Tag Archives: anger

Thumbs Up: TorahCycle Ki Tisa

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BoIn gladiator movies there’s invariably a scene when the honorable protagonist has a sword pointed at the throat of prone combatant, while evil Romans signal thumbs down, so the defeated’s life can be given for their amusement. Our hero throws down his sword and turns away, in essence saying I choose mercy even at the cost of my own life.

Most of us make much less important decisions, with less serious consequences, with much more fanfare and ado than they deserve. Too rarely do we demonstrate the qualities that’re at the core of this week’s reading. In addition to the Golden Calf story, we’re told of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, which in the mystery traditions transmute into a thirteen-petaled rose signifying both forgiveness and remembering.

In our lives I see them as the ability to say to yourself: Stand down. Put those sharp emotions and feelings aside. Put your weapons, your anger, and your destructive patterns away. Give yourself, and whatever you’re pointing all that negativity at, a break. Take a breather. It’s kinda like a time-out period for grown ups. A good kind.

For a little and maybe longer, you surrender to something that’s better than the way you might feel or act reflexively. You give up the helm. Stop trying so hard to do, make, please others, or struggle. You look at your crap and you say simply, Ya know. Let’s try something different this time.

In Torah metaphor it’s dawn. You can stop wrestling. All past failures gone and forgiven. Evaporating like an old bad dream. Sunk cost, as an economist might say. Time to move on in a better direction. Don’t look back, because it won’t be pretty.

Because while you were out carousing, getting caught up in office politics, or in personal dramas, you were pretty much dead to the world as far as living with awareness goes. The more you prattle stories about how you’re trying as hard as you can, unappreciated, entitled, victimized, needy, afraid, blah blah blah, you’re really building a golden calf instead of getting more godlike. And like the Jews condemned to trekking penance, you’re gonna have to serve your time.

This can be a moment of waking up. Albeit it may only be for an instant. But many eastern paths tell us –and hold out for us the hope – that an instant is all that may be needed. A favorite story is of the housewife who, when she hears the chapatti batter hit the splattering oil, suddenly groks the oneness of all things.

Talk about something to pray for.

The next sections of wandering in the wilderness offer us many paths to work on our holiness, assuming we aren’t granted a swift and dramatic revelation. We have yet a lifetime of getting to walk our talk: loving and quarreling, being thoughtful and thoughtless, jubilant and sad, triumphant and questioning, and exploring worlds seen and unseen as best we can.

Sometimes it’s hard to simply take a breath before we do something we will regret. But that’s what a mercy moment is: consciousness knocking hard on your door, hoping you will answer.

Testing, Testing: TorahCycle Va’eira

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Vaeira 2015When I was young and hospitalized, there was a toddler in the bed next to me. He spent most of the day and much of the night banging his head against the wooden sides of his crib. Surprisingly he didn’t howl in pain, as I certainly wanted to while witnessing his relentless, self-inflicted suffering.

I think about him sometimes when I’m castigating myself for falling short at something I’ve repeatedly tried to do. My efforts are often about physical or emotional healing. Things like strengthening my quads, lowering my blood sugar, or resolving an emotional interaction. If I fall short on my health program or fail to speak my truth, the image of this child sometimes shows up.

I’m not dumb. I know what I should be doing. As my mother once observed, in a painfully quotable moment “If you’re so smart, how come you’re _____.” Fill in your own blank with whatever you’re trying to heal from.

I think a lot about deep personal work. About what we have locked inside and what it takes to release it. About the pain and thrashing we go through along the way, whether that’s self-imposed or comes from the world.

This week’s reading has Moses and Aaron appearing repeatedly before Pharaoh, asking him to free the Hebrews. It’s the classic Let my people go! moment. To which Pharaoh repeatedly hardens his heart, and stays stuck.

