Table of Contents
Praise forHealing Rage:
[Healing Rage] is a book of enormous scope that helps us to become more curious about our rage and better equipped to use it wisely. Ruth Kings compassion and generosity of spirit will leave you feeling like shes right there with you on the journey to a fuller and more courageous life.
Harriet Lerner, Ph.D, author of The Dance of Anger
A classic... filled with the passion, earthiness, and wisdom of a self-described wounded healer.... This is a book that can change your life.
Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Color Purple
A wonderful, wise and inspiring book. I feel the heartbeat on every page. Ruths compassion and generosity of spirit will inspire us to do our own homework toward a fuller and more courageous life. Sue Bender, author of Everyday Sacred
Ruth King has done the unthinkable. She has written a book that empowers women to embrace their pain, confusion, and rage in a way that opens a pathway to liberation, healing, leadership, and vision. This is a powerful, wise and timely messagea brilliant piece of work. Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money
King has articulated the painful history, patterns, and traps of a raging heart and offers the skillful means for liberation in their very midst. This is revolutionary work.
Jack Kornfield, author and cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center
The psychology of our age is characterized by aggression. The antidote is an experiential process that utilizes the energy for healing. This book provides methods for transforming vital energies into positive, creative, life-enhancing endeavors for individuals, institutions, and societies.
Cecile McHardy, anthropologist and Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Harvard University
Valuable.... King speaks with insight and empathy about her own rage, rooted in a harsh childhood in South Central L.A., and the experiences of others.... King offers a starting place for women whose lives are being distorted by unrecognized rage.
Publishers Weekly
A self-help book of a different kind, Healing Rage offers how to break habitual patterns and center yourself in difficult situations. The Michigan Citizen
Ruth King, M.A., is president of Bridges, Branches & Braids, an organization devoted to working with negative emotions in positive ways, notably the Celebration of Rage and Generational Healing retreats, and the audio CD Soothing the Inner Flames of RageMeditations that Educate the Heart & Transform the Mind. A respected authority on the topic of rage, she is also a life coach and team-development specialist. Her client list includes Kaiser Permanente, Intel Corporation, and Levi Strauss & Company. King works extensively with managers, counselors, consultants, psychotherapists, educators, trauma workers, practitioners of the healing and expressive arts, spiritual counselors, artists, activists, mothers, and other women and men who influence the lives of others, to transform the emotional body and mind. King works internationally and lives in Berkeley, California. Her Web site is www.HealingRage.com.
To My family My world family
May every one of us become more curious and less frightened of rage. May manifestations of rage be acknowledged as pain and treated with the greatest compassion possible. May we look at one anothers rage, recognize ourselves, and fall in love with what we see. May our good deeds open our hearts in ways that heal the roots of suffering throughout the world for all beings.
FOREWORD
We live in a world where humanity continues to suffer terribly because we dont know how to deal with anger, hatred, rage, injustice, oppression, and conflict between people and between nations. Yet we also know from the beloved examples of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, Dorothy Day and Sojourner Truth, from Buddha and Jesus, and from our own hearts deepest wisdom, that there is another way.
Ruth King has dedicated much of her life work to understanding the fiery energies of rage, hatred, and fear, and defining ways to respect, understand, and transform these into a positive power in our lives. She has articulated the painful history, patterns, and traps of a raging heart and offers the skillful means for liberation in their very midst. This is revolutionary work.
As a Buddhist meditation teacher, I was first simply trained to mindfully experience and tolerate these energies. But beyond meditation I then struggled with a need to face them head-on, work with them, and express them without creating more suffering. In this book, Ruth teaches and encourages us to be brave, wise, alive, and compassionate, to both honor our rage and its causes and use them to heal ourselves in the world.
May these teachings and practices bring all who read this book relief from suffering and a clear, strong, and wise heart.
Jack Kornfield Spirit Rock Meditation Center 2004
INTRODUCTION
From Hole to Wholesome
Ive been enraged all my life, but for half of my life I didnt know it. Before I knew I was enraged I considered myself to be a high-functioning professional woman. With a background in clinical psychology and organization development, I worked at some of the most prestigious Fortune 500 companies coaching leaders in how to make effective business decisions and develop high-performing teams. I was educated in some of the most highly regarded institutions of human development. I trained other consultants and was considered a master designer of group development, diversity, and leadership training programs.
While my work was respected, I had a problem with every authority figure I worked with. In my opinion, they didnt know what they were doing, they never gave me enough credit, they always fell short of making the mark, and they always needed mewhether they knew it or not. Yet you would have been in for the fight of your life had you told me that I was enraged. What I came to realize was that I had unconsciously chosen a high-powered consulting profession to guarantee me the privilege of pointing out to people in authority how wrong they were, and instead of being abusedas I had been as a childI was well paid, which meant I was finally right!
In the prime of my superficial success, I underwent open-heart surgery for a prolapsed mitral valve, a congenital heart condition. Ill never forget how I felt waking up from surgery. I was cold, clammy, and half dressed. An invasive tube ran down my throat and was held in place by tape across my mouth. I felt silenced. There was a blinding light above my head, and needle marks spotted my arms and chest. A large, impersonal machine appeared to be forcing me to breathe. I felt controlled. There were loud sounds from monitors that looked like angry gray monsters. The enormous weight that once lived inside my heart was now on my chest burying me alive. I felt trapped. I panicked and tried to move, but alarm bells alerted the medical personnel and a slew of them filled my room in an instant. Terrified, I thought:
