Protection as a soft thing - centring on devotion not dominance
What happens when we rediscover another way to protect? One fueled by devotion, not dominance. Trustful, soft, powerful, unconditional. A more feminine way of protecting perhaps?
The center of my inquiry into the world we live in lives somewhere between two vectors on a good day. The first one is; how does the world work, really? The second vector is a line of questioning around difference. What is it? How do we do it? When is it? Folded into it there are curiosities about creation, wellbeing and freedom that I perceive as central in the times we currently live in.
These two lines of inquiry, that I only recently received explicitly, keeps leading me into various contexts. One of the most fruitful ones has been into the dynamic between the masculine and the feminine. That work has been unfolding through several dialoges for several years, where the most important one has been with Eric Lichtman. The two of us have been diving into the topic for about 2,5 years through dialoge as well as action research by hosting groups in different contexts.
The reoccurring title for the work has been "Dissolving the cage". The last series that we did for women exclusively had the subtitle "Threading the needle". I was never really sure about why I was doing this work, yet I perceive it to be shaping many of my other projects and my way of being in the world. Privately and professionally.
I tend to write in a round about way. I write to discover. If you are interested in that please keep reading below. If you are more curious about the punchline so you can get on with your life then, here is the jist of what this particular meditation is moving through:
Protection from devotion is very different from when we protect to dominate. Protection from devotion is not safe, nor static. It is a living, soft, brave, dynamic thing. That softness does not make it less powerful, the softness actually makes it stronger; unconditional, almost unbreakable.
To protect in that way we have to know what we are devoted to and remain connected with that knowing. That is the knowing by which we prioritise. Surrendering to this type of protection might spark fear. If so, perhaps it is an invitation to remember that fear is an invitation to listen with every cell of your body. Fear needs you to be with it, tend to it. It is not a thing to overcome. Perhaps it is trying to tell you that whatever it is you are currently protecting is not the thing you are devoted to? Perhaps you protect to be ok, or to become someone, or to control or dominate. These are starting points for protection that leads us towards separation. It is protection from something.
What I am exploring and inviting through this piece has to do with what happens when we protect ‘for’ something. We protect for our devotion, our service, our faith, our belief. That unconditionality where the cost of the protection does not condition our response nor our discernment of whether the protection is worth doing. Perhaps that is the type of protection our time needs? Protection that is humble, not righteous. Soft protection rather than rigid. Protection like water not the consuming fiery type. Protection from inside a circle of trust not from a place of fear.
If that was the summary then what comes next will take a detour into the meat of it.
Questions that matter
A line of questioning that we have taken with both men and women that seem to provide rich insight has been the following:
What are you protecting that you are not devoted to?
What are you devoted to that you are not protecting?
What if you would only protect what you are devoted to?
Perhaps you sit with the questions for a minute each. Either you journal or you settle with just sensing into these questions. What comes up for you?
When you consider these questions, what feels most alive? Are they light? Or heavy?
Was there anything that sparked your joy? That sparked possibility or potential? What was it?
Was there anything that felt stale, putrid, rotting?
Where did you encounter fear? What if that fear was an invitation to listen, with every cell of your body, what does the fear say?
What follows are some of the stories on this topic that I feel might be of assistance or inspiration to you as you spend time with these questions. And I really invite you to do that, spend time with the questions.
My journey into protection: losing control, in a good way!
Protection has been a complex topic for me. I have been raised in a context where control was not questioned. Control was good. "The situation is under control" was a calming statement.
So therefore protection was something absolute. It was something that had a stable boundary. Like a palisade or one of those ‘western’ forts. I saw it perched on a little hill. If I just built my palisade skilfully and in the right place I just had to double down. The bigger I could make it the more life I could keep safe within it. The more soil could be regenerated within it. It was the protection of the landowner, the one that has land, things, people. I thought that was my role as masculine, to protect what I owned.
As I started moving deeper into the exploration there was a framework that offered discernment. Guiding me towards a masculine flavour that I felt strong resonance with that describes that providing, abundant quality of the masculine (see other writings about the framework we have been working with), that of the oak. Until recently these two images, the palisade and the oak seemed to be different sides of the same coin. It is just that...
