Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 100): Anger is Idolatry - Mesillas Yesharim

good morning booker tov great to be back together again for our weekly 10 minutes of meaning the messily susharam lutz has been able to motivate inspire help us envision who we can be and realize that dream to fulfill or to at least advance our potential in this world we've been going step by step through the formula of pinnacles that the messiest arm that elucidates for us i want to thank our generous sponsors for the series for the year my dear friends hani and lenny grunstein in memory of hani's beloved father mr aaron tambour aron ben yitzchak thank you for your generosity for sponsoring this series and for so much more so we began with the media of the heroes of caution mindfulness presence consciousness to be thoughtful in everything that we say in everything that we do and everywhere we go in every act and every behavior this is an enormously high level you could get stuck on that first chapter and never get past it the ability to be roasted and say what is the outcome what is the consequence what is this going to lead to is this the right response is this the right thing to say how will this be appreciated received how will this land is this the right act what will the repercussions what will the consequences be it's enormously high level it's the first step because before we can talk about how to live in any other meaningful way we have to cultivate within ourselves the ability to be present in everything that we're doing so that we don't do things that we will regret number two we talked about zurichus alacrity zeal enthusiasm don't be lazy and lethargic don't procrastinate don't do a half-baked job don't only give a piece of yourself and don't be minimalistic in life but rather zareesus alacrity enthusiasm go pursue it go make it happen go and get it done and then we've moved over to the media of nikias which we've been spending a long time on i heard a rabbi a sermon from rosh hashanah yesterday somebody forwarded me and he characterized in his sermon i really think in a way that captures what was trying to communicate about the media of nikhias a really really beautiful way the medium says again this is really the teaching of repentance of the talmud who taught that nikias means to purge from ourselves every day we're battling every day we're struggling every day we're confronting the imperfections within ourselves the deficiencies the challenges the temptations the distractions the appetites the media of nichias is how can we how can we purge how can we eliminate how can we conquer in such a way that it's no longer part of the daily battle no longer part of the daily battle whether it's in the area of health and wellness in our eating habits whether it's in our sleeping habits whether it's in our gossiping habits whether it's in our anger response whichever area it is and he's been going through one by one those and more so the rabbi i heard said it in the following way which i really loved he said there's the battlefront and there's conquered territory there's the area of our life which is the battlefront we're battling it's a regular battle there's a battlefront taking place we're engaged in a war and a battle and then there's conquered territory conquered territory means i won the battle i conquered the territory now to be clear conquered territory you also have to defend even after you've conquered territory it needs to be defended it's not to suggest that any imperfection deficiency appetite temptation in our lives we can afford to let our guard down and we can afford to assume that we fully conquered it even when it's conquered it needs to be defended because there are opposing forces who want to snatch it from us but at least we can put it into the column called conquered territory we're not struggling it's not part of the daily grind we're not tempted it's conquered territory that needs to be defended versus the battlefront that we're engaged in so in this media of nikias the ram has been going through one by one the areas that in order to lead a most perfect life a whole life to be complete in our lives we need to move them from the column of the battlefront of the daily grind into the column of the conquered territory into the column of that which again we continue to need to defend but at least we've conquered and we've gone through many many different of these middos and we're now today we move on to a new one perhaps the most pernicious the one that corrupts the one that compromises the one that sabotages our lives of the most we're going to speak now about anger that there's a person who gets angry filled with such rage who responds with such a a lashing who's a fire that in that moment of rage they've lost themselves it's as if they are worshiping an idol what does that mean it's the person who gets angry when anything goes against the way that they want it i don't want to be sitting at a red light i don't want to be laid in traffic i don't want you to miss that deadline i didn't want you to say that i didn't want you to keep me waiting i didn't want you to leave the toy in the middle of the floor i didn't want you to serve milks i wanted flight shakes i didn't want the person flies off the handle loses themselves responds with rage why negadritso no at the core at the root of anger is ego everything we get angry about it's because our ego our ego had us view the world in such a way that we anticipated we drew it up we wanted a certain outcome we wanted people to respond or say or do certain things and they didn't comply we wanted the world we wanted nature we wanted we wanted uh traffic to be exactly the way we want and when things don't go according to our plan when they don't work within exactly the way that we prescribe we can't take it we can't reconcile it and therefore we get angry our blood pressure goes up our sweat glands begin to pump our pulse increases we get angry because the world's not working exactly the way i want i didn't want you to say that do that go there responding that way i didn't want it to be this way anger cast so what happens why is it like azara what is idolatry idolatry is worth worshiping something other than hashem we're supposed to live our lives and say everything is according to plan everything is according to hashem the whole world is the way he wants it to be that doesn't mean we don't hold others accountable we believe in free will