When Ruth King awoke from open-heart surgery in 1976, she had no idea she was embarking on a profound spiritual journey that would open her to the power of unconditional love and healing.

During her lengthy recovery, King, a high-powered professional who had worked with Fortune 500 companies, reflected on her chaotic and abusive childhood in south central Los Angeles.

A teenage mom from a working poor family, King set her sights on making a better life for herself. She eventually received a master’s degree in clinical psychology and was at the pinnacle of her career. But her surgery forced her to recognize that while she had physically walked away from the traumas of her childhood, she still carried them in the form of rage.

“I was awakened not only to how I had been harmed, but how I had harmed many people, including myself, and especially those I loved,” said King, 63, who lives in the McAlpine Forest neighborhood of south Charlotte with her life partner, Dr. Barbara Riley, and cat, Mr. Socks.

Today, King is considered a leading authority on emotional wisdom and travels the U.S. as a speaker, coach and consultant. She weaves psychology, mindfulness principles, neurobiology and genealogy to enhance self-awareness and social skills. The goal is to foster a wholesome mind, intellectual confidence, moral consciousness, humility and ambition that leaves a good legacy.

King, who moved to Charlotte 2 1/2years ago from Berkeley, Calif., has been practicing Buddhism since 1992. She currently is completing a 2 1/2 -year Dedicated Practitioner Program designed for practitioners of Insight Meditation, a method that offers guidance on how to see into the nature of the mind for the benefit of all beings.

In Charlotte, King provides a life-coaching practice and teaches mindfulness meditation at Insight Meditation Charlotte.

King is also the author of “The Emotional Wisdom Cards,” a 50-card reflection deck for individuals, groups and families to build intimacy and compassion; and the 2007 book “Healing Rage – Women Making Inner Peace Possible,” in which she reveals her love of humanity with insights about the trajectory of rage as a healing force. A sampling of her wisdom became an O, The Oprah Magazine nugget in the July 2007 issue, and Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Color Purple,” called it “a classic self-help book filled with passion, earthiness and wisdom. … Ruth King’s desire for our wellness and freedom radiates throughout. This is a book that can change your life.”

For more than 16 years, King has led Generational Healing and Celebration of Rage retreats that empower participants to heal emotional distress; understand the relationship between mind, heart, brain and body; honor ancestors; and create wholesome intentions and legacies. The common thread through her work is the importance of emotional wisdom.

“Emotional wisdom is the mental development of heart and mind,” said King. “It’s a quality of awareness, a presence that allows us to reflect on our lives lovingly and leverage this knowledge to connect in ways that touch, shape and heal the global human heart.”

Lisa Moore is a freelance writer for South Charlotte News. Have a story idea for Lisa? Email her at LisaMooreNC@gmail.com.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/08/19/2539096/wisdom-expert-overcomes-difficult.html#ixzz1Vx7xxBTA

In this overcharged atmosphere, the verdict and our resulting reaction, invites us to wake up to a harsh reality: Opinions are not facts. The fact is that we can’t possibly know what happened yet our “reality show” culture has us believing “we were literally there.”

No doubt there is still work to be done to ensure a fair and just society, but consider also your reaction when things don’t go the way you believe they should. This is a fertile time to turn your attention inward and connect more intimately with the human experience.  Perhaps these questions will bring you back home to your reality, which, I believe, is the best show to pay attention to:

1. How do you habitually handle disappointment, fear and shame?
2. In what ways have you “gotten away with murder” in your day-to-day life?
3. What might be revealed if the world could intimately judge your wrongdoings or secrets? How would you feel about this public exposure? Whose opinions would you trust?
4. When have you been determined to do something no matter how it might affect someone else?
5. What “child part of you” has been killed? How do you “kill” your spirit and the spirit of others through judgment and blame?
6. In what ways has your rage hurt you or someone else you love? How did you recover (or are you still on trial or in prison)?
7. How do you stand for justice without embodying hate and ill-will?
8. What would you do differently in your life if you were given a “get out of jail free” card?
9. What has your life taught you about compassion, and about forgiving yourself or others?
10. What legacy of well-being can you live today?

