freedom from defenses
Hey I just remembered this after seeing the link that Jannet gave us to Judith Warner’s column.
Last night I listened to the Oprah interviews with Byron Katie again. I forget the link but you can find them from hulu, search on Byron Katie, then that links you back to the XM Oprah site. [Ah, here is the link to the page where you can find videos. Incidentally the videos do not run on Chrome; I had to switch to Firefox.]
In the interviews Katie makes a point that I found rather remarkable:
A defense against anything is an act of war.
As soon as you start to defend or fight against something, you have started a war. So I thought maybe that would be good to keep in mind too. We support, encourage, offer information, and maybe even critique things that puzzle us; but at the same time, we see if we can frame this in a way that supports freedom for all?
Or maybe it’s just in the title here: freedom from defenses. There is no need to defend against anyone else. Simply be yourself.
I’m very glad you mentioned this! There are many actions/parties/relationships/etc. associated with “war.” (I placed “war” in quotes because it is one of those words/labels that we can seem so sure of that we can fail to pause and understand. What might happen if we lent our awareness to the concept of war?)
I wonder if it might be interesting to site guests if we presented posts like this and asked for examples of how “A defense against anything is an act of war”? Or perhaps we can ask for examples that can both support and undermine the statement?
Those are big questions and I’m sure a subset of the population will actively engage in providing examples. For the rest - even granting that we will only attract visitors of the highest caliber and intellectual acuity - I think it has to start with the author (me, in this case) giving an example of my own to set up something they can respond to.
It’s much easier for people to respond that way. How could I toss out a big question and expect people to answer it without first providing one of my own? Plus if you want people to stick their necks out and give an opinion, you have to do it yourself first. So… yes, I’ll think about some examples here.
A big serious example came to mind but I haven’t the stomach to describe it right now. So on a related matter:
Taking your idea and transposing it to a survey - the yes/no/maybe type of survey - I love those and think that should be a feature! Then the survey could lead to discussion.
Okay I’ll describe the big serious example. The twin towers fell. What if we had done nothing? Except mourn, grieve, accept blessings from the world, and yes - retreat, in the sense of pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia. What if we had put up no defenses? That would have been extremely brave, imho (harder to do than defending), and yet - I wonder if the world would be a more peaceful place today for it.
On a smaller scale I don’t even know if I can do this in my own life. Put up no defenses. When I think about it right now, it seems like it would take far greater courage and greater faith to do that. Faith in what I don’t know. Just faith that it’s the better choice.
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