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This doesn't mean every loud sound is gunfire. It means: Respect the process. As balloons are popping all around you at the 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.

Interestingly, thoughts are not your enemy; it's thinking that gets in the way, and there's an important distinction between the two. A thought is something that arises in the mind, and you rarely know from where it arose. Very often, a thought will be important and relevant. You might explore it, consider it, act on it, or discard it. It might come back, it might not. Whatever happens, the initial arising of a thought is not under your control.

Thinking, on the other hand, is the horizontal process of consciously linking thoughts, concepts, and ideas -- and thinking is what most often gets in the protector's way, as in this example:

"What's with the guy in the yellow raincoat? Reminds me of that sailboat team, crew all wore yellow raincoats. What's that race in Australia? Or it starts in Australia. Chevron sponsored some of them. Chevron logo was on the sails. Chevron had that executive kidnapped in Brazil. Or Peru... America's Cup! But it starts in Australia? Or a different place each year? Chevron paid some ransom, I remember. Is it even likely to rain? Why wouldn't a guy leave a coat like that in the car? If he's got a car. Some people came by bus. Buses could block the parking lot exit -- have to remember to check that when we get to the reception. Maybe we can even see the driveway from one of the windows. Is it a reception, or just a fast meet-and-greet? Reception means food. I should have eaten something when we had that downtime. Maybe we can bring the cars around before the thing starts, in case we have to leave early. Nutrition bar in the car; just candy really, but I want it. I need it. And if it rains, it'll be easier to get coats from the car. Maybe that's why he's wearing a raincoat ..."

This form of thinking, in which one idea is linked to the next, might feel like there's a constructive process underway. There isn't. The mind often links things together and then thinks it has formed some continuity -- but continuity is an illusion. In protective work,
Don't strive for continuity.
Continuity is a product of the mind only, a belief that some past events are significantly linked to the present moment and to the future. In protective work, there is nothing gained by connecting this moment to other moments -- and much is lost during the time travel it takes to gather up memories and create a story. As hard as it is for the mind to accept, there is no story to assemble, no sense to be made of events -- just occurrences and images that must each be allowed to stand on its own. In the example above ("What's with the guy in the yellow raincoat?"), the
thought
had great value, but the
thinking
carried the Mind away.

Satisfy the Hungry Mind

Earlier, we discussed addictions, and the mind itself has an addiction: To reach conclusions. A moment after reaching one conclusion, it will want to replace it with another one, and so on. If your mind has trouble discarding the snapshots appearing before you, try creating a quick name or label for each one. This can help convince the mind that it has completed a task, that it's okay to move on to the next person or event. For example, the process of observing and then naming seven people could look like this, and could be this fast: