing of the mastermind of 9-11. But my initial response was like, oh well, they’ll cut off the head of that snake and another head will grow and Bin Laden might have been a face of what we would call evil. But there’s a whole bunch of people who viewed Bin Laden as a freedom fighter and as someone who worked in the World Trade Center, I’m very well aware of that polar dichotomy of terrorists or freedom fighter and how, if we can find the person responsible, or the person we believe is responsible for the grievance that we have, then we’ll feel better. I mean, I guess symbolically, the nation breathed a sigh. I don’t know, I can’t speak for anyone else. It didn’t comfort me. I felt no comfort. In fact, I felt a little like I needed a shower after watching people screaming USA, usa in the streets, because that was not my experience. What were we trying to remedy? You know, you’ve made this much more complex than I thought, elizabeth, when you said I’m just going to read a little story about a monk in a boat. Oh, a monk in a boat. Are we better served by the inexplicable things that trigger grievance or by the explicable ones, where I can actually see the face, point the finger and say you shouldn’t have done that thing, instead of oh, some boat drifted into my boat.

Elizabeth Winkler: 17:29

I think the question we all can ask ourselves is how do we at this time, how do we tend to our anger? How do we tend to our anger? Do we rage? Do we act out? Do we get aggressive with others? Do we get aggressive with ourselves? Do we blame ourselves or others? And then there may be some people here who just say I am not an angry person. So I want to just talk about that for a sec, because anyone here who feels like a guilty person, guilt, is hiding anger.

davidji: 18:07

What’s an example of a guilty person who’s claiming they’re not angry, but they’re guilty and feeling guilty?

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:14

I meet a lot of people as a therapist who and it’s tended to be more women than men who feel more guilt around having things or around money or things like that, and they can’t enjoy something. They feel guilty that they were given something or that they have something and so they have a hard time receiving things, etc. Etc. And that’s often hiding anger. So I just wanted to throw that out there in case someone feels like this doesn’t relate to them. But we all have anger and sometimes it hides. It can hide in people pleasing. People pleasing is another way that we hide anger.

davidji: 18:58

Could we say, my journey to equanimity is that I’m not angry. I’m disappointed, but it doesn’t linger. What’s the goal? Is it to recognize our anger and go deeper into the source? How can I best process these feelings To be present?

Elizabeth Winkler: 19:17

with whatever it is, if it’s guilt, if it’s shame which shame is much deeper place that tends to not come forward because no one really wants to go there. Fear and shame are at the bottom of everything. Anger feels really powerful when we get angry. We talk about something and we raise our fist. That feels like a really powerful place. Being hurt and sad and vulnerable doesn’t feel powerful to a lot of people. It could feel powerful to someone that spent a lot of time there, but it doesn’t always. A lot of people want to feel that power and I’m not putting any of that down, I’m just talking about it in a multitude of ways. We always begin where we are. Start wherever you are in this moment. That’s your door. You can’t be anywhere other than where you are, honoring and respecting wherever I am. When we bring attention to that, when we bring awareness to it, maybe place our hands. Where are you feeling that in your body? For those that want to be able to shift the way that they are with anger or to teach their children about anger when your kids are angry, ask them where do you feel that in your body? Anger often is in our wrists, in our hands. We make a fist. People often feel it in the forearm or in your jaw, clenching your teeth.

davidji: 20:36

I have always seen anger, at least when I’ve been teaching techniques such as reaching for soda when things along those lines.

Elizabeth Winkler: 20:43

What’s reaching for soda. People might not know what that means.

