When we see a guard in front of a property, we figure there is something valuable inside that needs to be protected.
But when it comes to being guarded in our relationships with other people, this is an interesting question to ponder: what are we guarding when we aren't open and honest with them about how we really feel?
I'm not saying that total openness and honesty is always a good thing. When the clerk at a checkout line in a grocery store asks me, "How's your day going?," I realize that they aren't expecting a detailed answer about how my sciatica is a bit worse today, my computer has a problem I can't figure out, and for some reason I can't balance our checkbook.
I just say, "Pretty good. How are you?"
However, I'm fortunate to have some people in my life who I'm comfortable telling just about everything that's going on in my life — the good and bad, the ugly and beautiful, the successes and failures, the sorrows and joys.
Those relationships are the most satisfying for me. With these people I don't feel like I have to pretend to be someone who I'm not. I don't feel any pressure to appear more wise, competent, or caring than I really am. I can blurt out whatever comes to mind without censoring myself.
Being guarded or unguarded isn't a dualism. It's a continuum. We can be more or less guarded as the situation demands. On the whole, my experience is that the more unguarded we are in our relationships, the closer we will feel to other people, just as they will feel closer to us.
When someone carefully chooses their words, pausing in response to a question or comment as if they're trying to decide what sort of face they want to present to the world, I don't feel as comfortable around them as I do with someone who is unguarded.
Sadly, sometimes this guardedness is felt with people who are our almost constant companion, such as a spouse or partner. I experienced this in my first marriage, which lasted 18 years. Near the end of that time, my wife and I had grown apart. Our conversations weren't very intimate.
This frustrated me. I recall going on a vacation with my wife and her family where I flew home by myself after a week or so because I didn't want to go on an extended excursion. By chance I sat next to a woman on the plane who was easy to talk with. She was about my age, late 30s, and attractive, which helped me feel even less guarded with her.
As sometimes happens with a stranger who we'll never see again, I told this women about frustrations with my marriage that I hadn't expressed to anyone else. It felt great to do that, like a burden had been lifted. When we landed, she and I hugged. I recall that she wished me well.
A few years later, my wife and I divorced. Not long after, I met my second wife-to-be through a personal ad she'd placed in an alternative paper. (This was before online matchmaking.)
The unguarded floodgates opened almost as soon as Laurel and I started dating. After years of not being able to communicate openly and honestly with my first wife, I was starved for intimacy. With Laurel I felt that I could say or feel anything and she'd accept me. Laurel was a clinical social worker, so this wasn't all that surprising, though I never felt like a client, but her lover.
Philosophically, I enjoy the question I posed at the beginning of this post: what are we guarding when we aren't open and honest with other people about how we really feel? I don't claim to have any firm answer, just some ideas.
The more I see myself as possessing an enduring self, some lasting inner core, the more guarded I tend to feel around other people — because I don't want that Precious Pearl of Me to be crushed by some biting criticism, gratuitous insult, or mocking laughter. That hurts!
However, when I'm able to live in accord with what I believe, that the notion of an enduring self is an illusion, so in truth there isn't anyone at home inside my mind who needs to be guarded, then I'm better able to open up with other people, being much less afraid of what could happen if they know me as I view myself to actually be, as opposed to who I appear to be when I put on a false face.
When I was young this was a familiar adage: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."
This is true. Words can't hurt us physically. But we certainly can be hurt emotionally.
For me at least, I doubt that I'll ever attain a state where critical words directed at me don't hurt to some extent. Still, my 22 years of blogging marked by lots of comments on posts I've written that call me stupid, uninformed, and clueless (those are mild epithets compared to the really nasty comments), have helped me learn that what people say about me doesn't really harm me in any way.
Especially when I'm able to realize that "me" is a social construction, not a fixed self. Criticism can wound, but when it is justified in whole or in part, it also can heal. Here's what Google's AI said when I searched for "value of being unguarded."
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Thank you Brian!!
Very good healthy and usefull subscribtion about intimate Partnership and also even for good friendships..
Agreed!!
Unguarded not a feasible solution for long term relationship.
It’s you and you only when you die. Relationship between two entities is determined by how much you bring to the table.
Those initiated ones have to fight your own battle.
Beware Kaal is watching
One Guarded relationship is must.
