Navigating Political Arguments with the “Three Gates”
BREATHE!
“Breathe. Don’t panic and flee. Sink. Feel it all. Imagine. Let it burn.”
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Remember that you are playing chess with time. Hesitate too long, or make errors in judgement without learning the lesson offered, and you will run out of time.
TIME is the one coin you cannot replace. In a political season, passions run high, and IMO there are basic differences in perception of “What is True?” and “Who am I?” on either side of the political aisle. And that much argumentation between honest and honorable opponents are based on PHILOSOPHICAL differences rather than the politics. “What is true?” is philosophy. “How shall we win, GIVEN what is true?” is politics.
There is no use in debating the second until you agree upon the first.
The Three Gates and Politics:
- Love yourself. You need to start with being kind to yourself, loving yourself, wanting the best for yourself. At the least, to escape suffering and embrace joy.
- Love One other person. Loving another human being is the beginning of empathy, the “expanded self”. When this person is a romantic partner, the potential to create a family is very real, creating even more expansion. You connect to the cycle of life, even if you choose not to have children you become a biological or adopted uncle, aunt, mother, father. If your heart is full, you begin to care about them: its programmed genetically, as well as learned in infancy.
- Understand humanity without guilt, blame, or shame. To understand, accept and love yourself, to watch children grow and realize that they are doing the best they can with the resources they have…to understand how fear leads to anger and violence, and how DIFFICULT it is to stay within the Three Gates…you change. Develop more compassion. If you can forgive yourself, it becomes critical to forgive others. NOT forget. NOT give them another chance to hurt you. But as you come to awareness that YOU have done your best (until you learned better!) and your BELOVED is doing their best, and the CHILDREN you observe are doing THEIR best…you change. Grow. Mature. Gain wisdom through observing the cycles of life. Apply this to all of history, and you’ll start seeing how human being throughout all time are continuous with the animal kingdom, and also the rest of reality. You see the flow. And you also see where we get caught up in greed, and fear, and hate. But also the healing power of love and communication. Its right there. If you believe the basic nature of humanity is evil, consider that it takes a century to grow a forest, and one moment with a match to burn it down. And yet we have forests.
- Avoid Sleepers and Snakes. Nurture your tribe. “Sleepers” in this sense are people who are unaware of the real facts, or deceived by their perceptual filters. Often, what we consider “lying” is no more than this. SNAKES on the other hand, are perfectly aware that they are lying, and using those lies to confuse and manipulate you. They are operating in the service of MONSTERS, who are above the normal human system, mock it, and use it as they wish. Both Sleepers and Snakes will enjoy burning your time up, having you dig where “Y” marks the spot, until you fatigue and give up. Instead of this, spend that energy nurturing the people of your tribe. This might include honorable adversaries who are awake to the actual location of disagreement — usually in the “Who am I?” and “What is true?” categories, and will have THAT discussion with you, understanding that if you can reach accord THEN it is possible to have the next conversation. But bandaging the wounds of your warriors, nurturing your children, and giving love to all willing to receive it is a pretty safe investment of your time and energy.
- Win with Integrity and Compassion. IF you are correct in your assessments of a situation (and you must CONSTANTLY work to improve your clarity) then ultimately, there are times when you must take a stand. Say “this is what I believe” and perform the experiment necessary to test your belief. In this state, the opinions of ANYONE, including yourself, become irrelevant. What does REALITY say? By testing everything you CAN test in the arenas of body, emotions, and mind, you gain the intuition to extend your reality maps to things that are more subjective. This process is “wisdom.” And you have to grant that you will never be 100% certain…and yet you must make decisions. It is this uncertainty that gaslighters will attack. “You can’t be SURE you are right. So convince me.” And if you follow that road, you will NEVER get started, because there will always be another challenger. Political operatives thrive on this uncertainty. So…what do we do? I’d say that you have to take a stand, and accept that you will never have total agreement. Further, that you might be WRONG….but must act with confidence anyway. Sigh. As long as you are constantly testing your instinct and intuition, every day, you will be able to calibrate instinct and intuition more carefully. But you MUST remember that you might be wrong…and need to treat others with compassion and courtesy, if that is the way YOU would want to be treated.
Recently, I had a political conversation with a reader, and realized we had different beliefs about a certain event, and a certain individual. STRONG believes, in an arena where it made sense to consider the situation binary. (Yes, dualistic thought has its use). If he believed X, then EVERYTHING he said after that would rest on that foundation. And that logic chain would lead in a particular direction. I believe Y and am willing to take a stand there. That means that ANY discussion beyond that point is useless IMO. Doesn’t pass the Three Gates.
So…I told him this. Further, I said that if HE really believed his position, he would have to consider me deluded and at best a “Sleeper.” As I would give him the respect to assume: not bad, but deceived or unaware. Each of us should consider the other is “asleep” IF WE REALLY BELIEVED OUR POSITIONS.
There is a problem of course: if they AREN’T certain, then the X-Y situation is the discussion, NOT anything following it or depending upon it. But if they ARE certain…and actually AGREE with me? But are lying for political purposes…?
Then he would continue to engage. He would be, in essence, considering it worth his time to distract and confuse me. That’s a perfectly reasonable stratagem in war, and “politics is war continued by other means.” A Snake would be PERFECTLY happy to continue the conversation. A person who is “awake” would have the XY conversation, not the “Z” conversation that might follow. So…while I cannot be CERTAIN of my perception or the accuracy of my logic, I have to take a stand.
It is TRUE that I genuinely believe “Y” and so have to consider him wrong.
It is KIND to myself, my family and tribe to protect my time and energy. So while I need to be COURTEOUS to him…
It is USEFUL to be wise enough to recognize when you are actually arguing about something that isn’t on the table directly (like arguing about whether to go to a particular restaurant, discussing everything except the reality that your partner hates the smell of cooking meat), and wasting BOTH of your time.
Unless you CAN and are WILLING to have that more fundamental conversation, withdraw with courtesy, realizing that you might be wrong, and WILL be wrong on another occasion, and so need to establish rules of interaction that support building a healthy society.
You MUST protect your time and energy. You MUST learn to take a stand. Must recognize when you are spending your time wisely. Must realize that “Sleepers” and “Snakes” will use similar tactics, and that you cannot always tell the difference.
If you have a vision for our country, it is important to fight for it in the market place of ideas. To find others on the other side, and see how far you can get in the logic chain asking “what is true?” and “who am I?” (what is it to be human). And, when you reach an impasse to RECOGNIZE that. Then, you can either go deeper, or shift to another discussion maintaining respect and rapport. Or, disengage courteously.
But don’t let them trick you into wasting time and energy, or lashing out out of fear and rage. IF you do that, they have won.
This is all difficult thought, but it is precisely the sort of thinking that the Three Gates nurtures, and why we included it in the “MAGIC Formula” aspect of FIREDANCE.
JOIN US. This Saturday for a deeper dive into these things, at www.thefiredance.com this Saturday at 12 Noon Pacific on Zoom. See you then!
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