| Terrorism: A Personal Response by Guy Odishaw In the days following September 11th, I listened as President Bush called for a war on terrorism, proclaiming that this war must start at home. Being the kind of person I am, I thought he meant that we, the United States, would begin by looking at our use of terrorism to accomplish our own goals both at home and abroad: leading through example by being willing to be held accountable for our past actions and our present terroristic treatment of our citizens and the citizens of other countries. Perhaps we would make the first strike against terrorism by dropping terrorism as an option for furthering our domestic and foreign agendas. But, what I inferred from his statement was not what he was implying. He meant we must find someone to blame (a receptacle into which we could dump our unmanageable feelings of shock, fear and anger), then root out terrorists with in the U.S. (so we can go back to feeling safe) and finally identify an enemy outside our border to declare war on (so we can go back to feeling powerful). Seeing how things were not going as I had hoped, I decided to declare my own war on terrorism. In the week following the WTC bombing, I started a line of inquiry I call, "Finding My Inner Terrorist." It began with a simple definition of terrorism -- the willingness to evoke, provoke, induce or otherwise create fear in others, or tread on the fear already present, to get my needs met. Now self-inquiry is an amazing phenomenon. If you hold a question in your heart-mind with an open-ended, agenda-less curiosity, you will find that understanding begins to unfold within you. Self-knowledge seems to defy logic, but it has a logic or intelligence all of its own; it is multidimensional and includes feelings, thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, creative intuition and much more. Because of this, it makes the sharing of self-knowledge, to the degree it can be shared, a rather elaborate process. Fortunately for you, there is not enough space in this article to tell that kind of story. But I will share some of the questions that unfolded in me over the last three years. From my original definition, "Do I create fear in others, or tread on already present fear, to get my needs met?" other questions came: What is fear? Where does it come from? Who in me is afraid? What am I afraid of? How do I know when I'm afraid? How do I know when others are afraid? How do I create fear in others without getting caught? Where does the willingness to do this come from? What needs are being met? Who is deciding what needs should be met? And on and on. Each one has been answered several times, each time revealing a deeper truth. Daily, the activities of the terrorist inside me are becoming increasingly transparent to my inquiry task force. Through this inquiry, my study of the wisdom traditions and modern psychology, I have come to the following understanding. Somewhere between conception and about age 3, we suffer a number of unavoidable traumatic wounds such as birth, the end of the symbiotic phase of oneness with mom and the development of a separate self-sense. During this time, we do not have the protection of the rational mind to interpret these occasions as mile markers in our development and therefore worthy of celebration. Instead, in these moments we feel only unbearable pain, to which we respond by contracting around the wounds in an effort to protect ourselves from further damage. It is on and through this core contraction the personality is built as an extension of this protective reaction. So early is this in our development that it does not occur to the rational mind to question these adaptive structures, so they are included in the psyche as natural or normal. In reality, our inherent preciousness is suffocating inside this contraction, relegated to a barely perceptible intuition silently crying in the heart for re-cognition and re-union. I have identified my inner terrorist as this apparently helpful character, wrapped around my essence. He is afraid, angry and knows only the anxiety of a never-ending anticipation of attack. Is there any reason to expect this aspect to do anything other than hurt people? Now begin the negotiations, his surrender to the force of love and the release of his prisoner -- my Essential Self. A quick review: Bush's war on Terror (just in Iraq): ¥ More than 10,000 deaths. ¥ The total cost to date is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $112 Billion. ¥ As a country we have fewer "friends" then we did before the war started. ¥ Global terrorism has increased. ¥ Both money and attention have been distracted from domestic and environmental concern. ¥ He has revitalized the fundamentalist duality of good and evil. ¥ He has inflicted great environmental damage to the land of Iraq and greater psychological damage to the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. My Inner war on Terrorism: ¥ More life (no deaths, not even ego deaths -- I love the little guy!). ¥ Total cost to date is estimated at $4,000, spent on retreats. ¥ I have more friends and deeper relationships with them. ¥ I am more compassionate with my self and with others. ¥ I recognize and respect more of my own suffering and the suffering of others. ¥ I am more sensitive to my impact on the environment and the environment's impact on me. ¥ My capacity to love, create and express are growing. Given the choice, and you are, which war would you choose to support? Which war are your actions, moment to moment, supporting right now? Guy Odishaw is a practitioner and instructor of alternative medicine. For the last eight years he has been working at University of Minnesota, Boynton Health Services, as a practitioner, educator and coordinator of the alternative medicine education program. He currently teaches classes in self-inquiry, consciousness evolution and integral and transformative practices. Guy can be reached at (612) 859-7709 or e-mail at godishaw@bhs.umn.edu. Copyright © 2004 Guy Odishaw |
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JUNE 2004 |
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