Some of the funniest comedians in the world today are also angry to some extent. Their genius allows them to reach into that reservoir of angry feelings and transform them into jokes and sketches that make us laugh. Basil Fawlty of "Fawlty Towers" is hilarious because he is so angry, and his failed attempts to control the world around him make him angrier still. The more he struggles, the more we laugh, because we know that his struggles will only make matters worse. This sort of comedy depends on our Schadenfreude, or the pleasure and amusement we get from Basil's misfortunes.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
—Mel Brooks

Humor born of anger is funny because the comedian is telling us what we already know about ourselves. We can relate to the frustrations of Basil Fawlty, we empathize with the cynicism of Lenny Bruce, and we are awestruck by the damage that intense hatred of oneself can produce in someone like Richard Pryor precisely because we have known self-hatred in our lives. A lot of humor is forged in the fires of painful experience, and the comedian is acting as a healer:  they are trying to heal themselves by searching for the meaning of their pain, and they are healing us by giving us the opportunity to connect with their pain, identify our own pain, and then transform it with laughter.

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
—Bill Cosby

Laughter is healing because it allows us to connect from our hearts. We don't have to think about it; it just happens naturally. It reminds us that we are not alone, that we are connected, and that we really are all in this together. Laughter can transmute our negative feelings as well. When we laugh, it feels like a weight is removed. We can gain perspective. A hopeless situation looks a little less hopeless. Laughter is the product of Joy, which is our natural, Divine state.

So, what happens when we heal? Will we still need laughter? If there are fewer angry people, will comedy still be funny?

A lot of people seem to think that being more evolved, or ascended, means that we won't feel things as much. Somehow, we will transcend our emotions when we become enlightened. In fact, the opposite is true. Our emotional bodies are a fundamental part of who we are. Our mental bodies reflect God's mind, but our emotional bodies reflect God's heart. Both are needed in this dimension and in any other. So as we evolve and ascend, we will still have our emotions, but we will mature in them. We will learn to manage them better, and more importantly, we will be more connected with one another. We will have the understanding of Universal Love that Christ and so many others came into this world to teach. We will feel things as Universally conscious beings, aware of our Oneness. This is why it is so important to open your heart.

Does this mean we'll never feel anger or sadness again? No, but our understanding of these emotions will shift. We'll laugh, we'll cry, and we may feel new things that we can't even define right now. But we'll do it from that connected place, the one that we glimpse when we're at the nightclub, laughing at the angry guy on the stage, and feeling a sense of camaraderie and shared experience with the rest of the audience.

And what about humor? We'll always need humor. Spirit has a sense of humor because it knows that we are just playing here. We're here to have fun. What fun would it be without laughter? And as for what kinds of things we'll find funny as we make this shift, only time will tell.

The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
—Shirley MacLaine

Related articles:

• Opening the heart
• Your head is a liar, but your feelings tell the truth
• To heal, feel
• Players on the holographic stage