and if another person is exercising their free will in a way that damages us we hold them accountable we don't say if someone raims my car or someone borrows money and never returns it ah let it go it's hashem's will what you do is you say i'm taking you to court you owe me compensation but i'm never going to get angry because it's also hashem's will hashem willed me to be out x money but you didn't have to be the agent for it so i'm holding you accountable both can happen simultaneously but you see when we get angry when we give in to that urge that pure emotion that has no intellect when we lose ourselves and the animal in us comes out by getting angry by raising our voice by flying off the handle by being filled with rage then we're worshiping something other than god we're worshiping ourselves we're worshiping our ego we need the world to conform to the way we want it to be that's arrogant it's ego at the core at the root of all anger is ego that's not to say that there aren't things that we shouldn't be outraged by should be outraged by anti-semitism we should be outraged by injustice we should be outraged by people who are corrupt to take advantage of others but the outrage should not be an emotional response of anger it should be a calculated strategic intellectual response which causes us to become activists to try to change whatever it is that we're outraged by so we should never have rage but you can have outrage you should never have anger but you can be terribly upset frustrated and therefore be led to action but a person who gives into that emotion a person who reacts with anger or rage can destroy the whole world if the power was in his hands because this is so key the rebecca understood something hundreds of years ago that psychologists are only understanding today scientists who actually mapped the brain during moments of anger which i never understood like you put someone in an mri machine and then you show them images that will anger them how exactly do you see a person's brain waves while they're angry you get someone angry then you put them in the mri machine i don't know exactly how they do it but they see today the blood flow the parts of the brain that light up when you get angry are the animal parts of the brain the fight or flight parts of the brain the parts of the brain that are human that are thoughtful that are mindful that are intellectual that are disciplined they don't light up when you get angry in other words the animal in us takes over and therefore we act like an animal we say things we later regret we do things we need to later repair we break things that are irreparable relationships objects we did we kill deals because somebody angered us and we lost ourselves and therefore we we don't get the outcome that we wanted in a business negotiation or in a relationship that we're trying to reconcile or heal so understood this he says the animal part of the brain lights up you become like a wild beast and you're ready to destroy the world you'll hurt even the people that you care about most so that's the emotion of anger there's no intellect to anger there's nothing productive about anger anger is purely destructive it purely purely compromises and destroys may i love nammar and on this eo said tariff when you're angry you'll violate everything in the world gossip revenge when you're angry you're no longer thinking anger clouds your judgment you have no judgment how many people in anger did things that were self-destructive they sabotaged their own success their own happiness their own finances their own relationships their own marriage all out of anger now what we'll talk about next week what continues with or after success i should say we're going to pick it up after what talks about is that you can't allow the anger to rage once the anger hits a certain level it's hard to bring it back so the strategy the key to never giving in to anger is to never allow yourself to become angry to catch it before it happens to catch yourself before it happens yesterday i found myself being very angry i was angry i was angry at someone i was angry at something it's very frustrating as we're trying to plan and coordinate the the mignon in the community and there's challenges around the community and people you rely on who who bail on you and don't put the community first and it's been it's been challenging very challenging i found myself being angry and even before i saw this and prepared for today i thought to myself because i've studied it in the past so why am i getting angry it's my ego it's my ego i had a certain vision i need everyone to fit into the way i want and i still believe it is what's correct and it is what's virtuous and i wish they would but i can't get angry about it it is what it is and i have to focus on what i need to do and you know what leave the judging to god in these 10 days of repentance god is the judge let him do the judging we don't need to put our energy into the judging focus on what we need to do but when we give in to that anger it distracts us i felt my heart rate increasing i felt myself getting sick heartache over the thing i was angry about the people of the person has absolutely no clue they're not suffering the only one suffering is me and i realize just how foolish just how foolish let go of the anger the anger is driven by ego stop worshiping yourself and your vision of the world and needing everyone to conform and let go and let god let the kurdish borough's vision be the one that carries the day catch the anger before it reaches the point of no return don't allow the animal part of the brain to light up continue to be uniquely human move anger from the area of the battlefront to the conquered territory that we become the type of person who's slow to anger who doesn't get angry we'll pick up with this after circus uh the next the ramkal is now going to characterize different personalities slow to anger and slow to and slow to recover someone who's slow to anger but quick to recover so so on and so forth we'll go through them one by one until then have a good march hasimatova joining us 8 45 for living with amuna join us tonight we're going behind the bmw with judge alvin hellerstein a federal judge from new york talking to a judge about how to prepare for coming before the judge onion kipper it's going to be fantastic 9 o'clock tonight shabba sheba drasha this mozai shop is 8 30. have a wonderful week stay happy stay healthy and stay holy