Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  Be Wrong

  You have to choose what is more important to you, being right or being in extraordinary human relationship. For your Box the choice is obvious: being right is much more important. Making the other person wrong – your mate, your boss, your kids, your parents – is much more important; winning is much more important. But, if you have a different set of priorities than your Box, if experimenting with extraordinary human relationship is more important to you than being right, then focus on being in relationship and let the “facts” fall where they may. What is so important about details anyway when what you have here is a genuine opportunity to be in extraordinary human relationship with him or her?

  “Do-overs” are possible. If by habit you have created the conversation to result in you being right, whether your position is obnoxiously superior or not, quickly apologize and get off it. Say, “Whoops! Excuse me! I did not mean it that way. Let me try that again.” And, without waiting for a comment, immediately start over, all the way from the “Hello” at the beginning of the conversation, creating a different result than you being right. For an extra credit experiment, arrange the conversation so that you end up being wrong. If you are wrong, then you can ask for help or for feedback and coaching. If you are right the game is over. You win. They lose. If you are wrong, then there are myriads of options still open to both of you for continued exploration. By making yourself wrong I do not mean to actually cause destruction, waste, pain or confusion. To be wrong is a way to be in relationship where you do not automatically fulfill the Box’s desires to know, to feel safe, to be in control, to be right. The experiment is to come from the perspective of not knowing, and to make being-with in extraordinary human relationship a higher priority than security for the Box.

  SECTION 6-Y

  Feed Your Heart and Feed Your Soul

  The practical understanding of the difference between feeding your heart and feeding your soul is not distinguished by our culture, so we live our lives without having that clarity to work with. Gaining this knowledge can make a tremendous difference in your ongoing ability to navigate into extraordinary human relationship.

  I first learned of the difference between heart and soul from the words of a song:

  A man gives his heart

  to the woman who he loves,

  but a man gives his soul to his destiny.

  If you try to make him choose

  you might just end up with

  a man who’s not man, can’t you see?

  Lyrics by Lee Lozowick

  (© 1986, Bad Poet Productions, used with permission.)

  It goes without saying that this clarification for a man: heart – to love, soul – to destiny, applies equally in reverse. That is, it applies to a man trying to force his wife to choose either nurturing her heart or nurturing her soul, instead of encouraging her to nurture both distinctly in her life. (Since it needed saying here, perhaps it does not go without saying.)

  The closest we come to considering ways to care for our heart and our soul is through the modern consideration about establishing some kind of “work life balance,” which is only a weak approximation of what the lyrics are talking about.

  Our heart and soul are centered in different bodies, and therefore have need of different kinds of food (as was briefly considered in the discussion about the Map of Four Bodies in Section 5-A). Without caring for our heart differently from the way that we care for our soul, we may be mixing foods, or starving a part of ourselves while overfeeding another with something it does not need. By distinguishing between heart and soul, and by intentionally nourishing both your heart and your soul, each with its appropriate nutrition, it becomes immediately clear how important this is for building and maintaining extraordinary human relationship.

  For example, some women try to lasso their man’s destiny-driven, soul-food-seeking attention and focus it onto themselves, the children, the family, the house, the dog, and so on. Because the woman is not creating food for her own soul, she consciously or unconsciously feels that it is not fair that she “stays at home with the kids” while the man goes out to “play” where he gets food for his soul. She may force the man into an either/ or decision, “Either me or your job! Either me or your art! Either me or whatever it is you are doing out there!” She does not realize that her man needs both her heart food and his destiny food, just like she does. If she tries to make her man choose, she might end up with a man with no balls, a man not challenging himself to go beyond his own limits, a man with no adventure stories to tell around the fire at night. This would be “a man who’s not man,” as the lyrics above explain.

  Garth, a highly creative and self-motivated man, had arranged for his work to be in alignment with his destiny. As a result, his work-life was rich to overflowing with soul food and his soul was well nourished. He had always been active with explorative adventures, and ever since childhood his abundance of soul food had also flowed to his heart, without his awareness. His heart was then filled to overflowing with soul food, not with heart food. Since his heart was already full, it was neither interested nor able to receive proper heart food, such as the direct heart to heart extraordinary human love from his woman.

  The heart/soul food imbalance causes diseases equivalent to imbalances in ordinary food. For example, you cannot only live on protein. Your body also needs carbohydrates. It is rumored that a widow had enough money when her husband died that every day she could finally eat what she had always wanted to eat: fried chicken. After a few years she died of starvation. Fortunately for Garth, when he understood what he was doing it was not too late. He immediately made changes in his inner navigating. Garth had to learn how to “flow” the soul food from his destiny only into his soul, and then to hold open the channel for receiving heart food from his woman into his heart. Many things in Garth’s life changed for the better soon after that, with his children, with work associates, and with his woman.

