Malcolm Stern: 0:46

So welcome to my podcast, Slay Your Dragons with Compassion, which, of course, I'm doing with my good friends at online events, and today I'm very happy to interview a very, very old friend. He is very old, but we're all getting older. But I'm happy to interview my friend, Mo Cohen, who's had a very rich and full life and we've known each other a long time. We've gone through quite a lot together. We've been around each other's bereavements and also around each other's sort of like joys and other things as well. So good friendships are hard to come by. So let's take a look at, mo, your life and what you'd like to explore today in Slay your Dragons With Compassion, which is about how we overcome adversity. A look at, uh at mo, your, your life and what you'd like to explore today, and slay your dragons with compassion, which is about, um, how we overcome adversity. What have been the tools we've used to overcome adversity?

Mo Cohen: 1:39

wow, do I start right there with what are the adversities that I've faced?

Malcolm Stern: 1:43

why not? Why not yeah?

Mo Cohen: 1:45

okay, well, maybe it'll mix my autobiography with with the adversities, but, uh, the thing that comes straight to mind when you, when you say that, is that, um, when I was eight years old and uh, at that time I lived in north london. In North London, my sister was born and after two years so I was now 10, she was diagnosed as what was then called spastic. Now, obviously, I didn't know about that, I was 10 years old, I wasn't part of that conversation that I was 10 years old. I wasn't part of that conversation but, um, I could, I sensed there was something um wrong, I, just something wrong, just something wrong. Um, and so and the evidence really came Slightly later, because I passed my 11 plus and I went to grammar school. At junior school I'd been top of the class and, well, actually number three, to be absolutely authentic, it's good, yeah, um, but but at front about, at um grammar school, I went from top of the class to bottom of the class. I was, you know, 23 out of 27, 26 out of 27, um, and so clearly something was going on, um, that was being represented outwardly in that, that's my understanding of it.

Mo Cohen: 3:38

And it was only years later, much, much later, that I found out and I understood that there was this trauma in the family and my mum told me when I was an adult that she and my dad didn't have sex for two years or three years, that my mum became agoraphobic and didn't go out of the house. She would get to the door. She would get to the front door and she would say Reggie, I can't go. And now I didn't know any of this until I was really an adult, but I could feel it. I could feel something was going on and and I think the thing that I felt the most was um, a kind of withdrawal of um attention. I mean, I wasn't getting attention and my 11-year-old said what's going on? Nobody cares, nobody's noticing me, and this kind of ominous sense that something awful was. And if something awful was going, so this is really childhood illogic, right.

Malcolm Stern: 4:56

Yeah, yeah.

Mo Cohen: 4:58

But if something awful is going on and people are not paying attention to me and not noticing me and I'm, you know, having trouble at school and they're not doing anything about it, I must have done something terribly wrong. So I made it all about me and it's all my fault, and that became my kind of filter on the world. Is something wrong, it's all my fault, I'm to blame. So now, you know, even now, as a 75 year old, as an adult, I only have to get a whiff of I'm being blamed for something and I go immediately into some kind of defensive mode. But my defensive mode is very attacking, very kind of pugnacious. But my defensive mode is very attacking, very kind of pugnacious. So that's really the first thing that comes up when you talk about dealing with adversity.

Malcolm Stern: 6:00

It's interesting we share that sort of. There's some interesting sharings we have, because of course you know that my sister was also. She wasn't spastic or what was called spastic in those days, but she was um, she had um mental illness and my parents showered her with affection. And then what about me? So I can, I can really hear all that. That. They these things. We can be very rational about it, but these things actually stay in our psyches yeah, I mean, it's interesting, your, your expression of it, or what about me?

Mo Cohen: 6:31

I, when you said that, I kind of felt myself absolutely physiologically respond to that it's not, it's not my phrase, um, but, but I, but I get it. What about me? What about?

Malcolm Stern: 6:46

yeah who's?