May all beings, without exception, be free from inner and outer harm.

May all beings, without exception, be healthy and strong.

May all beings, without exception, be happy and content.

May all beings, without exception, be peaceful and free from suffering.

“…New York Times columnists want to see Obama angry; the filmmaker Spike Lee is demanding that the president “go off”; Democratic strategist James Carville wants “rage.” Whole cable shows have been devoted to the question…the Today show’s Matt Lauer informed the president that his critics were saying, “This is not the time to meet with experts and advisers, this is the time to…kick some butt.”

The Gulf Oil Spill is referenced as the worse environmental disaster in American history. Compared with the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the George H.W. Bush administration specifically denied that the federal government bore any responsibility for the cleanup, and Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner declared that government involvement would be “counterproductive.”

The Gulf Oil Spill is not the first suggestion that the president is “not touch enough to lead.” A 2008 Huffington headline reads: Enough! Why Obama should Release his Righteous Rage:

“…Obama has waited long enough to show us this side of himself. Besides, we need to know that he can be a mean motherfucker if he wants this job… the last seven-plus years demand more than a detached analysis—and certainly more than a beaming smile. They demand indignation. Outrage. Fury.”

Really? And where, exactly, has the previous seven-plus years of kick-ass, cowboy leadership gotten us? The catastrophic inheritance from the past administration, multiple wars including the Republican war on the President, and Mother Nature’s rage, would be mission impossible for anyone, yet it does not seem to sway our obsession that President Obama should be angry, immediate and flawless.

I don’t claim to comprehend the complexity of the challenges we face as a nation, nor do I know the appropriate response, if there is such a think. I can only imagine what it’s like to live in President Obama’s skin, to hold the weight of the world on your shoulders. It’s not a job I’d want. But I am curious: Why are so many of us enraged that President Obama is not publicly outraged? For the 4 decades I’ve been voting, I don’t recall any president being “expected” or “pressured” to display outraged. What are we really after in this collective longing for the President to “go off?” What would President Obama’s rage prove to us? How would it relieve us? And more importantly: What would President Obama’s rage reinforce that would affirm our notion of Blackness?

Imagine for a moment the dilemma: If President Obama “goes off”, he is viewed as threatening and just another out of control Black man. If he rages righteously, he proves his Blackness and shows the world how tough he is. If President Obama does not rage, he is weak, lacking what it takes to be a strong leader. Our story about why he does or does not express rage is just that—our story, not to be confused with who he is.

Here’s my story (at least today): We have a history of tying black and rage together, and when this doesn’t happen, we don’t know what to do with ourselves. I’ll continue knowing my story is only a sliver of the truth.

Consider this: Our need for President Obama to explode in rage is our unconscious need to maintain our comfort with and definition of Blackness: Black folks look like this…, act like this…, and ends up like this… Fill in the blanks.

It is my observation that people of color, and especially Black people, disproportionately embody and express the denied rage of other races and cultures. I see this as a global as well as national issue. John McEnroe, for example, had an “anger management” problem where as Serena Williams’ behavior was “Roid Rage”, “not that of a champion.” As angry as McEnroe became, he was not characterized as violent. When we combine woman (women should not get angry) and Black (Blacks are always angry), it places a particular spin on our perception. This distortion does not happen consciously. It comes from generations of programming and social conditioning. It is what we have grown to expect, and therefore what is reinforced as “truth.”

In Berkeley, California, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run to pay the parking meter only to be met by a Black woman having just placed a ticket on my windshield. My impulse was to scream: “I was only 30 seconds late.” But upon seeing the “I’m not paid enough to take your shit” frown on her face, I would instead snatch the ticket and mumble under my breath as I crawled back into my illegally parked car. Was she given the job because she could ward off potential irate citizens like me? Would she have bitten my head off had I screamed at her? Perhaps she was simply doing her job.  Perhaps all of the above and none of the above.

