It's time to learn about the stuffy war, we'll call it for the purposes of this training. So it's a very interesting metaphor actually, for me, because I don't know about you. But what I realized is that when I was stuck in a feeling of constantly being attacked by the world of the world being unfair, unjust, and I'm having to defend myself against the world, I was in a constant state of defensiveness. Now, my anger was driven from this constant state of defensiveness because the best form of defense is naturally attack for me. So I built up this protection mechanism against being attacked by the world. Look, firstly, I was completely in my understanding, I was not constantly being attacked by the wall, and nor you, even though it feels like That's true.

We've already spoken about money, and how it's interpreting our experience all the time. So we can have a little glimpse of the fact that what we think is true is normally the conversation of our mind and not necessarily the whole truth of what's going on. So you started to understand the car, just because my thinking tells me something. Just because my feeling tells me something in relation to that thinking, doesn't mean that it's true. So I was in the thinking state of being attacked, I was in the feeling state of defense, of being under attack of having to look after and protect myself from the ways that other people treated me from the things that other people did some things that other people thought about me because I was quite sure of course, having the psychic mini me on my side, but I knew what they were thinking about me.

And so I started to build this wall around me. And this wall I call the stuff you will and it Was it was high and it was wide. And what's the stuff you will was was a wall of protection. And I learned that war with God. And for some reason that I still do not exactly understand. They're all in medieval armor with crossbows in this picture in my mind, but anyway, there's a lot of guards on this wall.

And in the case of anger, the gods of the school were looking for those specific things that raped me, the things of other people's judgment, the things of self protection, the things that were that felt safe, the things of being out of control, all the things that you will put on the list of exercises that you did early on in this course. So they were on the wall, they were guarding against that thing. So they're constantly scanning, they're constantly looking for any situation that may in any way whatsoever, represent one of those things. Now, the truth is that we are very biased in our thinking. Essentially I hid is bubbling along on the top of a very long neck and the whole thing is turned around and shoved up. And we are looking through the world at the world should I stay through the veneer?

And so it doesn't really matter what you're thinking, what I think he's thinking will probably cost me Oh, it doesn't really matter what I think you mean or what you actually mean? It's what I think you mean that's gonna put me off. It doesn't matter what your attention intention is by taking something or dismissing me or not doing what I asked you to do or by not turning the lights off or whatever it is that I want you to do next. It doesn't matter what that intention is. It's the interpretation the thinking I make of that. That's gonna pass me off.

And so my gods are on that war and they are watching for every and all experiences that might even vaguely sort of represent That's to me. And anytime they pick up an experience like that, they go mad. They're shooting, they're screaming, there's chaos on the wall and I am responding with my angry, my angry voice, my angry actions, my angry behavior. Here's what I found interesting about the stuffy wall. That wall was never necessary for me. It was always an illusion, but I needed to protect myself from that.

From that experience, you see, the experience is painful for me. Not because something is actually happening, but because my interpretation what that means to me and about me. Experience is painful not because of what's happening, but because of my interpretation of what it means about me and to me. Suddenly, let me give you an example, about two or three years ago Also, my husband had a shop in Cape Town. And we live in Johannesburg. So we obviously didn't manage shop, he had somebody and that person over the period of the three years that that shop was open and not profitable, stole quite a lot of money.

And he wasn't even that clever about it. Ironically, he just picked a few invoices and took some cash. And only after we closed the shop, because it wasn't profitable, that somebody who worked there come and tell us that they saw that there had been a problem with time. And my husband came back to me and he said, You won't believe what happened and these people have been, well, this particular person has been stealing money. The trainers in the past, those people on that wall would have gone mallet. They would have been chaos in my thinking.

They would have been blamed, they would have been betrayal. There would have been all sorts of stuff about how personal that was about what I could have done with that money. Favorite was about how we treated in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I knew that I've mastered this. When I turned around to my husband and I said to him, I'm really sorry to hear that. I actually like that guy quite a lot.

And he has also gone through this understanding with me, say to me, you know, we're not going to go on and on about this. And I say to him, absolutely. It's done. All we have to do is make a decision as to how we're moving forward. We do not have to have all the emotional talk, we don't have to have all the blame talk. We don't have to have the justification or we don't have to have the it's not famous.

