When Soldiers
Meditate:
Talking
with Richard Strozzi Heckler
by D. Patrick Miller
Published by D. Patrick Miller at Smashwords
© 2010 by D. Patrick Miller
Smashwords Edition
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SENSE & SPIRITUALITY REPORT #5
Talking with
Richard Strozzi Heckler
by
D.
Patrick Miller
In late July 2002, the Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina announced that it would re-evaluate its family counseling programs after the disclosure that four Army wives had been killed by their husbands in the previous six weeks. Two of the killings were part of murder-suicides; three of the suspects were Special Operations solders who had returned from recent duty in Afghanistan. In a fifth homicide involving base personnel, the wife of an Army officer was charged with his murder.
While an Army spokesman said it would be “a reach” to connect all the recent domestic violence to the war in Afghanistan, the tragic news nonetheless raised questions about the stress that soldiers and their families face as an inevitable part of the military lifestyle. NEWSWEEK reported that the occurrence of domestic violence in the military is twice that of civilians, and noted that critics say the armed forces are slow to report and confront the full dimension of the problem — in part because federal convictions of abusers would mean the loss of their right to carry guns, making them useless as soldiers.
Psychologist and former Marine Richard Strozzi Heckler has an unusual perspective on the military state of mind, as he has been called upon several times to attempt enhancing it by non-ordinary means. The first experiment took place in the fall of 1985, when he participated in a six-month classified experiment to introduce “inner technologies” to a contingent of the Army’s Special Forces — twenty-five Green Berets. Those inner technologies included martial arts, meditation, and biofeedback.
Heckler, who taught both physical techniques and and psycho-logical values to the soldiers, could not have been better qualified for the Trojan Warrior Project. The child of a military family, Heckler grew up to be an accomplished athlete, attending college on a track scholarship. He served in the Marines before acquiring his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Later he would become a master of the defensive martial art called aikido, which focuses on the “blending” of combatants’ energy.
After the initial experiment that Heckler describes in his book In Search of the Warrior Spirit, he has taught inner technologies to the Navy SEALS and to Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego. At his northern California ranch, Heckler and his wife Ariana run a consulting firm called the Rancho Strozzi Institute.
In the book you recount how the Green Berets referred to you as “the psycho-queer from San Francisco.” Didn’t your own military experience count with these men?
heckler: It didn’t count for anything. Part of it was interservice rivalry; Army men consider themselves smarter than Marines, whom they call “jar-heads.” But as far as these Green Berets were concerned, we were civilians. What could we possibly have to offer to the crème de la crème of the military? They respected my sports and martial arts background, but otherwise the attitude was: Prove it to us.
You’ve written that the central paradox of your work involved teaching values of “wholeness” to soldiers who are generally trained to regard their enemies as abstractions, not human beings. Can a Green Beret experience his full humanity and still be a good soldier?
heckler: The Army wanted to see mental and physical improvements and better communication. One of the officers overseeing the project used the term “holistic soldier” to describe its objectives. But I don’t think the Army understood how deep such training could go.
For instance, the Army wanted the Green Berets to be able to concentrate well after two nights without sleeping — as if we could reach into their heads and develop such a specific skill with meditation practice. While such powers can be developed, it requires revitalizing the whole person. That means feeling oneself more deeply, and to feel oneself more deeply means feeling others — including your enemies — more deeply. It also means developing more independence in thinking, which is antithetical to the institution of the Army, and most other institutions for that matter. It’s a dilemma common to society at large. To be honest, I don’t have the answer.
What’s the difference between the contemporary military mentality and the psychological archetype of the warrior? The traditional meaning of the latter usually has to do with self-mastery; that is, a warrior knows that the real enemy is within. Is this philosophy something you attempted to convey to the Green Berets?
heckler: These men regarded self-mastery as a primary virtue, in the sense of challenging themselves to learn new things and improve their performance. But the kind of work we were doing meant they had to face their character weaknesses and their shadow side. Once you start confronting your own demons, it gets a lot harder.
Here’s an example. As trainers we had our own informal uniform, but sometimes I wore a pink polo shirt instead. This just drove the guys crazy; they began to see something of themselves reflected in that pink shirt, an aspect that could be both soft and powerful. That was foreign to them. They also reacted aggressively toward me because they were beginning to feel a new longing: to release their vigilance, ease up on their psychological armor, their rigid paranoia, to accept themselves as people who were good enough just as they were.
You introduced a kind of self-mastery that’s difficult to measure — not a matter of running faster or having better aim, but of sitting peacefully and experiencing oneself without agitation. Did the men get a better understanding of this kind of self-mastery?
heckler: There were three distinct groups of men in the Trojan Warrior Project. A third of the men had a real thirst for this work; it was as if they had been waiting for us to show up. While they maintained their cynicism and pragmatism, they tried everything to the fullest. Another group, mostly the youngest guys, had a difficult time. They were in their early twenties, very strong and active, and they couldn’t see any virtue whatsoever in sitting still. Or if we suggested they quit smoking, a typical response was, “Hey, I can smoke a pack a day and still outrun anybody on this base.” This was a group infused with a sense of youth and immortality.