Loving My Opponent Sets Me Free
- Daikan
- Sep 25
- 3 min read
Allowing this whole life to naturally unfold.. is liberation. It feels like a great weight is lifted and the fog evaporates.
Going through life can feel like being a witness.
It feels free.
Being a witness means just letting emotions, feelings and thoughts pass through and not attaching to anything. Allowing the universe to unfold, including all the stories as they come and go. It includes the pain and grief, pleasure and success all flowing by - everything arising and falling away naturally.
This all came up vividly recently when I went out to "bear witness" and record video of the local Charlie Kirk vigil. The video was for the sun website.
Feeling the partisan fervor a little still, I thought, I have these "God given" talents in photography and it is my responsibility to not hoard it, or refrain from just using it for my own agenda.
Like everyone, I often attach to some strong beliefs or feelings like debating on Facebook. That always feels more exhausting and confrontational.
This squelches curiosity and digs me into my position. It narrows my perspective and forces me to be sure everything fits in. It's delusion. I can feel it.
Naturally the brain (and the separate self) starts to look for all the examples, targeting all the people saying it. A real need arises to be the world's defender.
In order to let go and come back home to this moment and feel grounded - is to go through life as the witness instead - the trick is recognizing who is having the experience and who is the witness.
As the witness, it matters much less to me to make myself right, or, worse, making "my opponent" wrong. This attitude seems to devolve into trying to negate the other -- while real life remains infinitely subtle and codependently arising.
Just allowing the other's argument without jumping on them, without succumbing to the need to make them wrong immediately feels like uplifting myself and having confidence in my own sense of truth. It feels like uplifting "my opponent's" humanity. It brings more curiosity towards why they might feel one way or another. The questions that come to my head are different and probing for commonalty instead of difference.
It doesn't feel like condoning. It doesn't mean I agree with the conditions of the argument. I'm just allowing their humanity. Ironically it gives me more confidence in my own arguments and allows me to discover my own misunderstandings or to improve my understanding of the topic. Mostly, I'm gaining an understanding of "my opponent." To understand someone is to love them. It really feels that way. I felt community at the Charlie Kirk vigil. Community is humanity unfolding. Humanity is miraculous - all of it.
A way to turn down the temperature is to start with the agreement that we are all humans and are born with the same inalienable rights. I think we all can see the humanity in each other's eyes.
Being more confident in "the natural unfolding" is seeing the world from the standpoint of "the natural unfolding" .. the witness ..
Being witness liberates the need to be right and ends the drive to make my neighbors wrong.
It uncovers the One truth of our shared humanity.
Look for the spark in each others eyes!!
Love, Daikan🙏
Protest in Conway, NH 2025.
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