Kavanaugh’s Wildfire: The Rise of Sacred Anger
Thanks to the recent Kavanaugh event, we have added more fuel onto the already spreading wildfire of outrage—a fierce call igniting within each of us an opportunity to look at how we perceive women’s bodies and sexual rights, along with the larger issue of human dignity.
This is an unprecedented time when the full spectrum of change and possibility is alive for each of us. Some of us are the rising storm itself, while some of us are the storm-riders, attempting to make sense of how we feel and how we can affect change in the climate of overwhelm and confusion. Thankfully, there are stages to this storm that we can map out and use to our advantage.
Three Stages of Transformational Storms
Stage One: Turning Righteous Anger into Sacred Anger
Before we get creative, we must feel what we feel or risk numbing out, or worse, deepening our own trauma and pain. Anger is a good sign. It means we are no longer willing to be frozen and numb. It means we are waking up to all the ways in which our own sovereignty as individuals has been overridden and disrespected.
The only trap to look out for is that of feeling righteous in our anger—where our own experience is viewed as more important than that of others, and where we, in turn, disrespect others through how we react to our challenges. This kind of anger can feel good after feeling helpless, and as it gathers momentum and power, it can move through a greater and greater number of us. Yet this kind of anger, like a wildfire, seeks only to obliterate whatever is in its way, no matter what the cost.
This is where sacred anger comes in—the clear, focused anger that’s the cornerstone of catalyzing a transformational and effective end result. When we harness the intensity of our rage with lucid clarity, mobilizing ourselves and others to create the change we believe is needed, we become powerful change agents.
So yes to our collective anger, and rather than wasting it through emulating the behavior of those who enrage us, we have the opportunity to rise together in sacred anger—a force more powerful than imaginable. It’s in service to the common good of everyone: one in which our sovereignty is seen, respected and heard.
Are you willing to let yourself feel anger and focus it into sacred anger?
Stage Two: Moving from Assumptions to Clarity
Rather than throwing tantrums kindled through assumptive reactions, we must put our genius to work and attain clarity. It enables us to create lasting change in which the choices of each individual within the greater collective are upheld and considered. We are not a one-size-fits-all world.
Assumptions can only take us so far, often at a great cost. By allowing ourselves to integrate our feelings with our capacity to use our intellect, we start to engage in the clarity needed for us to move forward with integrity.
This includes recognizing the essence of human dignity: that only WE can be the true authority of our own choices. We’re not children needing mother and father to patronize us into proper behavior.
Up until now, we have put conditions on our healing and reclamation, deferring our power to an external authority. Yet both the #MeToo movement and the recent Kavanaugh hearing have clearly shown that although conditions are not what we’d like them to be, we no longer buy into the idea that those conditions pre-determine the trajectory of our own lives. In other words, the full reclamation of our power isn’t dependent on any conditions, including the ones we are currently facing.
Are you willing to get curious, letting go of assumptions, to have a deeper look at issues through the lens of your own sovereignty?
Stage Three: Creative Action
Structures help us function better, however, when they shift towards tyranny, it’s natural to be ignited with sacred anger—anger that arises from noticing injustice and offering forward-moving solutions. It’s time for a structural upgrade.
As we address many large issues that impact humanity, and we work together to improve the conditions for all people, we are realizing that we cannot leave behind the issues that surround our body and sexuality. The dissolution of existing paradigms about sexuality makes the idea of sexual sovereignty an important one to consider.
Sexual sovereignty is a new possibility, one that will be fleshed out not by the few, but by the many. What would it look like to live in a world where each of us feels safe to be in our body, we enjoy our body, and we naturally take on the responsibilities of being a sexual being?
Establishing the profound respect for oneself naturally allows this same respect to flow outwardly to others. No longer can we stand for slavery, serfdom, the sex trade, and all manners of outdated ways in which we treat each other’s body and sexuality.
Kavanaugh’s recent rise to the Supreme Court need not predetermine the outcome for all American women. This is a unique opportunity to laser-focus the fire in our belly to moves into right action and to co-create a world where sexual sovereignty is established as a true human birthright.
Now’s the time to come deeper into our body, to let the rage flow through, leaving us crystal clear that what we stand for does matter and is worthy of our continued attention. We are setting a precedent for the future generations, one in which, against all odds, we come together in common purpose for the good of everyone. One in which we stand so fully in our power that we no longer regard men as our enemy, but are finally willing to invite them to stand with us as our allies.
Our sexuality isn’t a commodity, a weapon, a thing to be used. It is who we are. By learning to heal ourselves of our traumas and wounds, by taking a stand to fully abide in ourselves, by using our voices, sharing our stories, we become the change we desire and we open the invitation for others to do the same.