The oak is not static. It is not as big as possible. The oak is steadfast, abiding, its strength depends on its slow growth. The resilience depends on the number of storms it has weathered. The oak does not own. Does not control. It responds. The oak may be beautiful and straight or knotted, old, vast. Just because it eventually might grow big and become the home and sustenance for many species I assumed that its fundamental principles of being were the same as the palisade, it's bigness was equatable to it's success. As I look closer from where I am now I can see flaws with the equation. The oak carries irregularities that are shadows of responses to continuously evolving contexts. The bark. The leaves. The little twigs. The roots searching deep, exploring. Its a living and irregular shape, shaped by its context, by the centuries since it first took root. The oak is not just the masculine-yin energy I had imagined, it has the full range of energetics in it in a constant interplay. That dynamic is what is allowing it to grow. That dynamic is what allows it to live.
Returning to the human: Pilot journeys and experiments
The drawn curtain reveals a stage where a play in 4 acts with "the women" in the main role is about to unfold. Eric and I are holding space for a group of women. Brave souls that have decided to lean in. As we started shakily moving in the territory, they held us and with their permission we held them. It was fascinating to see how different it was from facilitating the men. It really was. Chaos, different movements appearing, new ways of relating, new codes. Other dynamics at play. Over the program there was an increasing togetherness as a result of the ground that we covered, broke and discovered. As we explored the questions of devotion above there was something new present. Something I had only intuited before but not been able to see the outlines of. Unconditionality. But not in that rigid, heroic way. Not as controlling, dominating or owning. Rather dynamic unconditionality.
Where the men went into the sacrifice, doubting their devotion feeling destabilised. (My own experience was that of peering into the abyss as a result of those questions.) The women seemed to get in touch with the joy. Much of what would normally fall in the category of duty was left unspoken. That duty was so obvious it went without saying. The grandkids, the kids, the world. Rather what needed to be expressed as we explored protection was the art, the movement, self-fulfilment. This did not feel like ego or selfishness to me, I heard it as service: by maintaining self, one can serve the others. In deep relationship.
(There were similarities too of course. Similar questions about protecting work and money above other things was present in both groups. Those similarities may reveal something about our culture and probably deserve to be looked into as well, but this is not the time or place for that.)
What reverberated through my system was a new, enlivening, joyful inquiry: What if protection is a soft, dynamic thing?
Only there when there is need for it. When there is no need, there is no rigidity, no fight. No need to keep it up or keep watch. Instead I saw that there is a way to let go of what is important. The doubt poured in: how do I know when to be there if I am not constantly vigilant? There were multiple whispers: by walking the territory, listening deeper, intuition, tending the relationships. Perhaps if we are connected to one-another and the deeper flow of life, we will be available when we are needed.
In parallel I was reminded in a conversation with an indigenous woman (Mandy Martini, episode not yet out at the time of writing) for the World of Wisdom Podcast. She told the story of how she had managed to get herself out of an abusive relationship by remembering her indigenous roots and upbringing. I was struck by the difference in how that protection seemed to be unfolding. That too seemed to hold that dynamism, the trust. She was the one getting herself out of the situation. Not without support but on her own initiative. She knew she had a place to return too, but her spouse had successfully isolated her. Separated her. So, it was for her to remember. The community in a way trusted that she would, and be able to make it out. Trusted that she had the tools they had offered her during her formative years. There was no heroic saving, no direct helping, just trust that she would find her path and heal. To my sensibility it seems like an edgy way to protect. Far from modernity’s concepts of safety and promises that everything will have a happy ending. A trustful protection. One that is for the one that needs protection rather than from something; not from the world nor from the spouse. It seems to point to a completely different starting point or outlook on the world. One that stand in stark contrast to the ownership, control and domination.
Interlude: What if..
"Actually, change is a soft thing. If you think about it, change is actually soft." I cannot even remember who said it anymore. But when I heard it, it gave me pause. Change is softening to the reality as it is. Taking that next possible step. If we can learn to soften earlier, to meet not match the problem as Nora Bateson puts it. Then what does it mean to protect? What does it mean to devote? What does it mean to serve?
What if that is it? Hidden in plain sight. The invitation to surrender. To become small. To soften. To trust our innate master, the one that has all the tools to meet whatever is put infront of her with agility. Not to have to spread out, blow oneself up, fence off resources and space to be believe that we will be ok. Not have to rely on static fallbacks and fat bank accounts. One that does not have to own to live. What if I devote myself to the flow, to the dynamic rather. What if we all did?
My wife mentioned it the other day as I was feeling into my stress about the volcanic activity here on the Reykjanes peninsula. I said "What if those people that are now evacuated were us? What if we would never see our house, our things again?" She says "Then we start over, begin again. What else can we do?" Simple as that. Deep trust.
What if you only protect what you are devoted to? That which is most important to you? What if you only did that?