Another example. When I worked in corporate America, I felt it was my job to express the anger in the group. This was not an explicit agreement. It was a subconscious understanding that we all colluded with and benefited from. Other team members held different roles—peacekeeper, cynic, observer, humorist, etc., but my role was “the rager.” When someone did something that required confrontation, all eyes rolled in my direction. Being reliable to the team, intolerable of the anxiety I was experiencing, and unconsciously loyal to a lineage of ragers, I played my role with righteous pride.

While my ego was frequently stroked outside the meetings, when teammates would share how relieved they felt that I had spoken, I was unaware of how my race and ignorance was being exploited as I lived true to the stigma of the “Strong Black Woman.” As I splattered their denied disgust, others could point to my lack of control while their own pressure cooker was temporarily relieved at my expense. My belligerence was consistent with my thoughts but not reflective of my needs. Being out of control did not provide me with strength nor did it offer the peace and authentic connections I was unaware of needing and unable to articulate. Instead, I was reacting more from a notion of who I felt I should be and, at this point, what I had mastered—rage. In my “dead righteousness,” I destroyed relationships with people and causes I deeply cared about.

As I began to heal my rage and shift my behavior, others began to experience their rage more directly. In my relief, I noticed that many team members became upset because I was no longer doing their work. With practice, I learned how to sit with my discomfort long enough to clarify a more authentic destination. Without blame or shame, I began to acknowledge to myself that I not only wanted to speak my truth, I wanted to make a difference that brought us together.

There is a difference between feeling rage and acting on those feelings. What we do today with our intense inner fuel is deeply rooted in our history, our direct experiences, and the insights we glean from self-reflection. Unexamined, our expression of rage can cause life-changing and long-lasting damage. Wars, politics, and Mother Nature herself, are currently manifesting the unresolved rage of generations. This is true in our families, relationships, and within ourselves.

Pick any race, ethnicity, gender or class: the majority of us have been harmed by someone’s fury, often a loved one. And too many of us struggle with the regret of having harmed others. When you understand this human proclivity and its resulting impact, you are less likely to express rage indiscriminately or hold the rage of others personally. The more you understanding and dignify the roots of your own rage, the wiser and more spacious your choices. You understand how emotionally delicate we all are as humans and your actions reveal an intention beyond the emotionality of the moment.

So, consider this story among stories: What if President Obama is simply being President Obama?  What if, because of his race, heritage, experience, wisdom, and his power as the President, he is aware of the harm the display of rage can re-stimulate and impart?  What if he is using his own personal rage to ripen his understanding of the complex problems we face as a nation and world? What if we acknowledged that the unprecedented challenges of our time requires an unprecedented leadership? What if it takes more time to heal a problem than to fix one? What if we understood that input is not the same as having things your way? What would it mean for each of us to consider President Obama’s humanity over our righteous desire to make him in our own image? And as we consider the impossible challenge of making him in our own image (something we’ve not perfected with our children, our parents, our partners and pets), is raging, blaming and shaming a wise approach?

I’ve found in my work with practitioners that the antidote to our discomfort with rage and other intense emotions is in cultivating self awareness, where we nurture a sound mind, moral consciousness, humility, and an ambition that leaves a good legacy. This requires an inner inquiry that becomes the foundation of human service.

By doing our own healing around rage, we recognize the more subtle Disguises of RageTM in our clients-Dominance, Defiance, Devotion, Distraction, Dependence, and Depression. We know from our own experience that when we are in the face of a raging client that rage is not the deepest truth that wants to be told. The deeper truth is more a disguised request to stand in the fire and not be frightened by the wrathful display of raw radiance. Your confident stance allows for a deeper investigation of emotional pain and wise action.

As practitioners and leaders, when we can accept personal rage and tap its wisdom-Discernment, Truth from the Heart, Compassion, Creative Freedom, Originality, and Solitude, we ripen our ability to allow transformation in our client work while also dignifying the humanness of those who are suffering. This I call HUMAN services!

