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PREEMPTIVE AGGRESSION
Student: I often feel I need to take on an aggressive stance with some people or organizations to protect myself from those
who will hurt or take advantage of me. How can I be open and compassionate and, at the same time, not be used?
Pema: That's a good question, isn't it? So, I purposefully didn't think about the answer ahead of time. In view of tonight's
talk on Point Three, I think it's a question of: How do we gain clarity? How do we gain a sense of inner strength? Well, the
teachings are saying, I am propagating these teachings, that inner strength does not come from protecting ourselves, or
polarizing into strong sense of self being abused by other. So, in these situations, how to be open and compassionate without
being used?
Well, clear boundaries are really important. We all need to work with that. But, my experience of working with
boundaries— which is like knowing your limits and stating them clearly. Not saying: forever and ever and ever these are
going to be my limits— like, this is me. But, just saying: today, and this month, and currently, in this particular work
relationship, or family dynamic, or whatever, these are my boundaries.
This is very helpful, because then another person —they may not like these boundaries —but there's a clarity in it. But, my experience is that it's difficult to set clear
boundaries if we don't have some self-compassion. We're just in this murky place of fear and reactiveness— which is called
ego. Reacting, always reacting, because there's so much fear, and so much fear of being used or hurt.
So, where does courage
come from? Or, let's just say, how do we nurture this ability of courage that we have, this ability of strength that we have,
this ability of confidence in our own core of openness and flexibility and strength? That we can take responsibility for our
side of it. This is a big part of it. Taking responsibility for our side of it.
I am proposing here that we work with not
driving all blames into the other. Because, why? Not because there isn't injustice out there. Not because other people never
use us, or anybody. But, why? Any ideas?
Student: Because it closes our hearts?
Pema: Yeah, that's the right direction.
Because it closes our hearts. It's like one of the main ways that we use to get away from fully acknowledging what's going on
with us— the other way is repression. We either act out, strike out... This is supposed to bring us relief. But it
doesn't... maybe temporarily. But, ultimately, it has a hangover—this striking out. As does repression or self-blame—not
in the sense of driving all blames into one, which has a lot of honesty and courage in it, but of just like denigrating.
In other words, blindly striking out at the other, or blindly turning it against ourselves. So, they're like exits from really
feeling our hearts, and feeling what's going on with us. A lot has been triggered in this situation where we feel we're being
used. A lot is being triggered. And we don't really know what's going on. We just feel this confusion and this
defensiveness.
It's like seizing that moment, and saying: If your goal —we're told to give up all hope of fruition— but,
perhaps your goal is that you want to get even with this guy (sometimes bad motivation can bring you to a good place) but you
say, OK, I'm just going to try... if the method for getting even is to acknowledge my side of it, so I become more skillful
at getting even... (I don't care, whatever works! Whatever makes it real for you, so that you can hang in there)... and
breathe in, and really feel what it feels like to be used, and breathe out.
Now, on the spot in a situation, I've seen this
happen again and again, and I've experienced it, where aggression is coming at you— or at me, at a person. And, everything
in you wants to be defensive, because you're terrified. And, instead, you just start breathing in, fully
contacting what you're feeling, and sending out. And something begins to connect you with the other person.
It isn't that
you're verbally thinking, "They're OK." It might be that you start noticing their mouth, or their eyes, or somehow they
become more real to you. And what they experience is that you're really listening. But, what you're doing is just
standing there, breathing in and out, fully owning what's happening with you, and opening up the space.
And then,
what comes out of your mouth is usually not the habitual thing. Often it helps to dissolve the tension, or the bitterness, or
the aggression, because it's honest. But, in any case, whether this story has a happy ending or not, it's a transformative
process for you, rather than a process of getting better and better at protecting yourself, of closing down, of seeing others
as enemies and opponents.
Really the question you have to ask yourself is: Do you want to spend your life making your habits
and patterns stronger? Or do you want some kind of transformation to happen? — so that your strength and your confidence and
your capacity to love and to care for people can begin to surface— you're not always blocking it.
Photo by Ana Elisa Fuentes.
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