The word for Egypt in Hebrew, mitzrayim, means “the narrow place. We’re each in our own narrow place and aiming for our own promised land. But they’re inter-connected. We cycle between times of light and dark. One question this reading raises is how long we’ll stay in those dark times and places. How long we’ll stay stuck, mucking about until we are ready to choose release.

The message is that you need to stop punishing yourself and others, both for your failings and your wounds. That you need to find compassion and forgiveness to move forward. To lighten up and heal. That means not banging your head against a wall, repeating the mistakes of the past.

Those emotions can be difficult to find and invoke, especially when the world feels hard and bleak, scary and unjust. When we face despair and fear, as in the wake of the terror in Paris, it is especially complicated to access our higher selves. It’s easier to bang our heads and scream, even if we are shouting into what seems like a dark and implacable void. Because it’s not just our own selves caught in this cycle of frustration and anger, but the societies we live in.

If we cannot heal ourselves, how can we possibly aspire to healing the world around us? My only answer: we gotta keep trying, and trying, and trying.

I don’t have any easy answers, or words any wiser than what have been said in the past week. I only know that it is important, even vital, for us each to do whatever we can do to stop screaming, stop banging, and stop hurting ourselves and one another.

It may all get worse before it gets better. But if we aren’t all trying to get better, it’s going to stay worse for much much longer.

Letting It Go: TorahCycle Miketz

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Miketz 2014The old adage goes, Revenge is a dish best served cold. That suggests it’s better to be tough (so you are not hurt again) and cunning (until you can get even). Not good for anyone, including those who’ve been hurt. Ditto for immediate responses of anger, physical violence, and words that cannot be unspoken. All set us on a path to unhappiness, disease, dis-ease, and a generalized sense that the world is an unfriendly, even hostile, environment.

But hurt is a heavy burden. You know the difference between the lightness you feel when you are joyous and the weight sadness brings to your soul. In the movie 21 Grams, that miniscule amount is the difference between a living person and their empty husk. Would it be more on a very bad day?

Other than spirit itself, what weights a soul? Wounds, sadness, anger, regret, unrequited longing, unhappy memories, words spoken and not, scars of body, mind, and heart.

The grudges and hurts of a lifetime form a subliminal refrain. Something your parent or a teacher said. The ex you can’t get over. A bad review, criticism from a friend, a mistake you can’t forgive yourself for making, the chance you didn’t take. It all festers. Whether we want revenge, oblivion, or another chance, we’re unlikely to get it this time around. We need forgiveness, from and to ourselves and others.

In this week’s reading, Joseph, now a governor of Egypt, looks down from his dais at the very brothers who sold him into slavery. They’ve come petitioning for sanctuary and grain.

What’s a guy to do? Embrace and thank them for initiating events that brought him to high position? Or hide behind the masks of office and test them, see if they are worthy of his help?

It’s the rare person who would choose the former. But bearing a grudge keeps him caught in a dark place too. He escaped the pit and slavery, but they cast a shadow on his soul. The forgiveness he is working on towards those who wronged him will benefit him as much as those who treated him badly.

Often times we bury our wounds in our bodies. We encapsulate them emotionally but they fester in our aching backs or sour tummies. They simmer, keeping us unbalanced, hurting, and unavailable to be fully present

It’s amazing what letting go of old pain can do to heal us. Recent studies have shown that memory transfers cellularly to future generations. So lineages of abuse and trauma get multiplied. What if we infected one another with forgiveness and goodness instead?

Q: How can we interrupt the cycle? A: No revenge: cold, warm, or otherwise. Keep releasing the anger, grief, and sadness, no matter how old or seemingly small. Remember it; look at it and let it go; then sweep out of your soul. Rinse and repeat. You’ll know when you’re clean.

From Peter Heller’s new novel The Painter:

      It’s not possible to hold that much pain.

There was a silence and then she said, Even the earth rests. The moon swims up, thin as grass, and the stars, and you can see every one. It is a much quieter song.

