“I’m not angry — I’ve never been angry in my life.”
“I’m not an emotional person.”
These are phrases I’ve heard from quite a few people recently — mostly men. And each time, they were said with a certain energy... as if that was the right thing to believe. But I could feel a subtle pain behind those words. And when the universe repeats something often enough, I start paying attention.
So today I want to write a bit about anger — and also about the devil, dark energies, and all those classic “enemies” on the spiritual path. Just from my own perspective and experience.
The Awakening of Anger
Five years ago, I was in Costa Rica at a workshop called The Awakening of Love. One of the practices was to connect with anger — to scream, hit a pillow, let it move through. I struggled. Other people’s expressions of rage made me uneasy. My own attempt felt fake and forced.
Afterward, the teacher, Karam, shared about his own journey with anger. He explained how many spiritual people view anger as something “bad” — and how he did too, for a long time. But after years of inner work, he could now access that emotion fully within seconds — from a state of complete peace. Because when you are truly connected to all that you are (and the entire universe lives inside you), you can access any emotion, anytime.
If you can’t connect with your anger, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It means it’s been buried. Suppressed. Disconnected. But it’s still alive — and it will find a way to express itself. What we resist… persists.
That share became one of the most important teachings of the whole retreat.
In a retreat about love — the most powerful thing I received was about anger.
Meeting Kali, Meeting Myself
That seed took time to grow. But eventually, I began to feel it. Anger.
It was Goddess Kali who helped me truly meet it.
No wonder some spiritual teachers revere her as the deepest embodiment of love and compassion — and others warn she’s “dangerous” or associated with black magic. She doesn’t hide from your emotions. She brings them right to the surface.
The first times I allowed myself to feel and express anger were intense.
Even when I knew it was the right thing to do, there was so much inner resistance. The old conditioning: “I’m a bad person if I feel this way.” I had always been an expert at suppressing my feelings — but suddenly, it stopped working.
One stressful month at work, I started exploding emotionally — something I’d never done before. I went to a Chinese medicine doctor and told him I felt out of control with my anger. He looked at me and said,
“Try not to be angry.”
It took everything in me not to yell at him.
All my life I had been trying not to feel. That was the problem. And now that I couldn’t suppress it anymore, I was being told again that my emotion was wrong.
I now see that I was still searching for a way to fix it — to make the anger go away. Because on some level, I still believed it was wrong to feel that way.
What if the emotion… is actually right?
What if your emotions are not the problem?
What if the anger you’re feeling right now is completely appropriate — given your life, your experiences, your body, your past?
Just yesterday, I felt anger twice.
The first time, it was toward someone who — in my view — was using spirituality to escape from reality. When I allowed myself to sit with that anger, I found clarity: I needed to express certain truths. After doing so, I felt gratitude — toward that person for triggering something important, and toward the anger for showing me what mattered.
The second time, I asked Linas to start documenting certain things that had been happening. But my tone was sharp. He calmly asked, “Why are you telling me this with anger if I’m not resisting and I’m agreeing?”
The truth? Because that request had come to me many times before — and I had been suppressing it.
The anger was not about Linas at all. It was the result of suppressing my own truth.
Anger had become the doorway through which I finally honored what I needed to say.
The Trap of Spiritual Bypassing
It’s so easy to use spirituality to run even deeper from ourselves.
The law of attraction, karmic releases, sacred language, rituals, plant medicines — all of it can become a tool to avoid feeling.
Because if you feel something “bad,” you must be doing something wrong, right?
And when all your effort goes into not feeling something… guess what happens? You start to feel worse. You blame the practice. You blame the guide. You say the energy was too strong, the portals were too open, the devil came in, the astrals took over.
Maybe.
Or maybe… your own protective walls started to fall. And underneath those walls, there were feelings. Emotions. You.
How We Learn to Suppress
This programming starts early.
Maybe as a child, you felt anger because something was wrong in the family. But when you expressed it, your parents got upset — because they themselves were working hard to suppress their anger. So your anger felt threatening to them. It forced them to feel. So instead of seeing your emotion as valid, they made it your problem.
That’s how the cycle begins:
“Good boys don’t get angry.”
“Good girls don’t cry.”
“Successful people don’t feel.”
And to stay “good,” you started wearing a mask. Hiding your inner compass. Disconnecting from your truth.
The Second Layer of Denial
Eventually, the emotions start leaking out.
You try practices to release them. But then it gets worse. The feelings become stronger. What is happening?
So you move to the second layer of spiritual bypassing:
“This teacher opened me too much.”
“This plant medicine let in dark energy.”
“The devil got in.”
“This person cursed me.”
It’s easier to blame something outside you than to face the truth that has lived inside all along.
What If You Just… Feel It?
So what do you do?
One of two things:
Either make peace with the fact that “bad” emotions aren’t bad — or stop trying to be “good” all the time and allow yourself to be a mess.
Let yourself fall.
Let yourself feel.
Let yourself die into the emotion.
And you’ll see — something is always reborn after that.
Become the parent you needed. The one who can sit with the child inside you and say:
“I’m here. Even in the hard moments. Even when you’re angry or crying or scared. I won’t leave.”
Anger as a Compass
This doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anger again.
But next time it arises, maybe you’ll see it as your ally.
A signal. A guide.
It tells you when you’ve compromised your truth. When something is out of alignment.
It helps you grow. It leads you to compassion — for yourself, and for everyone else fumbling through their own shadows.
Every “bad” emotion is a lotus seed in the mud.
A potential pearl waiting to be found.
This is real spiritual alchemy:
Transforming darkness back into light.
Not by rejecting it — but by loving it all the way through.
You are a free soul.
You can keep blaming the devil, the energy, the “bad” teacher, the kids…
Or you can choose to feel. And let that be enough.
9/1/2020