What Palpatine missed: Letting the hate flow through me

“Use your aggressive feelings boy, let the hate flow through you” is the famous line by General Palpatine in Star Wars. His implication is that if Luke Skywalker feels his anger and aggression, he’ll be more likely to be turned over to the dark side. 

A few days ago I’ve been processing some of my own hatred and anger in relation to my sexuality. Powerful stuff! What struck me was how I’d learned to deal with those emotions through my upbringing and conditioning. It was mostly to repress, minimize and vilify it.

Then, I re-experienced something in my own body which was the opposite, which I’d already learned many times over from my meditation and trauma therapy training: Letting the hate flow through me and agreeing to it. It turns out, it didn’t turn me over to the dark side, despite my and the wider society’s fear of that. In fact, quite the opposite, doing so was maybe the only possible way to free myself from it, because hatred, it turns out, leaves on its own once it has been fully felt, acknowledged and experienced. 

At one point in my processing I wrote down in my journal these jarring words: I hate myself. Wow, this scared me, but the truth is that writing these words down and seeing it was extremely powerful and relieving. A part of me did hate itself and this feeling was definitely turned inward and against myself. I almost wanted to do a little dance seeing the statement “I hate myself” in front of me. It felt as if I’d been consistently running away from this very statement, becoming extremely clever in finding ways to deny it or avoid it. And yet, when I faced it, it wasn’t even half bad. It immediately loosened its grip, it felt like a part of me could finally stop running. 

My insight is this: In order to love myself, I first have to allow to hate myself. To really own up to it and agree to it. Then I can love that I hate myself, the hardest part to love. And from there, the hatred, now befriended and loved, can be on its way, stick around a bit and then, magically, leave. From a biological perspective, hatred as emotion takes up a lot of our body’s energy. So only if it has a reason to be here, will it stick around. Once we find a way to agree to it and fully feel it, alongside with the grief and fear that it often comes with for me, then it has no more reason to stick around. 

Sorry to say Palpatine, your advice is in fact good advice! It just doesn’t do what you think it does and make us Sith lords and ladies. 😀 

The question I want to leave you with is this: Which part of you, that you are most scared of, can you flip the script on and actually agree to? I’m curious what happens if you do, feel free to send me your insights.