Tag: anger

The Two Wolves

Once upon a time, or so the Cherokee legend goes, a young Indian boy received a beautiful drum as a gift. When his best friend saw it, he asked if he could play with it, but the boy felt torn. He didn’t want to share his new present, so he angrily told his friend, “No!”

His friend ran away, and the boy sat down on a rock by the stream to contemplate his dilemma. He hated the fact that he had hurt his friend’s feelings, but the drum was too precious to share. In his quandary, he went to his grandfather for advice.

The elder listened quietly and then replied. “I often feel as though there are two wolves fighting inside me. One is mean and greedy and full or arrogance and pride, but the other is peaceful and generous. All the time they are struggling, and you, my boy, have those same two wolves inside you.”

“Which one will win?”, asked the boy.

The elder smiled and said “The one you feed.”

This story, told in How God changes your Brain, by Newburg and Waldman (neurotheology), is a wonderful example of the power of therapeutic story-telling. Stories can help us see ourselves more clearly. They give us visual metaphors to describe intangible feelings inside us, along with new strategies for managing our challenges. Continue reading “The Two Wolves”

Anger – Neuroscience and the Aura

I love exploring emotions from both a neurological perspective and a philosophical one. Here’s some fantastic writing from Newberg and Waldman (How God Changes your Brain), about anger:

“Anger makes people indiscriminately punitive, blameful, pessimistic and unilaterally careless in their logic and reasoning skills. Furthermore, anger encourages your brain to defend your beliefs- be they right or wrong- and when this happens, you’ll be more likely to feel prejudice towards others. You’ll inaccurately perceive anger in other people’s faces, and this will increase your own distrust and fear. It’s an insidious process that feeds on itself, and it can influence your behaviour for very long periods of time, Eventually, it will even damage important structures in our brain.

Nor is it good for your heart. Regardless of your age, gender or ethnicity – anger, cynicism, hostility, and defensiveness will increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular problems. What makes anger particularly dangerous is that it blinds you to the fact that you are even angry; thus it gives you a false sense of certainty, confidence and optimism,”

This inspires so many thoughts for me!

The last point in particular, about anger making us feel certain, confident and optimistic might sound strange, but I have noticed that people use anger to protect themselves from depression, sadness and feelings of disempowerment. As a therapist, I’m often working towards helping people lift up their anger and take a look underneath, because it’s usually an offensive defence used to shield feelings of vulnerability.  Continue reading “Anger – Neuroscience and the Aura”

Blame/Stuck – a muddy orange-brown aura frequency

This blog is for anyone with a deck of my Aura Cards. Please contact me to enquire about purchasing.

Colour Perception:

The colour of Blame is a muddy, congested, brown tinged Orange, with glinting hints of angry red streaks. It provides a sick, groaning, heavy feeling to the body, with deeper feelings of pain and a sense of being forsaken. Energetically, this is one of the anger colours; a resonance partner to brown tinged Resentment Green.

 

Light Characteristics:

The presence of Stuck Orange in a card spread helps you acknowledge a blockage in your energy field that is holding you back and interfering with energy flow. This is particularly useful if you are being proactive about healing. The card position will tell you where the blockage is, so you know which chakra, body area and issues to focus on for healing.

For example, a blockage in the heart chakra will reduce energy flow and functioning in this part of the body. There could be problems with blood pressure, the upper back or the immune system. There may be problems with the giving or receiving of love, feelings of loneliness or a belief that ‘loved ones will always abandon me’. Once these issues are identified, they can be addressed and the blockage resolved.

Shadow Characteristics:

When we are healthy on all levels, our aura is a free flowing system of energy.. A blockage is a density or congestion of energy in the aura which impairs energy flow and functioning, much like a rock stuck in a pipe or a log in a stream. Energy then becomes unevenly distributed throughout the auric system as a result, with some areas receiving excess energy and others being starved of energy.

Every auric blockage is an unresolved issue from your past or present life. A problem or challenge that you have been unable to complete and move beyond, almost like an undigested experience or unfinished story that keeps revolving around inside us until we can find a way to make sense of it and be at peace with it. Sometimes this means letting go, at other times it means having to really tackle and confront an issue.

Think of a blockage as a blind spot in your vision, like an rock blocking your view. What is behind that rock? It can be difficult to really understand something if you cannot see it clearly. A lot of the time, we do not even know the rock is there, almost as though the rock itself is an invisible wall. You might have put the rock there yourself to block something out that you could not deal with at the time. Sometimes we know the block is there but we do not want to do anything about it. But more often than not, we are completely blind to the block, even when it is obvious to other people.

A block is like a gap in our understanding of ourselves, other people and life. When we resolve a blockage, we usually have an ‘aha’ moment where we finally see the light, almost like a puzzle piece clicking into place. We find new understanding and rewrite our experience of reality and our perception of self, others and life. When a block is resolved, our negative life story stops revolving and finally completes itself in a satisfactory way. We are let off the merry go round, liberated and set free to finally move forward.

Stuck Orange can represent blame; a habit of assigning responsibility for problems in your life onto other people and situations, whether past or present. If your life is not working for you, it is always tempting to make it someone else’s fault. It takes a lot of courage to acknowledge that your own personal happiness or lack of it is all up to you. Blaming other people or events in the past for our current state of affairs means that we do not have to be responsible for our own happiness, success and wellbeing.

Whilst past events and other people can have a profound effect upon us, it is ultimately up to us how we respond to these events and to other people. We can choose to give our power away and deny that we have any capacity to rise above these difficulties, or we can choose to take personal responsibility for our own happiness and take positive steps towards moving forwards.