davidji: 20:46

It’s a powerful tool. It’s a powerful technique to help you when you feel the tiniest tickle of anger, of the velocity building up inside of you. Someone pokes you, someone triggers you, you feel triggered in a particular moment, someone’s boat bumps into yours. We all have a place where we feel that that is actually the beginning of a biological stress response. It’s actually the beginning of hormones and chemicals being spiked inside of you, whether that’s fight-flight or emotional fight-flight or the reactive response, any of those things. In that moment where we first feel the first tiniest little tickle, we reach for soda S-O-D-A. The S stands for stop. We actually say to ourselves stop, the O stands for observe. And we float up to the top of the room and look down at us and whoever is in the boat that has just bumped into us or whoever has just sent us the email or spoken to us, whatever it is we’ll dive deeper into this in another episode. The D stands for detach. We need to physically and energetically detach from the irritant, the culprit, the person who has poked or triggered us. And the final A is awaken to your best self. You actually ask yourself what would the best version of me do in this moment and in that moment. Ideally, the best version of you has no anger Over this thing. The best version of you doesn’t need to be right. The best version of you doesn’t need to point a finger. The best version of you floats through the world with greater grace and greater ease, love and compassion and forgiveness and less judgment in that moment and it can help you make a more powerful, more conscious decision in that process. But guilt and shame. Guilt is pretty much most concerned with one’s responsibility for some type of harmful act or attitude or behavior, and shame is not the same thing. Shame is a self-evaluation where you see yourself as immoral or having done something unethical. It’s really like a who am? I Is the shameful thing. Guilt is pretty much over a behavior. These can be such powerful seeds for anger. I’ve seen you in your transformational way. You take people to that place and then release the knots, the K-N-O-T-S that we hold on to so dearly. But at the same time, I believe probably all of our anger has to go back into the past. Yeah, even if I suddenly, right here right now, suddenly spilled some water and poured over your computer, you would have the right to be angry. Right, and would you be angry at me as a person? Would you be angry at me as sloppy or not mindful, because my hand knocked over the water? Would you be angry at me because I’m lazy and not paying attention? Right, we’ve all done that, where we’ve suddenly, like, judged this person completely because of something innocent that we are all capable of. This is saying you know, don’t cry over spilled milk, guess why? Because trillions of gallons of milk have been spilled over the last 10,000 years, and so for me to spill some water would be the same type of thing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 24:20

Yeah, you’re reminding me to go into different teachers who’ve talked about this. You know Jill Bultetaylor.

davidji: 24:27

Sure.

Elizabeth Winkler: 24:27

For those that don’t know, she wrote the Stroke of Insight. She had the TED talk on her stroke.

davidji: 24:32

She is a brilliant neurologist. So that was the irony. A brilliant neurologist has a stroke and views it almost in a clinical way as it’s happening.

Elizabeth Winkler: 24:42

Yeah, that was amazing.

davidji: 24:43

You know, not out of fear, but out of like, oh my God, what my brain must be doing right now. It was so amazing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 24:49

So she said, when a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there is a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body. After that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop. Now I heard her in an interview with Oprah this is really old video that I saw on YouTube and she said to Oprah next time you get angry, I want you to set a timer 90 seconds, okay, if anything is happening after that 90 seconds, she said your body is being flooded for 90 seconds with anger and you can watch it with awareness. You can pause. I have my practice. You’ve soda Pause, notice, settle. So pause. Notice the energy moving through your body without judgment, just noticing it, observing it and allowing it to do whatever it does. So she said pause and notice and choose not to continue the loop through thinking and staying anchored in the body. So that’s one way of looking at it. You know Eckhart talked about in his book A New Earth, the pain body. That anger Activates the pain body. You’re talking about the past. The pain body is connected to that. It’s also, he says, like there’s a pain body, a collective, so it could just be a collective energy and it makes you think certain thoughts. So stay aware while it’s happening, anger is thinking these thoughts. They are not true. It’s the energy field of anger. That’s another way to look at it. Or Marshall Rosenberg, who you so wonderfully introduced me to his work through your teacher training that I got to do many years ago, he talks about in nonviolent communication To look at what need is not being met when we are angry. Is it connection, is it safety, is it autonomy? Is it Physical well-being, is it purpose meaning? So these are some of the things that we can look at or our boundaries being crossed or our values being harmed, in some For fashion, right.

davidji: 26:56

But again let’s say our boundaries are being crossed in some way, and let’s say I’m feeling really great, though Right. Let’s say I woke up. I had an amazing day. I’m feeling good, my food’s been good, the weather’s been good, I’ve been frolicking with my, and here’s a public service announcement adopt your next pet with peaches. The Buddha princess, my LA, rescue my mindful morky, my companion for more than 15 years, and All is right with the world, as Louise Hay would say, all as well in my world. Then, suddenly, something crosses my path someone cuts you off in traffic right.