 

Because I Said So!: TorahCycle Chukat

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JoshWhat pisses you off? Bad drivers when you’re late? Annoying colleagues, stubborn friends, or forgetful partners? Poorly designed tools, new software? What makes you lose it? Grit or gnash your teeth. Shriek, smash pottery, or just plain lose your cool.

I recently lost a beloved pet. Death’s high on my things-that-piss-me off list. Not so much my own death; if that was gonna happen now it probably woulda. But the damn finality of it. The can’t pick up the phone and find you now finality. Or in this case, shake the bag of tuna treats and see my kitty come running.

Even though I believe in reincarnation, the transmigration of souls, and high-falutin’ stuff like talking to unseen guides and all the wonderful things my generation helped scatter about, connecting with spirits that are energetic rather than manifested is harder and less reliable. It requires a certain sense of intention, kavannah. A committed, more focused way of doing things. Slower than my instincts generally motivate. Not to mention careful listening and a whole lotta faith.

So I can empathize with Moses, who’s spent 40 years shepherding the whiny masses. They’re hungry and thirsty, and when HaShem says water will flow from a rock, Moses gets impatient and angry and wonks it with his staff to hurry things along. I’m amazed he didn’t snap sooner.

Anger is such a murky emotion. So seemingly transparent, but usually the tip of a deep pool of other, older, feelings. Flailing at what doesn’t obey us, what doesn’t confirm to our desire to reshape the universe as we think it should be, can be momentarily cathartic.

I’m empathetic. I’m often moving too fast. Not always paying enough attention to fine details or sharp edges. My recent construction project helped. Enforced an ability to be more at peace with, or at least more tolerant of, what I could not control. It was a good and needed teaching.

But like most folks I’m not very good with a profound sense of helplessness. We like to say, Let go and let God. But really! Sometimes it’s hard to keep the faith. And then we blow it.

Usually there are consequences (rarely good ones), to us or worse, to others. They tend to make us rueful and sad, angry at ourselves for not paying better attention all along. This reinforces the helplessness, because we can’t change the past any more than we can avoid the deaths of those we love.

The day after, one of my wise friends quoted me a great line of lyrics: Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. It helped.

If we’re paying attention, we’ll learn from our lessons. Get a little smarter. Do better or at least maybe different the next time. No guarantee we won’t blow it again. And again and again. That’s why we’re here, doing this work. To keep blowing it until some day we don’t, and get to wherever it is we go next.

We get wiser. A little more healed. Find enough solace and blessings in what we have and can hold, love and be loved by, that even though we don’t get to enter the promised land right now, we get to see it is indeed there, waiting for us when we are ready.

Lucky us.

 

Not Quite Yet: TorahCycle Mikeitz

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Mikeitz 2013Forgiveness doesn’t come fast or easy Sometimes it doesn’t come at all. That’s true whether the offender is another or ourselves. Careless, or even intentional, words and deeds hurt and wound us. We feel them deeply. Sometimes even allow them to define us. We identify as the aggrieved or victimized on the one hand, and the ashamed or guilty on the other.

Getting from hurt to forgiveness takes many steps. The deeper and more important the hurt, the more we need to process the healing. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. Sometimes we don’t think it should even be a goal.

Bad drivers in your path may annoy or rankle; they earn a quick  hand flip. Here and gone.

Family dysfunction can last decades, even lifetimes. Emotional scarring, physical and sexual abuse becomes woven into us. We may feel forgiveness is impossible or unwarranted.

Folks tend towards either: Someone hurt me!, or I must have deserved it. And the converse: I screwed up! Now what? Each has its own burdens.

A great photo from 1900s New York: an old Jewish immigrant woman, bent over double, with an enormous shipping crate on her back. That’s what carrying around anger or shame can feel like. A very large and weighty burden. One you cannot put down until you reach  sanctuary. Even if that’s a fifth-floor walk up with noisy neighbors and no running water.

Releasing even some of your anger and pain will make you lighter, clearer, healthier, and happier.

