Lessons from a Yogi: How to Win An Argument with an Arsehole

A field, beyond right & wrong.    Photo Credit: Pete Longworth | The Visual Photographer

by Kara-Leah Grant

Facebook. Arguments everywhere. About whether guns kill people, or people kill people, or guns with people kill people without guns.

Often it’s arseholes waging arguments.

Wait.

Digression.

I’m going to be using that word liberally throughout this article so if swearing offends you please take the following precautions:

1. Stop reading
2. Keep reading, and inquire into yourself to determine why you may be having that response to a particular word, which is a collection of sounds.
3. If you’re still reading, and it’s still annoying you, see #1

Onward.

I’m using arsehole because it’s a handy label that we sometimes slap on people who disagree with us and are antagonistic or relentless in their assumption that they are right, regardless of the impact of their belief on other people.

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I don’t actually believe anyone is an arsehole, nor is there any malice behind my use of the word.

I’m using it endearingly, with love, and compassion.

Now that’s out of the way (and I’m less likely to be bombarded with comments and emails about my use of the word)… on to the article.

Want to win an argument with an arsehole?

It’s simple… so very simple. But you know what that means right. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s probably one of the most challenging things in the world to do… which is why so few of us are doing it and the arseholes continue to win all the arguments.

Here’s how.

Play like a yogi. An actual yogi that is – not one who does yoga postures, but one who inquires into the nature of self and reality.

A yogi is constantly self-inquiring and knows that nothing can be known, that everything is a construct and it’s all made up anyway.

So when you’re arguing with an arsehole, be like a yogi and turn your super powers of self-inquiry into other-inquiry by constantly asking the arsehole the same question.

How do you know that’s true?

How do you that THAT’s true?

And how do you know that’s true?

Now here’s the real kicker, and what makes this an extremely challenging path.

You have to ask sincerely, with openness, love and compassion, and out of pure curiosity because you want to understand that person. You want to genuinely know how they know it’s true that guns kill, or that people kill, or that people with guns kill people without guns. Or whatever.

You have to let your curiosity and desire to understand spring from a field out beyond right and wrong – that same field where Rumi and all the other Facebook Quote Writers hang out.

No but seriously, if you’re damn keen on winning the argument, you have to come from the right space.

1. You must have no judgement.

None. Zip. Zero. That means that you’re engaging with the arsehole as the representative of Divine Consciousness that they are, beneath all their arseholeness.

2. You must want to know (not to prove them wrong).

Why? Why? Why? Why oh why oh why? Pray tell me why!?

Because when you ask someone this question, there are only two possibilities.

The first is a defence offering, sometimes masked with an offence. That is, you piss the arsehole off and they get annoyed with you and blow up in your face.

Or, your non-judgemental curiosity arising out of that field of awareness beyond right and wrong piques something in the other person…

Some of that level of presence and awareness is transmitted, because awareness and the love it swims in is contagious.

And the arsehole begins to wonder, with their own non-judgemental curiosity, how DO I know that’s true?

Now a seed has been sown.

You work is done.

The argument is won.

The arsehole has turned inward to self-inquiry from a non-judgemental space.

Because it does not matter whether guns kill people or people kill people.

What matters is whether we have the ability to deeply listen to each other so we can understand each other’s perspective.

Because everybody believes he’s the good guy. Or she’s the angel. EVERYBODY. Even the arseholes. Especially the arseholes – that’s what makes them so fixed in their arseholeness. They are so damn attached to their ideas and beliefs about the way things are, and they’re willing to kill to defend their ideas.

You can’t argue them out of that space. Because that just turns you into an arsehole, equally convinced that you’re right, equally attached to your ideas and beliefs about the way things are.

No, the only way to win an argument with an arsehole, the only way to disarm them is to move beyond right and wrong and into understanding.

That’s what matters.

Because Rumi is right. Beyond right and wrong is the only place to be… there is no other place at all.

Beyond our human ideas, beyond our beliefs, beyond our opinions, beyond our constructs… there is another place.

I’ll meet you there.

Let’s see how many arseholes we can bring with us.