Mo Cohen: 6:47

who's there for me Actually. I mean, in a way, there's also another thing which, which may or may not be related. It may be, it may be a very deep, unconscious kind of precursor, but you know. But obviously the listeners to this pod or viewers to this podcast won't know, but when I was born, I was born in 1949 in Israel, and Israel was, even though there was an armistice, it was still officially in a state of war, and I was born on a kibbutz up near the northern border, just underneath both the Lebanon and the Syrian borders.

Mo Cohen: 7:35

So I was born into this state of tension and particularly because my parents didn't want to be on a kibbutz.

Mo Cohen: 7:42

At the time, my dad wanted to be a teacher in the city and couldn't find a job.

Mo Cohen: 7:47

So there was a lot of stress, couldn't find a job, so there's a lot of stress, uh, but at that time the system of kibbutz which, for those anybody who doesn't know, is a communal village, a real commune on a large scale um, the children were raised communally in baby houses and I was removed from my mother's bed to, to, to being in the baby house and um, and I think that for years I thought it was.

Mo Cohen: 8:16

I mean really until this year, I think, um, and I'm 75, uh, it was this year that I realized, um, I always had a sense of kind of being abandoned, but but, but I realized this year that I wasn't abandoned. It was, it was a separation, but I wasn't abandoned. So my point is that I grew up with this sense of separation as a really as an infant, pre, you know, kind of a pre-verbal, pre-language sense of being separate, um, and I think that that may have played into the what about me? You know like being and you're being left on your own, even though it's not an abandonment nobody's actually not there for you, but it's a fee, it's a, it's a, it's a felt sense.

Malcolm Stern: 9:10

Yeah, no, that's very good, Because I think what happens when we're unable to process things psychologically is that they go very deep into our psyches and we find ourselves acting out. I found myself acting out in my 70s in ways that go bloody hell. What the hell is that? You know, I'm like a child in that moment.

Mo Cohen: 9:29

Yeah, exactly, is that? You know, I'm like a child in that moment. Yeah, exactly so, um. And now you're reminding me, when you said you know things getting processed, um, I'm reminding, I'm reminded of a kind of a third adversity and in in a totally different um domain, but I, I went back to live in israel, um, and I know the politics around that now and you know, um, I have to, you know, I have to say to everybody not in my name, um, this you know, what's happening now is definitely not in, you know, not in my name, um, but when I was there and it was really a different country in the 1970s and I was in my 20s, uh, I was on the kibbutz in 1973 when the yom kippur war broke out, the uh, the day of atonement, um, and we were under fire.

Mo Cohen: 10:27

My myibbutz, my village, was situated between the River Jordan, just down and a, and an airstrip, a commercial airstrip, and the Syrians were shelling from Syria to try and hit the airstrip, and they missed the airstrip altogether and they kept hitting our, our buildings, airstrip, and they missed the airstrip altogether and they kept hitting our, our buildings, um, so we were under fire and um, and it was unknown and unexpected, and all the babies and the children were having their siesta at two o'clock in the afternoon, and um, and we had to get them. We had to get them into the bomb shelters and we were literally throwing these babies we know human chain, person to person, baby to baby, baby to baby, baby to baby, person to person to get them underground into safety. And um, and of course the shells were falling all around us. You know, you, we were in the middle of a shelling attack in a war zone.

Mo Cohen: 11:31

And jump forward 40 years and I'm doing my first solo autobiographical theater performance, which I can talk about maybe in a moment. But I was doing, I was doing a show, I was writing the show and I found myself drawn back to this moment and writing. I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know I could still hear the sounds of the shells, I didn't know, I could still feel the tremors in the ground. And as I'm writing this, 40 years later, I'm reduced to tears, I'm in floods of tears. I mean, I just can't control all of these feelings.

