Anger & Rage

Currently in my Kali Era...

Lately, I’ve been feeling these two powerful emotions so I’m going to write about them.

I’m angry about a lot of things right now.

I’m angry that my current landlord has neglected me and my housemates and has refused to make repairs to our heat in the dead of winter. He doesn’t care about us at all. Every time we email him he ignores us. We’ve even brought him to Housing Court and nothing has changed.

I’m angry that an old friend of mine, one who I hadn’t spoken with in a long time, died suddenly and without warning. Her name was Olga Meshoe and she was a guardian of the Jewish people. We didn’t always agree but she was a fierce defender of a beleaguered tribe that has been subject to periodic spurts of hatred time and again throughout the past several thousands years; I’ve been reading a lot of Olga’s husband’s writings in Substack and from what I can tell, she died because she wasn’t given the space to feel her feelings. As a result, her body shut down.

I’m angry because I recently found out that the Bibas family — a mother and her two young children — were murdered by Hamas. Hamas turned the delivery of their bodies to Israel into a macabre spectacle. Fathers came to celebrate with their children. The videos are unconscionable and I am enraged.

I’m angry at the left in America and at the Democratic Party. Since 2020, (probably since 2014), the party has paid lip service to the notion that people with white skin color are evil and responsible for all the ills in society. This racial oppressor-oppressed paradigm has predictably led to a backlash on the right, one in which the president has decided that a tragic plane crash in DC *must* be the fault of “diversity-hiring," a phrase we all know means “too many dark-skinned people flying planes.” A thing always has a tendency to become its opposite so if you preach the idea that white people are inherently evil, you better believe some of them will start to believe their skin color makes them inherently good. When it comes to humans, there’s always a dynamic at play, for better and for worse.

The belief that the only thing that matters is power, a notion that has wrecked academia for the past decade +, has given rise to pride and inflation on the right. The left dealt this card and the right has come to play. President Donald Trump posted an image of himself as a king on the white house’s official instagram page, with the caption “Long live the King.” The very thing we fought against in 1776 is now being touted as #goals in the highest office of the land. Congratulations, DNC, you played yourself.

For years, I warned against this and predicted this. “Human beings imitate each other, even, and perhaps especially in war. Some have called this phenomenon mimesis”, I wrote in my characteristically nerdy way on X/Twitter. “The only way to counter this is to learn how to get in right relationship with your feelings, learn to hold your suffering and transform it without projecting it onto others.”

I worked with individuals and organizations and companies to train them to do this. And I’m aware that the work I did affected them profoundly and deeply for the better.

But I’m struck with this current feeling of despair and bitterness; I’m struck with this current feeling that none of it mattered. I know that’s not true but it is a feeling I have and as you know I’m all about the feels. So I don’t need you to try and convince me otherwise. Ever since the president passed executive orders banning the word “diversity,” in programming, this has affected my livelihood. Orgs who have worked with me in the past have paused not because they don’t want to work with me but because they simply don’t know if they can. This is a big ouchie for me. I’m going through a time of scarcity and scarcity is hard.

One of the first things I teach in my workshops is the importance of making our peace with the unknown. So I also recognize that the current state I’m in is a gift from the universe, a beautiful opportunity to train and I’m grateful for that. I have less and less of a need to fake happiness as a result of my training.

I’m not happy. I’m upset. And I can bear witness to my feelings while feeling them which is awesome.

That doesn’t make what I’m going through comfortable.

It’s not.

I’m suffering. And while I’m grateful to know that suffering transforms, I’m also aware that suffering feels really shitty. And I’m okay with staring down that bare naked truth.

Sia has this great line in one of her songs that speaks to this. She says in ‘Human, ‘Just because I predicted this, doesn’t make it any easier to live with.” And she’s right.

For years I tried to provide an alternative approach to Ibram Kendi’s anti-racism, one that didn’t dehumanize or alienate people. For years I warned people that if they didn’t do this it would be bad for all of us as a society. And now I’m seeing the writing on the wall and its really terrifying.

For years I tried to teach love. I still believe in love but I think this episode is helping me learn its true nature now. There’s a fierceness to love’s unconditionality. There’s a burning away of ego and illusion. There’s a Kali energy to it, one that beckons me to go into the darkness and seek out its hidden treasures, which means learning to love my anger and my rage, not suppressing it or denying it. It means learning to wait and listen to what wants to reveal itself.

There is no guarantee I’ll get out of this. These are dark times indeed. But as Carl Jung taught me, “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.”

So here I go.

Pray for me.