Anger results from the possession of an ordinarily calm mind by a thought or belief. These thoughts and beliefs are trespassers. The loss of temper is our consciousness jumping out a vehicle that we are driving before it has stopped. The vehicle is the instrument that is the body. We may not be in control but we still retain responsibility for where we go and what damage we do. When anger takes control of the perspective the whole mind is controlled by anger. The body is a vehicle that can create or destroy. We can be replaced in any moment by our anger.
Many identify external causes for their anger. To react with anger we must first deceive ourselves into believing that we are not in control of our feelings or behaviour. We are in total control. Anger is a pre-arranged conditioned response which can be learned to unconsciously condition our behaviour. Our beliefs seek to justify our loss of peace. Abandoning our peace of mind allows our words and body to be used to attack. The only way other vehicles can avoid a collision with a moving vehicle that is coming in the opposite direction is to get out of its way.
Losing our temper is an irrational excuse used to explain the abandonment of our peace of mind. We either have control or we do not have control. Prisoners will testify that whilst we may say we lost control of our behaviour we will be held responsible for our actions. For recurring anger to exist as a fixed response it must be conditioned. Like a guard dog is trained to bite, for a conditioned response to exist within the mind, the mind must recognise the command for anger and violence. An angry response requires a ‘criterion’ the mind uses to vigilantly vet experience.
Specific stimulus encountered in experience is used as the trigger for the angry response. If our anger and thought responses are conditioned responses then removal of that conditioning would remove the ability to respond with anger. If my mind is unable to discern ‘XXXXX’ as friend and ‘YYYYY’ as enemy then unless attacked, how would it be possible to get angry when I encounter ‘YYYYY’? If we cannot perceive an enemy then, for us, there is no enemy. The beliefs and knowledge that are necessary to sustain what others perceive in us requires a criterion within their minds.
To control us and keep us in character the part of our mind that controls who we think we are generates a lot of self-talk to criticise and judge. Nobody else can hear our individual self-talk. The self-talk is part of a loop that manipulates our responses in situations in which we have decided how we will respond. Angry responses can be generated for situations where we previously had little or no control such as bullying, violence or abuse. This anger can turn in on us or out to attack others who conform to the criteria required by the mind to attack. The attack can be verbal or violent.
So how does the mind know when to respond with laughter or anger? The proof of our ultimate control is that we must discern and isolate the stimuli that make us angry from those things that do not. Our individual interpretation of an experience is what causes us to respond with tears or laughter. If I am engaged in a conversation about something I enjoy doing with someone with whom I fully agree then I am unlikely to feel anger. If another does not agree with me they may respond with a calm objection, anger or aggression.
This shows us that our judgement must first detect what we perceive to be a cause or justification for our anger. To detect an insult or compliment requires a mind that can discern the insult from the compliment. This discernment requires ‘judgement’. If there is intolerance which exists in the form of an unconscious belief a person may not know why they feel anger. Unless it is a ‘fight or flight’ response it is always our own judgement that is the exclusive cause of our own anger. The ability to separate the compliment from the insult requires a discerning mind.
Even in situations of survival or compassion our mind must be conditioned to respond with anger before it can. The mind is conditioned by installing judgemental beliefs to create perception that vigilantly monitors and edits our experiences. Our beliefs edit our experience through the filter of individual perception. In his book entitled ‘1984’ the author George Orwell refers to an omnipresent government surveillance and public mind control. Omnipresent surveillance is what the ‘conditioned by education’ mind is. We are not our conditioned mind.
We are an expression of the one consciousness that exists in all life. Our individual consciousness has a body and that body has a mind. Once we have decided what to believe about our experiences our mind’s perception commandeers our eyes to detect and categorize our experiences. How we feel will depend upon how our perception sorts and categorises each experience. If our experiences conform to what our beliefs have condemned we may experience one of many emotions including anger. So our perspective has been prejudiced by the filters of our judgment.
We are not free if our consciousness is being controlled by our perception. We are our feelings. We are not our body. We are the life force in the vehicle we are using for our bodily experiences. This renders each one of us who judges our experience to be a prisoner of our own judgement. The paradox is that we are both the prisoner and the jailor. Anger can cause relationship breakdown, irrational behaviour, ill health, injury, violent attack or death. It is not uncommon for the mind to distance itself from its insanity, with the statement ‘I lost my temper’.
Our beliefs are our internal programming. This programming is strong enough to not only control us but to control what we feel. It was given the authority to control what we think and feel in the moment we consciously or unconsciously took what we believe to be true. We are the truth usurped by our beliefs. These collective beliefs not only control each one of us but some of them may come into conflict. The conflict is experienced as dilemmas in our experience. I may have a belief that I must worship my religious beliefs but I must also be patriotic to my country.