It is time for each of us to heal, to speak, and to contribute to creating more of what we’d love in the world. What is one thing you can do today to take creative action towards what you’d love?
To discover more about the impact of desire, explore Dr. Saida Désilets’ newest book, Desire: DesireTheBook.com
Why do you assume I am filled with rage that baby killing has been made less easy with the acceptance of Kavanugh?
You seem so absorbed in your own point of view that you fail to see that there could be another in a woman on your list who sees things differently.
You are right, there is an assumption of rage. Many feel it and I wanted to speak to it. Perhaps my title is misleading as I’m not just referring to Kavanaugh and the rape issue. Let’s leave him out of it for a moment… and expand further, into the bigger rage that is growing across the planet. For example, many feel that the sex trade of children must be abolished. Others feel that there should no longer be any form of slavery. Others feel we must protect the oceans. The wildfire is beyond just the USA. All of these issues lend to building of a massive wildfire and all I’m suggesting is for us all to get creative when we feel ignited. And you are right, many of us don’t see clearly, seeing only what is in front of us and not the greater picture. What I’m most curious about, Madeline, isn’t how we are separate and may view things differently, it’s how our personal visions may come together to create a more complete picture. I’m curious what your sacred fire is, what your creative action is?
I agree with Madeline. Zero rage here. Personally, I side with Kavenaugh, his rise to Supreme Court is just and good. A new Conservative Age is rising, thankfully! The artificial and unnatural illusory construct of “equality” has created a lot of insanity and needs to be dismantled. Women like Kavenaugh’s accuser are a disgrace and being used as fodder to attack masculinity. Anyone with their third eye open can see the agenda, the silly theater being played, One can intellectualize and regurgitate the current (but losing) leftist degenerate zeitgeist ad nauseum, but if it goes against the natural order, against the laws of nature, it is completely meaningless.
Thank you Sonja, for your thoughts!
1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted, usually by someone they know (ie, a family member). This is a fact. Sexual assault and domestic violence fills a woman with fear, is this not true? She feels demeaned; her self confidence is damaged to the point of serious dismantaling of her innate right to her human soverienty. Where is your understanding and empathy of this dynamic that is heaped upon one out of every four females ~ females such as yourself. Woman who are raped, whether in this country or in other parts of the world, are also accused of it being her fault, insulting her integrity twice. Few woman can withstand this type of double whammy assault on their psychology, their body, their mind and their spirit. You obviously have not experienced the painful and very scared vulnerability that occurs when one is a victim of a serious crime. It robs one of the ability to think and act straight, for many years and always when a situation that reminds the woman of the rape occurs. Yet surely, you can understand this. Unfortunately, it is a fact that it is men who do the raping. And get away with it over and over again due to the sentiments that you express. This paradyme of blame the victim and honor the abuser is ending. Say what you will about those who are speaking out against this outdated, mean culture, it is changing. There is no stopping it, save more abuse against those who refuse to remain silent and suffering. Love and kindness is transplanting the fear of change, the fear of loving and respecting all of us as worthy. A huge imbalance is being corrected, and if it slops like water in a water tank a little too far to the other side, that is only normal and surely not permanent.
Hi Deborah, I appreciate you took the time to share as these conversations are what help us heal and grow. I actually think the numbers are higher than 1 in 4, in my experience it’s more close to 9 in 10 (but many incidents never get reported). Your statement “You obviously have not experienced the painful and very scared vulnerability that occurs when one is a victim of a serious crime.” is an assumption on your part. I have been raped. Violently. I was given 2 weeks to live afterwards. That was 2.5 decades ago. So I don’t speak from theory, but from an embodied experience of traveling through my own darkness into sexual sovereignty. After facilitating sexual reclamation for thousands of women world wide, it’s the women who deepened and broadened my empathy and clarity of what’s needed for us to relaim ourselves post-trauma. I know, both first hand and through my work, how hard it can be to reclaim one’s own sanity and self-respect as well as how intense it is to reclaim one’s sensuality, sexuality and life. To be honest, I had already experienced plenty of abuse leading up to the moment of my rape, so I get you when you share about what it’s like to be scared and not belong, to be hurt not only by men, but equally and at times more so, by women. It’s not only men who rape and abuse sexually. I have been abused more by women than by men. I have also witnessed many women share that they never reported their sexual assault because the perpetrator was actually a woman. As you said, there is change happening (thank goodness!) and may that change not be because we castrate human beings, but because we become a sexually literate culture that understands the immense power and responsibility that comes with being a sexual being. I’m curious, and would love for you to clarify, how asking women to feel the full range of their feelings, to take ownership of them, to get clear on what they want and to move forward in a creative way is enabling men to get away with rape?