In addition to this, when your inner child is empowered then you tend to relate functionally as a child. This can be problematical if you are wishing to enjoy the satisfying benefits of an adult-adult relationship. At first, carrying a child-like demeanor might seem cute, but it can lead to a rude awakening. Adult women are not attracted to being in relationship with little boys, and adult men are not attracted to being in relationship with little girls. The personalities attracted to little children in the opposite sex tend to be quite abusive. Perhaps you already know what I am talking about?
FREE AND NATURAL ADULT EGO STATE
Modern culture does not teach you that human beings have access to, or can actually live in, the free and natural adult ego state through succeeding in the archetypal rite of passage into adulthood.
WAYS TO LEAVE CHILD EGO STATE AND ENTER ADULT
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
If your child ego state still dominates your life you are not getting to live and relate from your creative, free-and-natural, responsible-adult ego state in the present. Instead you stay a child. Do you want a child in the driver’s seat of your life, perceiving, expressing and choosing for you? What for? Growing up means sending the child back to where it belongs, with all the other memories of your past. You used to be a child. And now?
• Stop being adaptive. Take your center back from authority figures. Stand in your own center so that you can make decisions, take creative risks, take responsibility and live your authentic life.
• Stop withholding what you really want to say, what you actually think and feel. Your contribution is needed and wanted, even if it opposes whatever the rest of the group is thinking.
• Minimize your now into the present moment. Don’t let it extend into a remembered past or an imagined future. Keep your now small.
• Ruthlessly distinguish between feelings and emotions (see Chapter 4).
• Experience your emotions as emotions. Express them consciously in a healing process so as to vanish them as completed communications.
• Recognize your unfulfilled childhood needs as just that: unfulfilled childhood needs. The needs are no longer present needs; they are memories. They remain strong memories because they are memories in all four bodies: physical, intellectual, emotional and energetic. But they are memories nonetheless. Does drinking a glass of water, now, remove a memory of being thirsty in the past? No. Does going pee, now, remove a memory of having to go pee very badly in the past? No. Does safe and exciting intimacy, now, remove the memory of wanting and not getting safe and exciting intimacy as a child? No. Distinguish your memories as just that: memories. They do not apply now.
• There is a hole in your being that was created by unfulfilled childhood needs. You might have noticed yourself standing in front of the refrigerator feeling needy, looking for what can fill this hole in your soul. You might expect your partner to fill that hole. There is bad news and good news about this gaping, aching, unfulfilled neediness hole. The bad news is that the refrigerator, your partner, even Mommy and Daddy, can never fulfill your unfulfilled childhood needs. Period. The good news is that the refrigerator, your partner, Mommy and Daddy are never coming to fulfill your unfulfilled childhood needs. Nothing can ever fill the hole because the hole is in the past. It is only memories. The good news is that your life can now be about something other than trying to fill that hole. Your life can be about living passionately now, developing your beneficial gifts and the gifts of others, and creating a bright future for your loved ones and your community.
When the free and natural adult ego state buys you an ice cream, flies your kite, or plays in the sand at the beach, you can make huge messes because as an adult you are absolutely responsible for cleaning them up. Adult messes include inventing new flavors and marketing plans for the ice cream store, designing new shapes and control systems for kites, and creating whole new worlds in the sand. Your playing field can extend into reinventing cultural space, challenging common ways of life, or establishing new forms of schooling that actually enliven the creative potential of each individual. You can go even further. For example, you could take back your vote from the government officials who supposedly represent your intelligence and voice about where the money you paid them in taxes is being spent. You can take radical responsibility for adapting to nothing and for withholding nothing. You can get on with doing what you entered life to do instead of enacting typical socially accepted charades. This is the free and natural adult ego state in action.
STANDING RAGE WORK This woman is leaving behind her complaining, manipulating, child ego state and using her adult woman power for making distinctions, boundaries, decisions, requests and statements. This is Phase 1 of feelings work. Note: in this set up, the front man’s job is to just listen. The second man’s job is to make sure the first man just listens, and also to make sure that if the first man backs up (which could definitely be a good idea) he does not crash into any furniture.
If this sounds attractive, well, that’s because it should sound attractive. Creating is your birthright and what you are designed for as an adult human being. From the perspective of having a free and natural adult in the driver’s seat of your life, it becomes clear why stepping into adulthood includes ritually and actually sending your child ego state back to where it belongs, down the stream of memories into the past. You think you want a child in the driver’s seat of your life? Think again.
STANDING RAGE WORK This close-up shows the proper form for standing rage work. The feeling being expressed is anger, so her fists are clenched with thumbs on the outside, feet solidly planted on the floor. She looks directly into the eyes, uses 50 percent of her energy in her voice and 50 percent in her body, and lets her body speak rather than her mind. The two other women loop their arms through her arms and hold her shoulders. This makes it both safe and comfortable for her to go to 100 percent maximum rage where she can reclaim her adult anger as a power source for intelligent actions.