Other stories of protection: My marriage and my business
Approaching my marriage like this has created flow and intimacy. When I do not need to have opinions about what is not mine to have opinions about. I do not need to fix what is spoken but not broken (unless I am asked). When I actually trust in the agency of 'the other'. When I hold space rather than rush in and try to poke around. Each shift small, yet the totality of the relationship is fundamentally changed. I know now, from experience, that that has been the way to come into connection. That is what listening is. Not acting at the first sign of intensity or drama. Refraining from acting as long as there is unclarity, as long as I do not understand. Rather just wait in earnest, be with, ask, listen, remain available. Then when there is clarity the movement is obvious. In that obviousness I do not have to leave her to protect. Instead we are in it together. Intimately, unconditionally.
Approaching my business like that has created more flow than I have felt in a long time. It does not mean that I do not apply myself, I am working harder and more rigorously than I have for years. It does however mean that I am willing to let things go. Stay with the hypothesis, test and twist, keep checking in with the horizon I am steering towards. Understanding that to get there things are of some importance, processes are of more importance and relationships are essential. And some relationships are more important than others. It is dynamic. It is not always important to do the write up or to have all the papers in order, but sometimes it is crucial. It is not always important to get the wording exactly right or staying within the lines of the strategy or the assignment, but sometimes it is crucial. It is rarely important to get through the agenda, if the one I am trying to get through it with is not at a place that allows us to take the next step anyway. You get it. There is an ongoing communication that allows me to make adjustments. It does not mean that I cannot protect, it means that I can protect more. By walking the land. By doing what is mine to do, not more nor less. It means protecting when it is my time to do that, and allowing or stepping back when it needs to be allowed.
It also means however in both these cases that I need to be connected to my priorities. It means that I need to walk away from those aspects that I am less devoted to. To not play the hero and push through everytime I could. Doing that requires discernment and some capacity for holding intensity. For instance letting go of a particular goal when a relationship needs tending or a particular project when there is a flute recital.
Finally. Something I feel called to make explicit. Something that has been important in getting me to where I am now. As I confess to being devoted, there is also the possibility of profound loss. That confession might even spark a sense of danger. Can you cultivate a true surrender to the possibility that you might also lose the thing you am devoted to? Devotion means unconditional service. Perhaps it was about setting someone or something free. Perhaps that was the service that was needed in that moment. The devotion is asking us to build capacity to stay in connection and stay listening. Even if what comes through is hidden beneath fear or anger or discomfort in self or other. Instead of falling into the habitual cultural (or perhaps personal) programming of safety, control, dominance perhaps we need lean in, listen closer, listen deeper, stay connected, stay open. Acknowledge that with devotion comes a necessity to let go and then grieve that which was not mutual. That grief or pain is not a sign that we should take back control, instead I’m proposing that is the very signal that we should really deeply trust.
Protection as a soft thing
What a radical idea? A dynamic, soft, emerging, dancing type of protection. One that is not rule bound, not legislated, nor heroic. Protection that lives in the space between our unconditional devotion and our unconditional trust. The devotion that speaks through our entire body-mind. The one that shows up as the obvious next step. The one step that is ours to take (if we took it) in just that moment.
I will try one last image. One of watery devotion. Isn’t this how water protects? It flows. You throw a stone in, the water will let it pass and keep flowing. The impact does something but it does not change the flow of the river. Dam up the river and eventually the water will find a way. No one in their right mind would call the softness of water powerless. Nor unable to protect. It is just different than driving a stake into the ground and fortifying that hill. The water has a knowing that it will eventually find a way. It can afford to wait. It can afford to clear the path slowly, pebble by pebble or grain by grain until its time for the big flood. Perhaps that is the type of protection we need in these late stage times of modernity. Dynamic, soft, powerful, flowing, life-centred protection. Perhaps, one could argue, a more feminine protection.
Now it’s time for you to revisit the questions on your devotion above. And consider seriously; what if you only protected what you are devoted to?
I sit here with my four month old kitten on my lap. I am fiercely protective of him. And I realise, now, after reading this post, it is soft. Tender. Present. Earthed. Protecting life.
And I think how my body turns when I protect the particular way I arranged/organise things -- stressed, intense, clawing, moving away from earth, destabilised.
And I remember this article I wrote a decade back on how I felt the "motherland" call very masculine, of sons and mothers and not of daughters and mothers. And I called my land "daughterland" -- to love and protect. And now I realise the shift was the softness trust willingness in the process.
I havent understood some portions of the article -- like surrender and loss. I may need to read a second time.