Those who guard their relationships, as they also guard their identities, are those with hidden secrets that they are either ashamed of, or illegal, immoral, or it would reveal how unimportant they are, to not only society, which they have not contributed to, but even to their own Tribes.
So, other than the few here who aren’t ashamed to openly reveal them selves, unless most of them are AI Bot Trolls, then responding to people whose identities are hidden, what’s the point of even responded to Trolls?
I can assure you, that just throwing out posts against the Churchless Wall, wondering who would be interested enough to even read it, much less respond, is not very effective with out knowing exactly who we are responding to, with out knowing even if they are male or female, Nationality Religeon or Sect, Gay, Trans, married or single,…..or, Trolls from other similar sites, such as RSS, who are well known by some of us who were, or are members there, or no longer post or read there.
For what ever it’s worth, Jordan Peterson advised , on one of his podcasts to restrict sharing your personal life with any one , the older you get. They will always use it against you, at the flip of a coin. Which verifies to me, Jordan Peterson has plenty of his own baggage he hides.
Why is God so guarded?
What is God hiding?
Yep. The Fool-Me-Once rule. Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me.
Of course, it needn’t necessarily be just once. Depending, one may well extend the benefit of the doubt two times, thrice, four times. But after that, …fool me yet again, shame on me.
And nor does this preclude forgiveness, not at all. But forgiveness, beyond that initial benefit-of-the-doubt stage of once/twice/thrice/four-times/whatever, is predicated on the other recognizing their error, and repenting over and/or correcting for it.
And of course, none of this can be one-size-fits-all. Your philosophy/strategy in this regard will naturally need to be a function of your environment. There’s that too. (Which is why, often enough, the wide-eyed naivety of youth often gives way to the realism, even the cynicism, of age. Happy the man who has no cause for such — albeit not if that is effected by burying one’s head in the sand!)
“so in truth there isn’t anyone at home inside my mind who needs to be guarded, then I’m better able to open up with other people”
Separately from the actual point of your post, Brian, which I’m in agreement with; and separately also from the point I raised in my comment just above: just teasing this thought through, because at first blush this seems …just a bit curious to me.
If “there isn’t anyone at home inside my mind”, then equally, there isn’t anyone at home inside other people’s minds as well. Why bother about opening up to them at all, then, since there is no one there to open up to?
I don’t know, at first blush, and without much thought put into this: this seems just a bit incoherent to me. We can’t have it both ways, can we?
(Not a disagreement per se. Nor is there any larger point I’m trying to make here. Just trying to think my way through what appears to be an inconsistency in how this is shaping up.)
Thinking a bit more about this: This points, I think, to what I’d said in prior comments. It’s a mistake to imagine the self doesn’t exist, or to try to act as if the self doesn’t exist. That’s a mistake, and probably what lies at bottom of the incoherency in Sapolsky’s ethical framework.
Certainly the self doesn’t exist. But yet, subjectively it does, just as certainly. And for very good reasons. It’s silly to even want to jettison that evolutionary marvel — either by meditating or drugging ourselves into ego-less psychosis, or by making believe and acting as if that were so.
Instead, what I believe follows from an understanding of no-self, is to better understand and to better gel with our subjective self via that understanding (as opposed to the baggage of halfwittery we take for granted otherwise).
…Although, sure, that might end up in that exact same place. A realization of “our” insubstantiality might lead to a lessening of focus on ourselves. And that in turn might lead to better interpersonal interactions.
So it’s kind of potatoes-potahtoes, no? I say no. Because this latter is an organic development, that may or may not follow. Understanding of self may lead down wholly different routes, including a lesser concern for the selves of others.
I’m saying, while “opening up to others” may well follow, organically, from “realizing” no-self: but it is by no means a given: and in any case it is fallacious to set up one possible organic route as somehow an ideal one must live up to.
———-
Just thinking this through. Kind of compulsively, coz doing something else, posting from phone! But wanted to put this down before I lost strand of this thought in life’s endless distractions.
Very interested in meaningful feedback on this! Particularly yours, Brian, or maybe Ron or Umami among the regulars. Or whoever might have meaningful critique, regardless of whether in agreement or disagreement. …And emphatically not interested in engaging with halfwittery.