Leave a comment! Consider:

• What happens to you when someone becomes enraged?
• How aware are you of your internalized rage and its impact on the services you provide?
• In what ways do you perpetuate the oppression of rage?
• How does rage affect your personal relationships?

Disguises are our inner rage child’s armor—the coats we wear year round to cope with the chill of life, even on a warm day. They are our ways to be in control of a chronically frightening life and are symbolic templates of older stories of rage that require our attention. They have played a significant role in our survival but they interfere with our authentic presence in the world. We continue to wear our disguises because we perceive these obscure expressions of rage as being safer and more acceptable than truth itself.

My research reveals six Disguises of Rage™ worn by high functioning women:

·         Dominance–you are highly critical and judgmental, controlling your world to avoid being controlled by it, and keeping others at arm’s length to avoid your terror of needing them.

·         Defiance—you are perpetually angry and use anger to divert your need for love and approval, often from those who disturb you. You use anger to avoid intimacy with the truth of now.

·         Distraction—you never have a minute, filling your time with self-defeating diversions to avoid intolerable feelings of emptiness, and to avoid the terror of occupying and resting in your body.

·         Devotion—you take perfect care of others often sacrificing your own truth and well being to avoid knowing and receiving the care you desire and often secretly deserve. 

·         Dependence—you deny your own personal power staying financially insecure and emotionally young out of your fear of losing support and affiliation with others.

·         Depression—you seldom have the energy to do what’s best for you yet serve others well. You live a down-hearted lifestyle to shut down overwhelming feelings of grief and disappointment.

These categories are not intended to simplify or categorize our complex lives. Rather they are attempts to reveal our deceptions of rage and to invite us to reexamine what might ordinarily be considered normal or justified behavior.

Disguises keep us from experiencing the pure nature of rage. When we don’t allow this experience, we can’t heal it. Rage should not be understood as a useless emotion—empty of knowledge or wisdom. Rather rage is intense fear—oppressed energy housed deep in our bodies and our bone. Rage is the daughter of our traumas, twin of our shame, burden of our denied histories, foreign language of our emotional pain, AND the wisdom that helps us heal.

Of course, allowing yourself to feel the pure energies of rage does not mean you run amuck justifying your expression of rage. Healing rage is a process of gradually appreciating—through experiences and practice—that we are much more than what has happened to us in our lives.  My Celebration of Rage™ and Generational Healing™ retreats offer experiences to transcend rage. Fundamentally, we are challenged with becoming reacquainted with our basic goodness and life purpose. This requires that we give up what is familiar behavior (our disguises), rest in the richness of our current lives, and commit ourselves to choices that support our healing. We break our loyalty to suffering and stop over-identifying with our fears. We learn how to rest in the space in between our worries while cultivating an open heart, and we become less reliant on our disguises of rage and more aware of the wisdom behind them. For example:

·         The Wisdom of Dominance is Discernment—the ability to see clearly and hold multiple truths without judgment.

·         The Wisdom of Defiance is Truth Telling—the ability to courageously speak the truth from the heart without intent to hate or harm.

·         The Wisdom of Distraction is Spontaneous Free Will—the ability to trust our intuition without hesitation and to be generous without greed or urgency.

·         The Wisdom of Devotion is Harmony—the ability to serve in life with compassion without obligation and self-deception.

·         The Wisdom of Dependence is Originality—the ability to express our unique power and purpose creatively and joyfully without apology.

·         The Wisdom of Depression is Spacious Solitude—the ability to rest well in our own skin and to become our own refuge without shame.  

Rage is a natural resource of misused energy. Leonard Cohen says it well: There is a crack in everything…that’s how the light gets in. As we embrace the cracks of our early experiences as opportunities for light or insight, we discover that It is not rage that we fear but rather the intense clarity of our own light. Our challenge is to transform the negative energies of rage into self-empowering fuel for our lives and for future generations.