STANDING RAGE On average it requires seven to ten deep emotional rite-of-passage processes spread over a couple of years to grow up in relationship to childhood and parental issues. Each process unbinds you from a layer of decisions that you made under conditions that no longer apply. You survived, it is true, but as you mature the strategy that once protected you eventually becomes your prison. Going through the liquid state that reorders your Box frees up your attention and energy to build matrix for more consciousness. Rite of passage is teamwork—we can’t do it alone. In standing rage you start by choosing a man or woman to represent an authority figure with whom you practice making boundaries, changing agreements, starting things and stopping things. Standing rage is rapid learning, meaning that after each attempt you receive feedback and coaching from the rest of the team about your posture, feelings, voice and clarity. You use the feedback to shift and go again. The stand-in listener (on the left) is assured of safety by the second man at his side, who also cheers you on during your process.
AVOIDING STAGE FRIGHT AND STUTTERING
You now have all the distinctions you need to avoid the nervous, sweating paralysis commonly known as stage fright. Stage fright is caused by placing your center out in the future while directing your attention to yourself. Moving your center into the future—a few seconds, moments, days, months, or (yes) years—eliminates any possibility of you taking action. No one has the power to take actions in the future, not even Superman. You cannot make a future action happen now. Certainly you can prepare yourself. You can practice, or you can handle the necessary details to help insure a favorable outcome in the future. But you can only prepare, practice, or handle details now, not in the future. With your center in the future and your attention on yourself, you stare in horror at your absolute powerlessness, and of course you will freeze up. You are paralyzed because there is nothing you can do now to cause an effect in the future. Even though you may desperately want to make a diffe
rence now, you absolutely cannot.
To release the paralyzing spell, bring your center out of the future into a minimized now and a minimized here in the adult ego state, and put your attention out there in the circumstances around you instead of focusing it on yourself. To get in the here-and-now present it can help to ever-so-gently rub your thumb against the tip of your forefinger. The sensations of finger friction only happen here and now. Finger caressing is very intense in experiential reality. Stay in that intensity. Keep breathing. Keep your being center on your physical center in the present and keep your attention out there in the surroundings while doing whatever you need to do right now. Voila! No more stage fright.
Stuttering is when your mind moves faster than your mouth. If you put your being center into the thinking processes of your mind, you are putting your center into the future because thoughts move faster than the body can move. If your center is in your mind it is moving ahead of your body. Speaking involves your whole body: lips, tongue, throat, hands, face, posture, and attitude. The body is stuck in the material world in the present and cannot speak out of the future, so by placing your center into your thinking, you cause a breakdown between your mouth and your mind, and you stutter. Speaking eloquently requires keeping your being center located in the physical center of your body. You can use the same finger-caressing technique as with stage fright. The mind will do whatever it does to think things out, but don’t put your center in your mind. Keep your center in the present physical experience of your body and speak, sing, dance, juggle, work out of your physical center. You will not be able to speak as fast as your mind thinks. But no matter. No one could understand you speaking that fast anyway.
You can think fast privately, to yourself. But when you speak to others, you can slow your thinking down. You can also experiment with disconnecting your speaking from your thinking; that is, speak directly out of your body or your heart. In this case you will speak before your mind actually knows what you are going to say.
You can also experiment with speaking out of the space of possibility as a representative of your Bright Principles. We will talk more about this later in the book.
KNOWING YOU ARE IN A LOW DRAMA
Finding your way into the adult ego state opens the door to being able to create high drama. What often gets in the way of being able to create high drama is not knowing that you are already in a low drama!
Low drama is any action designed to avoid responsibility.
How can you tell you are in a low drama? There are very clear indicators if you construct and use a Low Drama Detector.
LOW DRAMA Notice how the victim (center) is shifting into her persecutor mode getting ready to attack the persecutor. Notice how the rescuer is saying, We’re okay, she’s not okay, a position of superiority and disrespect. Nobody is listening to anybody. Low drama is not authentic relationship; it is Gremlin feeding time.
MAP OF LOW DRAMA DETECTOR
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
Your Low Drama Detector can sense a low drama approaching from one hundred yards away. It warns you with a flashing red light on the front of your right shoulder, announcing: Beep! Beep! Beep! Low drama approaching! Proceed with extreme caution! Do not get hooked! It is simple but not easy to detect an approaching low drama: victimhood, irresponsible feelings, resentment, blaming, complaining, justifying, proving yourself right, or making someone else wrong. The not easy part is that low drama is VERY tempting Gremlin food. A hungry Gremlin can turn any situation into low drama. If your Gremlin is hungry, watch out! If anyone thinks there is a problem and it is someone else’s fault, or even the fault of circumstances, that is low drama. Use your Sword of Clarity to make distinctions so you step to the side of approaching low dramas like a bullfighter steps aside from a charging bull. Unhooked you retain the freedom of movement to take responsible actions!