Mo Cohen: 12:12

And I, and I realized well, I was working with a theater director and we process this very, very slowly and he said this is a trauma reviving itself. And I had not realized in that moment, 40 years ago, in 1973, that I had been in the grip of a trauma, because the nature of trauma is when you're in it you're not there. You, whatever the trauma is, you're gone, you're absent. But much later, when you revive it, when it is revived for by one trigger or another, you're in the middle of it. It's it's not happening, but you're again right in the middle of it, as if it's real.

Mo Cohen: 12:59

And it took me weeks to, very slowly, with mark mark drummond, to to process that um through a process that we called tritation, which is a chemical term for drop by drop by drop. Yeah, so what we did in the show was we drew a huge circle in chalk on the floor. That became the trauma. That was the representation of the trauma area. And we made the show around the circle, not in the circle, and it was only when I felt ready that I was able to step into the circle and confront the trauma, like facing the shadow. And I did it with my great grandma's brass, um, uh, candlesticks, and um, I made a prayer that uh, right now I can't remember but um, but I, I walked in with my history into the trauma and recited a prayer as a as a way of completing that process. It was, I mean, it was remarkable. So now I can talk about the event without read. I mean, I can certainly remember it, but but without, without re-triggering the trauma.

Malcolm Stern: 14:30

Yeah, so I think you've come a really long way. I know that when you dive into something, you dive into it, and so you dived into in your late 60s or early 70s. You dived into solo autobiographical theatre and you've in fact got a PhD in that now, and so you've actually really given yourself to something that has meaning for you. So you've kept recreating yourself, and probably at 90 you'll recreate yourself as something else again, but for now that's. I know that you're a coach and a therapist, but you're also now a performer and someone who is actually using theater as a psychological tool as well. Tell us a bit about that.

Mo Cohen: 15:14

Okay, so there's something in what you just said that I need to tweak, which is and this is maybe hard to distinguish but I will have a go hard to distinguish, but to distinguish, but I will have a have a go. Um, yeah, yes, I trained in psychology. I trained in clinical psychology. I was a clinical psychologist. I left the world of clinical psychology because I wasn't terribly interested in people as people, as patients and the medic, the whole medical model, and I moved much more into transformational and existential psychology and humanistic psychology, which I found much more rewarding and meaningful. But then I had a personal experience, a kind of I mean a literal awakening, where I experienced for the first time what it means to be 100 and completely responsible for your life, for your entire life, and the way that I experienced it was. I am the source of my own experience. Everything that happens to me is it may be triggered by the outside world, but my response to it is absolutely entirely my own. And in fact, in that moment of awakening it was in my head or in fact, maybe in the conversation that I was having with the coach. Was I was having with the coach? Was you mean, there's nothing happening out there, and that's my kind of go-to default, enlightened, if you like, position, which is not position, but location is. There's nothing going on out there except what I am generating, except what I am manifesting, am generating, except what I am manifesting. And so that allows me a high degree of freedom. But it's to do with, it's not to do with psychology, it is to do with the past and filters and stories and narratives, but it's not to do with psyche or psychology, in the way that I understand things, it's to do with narratives and stories. And so I've moved from psychology to what's called ontology, which is the nature of being. Who are you being? Who are you being? Not what are you, but who are you, what is the being of being? And so the theatre work that I do asks that question who are you being? What story is? What story has what stories or narratives and they can be transgenerational that are passed on, are, are, are what? Which stories are you in the grip of? And you would like to be free of? Now, if we come back to ruth, um, that's my sister, who obviously is no longer spastic and she's no longer handicapped, she's now learning disabled. So she's been through all of those labels.

Mo Cohen: 18:29

And then one day in the you know, maybe in my 60s I was reading my mum was still alive my mum gave me some old school reports that she had kept, I think particularly from my sixth form, lower sixth, and in there my headmaster was called my headmaster, real old school kind of edwardian headmaster, in you know black gown and hat and and his name was ew maynard potts, ew maynard potts, um, and he was my absolute nemesis. I was terrified of him. He'd caned me for inciting revolution and things like that. I mean, it's just, you know, I was still getting the cane at 16 or 17. It's probably a trauma that's unprocessed.