Oh my! Appreciate Reader “not interested in “engaging” with “halfwittiry” . Brian must be so thankful that AP has trotted out to explain to every one what Brian really said, that needs unwrapping by AP . Brian must be so greatful ,…..while wiping his pant leg from AP’s humping it with slobbering excitement!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvwg7kuD_GA
😇😁😂
“It’s good to be as unguarded as possible in our relationships.”
I guess it’s a lot to do with one’s upbringing and societal influences. Somehow, I grew up in what I recall as a trusting society. It was a time during and just after World War two. Times were hard, family and friends were being killed; many things including food was rationed. People who had gardens and allotments shared produce and there was quite a lot of helping out and being paid with food. Many evacuees from bombed out cities were welcomed and housed in smaller towns and villages. There was an air of cooperation. There was no need to be ‘honest and open’ with everyone; it was just accepted and obvious how people were coping and feeling – there was a sort of tangible compassion (not sympathy) as most people were struggling in some way.
This idea of being open and unguarded all sounds a bit new age ‘Ish. Okay, so its good to (some-times) speak one’s mind and to say how you feel. I’ve just finished months of chemotherapy and let family, friends and acquaintances know the situation from the start; I see no point in being stoic and secretive about such things. People responded in their own ways.
There are many things I wouldn’t express or offload onto other people, like so-called guilty secrets. There are many things I would keep to myself with no feelings of guilt or shame or need to confess – apart of course from watching the sometimes-wandering thought of ‘wish I hadn’t done/said that or ‘perhaps I should have acted differently’.
I think it does help to understand one’s self (or what appears to be one’s ‘self’) and know (without guilt) that we are all human beings with our many foibles, traits, fallacies and feelings, but off-loading them onto friends, family and the world at large, to my mind is totally unnecessary and perhaps even selfish.
@Ron,…FWIW,…I’m sorry to hear about your Chemo treatments. I have lost so many friends and acquaintances over the years, I’ve lost count. No doubt, it depends on where the cancer is, or was. I have a Nephew who had Lymphoma at 7 years old, and went through years of Chemo, Radiation, and testosterone treatments, because the Chemo stunted his growth. But he has survived, so far, to be 36 years old, and the cancer has never reappeared. He grew to be fairly normal, in height, due to his testosterone treatments.
Best wishes for your total recovery. When I was a Fire and Brimstone Faith Preacher, during my 40s, I prayed for many with Cancer. Some survived, others didn’t.” What will be, will be,….the future is not ours to see.” It helps to have Faith, tho.
This is such good advice, that should apply to all of us , 60 and above, but is not easy to follow. Trying to be friendly, helpful and kind to younger people you know, let alone strangers, usually gets eye rolls and suspicions. I mean, let’s face it. Just use the example of the push backs old folk get here!
https://youtu.be/DphLxGcB4rs
Ha ha ha ha ha you’ve got to be kidding.
Gurus have taken advantage of numerous people with such naive attitudes over the years.
Just look at Gurinder and Sheena and countless others.
Please, be guarded. For the love of God, BE GUARDED.
If you want to be happy in this fucked up world then don’t ask too many questions.
AR,
What I think you and others are saying about selflessness is not to put the cart before the horse. Organic is the word.
I know what Brian is saying too. As a young satsangi especially I really put the walls up. I fell for a girl whose mother described me as the most closed off person she knew. What a mess I made of that one with my intransigence.
The fake it till you make it approach gets old after a while. In relationships, temporal and “eternal,” you have to be honest with yourself sooner or later.
For example, is one truly moral for blind adherence to a set of Holy Commandments or Vows, or is it better to make mistakes and suffer consequences? A word to the wise is sufficient, but others only learn the hard way. It’s fair to wonder whether past lives have anything to do with it and take a longer view. Intransigence and shortsightedness go hand in hand, I would say. Consider the propensity toward retribution in fundamentalism. So I think someone truly realized in no-self would be the opposite–broad-minded, rational, non-judgmental, non-violent, forgiving–exactly because other selves are seen as ghosts and devoid of impact. Concerned? Why not, but perhaps in ways unrecognizable to the selves still stuck in illusion.
Yep, that does sum up what I’d been saying, nicely and concisely. “Organic”, in the sense of, as you say, “not putting the cart before the horse”.
