Tag: Anger

I Pray for Peace!

And yet prayer and a resolve to become the peace that I seek are the only things I have at my disposal. I will continue to pray. I will continue to walk the way of peace in my own life. It is all I can do.

Goddess Inspired

October 16, 2023

Tagged Anger, Grief, Peace, Power, Prayer

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These past couple of weeks have been full of grief and anger for me – war is like that, even war on the other side of the world. Lives needlessly extinguished. Unbelievable atrocities. So many lives lost on both sides. Where is the right? There is no right, only death and destruction of real people on both sides who only wanted to live their lives in peace.

I feel the grief from thousands of miles away. It is too far away to touch me, but it touches me, nonetheless. It feels like the prayers I send mean nothing. They can’t change what is happening, but they do serve as a sop to make me feel better about my helplessness.

This quote came up on Facebook this week, and it touched me to the core. “War is a place where young people who don’t know each other and don’t hate each other, kill each other, based on decisions made by old people who know each other and hate each other, but don’t kill each other… ” – Paul Valéry

For eons, that has been the case. Normal, everyday people become collateral damage in the mighty’s quest for more and more power. Any excuse will due – religion, land, wealth, resources, expansion. The powerful foment hatred where there is only the desire for peace. They create excuses for war. Deaths don’t matter to the petty tyrants and dictators who hold the power. They just want more and more of whatever it is that inflates their egos, and the rest of us live or die with the consequences.

As I sit in my comfortable chair, looking out onto the crisp fall day, I am safe. And yet are any of us safe, as long as the dictators of the world hold power? Are any of us safe as long as there is hatred and bigotry in the world? Are any of us safe as long as corporations and billionaires hold so much power over our leaders?

There are so many people in the world working and praying for peace – and yet there continues to be conflict. I am both grief-stricken and enraged by what is happening in Israel and Gaza, in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, in parts of Africa. I feel helpless to make a difference. Prayer seems useless at best. And yet prayer and a resolve to become the peace that I seek are the only things I have at my disposal. I will continue to pray. I will continue to walk the way of peace in my own life. It is all I can do.

Barbara Garland
October, 2023

When Does the Spiritual Become Political?

Heartbroken

For now, I will hold space for myself and others to feel this deep grief and anger, to feel all the feelings that are present. I will be still and listen to the voice of love and connection, the voice of the Divine Feminine as she leads me to a place of transformation and guides me to loving actions, whatever those actions may be.

Goddess Inspired

July 1, 2022

Tagged Anger, control, Fear, Frustration, Roe v Wade

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Heartbroken

The last couple of weeks have brought me to my knees. After the Supreme Court struck down Roe V. Wade I found myself weeping with rage and despair. It felt like the rug had been jerked out from under me and left me to fall into the never-ending abyss. I know that I and millions of other women feel betrayed by a toxic Patriarchy that sees women (and others) as objects, not full human beings. We feel betrayed by our country, which no longer treats us as full citizens with rights to our own bodies. My granddaughters will no longer have the same rights as I had when I was their age. I am angry, I am frustrated, and I am depressed by those very real facts.

As I see it, pro-life politics is really anti-life. The only concern of pro-lifers is a life in the womb. Once a child is born, they are unconcerned with the aftermath. Hence, we are one of the few developed nations without universal health care, paid parental leave, and other safety nets that support families, especially the poor and marginalized. Why aren’t pro-lifers anti-death penalty? Why are they gutting environmental protections that just might keep the world from climate disaster? Why are they not passing meaningful gun control?

There is no concern for the woman who is being forced to give birth. Pregnancy is much more dangerous to a woman than abortion. The maternal mortality rate in this country is the highest in the world for a developed nation, and it is rising, not falling. In Texas, where I live, the maternal mortality rate is higher than in Kazakhstan, Turkey, or Chile. Where is the concern for the life of the mother or for the child forced to bear a child? Where is the common-sense medical component that allows a woman and her doctor to make decisions that could save the mother’s life? Where is the compassion for the children that already exist when another mouth to feed will force everyone to go hungry?

Let’s get real. The reason for taking away a woman’s agency over her own body is to exercise control. It is based in the patriarchal view that a woman is less than human and that she should be controlled by an all-powerful male god or his surrogates, also men (or women who have bought into the lie). While this is never spoken aloud, it is played out in churches around the country. The debate is never about the equal responsibility of male and female in pregnancy. It is about forcing a woman to give birth. It is about punishing her for the “sin” of having sex.

I am both pro-choice and pro-life. I am not advocating for abortion on demand. In my mind, there should be a time limit that ends when a baby is viable. Before then, it is the woman’s choice to decide on the most life-affirming course of action. That choice does not belong to a politician or to government but to a woman and her medical provider.

In this blog, I have always tried to bring a loving, spiritual perspective to deep and thorny questions. It is my way of digging deep for myself and hopefully inspiring others along the way. My perspective is not one of right or wrong, but of trying to see the whole elephant. I have thought deeply on this subject, and it leads me to following the thread of love. What is the most loving response for the woman who is pregnant? What will lead to the most loving outcome and the least trauma for her and her family?

I continue to feel enraged, frustrated, despairing, terrified, helpless, and sometimes hopeless in the face of the Supreme Court decision. I, and many others, have been plunged into the very dark night of the soul. We are desperately trying to find hope for ourselves and all women in this impossible situation. There are no easy answers, and glimmers of hope are hard to see.

Barbara Garland
July, 2022

Grief and Anger

Grief hollows me out and makes me into a new creation, no matter how I deal with it. It can be a hallowing out, bringing me closer to the holy, or it can be a hollowing out leaving me empty and lost.

Goddess Inspired

March 18, 2022

Tagged Anger, compassion, empathy, Grief, Peace

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Grief and Anger

I am quite sure that I am not the only one feeling a deep sense of grief, anger, and outrage at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Putin’s war is putting, not just Ukrainians, but the whole world in danger. We, as individuals, can do little to change what it is happening. We can only watch as the horrors unfold while we continue to pray for peace.

As I wrote last week, it is important for each of us to be the peace we wish to see in the world. Last week, as I sought to be peaceful, I did the very opposite. I blew up over a very trivial matter. I was livid over a lamp. When I cooled down, I realized that my anger wasn’t over a lamp; it was really the grief I felt at what is happening in the world, the helplessness that I feel when I watch madmen kill and destroy because of their fragile, ego-driven hubris.

As I worked with my own emotions, I once again realized that anger is another side of grief. Sometimes it is easier to express anger than it is to express grief. This is especially true when the grief is not personal. I am grieving for things that are happening, not to me, but to people on the other side of the world. I am grieving for the losses of people whose names I do not know. I am grieving for the destruction of cultures, of freedom, of lives on both sides, of humanity itself. In that sense it is harder to recognize the feelings as grief. It is much easier to be angry.

Everyone, if they live long enough, experiences grief. In one’s lifetime, there are a myriad of losses, and each of us tries to deal with those losses in our own way. There are degrees of loss, but each new grief can bring up the old losses as we face life without someone or something dear to us.

Grief hollows me out and makes me into a new creation, no matter how I deal with it. It can be a hallowing out, bringing me closer to the holy, or it can be a hollowing out leaving me empty and lost. It is how I respond to the griefs of my life that makes me who I am. Through my grief, I can become more compassionate and empathetic, or I can become brittle and embittered.

I am convinced that those of us on the spiritual path will feel the grief of the world more acutely than those who are not connected. When I am deeply connected to God/dess – Source, I feel the deep grief of the Creator. I cannot help but share Her grief and deep sadness in watching humans who are determined to destroy each other and the earth which sustains them. If I weren’t spiritually connected, I don’t think I would feel as much. However, what I am feeling is deeply connected to the Holy, and I don’t want to sever that connection. I want to use my grief as a catalyst for empathy, compassion, and ultimately peace. I want to continue to feel deeply, being conscious and awake, to recognize that my strong emotions are connected to more than just a lamp.

Barbara Garland
March 2022

Today I Claim My Anger

While anger is seen mainly as a negative emotion, it can also be a very useful and powerful force for change.

Goddess Inspired

October 15, 2021

Tagged Anger, Expression, Gender Expectations, Injustice

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Today I Claim My Anger

My mother always told me that I could be angry but that I needed to be angry in my room with the door shut. So, although I was allowed my anger, it became a secret anger that no one knew about. It was something shameful and unacceptable to express. Instead of a powerful tool for change and dialogue, my anger became shameful and something to be hidden away and not expressed. Whether I was angry on a personal level about a perceived wrong against my own self or angry about an injustice in the wider world, my anger was not allowed to be spoken.

Study after study has shown that women’s anger is seen as pathological, while men’s anger is associated with power and control.

“Society shuns angry women, convincing them that their rage is impolite, unattractive, or even unhealthy.”

“Because we expect women to be kind and communal, we sometimes like them less when they are assertive or forceful. In contrast, we expect men to act like this, so they don’t face the same pushback.”

Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.

Anger is defined as “a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong.” While anger is seen mainly as a negative emotion, it can also be a very useful and powerful force for change. As I begin to open my eyes to the injustices in the world, not only do I feel deep sadness, I feel anger. And that anger gives me the impetus to try to make positive change. In that sense anger is not a negative but rather a positive emotion. Anger drives activism and can change the world.

Soraya Chemaly, in her book Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, says

“When we shut down somebody’s anger, we are literally silencing the knowledge they have and saying its not valuable to us as a social resource.” She also says, “Anger drives us to demand accountability, a powerful force for political good.”

Anger, then, is knowledge. It is the knowledge that something is not right and needs to change. My task then is to determine what my anger is telling me either about myself or about the world. Then I must decide how to use my anger to make a difference. I must claim my anger and not be ashamed for calling out the isms of the world – racism, sexism, ageism – the isms that cause injustice and pain. I must use the anger that I feel to give me the courage to stand up for a better more equitable world. I must claim my anger and channel it into a force for change.

Today I proudly claim and own my anger.

Barbara Garland
October, 202

Sitting in the Muck

In order to BE LOVE, I must sit with all my emotions in the dark before I can come into the light. I must sit in the muck and the mire before the lotus blossom can emerge. I must be willing to do the hard work of transformation before I can truly BE LOVE.

Goddess Inspired

January 29, 2021

Tagged Anger, Emotions, Energy, Muck, transformation

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Sitting in the Muck

Our human world seems to be a very simplistic and dualistic world in which everything is supposed to be neatly divided into categories of good and evil, black and white, male and female. However the real world doesn’t really work that way. The real world is a messy place filled with degrees of goodness, shades of grey, and a continuum of genders

I, (and everyone else I know) am a complicated, messy person filled with complicated, messy emotions. I tend to categorize my emotions on the good and evil spectrum. In my personal emotional paradigm, love, compassion, empathy, joy, and connection are on the good side. Anger, fear, jealousy, and hate are on the side of evil. I want to deny all those evil, or lesser emotions, and move straight to the good ones. However, when I do this, I short-circuit an important part of my own growth process and miss out on a developmental step of transformation and transfiguration. I deny that I can have those lesser emotions.

In an earlier blog, I talked about how really sitting and communing with the emotion of anger helped me to see the grief on the other side of the anger. When I recognized the two polarities, I saw the symbol of a diamond. The two emotions were then transformed for me into the diamond of compassion.

In truth, all of my emotions are simply energy. Although I label them as good or bad, the emotions themselves are neutral, until I act on them one way or another. In acting without examining each emotion, I miss out on the step that is transformational.

Let’s look at anger, for example. I tend to almost always label anger as bad. However, when I examine the other side of my anger, I may find fear, grief, self-loathing, or other emotions. As I sit in the muck with those “negative” energies, I begin to find a third emotion, such as courage, empathy, or self-love, which are the true jewels which can arise from this synthesis. Then I can choose to act or not to act out of wholeness. I can take the energy of these emotions to effect change in myself or to initiate positive actions in the outer world.

Anger is not always a negative emotion, but I must examine my anger closely to make that determination. Sometimes anger can be a loving act. There is a righteous anger, born out of outrage at injustice and inhumanity. Once I determine that the anger is appropriate anger, I can then use its energy to make change. Whether I march in protest or pray for change doesn’t matter. I am using the energy of the anger to make a positive difference in the world. I am transforming the anger into actions born out of a true understanding of that emotion and the many faces of that emotion.

What is true for anger is true for all the emotions I label as negative. In order to BE LOVE, I must sit with all my emotions in the dark before I can come into the light. I must sit in the muck and the mire before the lotus blossom can emerge. I must be willing to do the hard work of transformation before I can truly BE LOVE.

Barbara Garland
January, 2021

More on BEING LOVE

I realized that I have felt love most deeply when I am Doing Love, when I am performing physical acts of service for those people that I already love.

Goddess Inspired

January 22, 2021

Tagged Anger, Being Love, Doing Love, love, transformation

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More on BEING LOVE

After I wrote last week’s blog, I had a deep discussion with a friend of mine about what it really means to BE LOVE. We agreed that is it something that we are striving for as we navigate our lives. It is also something that we fall short of.

My friend came up with some questions that led me into even deeper thought about how and when I feel that I am Being Love. As I pondered these questions, I realized that I have felt love most deeply when I am Doing Love, when I am performing physical acts of service for those people that I already love. For example, I felt like I was truly connected in love to the Divine when I was physically caring for my dying father in ways I never would have imagined. While he and I didn’t always see eye to eye, taking care of his needs was an act of service and gratitude for his part in making me the woman I became.

It seems to me that in that instance, it was easy to BE LOVE. I already loved my father, so it wasn’t difficult to take the love a step further. This first step in BEING LOVE can be the gateway to something deeper and more radical. If I can remember what this love felt like, then I have a model to follow to exemplify this love towards people I don’t already love, toward people I don’t know, toward those whose behaviors seem unthinkable or even evil.

This is where we are called upon to stretch into our divine selves and become more than we are. This is where we are asked to BE LOVE. I am asked to BE LOVE to someone I vehemently disagree with, to someone whose vision of truth is totally opposite from mine, to someone who is angry or violent, or seemingly deranged. How can I BE LOVE in that instance? How can I move from my righteous anger to love?

It helps to remember that loving someone is not necessarily condoning their actions. As I said last week, anyone who has children understands that we deeply love them, but we certainly don’t always approve of their actions. Actions have consequences, and love demands that we allow those consequences to play out, no matter how much we love our children and want to protect them from pain.

It also helps if I live in the moment. If I see each moment as a choice to love or not to love, in this moment can I envision the hurt child inside of that person who makes me angry? Can I recognize the shadow in that other person that is also the shadow inside of me? Can I understand the fear that drives the actions of that other person? While I may not condone the actions of another, I can choose in each moment to see more deeply into the heart of another and radiate love into the woundedness of their souls.

Last week I saw that the other side of my anger was grief. Someone else might see the other side of their anger as fear. When I sat with both the anger and the grief, what emerged was a diamond. As I continue to ponder the meaning of the diamond, I am learning that in order to BE LOVE, I must acknowledge all of my feelings – the rage and the grief. I must transfigure my emotions into something new. I must open myself and choose the radical step of love and empathy for another’s wounds, while also acknowledging my own wounds and blind spots. I must choose in each moment what it feels like to BE LOVE and radiate that out to those who are radically different than I.

If in that transfiguration process, there is still residual anger, then I must use the energy of that anger as an impetus for change and growth, rather than spewing the anger. I must tap into that angry energy in order to bring something entirely new into the world, the diamond that transforms, the jewel of great value. This is what I am called to do and to be – to BE LOVE.

Barbara Garland
January, 2021

Transfiguring Anger

Today I learned that when I am mindful of and receptive to my anger, I am able to transform and transfigure it into something entirely new. It no longer festers inside me, but rather becomes totally new. It becomes the spark and the impetus for growth and change. It helps me to claim my inner power and BE LOVE.

Goddess Inspired

January 15, 2021

Tagged Anger, Grief, Meditation, Mindfulness, Transfiguration

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After writing last week’s blog on BEING LOVE, I have been struggling with how far short of that ideal I fall. To tell the truth, I have been overwhelmed with anger and grief at the events of the past two weeks. When I wrote last week’s blog, I was trying to bring some love into the situation and diffuse those difficult feelings in my own mind and body.

However, maybe I am short-circuiting a very important part of the process. In my rush to BE LOVE, I am ignoring or pushing away the righteous anger that I am feeling. I am ignoring the anger, which is still there, and trying to go straight to love. The more I reflect on this, the more I realize that this may be a form of spiritual by-passing. In going straight to love, not only am I denying a legitimate emotion, I am allowing that emotion to settle into my body and fester, like an untended wound.

I read a passage this week from Thich Nhat Hanh in which he talked about mindfulness and anger.

He said, “We do not produce mindfulness to chase away or fight our anger, but to take good care of it. This method is non-dualistic and non-violent. It is non-dualistic because it recognizes that mindfulness and anger are both part of ourselves. One energy embraces the other. Don’t be angry at your anger. Don’t try to chase it away or suppress it. Acknowledge that it has arisen and take care of it…. Look deeply at your anger as you would at your own child. Do not reject it or hate it.”

When I read that passage I began to think about how to embrace my anger in order to transform or transfigure it. I began to picture making love to my anger. In my mind, I pictured the Kundalini embrace of the Sacred Masculine and Feminine as they dance the dance of wholeness. I saw how the power of righteous anger can be the impetus to change and growth.

Anger in itself isn’t bad. It is an emotion like any other. However, women in our culture are not allowed to be angry. An angry woman is called a bitch, told she is hormonal, or otherwise denigrated. But angry women get things done. They don’t bypass their anger. They use its power to make change.

Being angry isn’t antithetical to BEING LOVE. In fact, many times our anger comes because we love. Any parent knows that it is because we love our children so deeply that we can become so angry with them.

In meditation this morning I decided to be more mindful of my anger by inviting her to talk to me. In my mind’s eye I saw her standing naked in front of me. She was glowing with red heat, defiant and strong. As I walked around her, I noticed that her other side was gray. She was sobbing, and her grief was inconsolable. Both the anger and the grief were two sides of the same raw feelings. I am angry and grief-stricken by the tremendous loss, death, and destruction in our country and in our world. I am angry and grief-stricken by seeing bastions of democracy tumble, by seeing that the things that I have taken for granted are indeed more fragile than I knew. I am angry and grief-stricken by my own seeming helplessness to effect change.

Somehow I found myself between the two. I heard both the anger and the grief, and I embraced them both and held them gently. Then I found that I was holding a diamond, the most valuable of gems. A diamond is a symbol of union. It is clear, strong, and beautiful. In my spiritual imagination, the union of myself with my anger and my grief transfigured them both into a jewel of great value.

Today, in inviting myself to mindfully embrace my anger, to ask it why it is here, to listen to it, and to hold it gently I have transformed the raw emotion into something entirely different. I have literally and figuratively transfigured those emotions into a rare jewel. While I don’t yet know where this revelation will lead, I think at the least, it will point me to a power within myself that I didn’t know I had. This in turn may lead me to use this power to act in a different way or to try to change things. It may ask me to shine my light on injustice or to be more empathetic. It may open me up to different opportunities to BE LOVE.

Barbara Garland
January, 2021

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New blogs will be added to this post every Friday.

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About Me

I am a seeker of truth, a truth teller, a lover of the Divine Feminine, an aspiring writer, a mystery, an open book, a work in progress. I have lived a long and varied life, and now in my seventies, I am being called to share some of what I have learned over the years. I hope to share the wisdom of the deep Feminine that is being channeled through me.

If the Goddess has ever whispered to you, I invite you to join me on an incredible journey of love and discovery. May you hear Her wisdom through these words.

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