My dear friend
Nancy called me in need of some spiritual-religious help. Her aunt had wronged her.
(In
a nutshell: the aunt sold the family farm to a developer even after
Nancy said she was willing to buy her ancestral land for more money
than the developer was going to pay.)
Nancy told me that she wanted to get over her anger. She knew the anger wasn’t healthy and she didn’t want to be angry anymore.
Moreover, she told me, if she were spiritually enlightened enough, she wouldn’t be so angry.
Nancy’s situation is commonplace.
We don’t like certain emotions and we tend to want to “get out of” them.
I’ve got news for you: You can’t.
You
can self-medicate in one of a hundred different ways so that you can
dampen the emotion you are feeling, but that’s not the same thing.
I told Nancy that she was confusing spiritually enlightened with a statue of Buddha that never reacts. As I understand things, those who are spiritually enlightened are angry when they are angry and sad when they are sad.
(Plus,
she was compounding the problem by kicking her own butt for not being
as spiritually enlightened as she thought she ought to be.)
Folks, we are allowed to be angry and upset.
If you recall, we touched upon this concept when we talked about spiritual-escapism.
Spiritual-religious concept for the week: There is nothing wrong with feeling emotions we don’t like. Except, of course, that we don’t like them.
With love,
Rabbi Brian