Mo Cohen: 19:30

Anyway, mr Potts had written in several of these school reports and Morris isn't fulfilling his potential. Morris, if only Morris would knuckle down, morris could be one of our better students. And in reading it as an adult in my 60s, I went. Oh my God, mr Potts noticed right, he saw me and I went. You know of all people, you know it's like of all people, my parents didn't see me, but potts saw me. Potts was there and I went. If I got that story wrong, that nobody saw me, what else did I get wrong?

Mo Cohen: 20:15

and in that, kind of moment, all my stories just kind of it was again. It was a felt sense, it was an awakening to I'm living inside all these stories and they're not true, they're not even there, they're kind of that, they're not even present. Then I have I don't have the story, I have the memory of this, I have the memory of the event and I have the interpretation of the event and it's all made up and it was, you know, in that moment it was so incredibly freeing and so incredibly liberating. So this, it's like a lighthouse which has windows out onto the same ocean over and over again, and each time you go around the spiral staircase and you look out of the window, you're looking on the same ocean, but you're looking at it from a different angle. And that's what's been happening to me. It's like I keep revisiting the same territory, but from a different angle, and each angle reveals something new and each time it's more and more liberating.

Mo Cohen: 21:24

And in my life and in my work as a coach and a facilitator and a trainer and an educator and a teacher, in all of those areas, what I'm really interested in fundamentally is people being free, just people's freedom. Freedom to you know, you could say freedom to be authentic or freedom to fulfill their potential, and freedom from, so freedom from the grip of unwanted, undesirable narratives constricting stories, limiting stories, also from hunger and freedom and oppression and war. So you know, and that's kind of who who I like to think I am in the world, is that stand?

Malcolm Stern: 22:10

yes, that's great. Can I just take you back a little bit, because you said before about not in my name and I'm I'm really with you on that as well. But I'd like to to expand on that a little bit. Just looking at they that, because that's a very obviously a very hot subject at the moment. But could you expand on that a little bit for us?

Mo Cohen: 22:29

um when I lived in israel. I went to live in israel in 1970. It was after the 1967 war and before the 1973 war. It was a radically different country than it is now, dramatically different country than it is now um, and I was on the left, I was on the left wing, I on the left of the left. I was, you know, I was right at the beginning of the peace now movement. I was out there, um, there, going to meetings, working on behalf of at the time it was called Moked. It was a very, very, very tiny offshoot of the labor movement and I've always been pro-returning all the territories.

Mo Cohen: 23:20

For years I was a proponent of a two-state solution. I think now I'm much more. Uh, I would advocate for a one-state solution. I don't you know like, like one country that includes arabs and jews, muslims and israelis, um and um, and that that it is an integrated society in the middle east. And um and I. I absolutely stand for um, for peace in the middle east, not just for israel but for everybody. Um for freedom for everybody, for the rights of all human beings in the Middle East. I'm against the occupied territories. I consider them to be occupied territories, not liberated land, and that's what I mean not in my name.

Mo Cohen: 24:16

I think it's very important that people like you do take a stand with things like this because it's so easy to get caught up in the fervour of patriotism, which I feel like is a disease of our time. You know that we can whip people into a frenzy position. I'm not positional about this. I I certainly don't think I have an answer. Um god, if I had an answer, that's people would be banging my doors. But it's complex, but I do think it's. I do think that the resolution, first of all, I think the problem is the problem, not the people, the problem is the problem. This is an idea that is michael white's from. I think the problem is the problem, not the people, the problem is the problem. This is an idea that is Michael White's from narrative therapy the problem is the problem, never the person, never the person. So in 1976, 77, I can't remember the Camp David Accords Menachem Begin and Arafat shook hands and made a deal, made a peace agreement, and what they both I beg your pardon, anwar Sadat, not Arafat Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, and that peace agreement with Egypt is still intact. It still exists today.