We just have to start to how to move forward and be good enough. Here's the thing. There would be absolutely no value in me getting angry about that many things. There is either do or do not in the actuality of my life. I can choose to do something about it or I can Choose to not do something about it. But the chatter and the feeling and the emotion and all the the frustration that goes with that is completely unnecessary in order to choose what to do or not do about that experience.

And that's what we really have to start to deeply understand. We do not have to become angry, to take action. We don't have to feel anything to take action. We definitely do not have to become angry if we don't continue to take action that's even more wasteful and useful ally emotional space. There's no point raving about something that we don't intend to do something about. And there's no point railing about something that we do intend to do something we simply do or do not do.

It is not necessary to also bring this feeling up and so on those occasions when my thinking goes, and fought off an idea, oh, there was all that money that got stuck. from you, I simply tell me to speak to the hand. Thank you, we're done with that. There's no value in looking at the game. There's no value in going into the draw of that experience again. So one day I decided to kick down the stuff.

And I can tell you, from me to you with love, it was pretty scary to pick it up. Because the only way that I knew how to respond to that was in that way. I didn't know what else to do. Like, I didn't know how to be open hearted and vulnerable to love and to be okay or safe. And what I didn't know about that was I didn't know that my feeling of okay and safety comes from overthinking it comes from what are paying attention to with many me and what I'm not paying attention to. It doesn't come from the world treating me properly.

Nature of the world is that sometimes really wonderful things will happen to you and sometimes really terrible things will happen to you. And most of the time, it's just something maybe quite nice and not a bit nice and quite nice and not so nice and quite nice and the Buddhists say that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And we have to start to understand that our thinking that keeps a subject with us, that keeps our thinking going about a subject and keeps us feeling angry or enraged or unhappy or hurt or unsafe. That is our choice. We are doing that. And that is suffering.

And we're choosing. So one of my clients came back to me one day after we've done some anger work together. And he said to me, and I realized something. Not only do I get unnecessarily enraged about the littlest thing, but then what I do is I take my well being, my happiness, my ability to be joyful and present in this moment in this life. I packaged it into this beautiful box. gift wrap, it was my most expensive paper, I put the most gorgeous bow around it.

And I pick up that happiness, joy. And I throw it off to the very person that feels sadness as well. Not only and I rotated Yeah, take my happiness, take my joy, take my well being. Well, that was a really startling idea to me. Because I'm a stubborn individual, as maybe you ought to. And I am not willing to give up my happiness, my joy, my peace, and my well being to somebody who's already done me harm on you.

Because by choosing anger, that's what you're doing. By choosing to keep anger, frustration in your body, by choosing to use anger as a methodology in your life. You're not only having to live with the ups and downs of the world and everybody in it, which is the nature of life. You're living with us. Bounce ended throwing your happiness after such a choice? Are you going to do that?

Or are you going to hold happiness and joy in your heart and speak to the hand and know how to get myself emotionally engaged in this experience? Tell me. So sometimes people say to me, but how how did you take down the big fat stuff? Well, in the end, taking down that wall is really just a choice. It's choosing to live my life, open heartedly. It's choosing to not respond in a certain way.

Once I've removed the sabotage programs, and the misunderstandings from our unconscious mind that have driven that behavior in the past, it's not difficult to choose to live my life in a way that is more expensing of what is that is more accommodating to the truth. And when I choose to live my life in that way, just allow myself to flow with the truth of what's happening. I am much more calm, I am much more peaceful, and I'm a whole lot happier. Now let me just put a little codicil on that. When I choose to live with what is and accept the truth of my situation. That doesn't mean that I'm sitting on the couch, eating potato chips and watching Netflix all day.

It simply means that the truth is what is in the moment, no amount of raging, no amount of wishing for something different. No amount of beating myself against the truth is going to change the fact that nothing is what it is in this moment. accepting that something is what it is in this moment does not mean that I cannot make energy and effort and movement in motion and do what I need to do to make it something different than another moment. It simply means that I have to accept the truth in this moment and accepting the truth in this moment. is actually so much lighter than you expect it to be. It's the gap between the truth and what we think the truth should be, and what we raging about the truth not being and we're frustrated and upset and peed off about what we think the truth ought to be how people should behave, what situation should look like.

This gap is this gap of anger and suffering. And if we could close this gap, we could close the gap of anger or suffering and just look for the truth. And from that place, we can very cool mindedly do whatever we want to do or think we need to do in order to change that truth for the future. We don't have to rage to take action. It's not necessary and it's not useful.