Author Bio:

Ruth King, MA, is a respected voice on transforming rage and emotional wisdom. She is the author of Healing Rage—Women Making Inner Peace Possible, and the audio CD Soothing the Inner Flames of Rage—Meditations that Educate the Heart & Transform the Mind. King weaves depth psychology, leadership development, metaphysics, and teachings from wisdom traditions to lecture, coach, and facilitate retreats that transform the emotional body and mind.

© Ruth King, 2007

There she was at the airport, glowing with simple dignity, wearing a wide proud grin like Maya Angeluo. We enjoy a flavorful meal of fried catfish, yams, greens, and cornbread which she has proudly prepared. I eat like a starved thief and begin to feel tired and proceed to climb into her old, rickety bed with poor back support feeling more comfortable and loved than ever, as I sob for no apparent reason as she rubs my head. No words were spoken. No words needed to be spoken. I fall into a deep, peaceful sleep-the kind of sleep that only the scent of your mother’s bed provides.

The next morning, feeling refreshed, I’m surprised with how happy I am to be home. Mom is cooking grits, eggs, sausage, and homemade biscuits. Strong coffee is perking on the stove. It’s been a long time since I’ve been with my mom when it was just she and me, and it’s rare that I feel this special around her. There was much competition with seven siblings.

The moment feels so ripe and real, that I find myself sharing with my mother the work I’m doing in the world. Don’t ask why. Mom never understand my work in the world. When I told her I had landed an organizational development consultant position at Levi Strauss several years earlier, her reply was: That won’t last long. You know how you hate to sew! My heart lightens with this memory. Nevertheless, I find myself babbling on.

Mom, my work matters to me so much I can’t even explain it. I’m helping women work through their childhood rage issues. They feel better about themselves and are better parents as a result.  I’ve never felt more alive. It’s like what I’m here to do, you know?

Mom’s silence appears to be saying: What the hell is this chil talking about? The scent of judgment competes with the other aromas in the air. She gives me the benefit of the doubt by asking reasonable questions like: Why’d you do work that’s so damn upsetting? We all have rage, we Black. What’s the big deal? Do you mean to tell me people pay you to feel this bad? How are you going to take care of me when you get old if you’re doing this for a living?  I catch myself nodding in agreement. Let the truth be known I silently struggled to answer these questions also. My reply seems childlike: I don’t know, mom. This work touches me in deep and scary places, and I just know it’s important that women have a place to release rage and rest better in their own skin. Mom replies: What in the world are you talking about? Are you crazy or stupid? I raised you to have better since than that! But then, you like crazy, don’t cha? 

I feel my shoulders huddle at my ears. My heart is pounding and I’m feeling a deeper truth revealing itself-a truth I’m afraid will change the color of the walls if I speak it. If I say what’s I’m really feeling I’ll lose this special and unprecedented homecoming. Yet every painful memory of growing up in my mother’s house was exploding within me.

My mind takes over and I begin to create stories of what might happen if I told her the truth-She won’t listen. She’ll storm out of the room and leave me, again. She’ll be hurt then blame me for not appreciating her. She’ll accuse me of always wanting more. I consider forgetting the whole matter. After all, it feels good enough right now. But my desire to connect with mom and be true to myself overrides my need for safety and those collard greens cooking on the stove.

Mom, I have a lot of rage about how I was raised. Mom turns off the fire underneath her pots and pans on the stove. She sits down, but it feels as if she has brought the boiling along with her. She looks confident and prepared for this fight in contrast to my drowsy righteousness. We are so still that neither of us appears to be breathing. Mom’s silence is more a dare, as if she is saying, So…? I continue in utter terror, as if leaping off a tall building without proper gear. The beatings, Mom. You beat me a lot when I was growing up. And I don’t feel like I got much love from you. 

I felt myself growing in emotional size as I spoke this truth, and I had a bit more inner space to breathe. I realize that my words are more honest than angry. I search mom’s face for clues about what to do next, wondering if I’ve said too much too soon.

