Nicotine, sugar, and caffeine are three popular products people crave -- but what the body actually seeks is nutrition. Accordingly, all intelligent logistical plans by security professionals will include opportunities to eat, and access to foods that don't inspire cravings. On this planet, that just about certainly means protective teams will have to bring along some of their own food; otherwise the only thing you'll be able to find quickly will be sugar.
Lest we sound preachy, we certainly don't pretend to have mastered the nutritional plan that perfectly matches the realities of protective assignments. We're always working to crack this nut, so to speak (and speaking of nuts, they are part of the solution because they are metabolized more slowly than sugar). This isn't a book about nutrition, of course, and all we're intending here is to give you the goal: to be free of craving, because it undermines (you could say under-minds) a protector's ability to be present for the mission.
If we go one level deeper into the subject of craving, we see that craving is not actually linked to hunger at all. As one quickly learns when fasting, even if for just 24 hours, the craving for food that we initially think will worsen to the unbearable point actually passes entirely after a while. During a fast, you might think, "I have to eat right away," and then you see that 3, 5, 10, 15 hours later, you still haven't eaten and yet you're just fine. This shows that craving is in the mind, not the stomach; craving and hunger are much different things. The experience of fasting for 24 hours is a profoundly valuable one for protectors because once you know that you can go ten or fifteen hours without even a snack, waiting an hour or two till the next break becomes far easier. Above all, you know your body is fine and that the challenge is in the mind only. (There is a body issue in fasting, however: Drink plenty of water.)
So, we've seen that craving is in the mind and not the body, and we've seen that craving is destructive to effective protection because it takes the protector out of the present moment. From here, we can go still one level deeper and see that more than just keeping you from being present in the moment, craving is a symptom, a signal that you are already not present. You'd never crave a Snickers bar while in a free fall skydive, or while scuba-diving with sharks, or immediately after hearing what you think is a gunshot. Being fully present in the moment and craving never go together. Thus, at the instant you become aware of a craving, you're simultaneously being made aware that you are not fully present. If you use craving in this way (instead of allowing it to use you), craving is a superb and reliable reminder to wake up and come back to the present. And the instant you are fully engaged in the present, the craving stops!
Assuming freedom from craving, or wise use of craving, the following concepts can now be applied:
In the TAD exercise, a protector is told that an attack will come within 30 seconds, making pure and complete focus somewhat easy. But in actual protective assignments, each of us must keep our mind at bay for hours and hours. To keep something "at bay," means to keep it protected from the sea, to keep it anchored.
What's tugging on that anchor? The same thing that tugs on all anchors: The constant moving of the water. The mind is a surging ocean of thought-waves, most of them irrelevant to the mission at hand. Unless we give the mind a specific task, such as Design That Building, or Total Up That Column of Numbers, or Find Those Car Keys, we're usually treading water in a sea of constant distractions.
With the mind at bay, your attention can move from Now to Now, releasing each moment almost instantaneously so that the next can be perceived. In protective work (and in life), the rewards come when each past moment is allowed to expire gracefully, without resistance, so the current moment can live fully. Remaining in the Now means, in effect, that you lose your mind and come to your senses. Then you can perceive what is going on around you. Our thoughts sometimes become scattered all over the mental field, and to direct them toward a single goal, we must collect them. The protector's mission needs to be constantly remembered, re-collected, in the most literal meaning of the word.
In order to avoid problems like Operation Makeup Case, our firm seeks to remove logistical responsibilities from those assigned to close protective coverage when possible. Contrary to a practice applied by some in the field, we do not automatically assign the Detail Leader to close protection, because we want our close protectors free of the need to deal with logistics and planning. We want them actively looking into each fraction of a second to see what it contains -- and we don't want them thinking too much about the future. In fact, we don't want them thinking too much at all.