Mo Cohen: 25:50

But what those two leaders had to do was give up the story. They had to put the past in the past and not be in the grip, the self-righteous grip of I'm right about my story. So in that moment two people in opposition gave up the story. And when you give up the story like that this is what Martin Buber calls an encounter you know there's a meeting. Buber said all real living is meeting. And they were able to meet because there was nothing in the in between.

Mo Cohen: 26:24

And that's when. That's when possibility, possibilities that are beyond the horizon. Right now we can't see them. They're beyond the horizon, but but when you give up the story, things that are unpredictable and beyond the horizon can start to appear in conversation, in language, and that was kind of the miracle of the 70s in Israel was to have a peace agreement. And even though you know there's a war going on, that peace agreement still holds. And so they've shown that it's possible. But it takes giving up the story, and that's what it takes for all of us. And it's not an out there, they have to do it, it's an in here. I have to, I don't have to. I have a choice, but that's in my agency, because who I am as an essential being is possibility. I am possibility. Not I have, but I am possibility that's interesting.

Malcolm Stern: 27:30

And also it's interesting that um anwar sadat apparently spent three years in solitary confinement and in that time he managed to get past his story as well. So it's something about um that he was put through a very sort of tortuous process, but in that process he became bigger than he had been.

Mo Cohen: 27:48

Yeah, and I I think there's something in that phrase about being bigger. It there's um. So you know, we, our world of human potential, we talk about surrender, and surrender, in my understanding, in how I've come to understand it, is a giving yourself to something bigger. Is is a letting it work on you rather than you have to work on everything.

Malcolm Stern: 28:21

That's good. So you're at this stage in your life now where you know there's a lot more. It's interesting we talk about the seasons of our life and you and I are in the winters of our lives now and that could be sort of quite depressing. But it's also sort of the winter is the time of contemplation and what I'm hearing is a lot of contemplation has gone into who you are and what makes you tick, and so there's a whole lot of exploration. Still, I think what's great is you haven't sort of gone okay, well, I'm going to retire and just sort of shut down and everything You're going. What do I want to open up into now?

Mo Cohen: 28:57

Yeah. So I think it's interesting that you put exploration and contemplation into the same kind of pack, into the same frame, because, um, I was watching, I didn't. I I stumbled in looking through some back emails that I had registered for a course on creative thinking online with Elizabeth Gilbert, eat Pray Love, and so I went back and I reviewed this program. I did it again and she talks she's a remarkable woman not just because of her success I mean, you know, she recognizes that her success was a complete fluke and had nothing to do with her but she's a remarkable woman because she understands. It's not understand, it's not a, it's not, it's kind of a grunt, it's like getting a joke. Understands. It's not understand. It's not a, it's not, it's kind of a grunt, it's like getting a joke. Understands. It's a comprehension, not a, not a understanding. She comprehends that curiosity is our way to discovery, is our way to um discovery, um, she talks in this program that I was doing about um.

Mo Cohen: 30:27

Sometimes you don't feel passionate. You know this is not about following your passion, because sometimes we just don't have we. You know passion can come and go, it's turned off, so you wait, you wake up in the morning you not feeling it, but the thing that you always have agency around is being curious. So I remain curious. And so when I finished my PhD, I OK, let me just backtrack because I'm just connecting, kind of making connections in my mind you were talking about being. You called me a performer.

Mo Cohen: 31:08

So the one of the main people that I wrote about in my phd was a polish catholic um theater director called jerseyzy Grotowski. I'm sure I'm not saying it correctly, but it's something like Yersey Grotowski. Anyway, jerzy Grotowski and Grotowski defined. First of all, grotowski loved Buber. He loved Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, and he walked around with his book I Thou in in his pocket, grotowski in his pocket. So I went oh, I love Buber as well. And then it turned out that Grotowski loved Carlos Castaneda and I went oh my God, my BA project in anthropology was about Carlos Castaneda and there were all these kind of connections that I had with with Grotowski. And there were all these kind of connections that I had with Grotowski and I just kind of fell in love with this man as a director and kind of gave myself over, even though he's 33 years older than me, no longer alive, I just kind of surrendered to his teachings and included them in my PhD and included them in my PhD.

