The Spirituality of Anger

When I first began dipping my toes into the world of meditation, yoga, breathwork, inner child healing and shadow work, one of the most confusing things that happened to me was the transformation of my relatively “tame” feelings of anxiety, fear, hopelessness, and sadness into feelings of unbridled RAGE.

And I do mean real, fiery, terrible rage: temper flaring, fist clenching, body trembling, stomach churning, sobbing and screaming, afraid of what I might say or do, rage.

I felt perplexed and broken—what was happening to me? Why wasn’t my spiritual practice “fixing” me in the way had I expected?

One of the most profound feelings of rage I have ever experienced happened a few days after a kundalini energy event (I say “event” because do not believe it was a full kundalini awakening, but rather a shifting of energy as a result of performing daily chakra aligning meditations and yoga).

Immediately following that particular event, I began feeling ungrounded and spacey—and then suddenly, there it was: RAGE. It felt as if my entire body was filled with black, angry, clouded energy. In that moment, I might have believed I could breathe fire.

Was this truly what my commitment to meditation, yoga, chakra alignment, and shadow work had earned me? Why was this happening? What was wrong with me?

All I knew for certain was that keeping this terrible energy inside of me would burn me from the inside out…and I had come too far to let that happen. So, I faced it.

I sat down on my floor, and I cried. I screamed. I rocked back and forth, shaking, as I felt every emotion and saw every hurt played out before me. I listened to the things that my anger had to say.

As I did this, I imagined all of this fiery, angry energy leaving my body and flowing into a candle I had set on the ground in front of me. When I felt utterly exhausted, as if every drop of energy had been spent, I lit the candle and thanked my anger for protecting me.

And it was only after I had done this—after I sat with my anger, felt it, processed it, lived it, thanked it—that I was able to say goodbye to my anger and return that unwanted energy back to the universe.

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Anger is rarely discussed in spiritual communities, and if it is, it’s usually about letting go of anger or moving on from old wounds. The message is clear: anger has no place in spirituality, and in order to ascend spiritually you must let go of those dark feelings.

There is certainly some truth in this message, but it doesn’t show us the full picture. Spirituality isn’t that easy, straightforward, or “fluffy.”

As more time has passed, I’ve begun to see this new feeling of anger for what it is: the much-needed release of emotions that have been repressed for far too long; the eruption of words unspoken, needs unmet, hurts unhealed, and feelings unprocessed—years and years worth, many of which I had never even taken the time to acknowledge, much less manage or begin to heal.

For so long, I wasn’t speaking or living my truth. I wasn’t embracing my inner power. I wasn’t following my intuition or listening to my inner voice. I wasn’t striving to meet my highest self.

Of course I was angry—and the person I was angry with was myself.

My anger is my suppressed shadow self, fighting against her restraints and begging to be seen and acknowledged.

My anger is my inner child, afraid and heartbroken and lashing out, just hoping to be noticed and soothed.

My anger is my highest self, shaking me and pleading with me to wake up and notice that I’ve strayed from the path.

Anger can be incredibly healing, but not when it is about placing blame on others. In fact, my belief is that this type of deep-seated anger doesn’t have anything to do with other people at all.

Repressing our anger or taking it out on other people is like putting a bandage on a wound that goes deep into the body—it ignores the true, raw need in favor of a solution that is temporary and shallow.

Spiritual anger is about showing us our inner wounds that need to be healed, our personal boundaries that need to be reinforced, and the ways that we can show up and do better for ourselves. 

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When I feel that now-familiar feeling of rage flaring up inside of me, I sit with it. I go into another room, shut the door, get comfortable, and listen to what my anger is trying to tell me.

What am I really feeling? More often than not, it’s much more specific than simply “anger”—perhaps frustration, sadness, bitterness, resentment, jealousy, exhaustion, anxiety, or feeling misunderstood, disrespected, unloved, or abandoned. 

Then I reflect on why I feel that way: Is there an unhealthy pattern of behaviors that led to this situation? Do I feel that one of my boundaries has been crossed or disrespected? Am I bringing any emotional baggage into this scenario rather than looking at this single incident for what it is?

We don’t get to choose how we feel, but we always get to choose how we respond to those feelings.

Always.

Instead of losing control, retaliating, saying things we will likely regret later, or shutting down, can we react another way?

Can we sit with those feelings of anger and listen to them? Can we have an honest discussion? Can we practice compassion for ourselves and/or the other person? Can we define better boundaries? Can we remove ourselves from the situation? Can we simply let that emotion go?

Anger is just one of many expressions of our inner voice; just as in the natural world, the dark is no better or worse than the light. Anger is no more or less spiritual than any other emotion.

By learning to recognize, accept, and listen to the truth of our anger, perhaps we can also learn to manage our emotions as they arise, rather than burying them and allowing them to erupt later on.

Perhaps we can allow our anger to be the spark that empowers us, rather than the one that burns us.