Find the Ancient Spiritual Roots of Aggression to Separate Out Violation From Being More Able to Accomplish the Greater Good
Aggression is a most misunderstood word and practiced behavior. It is associated with violation and other acting-out responses.
However, in ancient spiritual practices aggression was understood to be a necessary dimension of key focus to achieve chosen intent. I think “intent” becomes the tiebreaker, for whatever the real attitude is that fuels chosen intent is that which defines true purpose, and therefore, real outcome.
“Learn to Earn” Being “Response-Able” as The Key to Successful Assertiveness
Aggression that emerges from an attitude that mistakenly defines oneself as a victim well sets the stage for what, in clinical terms, is called passive-aggressive behavior. A person caught in this developmentally-challenged trap (meaning what is really operating here is infantile behavior driven by a still-wounded ego), at a core level, refuses to express themselves as a whole adult person from a place of integrity and freedom. Their only option, then, becomes a “swing-back” combination of passivity and aggression, which sets the stage for abuse involving self and others.
When one can earn, as an adult being able and willing to experience life’s challenges head-on, the wherewithal to find where the real resolution exists, one also earns the right to become response-able.
True Spiritual Aggression Accomplishes Healing and Develops Personal Power
This means, of course, being able to fully respond from a place of awareness and acceptance of what’s going on, which are the core elements of accessing both personal and spiritual power. Then one becomes empowered and free to assertively “push forward” to achieve new and higher goals.
In my shamanic healing practice I use the badger medicine totem, or visionary animal who is the designated guide for healing and power indigenous to my “neck of the woods”, to help clients use aggression to critically achieve their chosen transformation. The key word for the badger totem, according to the book that has been popular for decades called Medicine Cards, by Jamie Sams, is aggressiveness. It is interesting to note that in medical practice the phrase “aggressive healing” is used with the inference that, with healing crises, the required approach needs to be aggressive.
A “Push Forward” Supports Innovative, Creative, Higher Level Solutions that Recover Freedom and One’s Greater Self
I also reflected on this after seeing the well-reviewed movie this weekend, Company Men. It portrays three central characters’ unfolding responses to being fired by their company’s “downsizing”, with a lot of what these days can be described as “hot political” inference about how some heads of key financial and industrial institutions have criminally and greedily amassed great gains that have risked the potential destruction of national, even global economies through this practice, which correspondingly destroys employees’ lives.
We are in the midst of these great revolutions and the corresponding challenge to have to evolve and revolutionize our consciousness in order to survive and sustain ourselves, and this planet. This transformational challenge well engages the real power of spiritual aggression to force us to become greater, able to transcend and “push forward”, as my working definition of aggression, to achieve higher results that support the creation of the greater good. In the movie one character destroys himself; another character breaks out of his own “cushy” ego to do whatever is necessary, through developing personal integrity, to survive and rebirth his professional vision; and the third character affirms his own freedom and capability to start his own company, providing a better opportunity that from an integral center of caring and “win-win” focus in hiring back the employees that were fired.
So I ask you to reflect on your current challenges, especially considering areas in which you feel stuck and blocked, to better move forward. Consider what is required of you to be able to best access the spiritual power of aggression to push yourself to whatever higher level is required to well accomplish your aims. This always best supports and extends what you can offer to the world.