Mo Cohen: 32:27

And the point that I'm trying to make here is that Grotowski called performer a man, but it could be. He means a human being. When he says a man, a person of knowledge, he's following Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan, that to be performer is to be somebody who is awake and aware. And so when I finished my PhD, my tutors and my external examiner all said that I had developed a methodology which basically is the process of putting on a one person show, a one man or one woman performance and becoming that person of of knowledge a warrior, a spiritual warrior. And at the time I I didn't really want to call it a method. I was kind of anti or opposed to it a method. I was kind of anti or opposed to having a method. I thought it was too formulaic, um.

Mo Cohen: 33:26

But now, two years, three years later, after I finished my phd and continuing to be curious and to research and read and understand and grasp new ideas, I went okay, it's time for it's time for this method.

Mo Cohen: 33:40

I I can't went okay, it's a method, um, to see the light of day in the world. And so my this winter of my life is going to be about transformational theater and I'm calling it onto drama. So onto is being, onto is what ontology is the study of being. Any word that has ology at the end of it means study of. So you have biology, study of life, anthropology, study of people, and onto drama is the drama, the theater of being, and so with so. So now I'm going to work more and more with people as a director, because I think the directing is the next stage of coaching. I think this is the phenomenon of putting your story on stage, the phenomenon of theatre, of putting your story on stage not as a repeat of your story but as demonstrating the liberation from your story, your newfound freedom is going to be my way of working, uh, in groups and individually because I think, um, I think drama has the capacity to take us out of our intellect and into a place where we bypass the normal stuff.

Malcolm Stern: 35:17

That goes on. So we get caught in our mental patterns. And, of course, as you know, I've been working for a long time though we've had questions about this with psychodrama. But my version of psychodrama, um, but I, I can see that that's when the magic happens, when when I get people into a dramatic state, that's when we see that, that they can get past their tram lines that they're normally stuck in.

Mo Cohen: 35:42

Yeah, so this is all about being in a dialogue, literally being in a conversation with the invisible world. That's what art is about, whether it's Rothko's murals, you know, or theatre, or music, or sculpture. But once you bring yourself to the piece, to the music, to the play, to the picture, once you literally bring your whole self and you are 100% present and the performer or the piece is there in its presence and there's nothing in between, miracles occur. I mean literally miracles occur, things that people were. You know, it's like I didn't know I could be that way, I didn't know I could have a life like that yes, I didn't know, I didn't know, I, you know people, people fall into each other's arms after being 20 years in conflict.

Mo Cohen: 36:58

You know? I mean literally it's. I think theater is miraculous.

Malcolm Stern: 37:03

Language, theater, performance, it's miraculous, it's miraculous well, I think it takes us into an altered state of consciousness, doesn't it? That's, that's the thing.

Mo Cohen: 37:12

Yeah, beauty of it yeah, and and and, and, and. The beauty of doing onto drama over a long period of time is Grotowski called it verticality. You go from our kind of coarse, heavy material self into up the lift shaft to making connections with the invisible world, and that's what I meant. You're in a dialogue with the invisible world with you know, and that's what I meant. You're in a dialogue with the universe, um, and this is what mcgill chris's work has all been about recently is about this. He calls it the nothing. He these are my words, not his but there's a nothing out there. That's a something.

Malcolm Stern: 37:57

It's not a void, it's a, it's a kind of an active ingredient, um, that we are co-creating with, moment by moment, in with the universe I think that's what I was sort of thinking about earlier when I was talking about being in the winter of our lives is that actually there's more capacity, being in that space of contemplation, to explore the invisible world? We're not caught in the same patterns, of course we are, but there's a freeing at some degree of those patterns.