Those were not beatings. Mom replies. Don’t you know the difference between beatings and discipline? When kids do something wrong, you punish them. Hell, if I didn’t, the police would. You don’t respect the position I was in. My face and hands became clammy and hot. I was so uncomfortable that I couldn’t organize my thoughts. A part of me wanted to scream and shake violently, slap some sense into her, but the truth I had to speak was more persistent and in control.

Those were beatings, Mom, beyond punishment or discipline, and it happened a lot. I learned how to be afraid and obedient, and later how to be just like you. Your rage didn’t belong to me but it was dumped on me. I never felt I deserved that kind of treatment. For the most part, I felt unloved and unwanted.

I couldn’t believe that I was speaking to my mother as a full-bodied woman, not a child. Mom reacted as if she had been electrocuted with the truth, something she was determined to deny. I hope you don’t expect me to listen to this nonsense. You don’t let ya kids disrespect you and get away with it. I’m not gonna sit hear and listen to this. What do you want from me? To say I’m sorry, or to agree with you, or to apologize? Hell no! You can forget that.

The energy between us was at war as we sat silently, occasionally glancing up at each other. Waves of shame, embarrassment and self-righteousness flowed between us. I didn’t know what to say. I felt as if I had been put in my place and was being forced to be a child, yet I was disobeying-insisting on being a woman. 

In this pause, I reflect on a recent experience I had with my then 4-year-old grandson who was visiting for the holidays. He was hungry but I wanted to take a bath first. So he went to the kitchen, emptied the canisters of flour, corn meal, grits, salt and sugar in the middle of the kitchen floor. Being a smart kid, he mixed it all together with water and then rejoined me upstairs. Now refreshed, I announced it was dinnertime and off we went to the kitchen.

Upon almost slipping on his prepared meal in the center of the floor, I scream, damn it!  Terrified, my grandson runs for his life to the next room and hides his face in a couch pillow. Then it dawns on me: He has no idea why I’m upset. He has no reason to believe that it’s related to his culinary creation. In his mind, I should be proud-he had prepared dinner. Instead, he sees me as a crazy woman that he must hide from. As I hold and reassure him, I silently laugh as I visualize him 20 years from now in therapy sharing the story of his crazy, emotionally abusive grandmother who screamed at him for no good reason. I realize that intention does not matter to a child, only behavior, and I begin to empathize with the different ways a parent and child remembers their experiences. I return to the moment with my mother wearing a smile. I search her face wondering if she is having a similar flash of the past.

You don’t have to agree or apologize, Mom, although I wish you would. I understand that our experiences were both different and true. I’m just grateful that we can finally share what we feel. I remember when I was too afraid and hurt to tell you the truth, and when I did, you wouldn’t listen. That didn’t feel good. It only kept us apart.

Mom was starting to look like that woman that picked me up from the airport. There was a soft, prideful welcome back in her face, as if she had been affirmed and was relieved that she didn’t have to change. I saw this as an opening and stepped in: One of the reasons I do this rage work, Mom, is because I sincerely believe that had you, as a single mother working two jobs and raising eight children, had a place to go and release the pinned up rage you felt, you wouldn’t have had to come home and give it to us.

Mom displays a righteous smirk on her face and pivots her body in her chair away from me. She reminds me of those sanctimonious mothers in white that sit on the first row in the Baptist Church on Sundays with their fans, listening to the preacher in dutiful suspicion. Mom smiles at me and I sense that she has heard a disliked truth. In this moment, I simply love her.

Mom stands and returns to her stove. I look at my watch. It’s only been fifteen minutes but it felt like a lifetime. Mom says: Girl, you never could cook. I tried to teach you how to make greens for years but you just couldn’t get it, why is that? The myth of my not being able to cook was long enjoyed in my family, and it was more fun to play along with it than to prove they were wrong. The air suddenly feels blameless and melodic, and I take a deep breath knowing that talking about food is Mom’s way of saying I love you!  

 © Ruth King, 1999. All Rights Reserved