Taming Your Mind
What if, instead of being assured the suspect's attack will come within 30 seconds, TAD students are told it will come sometime in the 30 minutes? While there are clear advantages to observing people over a longer period, as time passes it becomes more difficult to remain in the Now. After a while, the mind wants to go elsewhere, off on its favorite mission: to think. And thinking is far different from observing.
Imagine we extend the 30 minutes to, say, 30 days, telling protectors: "Within the next month, there will absolutely be an attack on a public figure, possibly your protectee." The statement would be totally accurate: There will be an attack on some public figure within the month -- but even this truth isn't sufficiently specific or urgent to satisfy the mind's criteria for staying in the Now.
Many people wrongly assume that a protector's task is to be super attentive, on high-alert, wound up and ready to spring in the event of a specific outcome. That state, however, cannot be maintained, and remaining super alert for long periods of time causes anxiety, tension, and fatigue. Eventually, the state itself begins to detract from one's ability to perceive. Contrary to the unwanted results of trying to remain super alert, when protectors are fully in the Now, they are invigorated, not drained.
It isn't outside influences that make it so difficult to keep the mind at bay; it's the mind itself that tugs on the anchor. The mind doesn't like to be still. Its mission is to constantly wander, wonder, learn, think, chew on information, and, like a child, always have your attention. That's why people seek "peace of mind," but the phrase is flawed because mind and peace are opposites.
People go to great lengths to quiet the mind, to have just a few seconds that aren't disturbed by thinking. They ingest all variety of consciousness-altering compounds, from alcohol to LSD. Others seek thrills: They bungee jump, ski, skydive, swim with sharks, and shoot each other with paintballs. Similarly, sex, white water rafting, and boxing have great appeal because they bring us fully to the Now. When truly engaged in one of these activities, we don't think about bills, the office, next week, or last week. We are present for our present experience.
Once the mind gets in the way it labels and evaluates every perception, stamping each one with a judgment, a recap, an opinion, an analogy, a category, a theory, a conclusion. Most people are reluctant to see their own mind as an obstruction, but for many endeavors, the mind does get in 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 t
he 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 them. During our briefings with new clients, we explain:
"When you are in public, there is no such thing as a casual moment to your protectors. Staff members and assistants might view that time as a respite from work or as mere transit time, but your protectors are always engaged and busy whenever you are in public. You'll notice sometimes when you're in public that your protectors don't look at you when you speak to them. They might even seem unresponsive at times, though rest assured they are listening to you. Though they might not appear fully engaged in the conversation it's because they are fully engaged in their mission, which is what you want."
(See Appendix 1 for a Letter to the Protectee that communicates this and other things protectees must know in order to be as safe as possible.)
As the tasks and missions of others are completed all around you (the speech ends, dessert is served, the award is given, the curtain is lowered), it all makes little difference to you. But if something directly relevant to your mission occurs -- ZAP, you are part of it. If that something is an attack, then every millisecond you might spend trying to convince yourself "This isn't really happening" accrues to the benefit of your adversary. An assailant knows exactly what's happening, of course, and the longer it takes you to know it too, the greater his advantage.
Being a protector who can tame all internal distractions and be totally immersed in the moment is a high calling, a contest in which we face our most perfectly matched opponent: Our own mind. The authors realize that there will be resistance to the idea of not thinking and not making judgments. This idea will be unwelcome to nearly all minds, which derive their very identity through thinking and judging. In effect, the mind resists the idea of resisting ideas. Preparing the mind is like taming any other powerful and resistant force: It's a process, a practice, as opposed to a switch you can just flip. It's not easy to stop the mind's habitual thinking, and accordingly, protective work at the highest levels is not for everyone. One strategy is to withdraw energy from the constant process of analyzing, assessing, and reassessing. The effort to do this is actually more important than so-called success, because effort is a real thing, whereas success is just an idea, a concept. We decide somewhat arbitrarily what will be called a success and what will be called a failure -- but an effort is a tangible thing. When trying to tame the mind, it's the effort that matters most.
