Read Online Just 2 Seconds by Gavin de Becker, Thomas A. Taylor, Jeff Marquart - Free Book Online Page B
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the way. Gifted athletes will tell you that thinking is the last thing they want between their perception and their response, between seeing the approaching tennis ball and sending it back across the court. There's a role for the mind during preparation, but there's not much place for thinking during a game.
Before you hear a sound like gunfire, what comes first is the external vibration; second, the nerve motion that carries it to the brain. That's when you hear it. Next, after many perceptions, memories, and thoughts have been quickly (almost instantly) considered, the brain responds with an opinion or a theory about what caused the sound. Though these are each distinct processes (the vibration, the nerve's report, the assessment, and the brain's conclusion), we can't perceive each step; we perceive only their combined effect. Every act of perception includes these steps. Therefore, when you conclude that the sound is gunfire, respect that conclusion and act without further thinking.
This doesn't mean every loud sound is gunfire. It means: Respect the process. As balloons are popping all around you at the political convention, the conclusion of gunfire is unlikely; at the firing range, any other conclusion is unlikely. Respect the conclusion without invoking Mind, because Mind's approach would be to register the conclusion, then question it, think about it some more, decide on a response, question the decision, maybe execute the response, criticize the response, rationalize the response, and then go over the whole thing again. In effect, Mind never really concludes anything -- it just keeps going.
Zen in the Art of Protection
Were a tennis player to let Mind run the show, the ball would sail on by him. Great athletes speak of being "in the zone" or "in the flow," part of the flow of the game, not thinking about the game, but being the game.
Likewise, experienced protectors will tell you about being in the flow on a high-risk protective assignment, totally present and in the Now. They feel connected to events, intuitively aware of everything in the environment. Zen means direct intuitive insight, unmediated by Mind. When you bring Zen to the Art of Protection, like its acronym, ZAP, you are zapped into the current moment. No middlemen, no mediation -- it's just you and reality. In effect, you don't care about anything but your mission.
Your protectee is presenting an award and the show starts late. You don't care. Show going well, you don't care. Show going poorly, you don't care. Technical problems causing stress to production people backstage; don't care. Dinner is cold; don't care. Event organizers happy or unhappy; it's all the same to you.
The event ends? Perhaps surprisingly, you still don't care. That's because the ending of an event is a fairly unimportant milestone for protectors. You still have to get the protectee safely out, pass through transit areas, and get en route to the next site. Event falling behind schedule? You don't care, and anyway, though the schedule may indicate departure from a location at 10 p.m., protectors have to be ready to depart from the moment they arrive until the moment they actually depart, no matter what time it is. When venue staff say, "Let us know when you're ready to depart and we'll unlock the back gate," we say, "We're ready to depart right now." Explaining that we want to keep the cars at the ready all the time, we say it's in case of an "unscheduled departure," our euphemism for emergency.
Ideally, everything that happens in your perception is run through this filter: "Is it attack-relevant?" And if not, then: "Could it be attack-relevant?" If the answer to both of these questions is no, then move on to the next happening you perceive. Sometimes, as in Operation Makeup Case, it is protectees themselves who distract protectors from the mission, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes quite intentionally. Experienced protectors stay on mission even when protectees try to derail
Before you hear a sound like gunfire, what comes first is the external vibration; second, the nerve motion that carries it to the brain. That's when you hear it. Next, after many perceptions, memories, and thoughts have been quickly (almost instantly) considered, the brain responds with an opinion or a theory about what caused the sound. Though these are each distinct processes (the vibration, the nerve's report, the assessment, and the brain's conclusion), we can't perceive each step; we perceive only their combined effect. Every act of perception includes these steps. Therefore, when you conclude that the sound is gunfire, respect that conclusion and act without further thinking.
This doesn't mean every loud sound is gunfire. It means: Respect the process. As balloons are popping all around you at the political convention, the conclusion of gunfire is unlikely; at the firing range, any other conclusion is unlikely. Respect the conclusion without invoking Mind, because Mind's approach would be to register the conclusion, then question it, think about it some more, decide on a response, question the decision, maybe execute the response, criticize the response, rationalize the response, and then go over the whole thing again. In effect, Mind never really concludes anything -- it just keeps going.
Zen in the Art of Protection
Were a tennis player to let Mind run the show, the ball would sail on by him. Great athletes speak of being "in the zone" or "in the flow," part of the flow of the game, not thinking about the game, but being the game.
Likewise, experienced protectors will tell you about being in the flow on a high-risk protective assignment, totally present and in the Now. They feel connected to events, intuitively aware of everything in the environment. Zen means direct intuitive insight, unmediated by Mind. When you bring Zen to the Art of Protection, like its acronym, ZAP, you are zapped into the current moment. No middlemen, no mediation -- it's just you and reality. In effect, you don't care about anything but your mission.
Your protectee is presenting an award and the show starts late. You don't care. Show going well, you don't care. Show going poorly, you don't care. Technical problems causing stress to production people backstage; don't care. Dinner is cold; don't care. Event organizers happy or unhappy; it's all the same to you.
The event ends? Perhaps surprisingly, you still don't care. That's because the ending of an event is a fairly unimportant milestone for protectors. You still have to get the protectee safely out, pass through transit areas, and get en route to the next site. Event falling behind schedule? You don't care, and anyway, though the schedule may indicate departure from a location at 10 p.m., protectors have to be ready to depart from the moment they arrive until the moment they actually depart, no matter what time it is. When venue staff say, "Let us know when you're ready to depart and we'll unlock the back gate," we say, "We're ready to depart right now." Explaining that we want to keep the cars at the ready all the time, we say it's in case of an "unscheduled departure," our euphemism for emergency.
Ideally, everything that happens in your perception is run through this filter: "Is it attack-relevant?" And if not, then: "Could it be attack-relevant?" If the answer to both of these questions is no, then move on to the next happening you perceive. Sometimes, as in Operation Makeup Case, it is protectees themselves who distract protectors from the mission, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes quite intentionally. Experienced protectors stay on mission even when protectees try to derail
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