One thing, though: this goes beyond just the fact that “the fake it till you make it approach gets old after a while”. Here it is the case that our cart might take one of at least two diametrically opposed routes (which routes I discussed briefly in my comments prior). As such, to “fake” one of those possible destinations, or to hold up one of those two diametrically opposed destinations as somehow an ideal to be striven towards — is, as it seems to me, not quite coherent.
Absolutely, like I said I agree with Brian’s larger message here, which is that a lessening of one’s focus on oneself helps open us up to others’ perspectives. Which makes for better interpersonal interactions, better relationships, and makes us a better person overall, absolutely, agreed. Except, the no-self understanding is kind of a non sequitur there, in two senses: first, because one might well arrive at such a non-self-obsessed open-to-others’-concerns self regardless of this no-self understanding; and second, because the no-self understanding does not necessarily lead to this, and in fact may well end up leading us to a completely different destination than that particular ideal.
———-
And I enjoyed, and appreciate, your personal take on this, Umami, thanks for sharing!
Absolutely, I agree that a no-self “realized” person can hardly end up narrow-minded and judgmental and closed-minded. Without a shadow of a doubt, we can take it as given that such a person is miles and miles away from any actual “realization”.
However, here’s the thing. And I think I’ll repeat, as in restate, what I’d said prior, to clarify where, in this context, I’m coming from. While certainly a lessening of a self-focus will necessarily follow from an understanding of no-self: but equally, what may well follow, as well, is a lessening of one’s focus on, and interest in, others’ selves and *their* hundred and one what-have-you’s (just like one loses an excessive interest in these things in one’s own self).
You see where I’m coming from, right? The Buddha’s story may well have been apocryphal: but he, or at least his story, nevertheless does epitomize what I meant to convey. He did indeed lose his focus on his own self: but immediately after Nirvana, so entirely absent was his focus on others’ selves as well as on his own, that he considered, for a time, simply extinguishing his self altogether; and even later though his long life, although he did return back to the world, but he did not, at all, “open up” — as we understand the term, and as Brian used the term here — to the hundred and one worldly travails and concerns of his aged lonely father, his grieving lonely wife, the subjects of his erstwhile kingdom subsequently prey to marauding invaders, and such.
As you rightly point out, Umami, the concern that follows from such understanding, or “enlightenment” is likely, actually, to be completely unrecognizable as concern per se, to selves still stuck in the illusion. Certainly an organic understanding of no-self (not just intellectually, but also, more viscerally, via one’s practice as well) does open one up to empathy and compassion. Although I dislike pointing these discussions back to my own person, but I can attest to that from such (little) progress as I myself have made. Except, that’s a very different animal than the kind of more everyday “opening up” that the discussion in Brian’s main post was about, and indeed in many ways can be the exact opposite of that.
So that, like I said, to hold up one of two diametrically opposed perspectives that one might organically arrive at, as somehow an ideal to be striven towards before that perspective has actually come about organically, is …uhh, my apologies, Brian, absolutely no offense or disrespect intended! …but it’s simply incoherent, quite literally so. Or so it seems to me. That is, it is a perfectly sensible perspective to strive towards generally, most certainly: certainly it is a perfectly sensible ideal to keep before one and to strive towards, in general terms: but that is a whole different discussion than the no-self discussion, and for reasons I hope I’ve now been able to put across fully.
“Except, the no-self understanding is kind of a non sequitur there, in two senses: first, because one might well arrive at such a non-self-obsessed open-to-others’-concerns self regardless of this no-self understanding; and second, because the no-self understanding does not necessarily lead to this, and in fact may well end up leading us to a completely different destination than that particular ideal.”
Well said, AR. Apples and oranges. There’s no one size fits all.
So I asked Google AI myself about the characteristics of a person who’s realized no-self. The third bullet point was “Increased Compassion: Recognizing the interconnectedness of all beings and the illusory nature of a separate self fosters a natural increase in compassion and empathy for others.”
Maybe that’s where Brian was coming from. The feeling of interconnectedness in a good relationship could reflect the recognition of interconnectedness of all beings. One does not typically lead to the other (quite the opposite, lol), but being in love and realizing no-self could feel similar, and clinginess get in the way of both.
But I think we both cringe at Google AI reciting the ideal…inorganically. Canned wisdom in an annoyingly flawless stream of human-speak!
Pre-digested human-speak!!!
“being in love and realizing no-self could feel similar, and clinginess get in the way of both”
Indeed. 👍