Elizabeth Winkler: 27:32

If I’m feeling good, I’m not even aware there’s not a poking, there’s not a trigger, that’s going on all the more reason to meditate in the morning before you go out. Yeah right.

davidji: 27:42

I might say, oh, that person needs to get there faster than I need to get wherever I am and I just Absolutely let it go. That could be the flip side of that. The other side of that is I go oh, that jerk that cut me off and and I get all riled up. So I think this has so much to do. If your heart is light, what would normally think, oh, that should anger you, or only you make me so angry, or I can’t believe that You’re just not as pokeable. How activated you are yeah, right, so this all has to do with how activated are you?

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:18

yeah.

davidji: 28:19

To start with Essentially what this guy you say what do you really meant it?

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:24

Yeah, just some practical Applications. We always like to give you things to think about, to write about, to bring into your life. If you’re feeling angry, a question you can write about is what do I value, or or what must be protected or restored. Those are good, good inquiry questions to look into.

davidji: 28:44

I think another good inquiry question might be what am I really mad at? Yeah, for sure. Am I really angry at?

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:51

yeah, also reaching out to others, asking for help If you are too activated. Getting support, getting into nature, meditation I think meditation is always the answer for helping us being more light and bright. Creativity I cannot speak to this enough after what I have seen with my clients. Get creative, whether that means cooking, going in the garden, drawing about your anger, get out pens, color in the body when does the anger live? Get it out. Chanting, walking, physical exercise all of these ways are wonderful ways to Move energy within us right.

davidji: 29:41

The first step is to identify Emotional charge and the second step is to mobilize it and we do that by sharing, by talking, expressing ourselves in some way. But you have to mobilize it because think of this as it’s stuck, it’s at least stuck at the cellular level. By awakening it and moving it around, we can totally shift our life. And I think another very, very important and powerful practice in this healing is you have to ritualize the release of the anger. So, again, you don’t necessarily have to go back to that moment and work out Well, it was my mother 60 years ago, or like. You don’t have to go to that place, you can other people use that mechanism. But you could just as easily hold a rock to your heart and spend 10 minutes Slowly allowing the emotional charge that’s in your heart to move into the rock and Stay in silence and then throw that rock into the ocean as you shout I let you go. I have found great, great healing in writing down what I’m ready to let go of and Then burning it in some type of sacred fire ritual. I love combining the two and I’ve been doing that in so many of my retreats for so many years. So I think that if we can ritualize the identification of the anger, the mobilization of the anger and the Release of that anger. These are positive and powerful steps that we can take, and I do recommend reading Dr Marshall Rosenberg’s book nonviolent communication. I also dive deep into that in my book destressifying. There is a process if our needs are not being met and Abraham Maslow spoke about this as well there’s going to be a disconnect. If our needs are not being met, there’s going to be a rift in the fabric of the universe and we’re gonna take it. Personally, I still have this image etched into my mind, elizabeth, but me sitting in this boat in the middle of the lake, so placid, so relaxed, so sweet, and then suddenly feeling that bump, the boat just jostling me and looking around, swinging around my finger to go hey, oh, empty boat must be inside me.

Elizabeth Winkler: 32:04

Well, you’re pointing, he’s pointing his finger when he’s saying that, when he’s telling the story, but when you’re pointing out, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself. So yeah, yeah.

davidji: 32:16

Well, this has been truly an illuminating conversation. We’ll explore anger more. We’re gonna be here for the next 30 years times, 50 episodes. There’s a lot of stuff here. If I could stress one thing that we could take away from this, it’s just holding up the mirror. Holding up the mirror and seeing what’s going on inside of ourselves. And that’s our first step Recognize what just happened. What just happened, which is the first step in nonviolent communication. What just happened, how does it make me feel? What need was not being met and what would my request be?

Music: 32:57

Hmm.

davidji: 32:58

Yeah, well, thanks for stopping by everybody. Thank you, elizabeth, for illuminating. Just blown my mind, and this is the Shadow and the Light podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Music: 34:08

We’re over an hour in the light. It is clear, to remove all your fears and to bring new sight, the light. It is not that we’ll go to the deep to take you to the light, to the shadow, and the light has come because the light, the light has come. The light has come to set us free the shadow. Come to be God’s lover. The shadow come to set us free the light. It is clear, to remove all our fears and to bring new light, the light. It is not that we’ll go to the deep to take us to new light, the shadow and the light.