Mo Cohen: 38:31

And so when I had an awakening I mentioned before I had this awakening. So the awakening was in the S training. That was the precursor now to the Landmark Forum and all of that very, very rigorous two week process consisting of two, you know, primarily of two weekends, and at the end of this, you know, it's like Actually I've kind of lost my thread because I was responding to something you were saying, but my, my, my honest, authentic experience in that moment was I was completely connected. I mean it's like no, no, I was connected to, completely connected. I mean it's like I was connected to the universe, the universe was connected to me. There was in fact, even saying that it's not accurate, malcolm, it was. There was me, this hand, left hand, and there was the universe, right hand, but it wasn't left hand and right hand, it was one, that hand, but it wasn't left hand and right hand, it was one, it was. That's what it was. It was, it was this sense of oneness of me in individually, but also me in in the universe. It was, it was an entire event. It wasn't, it wasn't, it was even beyond an experience. It was just this kind of way, awakening event. Now, words never, ever, absolutely capture it. But I always have it there as an anchor to, to draw on to, to relocate myself as as whole and complete and, and, and, and. And.

Mo Cohen: 40:15

I had that again with my theater work. Um, there there were moments where there were moments of like realization that me and my great grandpa, my great grandpa morris me, were only three generations apart. And in that moment that I realized it, realized it was real, and I said to Mark, my director, I said, oh my God, mark, he's in my blood. You know, it's like he's in my blood. And then I performed, not about him, I performed as him, and he came to life. And so now that was amazing to have that realization.

Mo Cohen: 41:06

But what it allowed me to do was then to kind of recreate that in other characters and to see the world from their point of view. And so so it's like, so if I took my grandpa, who was, that's, morris's son, my grandpa Harry, who was really angry, but once I was able to play him, I was able to see the world through his eyes and like kind of I, and now, if you're in a conflict with your brother or your sister or your mom or your dad, and you are able to portray them. You evacuate yourself, you become them, you see the world from their point of view. You suddenly kind of find a place. This, you're escaping the tram lines. You find that place of compassion, of forgiveness, of love.

Malcolm Stern: 41:55

Not love just floods it like floods back in yes, and of course it's that place of when, once you understand, you can no longer sit in the same judgment as before, because you you see that they are products of their world and and their conditioning and their upbringing as well and you see that the judgments belong to you.

Mo Cohen: 42:15

They've actually got nothing to do with them, nothing, they're only to do with you. They're your judgments and who you know who made us the judge? Very good who made us the judge?

Malcolm Stern: 42:29

that good question and that's where we'll we'll. We'll move across to my final question as well, which is at the end of each podcast. I ask my guests to um to say what are the dragons you've had to say what's the difficulties you've had to overcome in order to be who you are, um blame, shame blame, shame humiliation.

Mo Cohen: 43:00

You know, I felt a lot of humiliation and shame around my sister Ruth and blamed her for my life and for what wasn't working. I'd love it if I was able to say forgiveness. But you know, there are people in my life that I still feel really angry and and I and I know, I know from that that it's not always easy to forgive it's, it's a grace, you know you can't just say to somebody as a coach or a therapist, well, the answer is forgiveness. Yes, it may be, the answer is forgiveness, but it's a. You know, sometimes it's quite a treacherous journey to finding that place of forgiveness and I know that I'm carrying certain things around with me that are not good for me. They are detrimental to my health and well-being and I haven't found that sweet spot yet. But but blame, shame, humiliation, uh, are what I've had to confront and the dragons that I've had to slay, um, uh.

Malcolm Stern: 44:26

So I would say I've done 97 percent of that, not nine or 98, but there's a little bit left to go oh, I wish you great joy, and joy in your 2% exploration as well, because I think forgiveness is one of the great. As you say, it's a grace, it's not something we go. I think I'll forgive them, and often people jump to forgiveness when it's not real. Yeah, so that's what I'm hearing. Thank you very much, mo. I've really appreciated having you on the show and to share some of your life experience and and your wisdom as well. So much appreciated you're welcome.

Mo Cohen: 44:57

Thanks for inviting me great.