MAP OF HOW I KNOW I AM IN A LOW DRAMA
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
LOW DRAMA DETECTION
Build and mount a Low Drama Detector on the front of your right shoulder. The instant it detects a low drama, trust its warning and respond immediately. Your response can be subtle, but if you ignore the warning you will be knocked unconscious by your own hungry Gremlin and you will be sucked into the low drama for its full duration. Time and energy spent in low drama is precious time and energy you won’t have for creating extraordinary or archetypal possibilitie s that nurture you as an adult man or woman.
You are definitely creating low drama if you are:
• Blaming anyone for anything, including yourself.
• Feeling resentful, even secretly.
• Justifying yourself, even in your own mind.
• Complaining about anything, even under your breath.
• Criticizing, judging, nitpicking yourself or others.
• Trying to be right, propagandizing, sacrificing relationship.
• Trying to make someone else wrong, gossiping, mobbing.
• Plotting revenge, being spiteful, being stingy, being small.
• Mixing your feelings: depression, isolation, schadenfreude, hysteria, despair, guilt, jealousy, shame, envy, etc.
• Having an argument in your mind.
• Being superior or arrogant, even with good reason.
• Withholding yourself, not playing, taking your ball and going home.
• Giving your center away, being adaptive, being nice.
• Being in a funk, sulking, giving up, regretting.
• Using addictions to solve your problems.
• Feeding your Gremlin.
The way out of low drama is through being authentic about your inauthenticity. As soon as you detect a low drama, name it. Say, “This is a low drama. I am in a low drama.” Then instantly reveal your part in creating the whole thing. Admit that you are playing victim, persecutor or rescuer on purpose. Name your game, and specifically what your payoff is for playing it. Get real. Look bad. The way to responsibility is through authentic remorse about your irresponsibility: hitting bottom. Nothing else works because nothing else is true.
MAP OF HOW TO AVOID LOW DRAMA
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
Responsibility is the procedure for change.
USE THESE PRACTICES TO AVOID LOW DRAMA
• Refuse to leave the adult ego state, where you are yourself in the minimized now of the present moment. Put a stake in the ground there.
• Declare that you are not a victim. If there is no victim, there can be no low drama.
• Consciously feel your four distinct feelings: anger, sadness, joy, fear.
• Detect if you are experiencing a present feeling or an emotion projected from your past or from an authoritŷgure or institution. (Hint, if the feeling lasts longer than a few minutes, it is an emotion.)
• Use your emotions to detect the healing that you need to do.
• Use your feelings to responsibly handle things:
o Make a boundary / become the boundary.
o Ask for what you want.
o Make a decision: yes or no.
o Make a distinction. Be precise.
o Start something / End something.
• Neutrally observe what is really going on. Choose what is.
• Make a paper-thin gap of nothingness between your Box and you.
• Take radical responsibility for creating your circumstances. It is no one else’s fault.
• If there are other people’s voices in your head, blast them away with your Voice Blaster .
• Apologize for your patterns that have caused the breakdown.
• Willingly enter the pain of remorse. Clear your resentments.
• Be authentic about your inauthenticity.
• Determine whose problem it is. If it is your problem, take responsibi
lity. If it is not your problem, it is none of your business.
• Get centered. Find and keep your attention. Stay unhookable.
• Use your innate genius to continuously invent new ways to get out of low drama. Share what you learn with your friends, and with your enemies.
HIGH DRAMA
Low drama is any action designed to avoid responsibility. Once you can consciously avoid engaging in low drama, what remains is high drama.
We live in a responsible universe. You are automatically responsible, for everything. In a responsible universe, irresponsibility is an illusion. It is impossible to be a victim. There is no such thing as a problem without you being there creating the Is-Glued story and announcing that there is a problem. The moment you stop generating low drama, you are generating high drama. High drama is any action in which you take responsibility.
For example, if you are at the dinner table and you would like some water to drink and you say, “I am really thirsty,” you are playing victim in a low drama, trying to manipulate someone else into rescuing you. If instead you say, “Harry, will you please pass me the water?,” you are playing warrior in a high drama. High drama is that simple.
If you are at a meeting and you think, “Man, this meeting is so irrelevant. Such a waste of time. The president never addresses the important issues,” you are playing persecutor in a low drama. If instead you raise your hand and say, “I would be ashamed of myself if I walked out of this meeting without bringing up this important issue,” you are playing magician in a high drama.
Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth Page 21