Some of you may not like what I’m about to say but I’m going to say it—because if you can take the freedom in what I have to say and run with it, you will bring such aliveness to your world that you will never look back.

Others, a significant number of others, will already have tasted this freedom and be wanting to add their voices to witness the truth of it.

I want to tell you one of the biggest secrets: there is no such thing as a “good” or a “bad” feeling.

All feelings are equal.—anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t understood what feelings are, or what feelings are for, or how to use them as the powerful creators we are.

I repeat: feelings are neutral—even anger.

Anger is the energy that changes worlds. It tells us what we want and what we don’t want. It is important information. That’s all it is. And everything it is. It’s what Ghandi knew. It’s what Jesus knew. It’s the energy that led to the abolition of slavery. It is the energy that gives us the determination to actively love.

So someone is about to hurt one of your children and you step in, fast. Is that love only? Or is it love powered by the accompanying energy of anger saying, “Oh no you don’t!”

Do you see where I’m coming from? It is anger that screams out a big fat “no,” right in there alongside love.

As a psychotherapist and energy worker who is also a spiritually awakening woman, I can tell you that the belief that anger is “bad” is behind more dis-ease on this planet than almost anything else. Clients come to see me who have been suffering from the deepest despair and depression for years because they are trying to be what everyone wants them to be rather than who they really are, or irritable bowel problems that flare up when others have hurt them, or eczema that breaks out whenever they are around their parents, and it’s all anger.

But not freed-up anger—not the kind that brings aliveness and changes worlds.

This is suppressed anger, held in the body or the psyche, unexpressed and disallowed anger turned in on the self.

It’s not the anger that’s the problem, it’s what we’re doing with it.

And why do we suppress it? We suppress it because we believe that if we let it out one of several things would happen.

Here are a few of the most common fears we have about anger: either we would reveal something so awful about ourselves that no-one would like us or love us anymore or we would wipe the floor with someone and say something we might regret or even lose it completely or our anger would be ineffectual and would be either ignored or ridiculed and we would feel even worse.

And do you know these are all actually referring to? They are referring to the fear of the consequences of acting out our anger in ways which are negative. Anger itself is not negative or bad. It is a gloriously vibrant energy. But because we have been taught that anger is bad, and have therefore been given very little or no help to manage or express it, we have grown to believe that anger itself is bad.

Anger doesn’t have to be aggressive. Or destructive. Or impotent. Or unacceptable. Anger can be assertive, an expression of our authentic, powerful and boundaried self. Source energy speaking up and speaking out and experiencing and expressing what it is to be human.

When we decide that some emotions are good and others bad we are missing the point. The emotion is information and we can use its energy in whatever way of choose. It is the choices we make as to how we use the information and energy we have so wonderfully available to us that’s the real issue.

It has been said that our greatest fear is not that we are powerless but that we are too powerful. I reckon there’s a great deal of truth in that. We fear our anger because of how powerful we can feel when we allow it, of how powerful we can be when we allow it to flow through us. That feeling of being powerful can be really frightening…but only if we use it in a destructive rather than a constructive way.

Anger is not the enemy here; our fear is. Anger is the muscle behind love. It makes us act. It tells us what is okay and what is not. It’s all One.

So I’d like to suggest that, contrary to what many of us are conditioned to believe, all feelings are neutral, neither good nor bad. It is as pointless to judge yourself for experiencing a feeling, even anger, as it is to judge yourself for catching a cold. Feelings simply are. They become problematic only when they are suppressed or denied.

Embraced without judgment, they are our emotional guidance system. They tell us what is going on emotionally, rather than our just relying on what is going on in our head. When we listen only to our head, we become caught up in “shoulds” and “ought tos,” whereas when we allow our feelings too, our rational, logical mind is balanced by our heart.

Rather than suppressing, denying, or dismissing an emotion, when we allow and experience it, it changes. When we experience an emotion, we begin to process the experience that gave rise to it. Everything joins up healthily, rather than being split off or chopped up and dislocated. We cannot integrate feeling and experience while we are still judging.

To integrate we must accept and allow.

Anger shows us something, it teaches us something. Allowing, exploring, understanding, and integrating our anger, and learning how to express it—and therefore ourselves—without fear is part of the gift of this lifetime.

Anger recognized and used helpfully and positively fuels self-love. It supports our putting in healthy boundaries and standing up for ourselves. It just needs to be channelled assertively rather than destructively.

It is part of the process of allowing ourselves to honour what we feel.

We often fear what allowing ourselves to feel fully will mean. We talk about drowning, or starting to cry and not being able to stop. Actually, in reality, the opposite is true. When we allow ourselves to experience, and stay with, or go into, an emotion, it leads us towards inner peace. Think of the relief we feel after a good rant or a good cry!

By accepting and allowing the truth of what we feel, by allowing our authentic self to be wrapped in a warm blanket of loving compassion, by just flowing with it, we begin to release and transform it.

It is far more painful and exhausting to suppress our emotions, to struggle in the judging and condemning of them, than it is to experience them. And that is especially true when it comes to anger. It is the struggle to suppress our pain that really hurts, and which also prolongs it.

Nothing changes when we hate, deny, or despise ourselves, or parts of ourselves. If anything, those parts becomes magnified and seem to us to grow uglier. That is partly why we so badly want to deny and put away our anger when we feel it, we hate what we perceive as the ugliness of it. But can you see, it’s not in itself ugly at all? It’s only what we might choose to do with it.

Paradoxically, it is only when we accept ourselves as we are that we are able to change. While we judge and suppress, we are unable to move from where we are. We are too busy hiding and defending to be able to shift or evolve.

Emotions are part of our wholeness. They are a sure sign of health, not weakness or badness or pathology. By welcoming each and every emotion, including anger, we allow ourselves to grow and change.

To be free to be all we are destined to be.

We do not live in an emotionless universe. We are not meant to be analytical beings without feelings. We came here to experience it all, not just half. So why would we decide that there are things we should feel and things we should not feel?

Why would we settle for a fragment or a snippet only when we actually came here to experience the complete package?

We are source energy, complete, whole, fully aware, curious and expanding, able to choose, accept, allow, hold everything in a state of compassion and grace. We are not here to judge, nor to be judged. We are pure love expanding through the challenges and contrasts of experiencing fully what it is to be human.

We came for the experience, not to judge experience. In terms of expansion, that makes no sense. We are love and light, and we are appreciate just how gloriously unique every single experience we came here to taste and know in this physical time/space reality actually is.

We came to play this delicious and intricate game, as if this is who we really are, while at the same time observing it through the eyes of the eternal and infinite consciousness we also are.

Who is there to judge?

Feelings make us human, they bring us to life.

They are why we came.

Let go, allow, accept, and be curious.

Author: Janny Juddly 

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Flickr/Mysi