People wearing Stuck Orange may be trying to punish others by staying stuck and saying ‘See what you have done to me? This is all your fault!’ (see Resentment Green). Some are consciously or subconsciously angry at God or Life for their perceived misfortune, so angry about the ‘hand they have been dealt’ that they protest by going on strike and refusing to live. They avoid forgiveness, because they think it means letting other people or God off the hook. In reality, forgiveness liberates us from our stuck state because it brings us to peace with what has or has not happened (see Harmony Purple).

COLOUR POSITIONS

Above Head – Anger at God, unresolved anger towards a deceased loved one or the presence of spirit guides who are attempting to help you get unstuck by moving beyond blame or any other blockage you may have.

Head – Assigning blame to others. A negative belief or idea that is holding you back.

Throat – Angry expression of blame towards others. Blocked creative expression.

Arms – Blame and anger in a relationship.

Hips –  Unresolved anger and blame to do with past issues such as childhood or past lives. Blaming a loved one, not taking responsibility for your part in a problem.

Hands-                        Anger and Blame to do with a work issue or work collegue. Possible self-esteem issues resulting in self-sabotage, with the underlying issue being loss of self-empowerment due to blaming others or the past.

Legs-               A period of time during which you may be tempted to blame others for your own problems.

COLOUR COMBINATIONS

Resentment Green-     Natural pairing. Anger, resentment, blame and jealousy.

Forgiveness Purple-    Beginning to let go of old blame issues and move forwards.

Ambition Red-            Highly competitive and jealous of others success which is seen as being unfairly come by.

Grey-  A highly stagnant state of apathy, despair, self-pity and anger.

Pinks-  Blaming a loved one, or blame issues in a relationship.

Soul-Retrieval-            unless surrounding colours are highly positive, most likely to respresent soul loss due to blame.

Abundance Green-      jealousy of others good fortune

Success Colour-          self-sabotage of personal success due to wounds from blame.

White-             A positive sign that blame is shifting and dispersing.

The Blame Aura : muddy brown and red streaked orange

This colour appears in the aura when we habitually either take or too much responsibility or don’t take any at all.

In the first instance we are blaming ourselves or taking all the blame. This can take many forms:

*Some will be dignified, proud and very much at the mercy of their own high standards. These people tend to have royal blue, dark green colours and salmon red/pink in the aura. They carry too much responsibility without accepting support. This weighs down the shoulders, making the colour frequencies of the heart and throat heavy and deep, due to the lack of circulation and incoming light. The greater the martyrdom, the harder and darker the colours become, sometimes taking on a murky muddiness or loss of clarity and sparkle. Blame orange in an aura like this will feel like a groan; if you listen to your body empathically while in the presence of an aura like this, you will feel tense as though stretched to the limit.

*Others will take too much responsibility in more of a shame-based manner. They might worry constantly about how they are affecting others, being overly apologetic and self-effacing. These people tend towards excessive guilt and low self worth. Some of their aura colours are pale and washed out- especially the yellow frequencies. They also tend towards slimy yellow-green aura colours and gritty mustard aura colours. Blame orange in a shame-based aura will tend to look like an open wound that won’t heal, and you will feel a lot of heart-chakra pain (an empathic tightening or ache in your chest).

In the second pattern, we are blaming others. Here are some variations:

*If there is a lot of self-pity, you will tend to see Blame Orange alongside pale wispy greys and dark green colours, especially shades and textures that might put one in mind of avocado or crocodile skin. Being able to grieve for and feel compassion for ourselves and what we have been through (or what we don’t have etc) is important, but when it becomes habitual, self-pity tends to give rise to self-defeating thoughts and behaviours, resentment, resignation, and sullen/sulky/angry depression. These people often feel angry at themselves, and some of them deflect this anger outwards onto others (Feeling angry at myself is uncomfortable, so I’m going to blame you instead, that way I don’t actually have to take any responsibility for myself). The blame colour in an aura like this will tend to appear as jagged shards of colour, festering acid-like bubbles, or burning hot coals.

*Some of us blame others without really having much apparent self-pity or anger. These people can be quite upbeat and pleasant to be around, so long as you don’t need them to take responsibility for something. Their responses to potential responsibility vary, but generally revolve around escapism in one form or another; they might leave town, pretend it isn’t happening, put it off, watch TV instead, sleep in, and be baffled as to why someone is angry with them for not following through. Some will be selfish and lacking in empathy. These people tend to have brighter, more cheerful colours in their aura (especially orange colours), alongside of dull plumy purples. There will often be a strange mix of extroverted cheerful aura colours alongside cold, dry, hard, grey-tinged colours (e.g. ice blue, eucalypt green). The blame colour in an aura like this generally functions as a blockage that blocks energy flow through the aura, or a hole like an empty mouth that can’t be satisfied. If you dig deep enough, you will still  find anger, but it tends to be deep in the aura, buried in early childhood (e.g. anger at a parent, not getting needs met, trust issues etc).

If you have loved this blog, you might like to order an Aura Reading, an Aura Healing, or a deck of Aura Cards. 

Lavender and the Watchful Blue Aura

photo-31Spirit keeps telling me to take Lavender, these past few days, bringing it into my life and to my attention in various sneaky ways. First it arrived via my current obsession with edible flower petals, and I found myself prickling it over my food. Now It’s the card I keep pulling from my home-made herbal deck. I have Lavender tincture preserved in pears, which is lovely and soft compared to the alcohol version.

Agitated Depression

I can’t say this is an issue for me at the moment but it is for many people I am energetically supporting. I love herbs that calm anxiety while also treating depression, because the two so often go hand in hand. Lavender treats dizziness and insomnia, and stops us from from getting caught up in obsessive thoughts.

Continue reading “Lavender and the Watchful Blue Aura”