If you are starting this post without having read “What is a Khuya?”, please take a moment and go back to read that first.
Why is this Khuya named “Anger”?
The Anger Khuya is named thusly due to its connection to a certain pain point within you. As a human, you have experienced anger. You have felt it in you, and targeted at you. You have developed all sorts of feelings about it. Some people like to feel anger because it makes them feel powerful. Some people fear their anger because they are afraid of hurting people if they lose their temper. Each Khuya has a spectrum of attributes that we might, if we are holding judgements, define as being good, or being bad. This is one of the Khuyas that speaks directly to a feeling within a person, and how it reaches out into that person’s life. This name is also offered to us as part of our teaching. We do not decide it, however; as we work with each Khuya, we learn about it, and we grow. This Khuya may be an Anger Khuya for me, but it could be a Passion Khuya for someone else. The meaning tends to shift for each person it is being asked to speak about.
What specifically does the Anger Khuya do?
The Anger Khuya offers me a place where I can process and review my anger, and related feelings and how I have interacted with them, but also how it could be. If I feel I have acted in Anger:
- Why?
- Was it needed?
- Was there another way I could have handled it?
- Would I change that interaction if I were able?
- What else can I learn from that to apply to the future?
- What does the spike of this emotion tell me about myself?
- What judgements have I made?
- What expectations have I not communicated that are not being met?
Can I process my anger energy like you can with your Khuya?
Not exactly like I can, but yes. Yes, because you ALWAYS have the ability to look into yourself and process your emotions in a healthy way. If you have encountered a place where you felt anger, were you alone? If you leave an interaction with someone, and you just feel off by it. Take a moment to think about how you acted. Did you act with emotion? If you were not aware of the context of that meeting, and you witnessed it, how would you judge the interaction? What could you have done better? What could you have made more clear? What information did you have that they didn’t? What assumptions did you make? If you can take away assumptions, and aim for clarity, you may find that your valid argument has actually put you in a place of that conversation for which you feel horrible. And if you get to this point, and you feel horrible, a way to process that is to accept responsibility for your part in it. Don’t blame others. Don’t scape-goat your hard feelings onto others. Don’t project your feelings onto others. Only think about what you could have done better. This gives you power to change this in your future. (It pulls you away from the victim role in from your own emotions.) Then reach out to that person. Apologize and admit to the realizations you have made. You will most-likely not only bring clarity to the conversation, but you will also allow that person to trust you more. The work isn’t easy, but it is powerful.
This process is a tool you can use to help you improve your relationship with those around you. If you feel as if you have ever been angry with someone. You can process as above to not only identify the truth of how you are acting in any moment, but how to make sure it is a choice you are making.
What does “spectrum of attributes” look like with the Anger Khuya?
As with all emotions, Anger is more complicated than we ever care to think of. When I think about Anger, I instantly seize up in fear. When I was seven, I had some pretty severe trauma that caused me to learn that when I got angry, I blacked out and hurt people. This happened once in high school to. And from the moment it happened, at age seven, I feared my anger. I was using the Martial arts to teach me how to deal with my anger, how to manage it, but that same training actually put me in an even greater state of fear around my anger, when it did break through. I was extremely efficient at hurting people now. What if it was ever turned loose without my awareness? What if I could never truly control my anger.
It wasn’t until my most recent teaching, that I really acknowledged the level of hurt I offered my Anger Khuya, but having an attitude around anger that was not just a negative opinion, but so afraid of this aspect in myself as to not even take time to understand my anger. I have been doing some serious work in the last couple weeks to understand more about anger in general, but in doing so, my goal is to understand MY anger.
I will break down some of the things I learned about anger in general, but the essential part for me in this work, has been to see that I have nothing to fear from my anger. Anger, like every emotion, is a healthy emotion. What I can now see that I have been actually fearing, is that I am a highly trained Martial Artist, and in the past (triggered by anger and self-defense) I have blacked out and really hurt people. But that truly was in self defense, and angry or no, I would not have harmed those people if I didn’t feel threatened. And that is it. I said it, and I saw it. My fear has never actually been about my anger. And I can feel it now, and at worst be a little curt. But, I will not harm someone unless I intend to do so, and other than someone attempting to harm my family, I can see no reason that I would want to. My fear is no longer a healthy fear. I have realized that I am good person. And I look forward to experiencing the various forms of anger knowing that my family can understand if I say, “Wow, I am feeling extremely angry about this, I need to go step away for a bit.”
Let me explain to you a bit about anger. – Side note: I am grateful to my MKP iGroup for giving my so much helpful information when I asked for advice.
Angry
The emotion as it stands, with no judgement about it. Experiencing strong emotions of Anger. Being Angry is acceptable. Feel your fucking feelings.
Frustration
I would consider this a low grade anger. Very similar to annoyance, however, this tends to be in regards to an inability to achieve or change something.
Irritation
I would also consider this a low grade anger. Showing or feeling slightly annoyed.
Immature Anger – Rage
Anger when uncontrolled can cause you to, or you allow yourself to, by overtaken by the powerful feeling of anger. And that allows you to bring yourself to a point where you destroy things around you, relationships as well as things.
Mature Anger – Harbinger of change
When you are truly angry about something or at someone, taking the time to realize that the target of your anger is most often NOT what you think it is. It is often something that is underlying what you see. And if you can see your anger, and acknowledge this piece, you can turn your anger into fuel to help you change what you see as the problem. It gives you the motivation to change the situation around you and improve things. It can also allow you to see aspects of yourself that you many know you were carrying. Anger can allow you to learn more about yourself, and perpetuate growth.
When Reading the Misa, how does the Anger Khuya read in someone’s life?
It is important that we look at each Khuya without judgement. We carry our bias about our emotions, and experiences. Which is good, which is bad, and so forth. But Anger is one that I had considered bad until very recently. When I realized that my interpretation, judgement and mental connections to anger were not actually connected to a healthy aspect of anger. So, when looking at this stone in the Misa, I must consider if this stone is holding the energy of the mature, or immature state of the stone. Or if it even represents anger in the reading to the person for whom the reading is taking place.
How did I learn to read the Anger Khuya in my Misa?
This question is both simple, and completely too complicated. As mentioned in the post about what a Khuya is, these stones are part of me. They are also not part of me. There are aspects I use to learn that are very ‘study and learn’ like the meaning of placements, and the meaning of the Khuya, and the Kintu, but there are some piece that really seem to be part of the Khuya speaking to me. Being able to process things like, which is getting in the way of me bring my best self. Why does this come up whenever I review something that is unknown. It allows me to see change in progress. So, I put things down, and I know their meanings, and I trust the information that comes to me.