I took a class about how to respond to active shooters because of what’s going on in the world. Besides, everyone needs a hobby, right? :) It was taught by a man with decades of real-life defense experience. He is a current member of the Boston police department as well as a former member of the Boston SWAT team, and the Marines. I was surprised to hear that he advocated we read a book called “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin deBecker.
This instructor seemed like the last person I’d expect to advocate for fear. As it turned out he wasn’t at all. To summarize the message of this book in one line, our emotions, which can also be viewed as intuitive signals, hold information about our situation that we're not even consciously aware of. By trusting this brief and highly evolved intuitive signal, we have no reason to worry endlessly, because we can trust that our body is providing us with all the information it needs to survive.
“When dreaded outcomes are actually imminent we don't worry about them we take action. Seeing lava from the local volcano make its way down the street toward our house does not cause worry it causes running. Also we don't usually choose imminent events as subjects for our worrying and thus emerges an ironic truth: Often the very fact that you are worrying about something means that it isn't likely to happen.” ― Gavin de Becker, Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe
The full title of the book is “The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence”. He also wrote a sequel to this book after September 11th called “Fear Less”.
Gavin de Becker is a specialist on violent behavior, especially against high profile targets. He developed the MOSAIC threat assessment system with a team of experts in psychology, law enforcement, victims’ advocacy, and threat assessment. This tool has been adopted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world.
In the next part I’ll go over the parallels between Gavin de Beckers view of intuition and the Buddhist view of wisdom.