Quote:When the attacker attacks, I believe in the offer of infringement they are opening themselves to whatever it is that they offer. In otherwords if you were to harm them as a result of self-defense it would not be an infringement on their will because they already invited themselves to engage in harm and so when they receive harm it is actually already within their free will, they have accepted this the moment they decided to harm another.
I understand this differently. I believe there is a distinction between self-defense and retaliation. Self-defense is protecting the self by blocking the attack or leaving the interaction. Retaliation is inflicting harm on the attacker. Any time we return harm for harm, it damages us (karmically) and provides catalyst to the other party. It doesn't matter if it's in retaliation or if we're the original instigator. What others do is their karma, what we do is ours.
The other level of this topic that hasn't yet been mentioned is emotion. Emotion is the essence of our being, it's how our consciousness experiences and channels the Creator's energy as it flows through us. At that level, there is a vast difference between unconditional love and indifference. They are entirely distinct states of being with nothing in common, energetically/emotionally.
This is relevant to self-defense also. Positive self-defense includes transforming our instinctive negative emotional reactions into love and acceptance for the attacker. Learning to react to catalyst with love and acceptance is the essence of the positive path, and all kinds of good things happen when we learn to do this. We have the examples of Jesus, who showed us that it is more beneficial to die than to cause harm to one's attackers, and even Socrates, who said we must "improve our enemies". Someone else - I don't recall who - said, "If I've turned my enemy into a friend, have I not defeated my enemy?" All of those express the same idea.
One of the most useful things I've realized so far is this: there is no external reality. All reality is internal; it's all about consciousness interacting with consciousness. The rest is just props - which are simply ideas held in consciousness. So, what happens or does not happen externally matters only insofar as it affects one's own consciousness and the consciousness of those around oneself, and those effects take place primarily through emotion, which is energy. And the highest energy in all circumstances, as far as I can tell, is love, the universal healing and integrating force.