This week finds Joseph in high office in Egypt, after interpreting Pharoah’s dreams of impending famine. Who walks in hungry and needy but the very crew of brothers who sold him into slavery. They don’t recognize him; but he knows them.

The Jewish High Holidays have a very active process around forgiveness. Often we erase the simpler, more recent, happenstances of life, rather than old deep ones. The option is there, but you’ve gotta be ready. Even wanting to be ready can be a journey of a thousand steps. And it’s unlikely to be a linear or level path.

We spend lots of energy carrying around our inner crates of hurt and shame. We’re angry at others and ourselves. IThose feelings have become a filter and a reflex for how we live and how we interact with others. Not just those who caused the hurt, but almost everyone.

Joseph’s not ready to forgive his brothers. Like him we play tricks, set up tests. Challenge ourselves, others, and the universe. We’re looking for some key to unlock our stuck feelings. Permission to set the crate down.

A great new novel, Visitation Street, highlights the surviving friend of a missing and presumed drowned teen-ager. Everything that happens is a test: If the next song on the radio is X, June will come back. If Jonathan kisses me, June will come back. If I can …., June will come back.

Our hurts are like that. Bubbling beneath the daily surface of our lives, waiting for us to release them. Waiting for us to shed our burdens of anger, shame, hurt, regret, and sadness. We need to forgive ourselves so we can get closer to forgiving others.

What would it be good for you to let go of?

Oh So Very Very Close: TorahCycle Chukat

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ChukatDo you remember from Psych 101 that rats on a treadmill run faster when they get closer to goal? What about you?

This week’s reading’s after a big ellipse in time. Forty years, gone with the turn of the page. The Promised Land so very very close. But the troops are cranky, whiny, and thirsty. HaShem tells Moses water will spring from a rock if he asks, but when it doesn’t flow and gush, Moses gets angry and strikes the rock with his staff. For which act he’s told he will not cross into the Promised Land.

He takes it surprisingly well. Better than I would’ve. By me, after 40+ years of tough slogging and cajoling, he’s earned his gold watch and pension. Milk and honey and a cozy place by the fire.

Perhaps he knows himself so well he understands the consequences of his actions. His angry self is mirrored in the folks tugging on his robe. No one’s worse to be with than yourself when you’re in a bad mood. Wherever you go and whatever you do, there you are, crabby, too-sensitive, and annoying.

Some of us are like the treadmill rats. We find that extra sprint you see in racehorses and runners. The last burst of energy and endorphins amped towards goal because you are so very, very close.

Others of us inexplicably punch on our brakes. Do something rash,  or stupid, or both. Some form of screwing things up so we taint the prize and possibly even our ability to achieve it.

Why? Which of those people are you? Does it depend on the goal? Or your age? Or your health, wealth, love life, or general state of happiness?

Each of us has an Achilles heel. In the physical domain, I’ve been wrestling with mine for two years. And the metaphor’s not lost on me. I’m eyeball to eyeball with some of my most vulnerable parts. The ones that I need to make peace with if I’m gonna emerge fully into what I call Helen 3.0. My own promised land. Different for each of us, but a vision, if we’re lucky, that we’ve had, that we cultivate, and that we aspire to.

I’m trying to befriend my Achilles heel; trying to heal her. Do you know yours? Can you name the part of you that, like Moses’ anger, flashes at exactly the wrong moments. The part that’s like the dinner guest who says something rude and wrong too loudly in that exact and  awkward moment of silence that sometimes descends on groups.

Odds are this part of you is a consistent mechanism for your self-sabotage.  Whatever the trigger, this is how you act out.  Even if you can’t eradicate the underlying dynamics in your psyche, you can identify both this behavior and some interventions, a system of bells and whistles that’ll alert you that you’re about to hit the rock and hurt yourself. It’s gotta be worth a try.

Question for the week: When you’re triggered, how can you act in ways that won’t cause you remorse? What will inspire you with clarity, vision, courage, and stamina?