In this example the beliefs are not in conflict. If, however, we are required to prove our patriotism by fighting in a war for our country this may go against the belief not to kill which was previously installed through religious indoctrination. Our mind vigilantly uses our beliefs as the criteria when monitoring and vetting our experiences. Our mind is more powerful than any government surveillance, organised religion or police force. It is our ‘self-programming’ that consistently triggers anger. We are the weapon and our beliefs are the ammunition.
The trigger that must be pressed to fire the weapon is pulled when we are exposed to any stimulus that our mind uses to activate the destructive power of our beliefs. We may have beliefs about people, sports teams, foreign nations, religion and politics. For a long time our minds have been conditioned to ensure that our body and mind conforms to the will of authority. The mind uses the beliefs like perceptual radar that detects the stimulus required to trigger all responses, including anger. When we worship beliefs our feelings are controlled by what we believe.
Beliefs can be installed through mediums such as religion, pain, education, marketing and experience. When some realised that what they were told by educators, politicians and religions was not true then they no longer believed and were freed from the spiritual contract that is entered into when you put your faith in a belief. Throughout history many have formed beliefs based upon the testimony of others who were subsequently revealed to be false or mistaken witnesses. The truth of experience revealed as a testimony can be honest but ‘subjectively prejudiced’ by previous conditioning.
Big brother is within, not without. Big brother is the mind that holds the beliefs which control what we think and how we feel. Big brother is our ego mind. The ego mind is born with the belief in the identity which is then believed to be who we are and takes our place. It controls us with the beliefs that we acquire over a lifetime. The arsenal that fuels our anger is stored within our mind as our beliefs. How we respond to the stimulus we encounter in our daily life is determined by how we perceive it. How we perceive what we experience will depend upon what we believe.
When we wish to upset someone else or make them angry we may simply insult them. If our insults don’t work then we may threaten or attack them. If we have a fear of violence we may just talk about them to others, criticise them or blame ourselves for allowing our fear to control and prevent our anger. We are ultimately responsible for how we program our mind and body to respond to what our beliefs perceive in our experience. We have programmed our self to respond to the stimulus we chose to judge with judgemental beliefs. We are both the persecutor and the persecuted.
The lunatic has taken over the asylum. Our persecutor exists within each one of us and has convinced us that it is in fact what we each refer to as ‘me’. The cause of our anger is our judgement. We choose to be angry! We are in total control! We are responsible! When our anger causes damage we may say we had no choice and that we just lost control. We never lost control we just gave power over what we think and feel to metaphorical and metaphysical demons. The demons to who we delegated our divine power now exist within our mind as our beliefs.
If we need to believe something about anything it means we do not know. We can only believe what we do not know because when we know we have no need of beliefs because we know. We may say ‘we lost our temper’. We are never out of control but we are totally controlled by the beliefs we worship. This is not a contradiction because the belief can only exist within our mind as long as we choose to worship it as our truth. This makes us each susceptible to the influence of anyone who can persuade us or convince us to accept their testimony as our truth.
When we believe others our beliefs are not exclusively ours. Believing others means we can be controlled by others. If we accept the beliefs of others they can control us like software controls a machine. So when we hear ‘left, right’, like a remote controlled machine, we put our left foot where we are told and our right foot where we are told. A marching army is an example of the sort of control that systematic programming can have on an individual. We can learn to assemble, dismantle, clean, load, aim and fire our weapon.
Until we chose to relinquish control we were not in control because we need no control when we accept ‘what is’. Before we had beliefs we freely expressed ourselves and any response was natural and instinctual. When we believe the word of another we give their testimony power over what we think and feel. When we believe others they have the power to influence our thoughts and behaviour. A believer’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour will compliantly respond to the stimulus that reminds them of their own belief’s judgement.
We judge Christians, Muslims, immigrants, politicians and each thinks the cause of their feelings is what they perceive in each other. Anger is a sickness and its cause is the beliefs. Beliefs are a virus that is ‘trespassing’ within the mind. Until our mind stops giving citizenship to beliefs and simply contemplates them as just one of an infinite number of possibilities that pass through our minds we are susceptible. When we believe we become victims of these metaphorical Trojan horses that conquer from within. We are not who we identify our self to be.
We are much more than any definition that can be expressed in words. We have been conditioned so that others can control our responses by programming our minds with judgemental beliefs. We are each ‘big brother’. Our beliefs are ‘guests’ or ‘trespassers’ that visit as tourists or invade and become an occupying force. Beliefs remain because they are disguised as ‘truth’ making an allegation of ‘fact’. We are the child that was trespassed against. When we stand up for what we believe we give our beliefs control over what we think and feel.
If we lose the beliefs which judge our perceived experience what is now distorted into pre-defined emotional responses becomes free and natural. We are not the victim of our experiences. We are the creator of our experiences. The quality of our experience is how it feels. How it feels is up to us.
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