Anger. Fear. Go!

Using My Authority to Bring My Soul Forward

The Anger

The other morning I woke up angry. Just like every other morning I woke up angry.

I never thought of myself as an angry person. And something about this shifted in me a couple of weeks ago: now my anger is even more alive in me when I wake up, and it’s about Authority.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a training in Kenya with Vera called Avalon, which focuses on healing trauma at the pre-verbal childhood level in deep intimate connection with others. In some moments I experienced a kind of energetic shamanism, in others, psychological role play, and others, profound practices, insights and healing connections landing in my 5 bodies in the most unexpected of ways.

Much of this journey, for me at least, was about holding deep, healing, and acknowledging space for the child parts in me to be held, seen and loved, while also making conscious choices to step into my adult in the many moments that call for it. Many things transpired in the magical field of this training space for myself and others, and here I want to share about how my relationship to Authority has evolved since.

My whole life I have been secretly seething in silent anger, hating, HATING, my father, teachers, gurus, know-it-alls, people who take up space, people who do what they want without hesitation, people who create their life, people who have other people following them around, people who own who they are, people in their natural, adult, radical freedom and joy. Even as I write this I can still sense the residue of this hatred on me, marked by the dark, energetic stickiness of envy.

With the longstanding commitment I made to my victimhood, which I discovered in Kenya, I placed my Authority in a thousand people, institutions and modern cultural constructs outside of me, so that I would never be responsible for creating my life.

This made it seamless to blame others for being selfish, egotistical, narcissistic, fake, competitive, and condescending, as I gripped my unconscious anger even harder about how I was NOT creating my life how I wanted to.

I made myself a victim of other people living their lives because I did not own my Authority to live my own.

I created, and still create, so much separation between myself and others by playing out the Low Drama of the Victim. I also deny the Vision I hold for myself to fully embody my Authority by pushing away those in their Authority.

And then I met rage work last May, when I met Possibility Management.

I have been working my rage since. Expand the Box’s, Possibility Labs, Specialty Labs, Rage Club Spaceholder Training, holding Rage Club, and am currently holding space for 3-3-3 anger and fear (nearly) every day for the women while I am here at the Women of Earth Bridge House.

I’ve had big leaps, stops, starts, fall backs, clarity, and confusion, as I keep learning to walk side by side with my rage.

In this training in Kenya I had a process where I took down the authoritative energy I lived with as a child, with my father, and then again as an adult, with the people I project Authority onto today, and something new landed in my system. I had done this in processes before, but something about this time was different, about the field, the role playing, about how the authoritative figure standing in front of me got physically and energetically smaller the more I called back in my power and Authority.

Parts of me kept rearranging again and again throughout the week. During another process, I said such a clear, final “NO!” that I couldn’t stop bearing my teeth at the person across from me like a tiger glaring at a predator physically and energetically saying, “DO NOT FUCK WITH ME.” I felt my Authority in myself in a way I had never before. It was raw, animalistic, pure, genuine, scary, and alive.

I am still moving through how to be in the presence of others’ Authority. It seems I can no longer hide or swallow the unconscious anger I feel towards Authority anymore. I have the sensation of being in the rebellious teenager phase that I never had. I feel scared that I might explode at any moment or run away from everything.

The Fear

Under all of this lives a few, core, deeply engrained emotional fears that rear their heads just about every day in my life: What if I fail? What if I look stupid? What if I am humiliated? What if I waste my time? What if I am not good enough?

What if I stand in my Authority and people hate me for it, like I have hated them?

So many reasons to not create my life on my terms. So many low hanging fruits of the old map of fear to grab onto. So many ways not to choose love.

The other night at Vera’s birthday party, where we made offerings with the theme “Be a Source of Love”, Lisa Maria offered a Speed Dating fear of connection space. We took turns rotating, connecting with different people sitting in front of us, and at one point I sat down in front of Sónia, who shared that she was scared of me because I was waking up angry in the mornings. When I heard this I went totally liquid. It struck a chord deep within me that brought a great sadness within me to the surface.

How could someone like me wake up angry every morning? How could someone like me not notice this? How could someone like me, after all the rage work, think it is bad to wake up angry every morning? This kept working in me through the rest of the night.

Then the next morning, as usual, I woke up angry. Angry about people creating their life. Angry about not knowing what I wanted to create. Angry about the Authority I projected onto others. Angry about how I was receiving love, and that it didn’t come in the way that I wanted it to. Scared that people don’t love me because of being angry. Scared I am not fun to be around. Scared that people will leave. And so on.

In no time, my go-to survival strategy started to kick in, which was an impulse to run away. I was already exploring the possibility in my head of going for a long walk to the beach, for hours, alone, to accomplish this.

The Go

Then Sónia, my roommate at the time, appeared, and said, “Good morning. Want to go for a long walk with me?” and in my angry, still waking up state, while finding sneaky ways to isolate, I managed to find a way to navigate to my “Yes, and can we go to the beach?” And she said, “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.” While E.C.C.O. did some of its finest work, Sónia let the Archetypal Forces of her fear work through her the night before and again this morning. I felt held and like there was something to lean into, something that welcomed my soul to come forward a little bit, and something that allowed me melt into the knowing that I am so not alone. In fact, I could sense the field of the Women of Earth Bridge House holding me so lovingly in this moment.

As we walked, Sónia held a loving listening and possibility space for me. Sharing my words into this space of care, gently accompanied by the waters of Love lapping up on the shore, the history stored in the sands of time was being rearranged into something just a bit different from the moments before.

I got clarity about a negotiation that I wanted to have with Vera about our relating space. And in Sónia’s presence, with her magical skills of Noticing, Curiosity and Presence, I felt an opening in me to zoom in and appreciate all of the beauty around me. To admire the jellyfish, the butterflies, and sculpturally mangled driftwood up on the shore. The Bright Principle of Being With was unveiling that something else was possible.

Somehow, it was in this zooming in, of bringing myself forward to meet Sónia, to meet offers, to say yes to life, to zoom into my anger, to zoom into the painterly striations in the wood and graphic crystalline patterns in the jellyfish that something new could emerge. The joy of appreciation, the joy of Being With, the joy of leaning in instead of my soul leaving my body and running away. I could taste something new.

I could experience myself in my Authority again, being centered in and moving from myself. And it wasn’t just being in my Authority that allowed this unfolding to happen — I also had to bring my soul forward, to touch life, to meet others, because just being in myself kept all of my power in isolation. It was by using my Authority to CHOOSE to bring my soul forward into connection, while being in my center, that Healing, that Creation, that GOing, and that Love, happened.

This GO opened up more possibilities for me. Just a couple of mornings later, I woke up angry again, and debated the same survival strategy of isolating and being angry alone. And then I checked in with my fear about missing out on a cleaning party of Sophia-Magdalena’s old house here in Florianópolis. I felt an emotional fear of missing out, I felt a fear of being alone and creating more Low Drama stories in my head. So I used my fear to lean in and say yes to the opportunity in front of me to come into connection. While I felt an incredible amount of fear to clean this dirty house once I was in the space, I ended up again feeling immense joy from my day of connection with Sophia-Magdalena, Emmanuel, Anna, and Lisa Ommert.

We flowed from cleaning, to going out to eat, to working, to doing a big shop for the house, and ran into Jesse at the supermarket. E.C.C.O. was again doing its work to remind me that we are all connected, held, and that the magic is always alive, if I choose to own my Authority to zoom in, bring my soul forward, and say yes to life.