All people yearn at times to be free of the Mind, even if just for a moment, but as protectors, we are looking for much more than a moment. We know that a few successes at conquering internal distractions don't add up to a victory. The victory comes when we occupy the conquered territory. In effect, we must occupy the Mind to prevent it from occupying us.
Choosing the Best Seat on the Train
In protective work, it's beneficial to occupy the mind with real events that are in your environment right now. Perceive the things that happen, then quickly discard them. Like being on a train, you see things pass, but you don't grab onto anything. You let each thing go, releasing it to make space for the next perception. The ideal place to be in protective work is the front of the train, from where you can see events approach and come into focus. Facing forward, everything you see is relevant, and evermore relevant because it's coming toward you. It is real. You experience each event directly, with curiosity instead of judgment -- and then you let it pass.
You wouldn't want to be on the back of the train watching the past and contemplating each event as it recedes into irrelevance. What passes behind you in time quickly becomes unreal, a memory with all the edits and judgments of a memory -- and at that point, you are actually better off not watching it at all, for "it" is in your mind, not your reality.
Being positioned on the front of the train encourages you to focus on the current, and helps you to quickly forget the past (literally, that which has passed). The mind will try to hold on to things that have already disappeared, but you can use the advancing reality to keep you in this moment, then this moment, then this moment.
Imagine driving from New York to Los Angeles. It is nighttime. You can make a whole journey of 3000 miles able to see only in relatively small increments of the few hundred feet illuminated by your headlights. Safety requires that you focus on those few hundred feet about to be crossed, and you compartmentalize thoughts about things that are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Through this process, you reach your destination, having been present all along the way. In protective work, focus on what you can see (what is within the range of your headlights), and not upon what you cannot see.
Zen in the Art of Protection means taking thousands of mental snapshots every hour, and quickly discarding each one that doesn't matter, in order to make room for the next, which might matter. It's easy to slip into reevaluating a useless past perception, keeping it mindlessly in Mind, turning it over again and again. The word ruminate is often used to describe deep thinking, but the actual meaning of the word refers to the action of cows when they bring already-swallowed food back up from their stomachs into their mouths to chew on again. That's not a bad analogy for what we do with thinking sometimes, bringing ideas and concepts that have already been mostly digested back into our minds and uselessly going over them again. While in a crowd with your protectee, for example, what is really worth thinking about? Very little. What ideas are worth revisiting? Very few. Most importantly
, what can help bring you to the present moment, and what can help you keep moving with time? The surprising answer is Distractions. Distractions can serve to bring you to the present moment, if you are willing, that is, to accept the gentle tug of each new perception.
Be Driven by Distractions
Someone might say, "A loud noise distracted me," though it's more likely that the noise brought the person back from distraction, back into the present moment, back from thinking about the past or the future, back to that which is Right Here. When we get distracted from our thinking it's such an irony, since thinking itself is the most frequent and pervasive distraction from what is actually happening Now. Thinking is usually more destructive to your mission than most actual occurrences in your environment.
Rapid movements, jumping, outreached hands, cameras flashing, hands reaching into pockets, cars pulling into traffic a block ahead, a briefcase you can't immediately match to a bystander, a person running toward you, a person moving away, a person firmly resisting your nudge, someone's eyes darting to the side, someone's eyes holding your glance too long -- all these events, even those that later turn out to be unrelated to danger, have profound value to your mission if you let them serve to bring you into the Now. Things we previously called distractions can be used to keep us aware of and perceiving events in our current environment. The protector's attention can be, in the best sense, driven by distractions.
Being aware allows perception of events to occur, and perception brings information to you via your senses as opposed to via your memory. Because perception brings current information as opposed to dated information, it is a protector's most important resource. If the route between your senses and your muscles is congested by thinking, action is inhibited. Logic, judgment, imagination, memory, contemplation -- all these clog the path between perception and action.
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