  Another man, let’s call him Sid, followed the normal cultural program and never took strong steps to align his work with his destiny. His work put food on the table and paid the bills, but it did not feed his soul. Sid had graduated from college and accepted a small “safe” position in a large company doing technical work on various projects. Then, after years of dedicated work, he was unceremoniously laid off. His soul would have been starving except that he had a strong heart connection to his wife and to his adopted children. After being fired, Sid spent more than a year “looking for work,” hanging around his wife and kids at the house, driving himself and them totally crazy by trying to feed his soul with heart food from them. (You cannot survive on just carbohydrates either. You also need protein.) As Sid’s severance pay ran out, he finally took courage and followed his destiny, getting certified and starting his own business leading workshops and coaching other families who wanted to adopt children. His new work generated food for his soul, and the resulting balance provided sanity in his roles as husband and father.

  Many modern women avoid starting a family, and may keep relationship to a sterile minimum, so as to follow a momentous career path that may or may not be in alignment with their destiny. These women may suffer from starving hearts and starving souls, because most corporate work does not provide food suitable for feeding feminine souls. Other women avoid applying their education, and “sacrifice” a potential career in order to build families and nurture children. They may have plenty of heart food, but try to get their soul food vicariously from meddling in their husband’s work. He in turn may be trying to feed his heart vicariously from enmeshing himself with her relationship to the children. These things may be happening to you and will definitely trap you in ordinary human relationship.

  Taking care to feed your heart and your soul abundant meals, with their appropriate kinds of experiential and energetic foods, will go a long way toward establishing a foundation upon which you can experiment in extraordinary human relationship.

  SECTION 6-Z

  27 Experi
ments for Creating Extraordinary Human Relationship

  These twenty-seven experiments help build a foundation for Adult responsibility and extraordinary human relationship. The difficulty here is that extraordinary human relationship is generated through ongoing nonlinear creation, for which there can never be a methodical system. Nonlinear creation means: Something that works once will not necessarily ever work again in the history of the universe. Then again, maybe it will. There are no guaranteed formulas. Extraordinary human relationship demands that you take fierce, reasonless responsibility for ongoingly creating the possibility of extraordinary human love. There are no rules for making this happen. You just need to keep trying. (Watch the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray to see what is meant by keep trying.) Remember, these are experiments. Some of the experiments are simple actions that take only a few moments and are repeated over and over again. Some are subtle or fundamental attitude shifts that show up as a totally new tactical approach to problems or potential conflicts. Other experiments may take days or weeks to try, but might be done only once in a lifetime.

  While experimenting it can be both wise and practical to adopt the perspective of Old Lodge Skins in the film Little Big Man, “Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it does not.” Each experiment works in its own dimensions, so the results of one experiment may or may not have a connection to the performance of another experiment.

  You can conduct your experiments like the conductor of an orchestra, choosing which experiments to try when, how intensely, and deciding how to harmonize the mood of each experiment with the others when you are doing more than one experiment at a time. As you conduct your life’s concerto, consider this: How would your relationships be if moment to moment you consciously knew that every move you made while being together was a living improvised experiment and that this is how it is supposed to be?

  1. Do not complain to your partner. No matter what is happening make zero derogatory comments about anything, even under your breath. Notice whatever you notice. Decide whatever you decide. Do what you do. But along the way, do not complain. Not even one little squeak. Complaining places you in the victim position of low drama – you become adaptive and manipulating. Life is not low drama. If there is something to complain about, then change it. If you decide not to change it, then be happy with how it is.

  2. Be radiantly happy. Most of us have squelched our happiness down to that level of happiness tolerated in a bank lobby. It is far more acceptable these days to be cool than it is to be happy. Unsquelch your happiness. Discover and connect into the source of being happy for no reason. Watch children under the age of three. If their innocence has not yet been shattered, then their actions are fueled by pure joy. That joy is still in you somewhere. Find it. Let it shine, out loud, with your voice and body and facial expressions attached.

  3. If the waiter brings you something different from what you ordered, do not explain that a mistake was made. Calling it a mistake is questioning the intelligence of the universe. Who knows? Maybe your body needs vitamins or proteins that were not contained in your original order. Instead of sending your order back to the kitchen, change your mind. Decide, “Yes, wow! A surprise from the universe! This is so much better than what I ordered.” Choose what was served, and make your choosing invisible to others. You are not a victim if you have changed your mind. It builds matrix to eat what was served rather than what you ordered. This also applies to life at large.

  4. Repeatedly experiment with not knowing your partner. Have no history with them. Dwell on no memories. See them now as if it is the first time you are seeing them, perhaps even the first time you are seeing another human being. Make it be the first time you are holding their hand, the first time you are holding any hand. What a wonderfully fulfilling experience it is to hold this incredible being’s hand.

  5. Do not remember any pre-existing story that your partner has told about themselves. Listen instead to whatever story they are creating about themselves in that moment and repeat it back to them so that they know you heard their story. Know that the story they are telling now, no matter what that story is, once it is heard can completely vanish, as if it never existed. Then, an entirely new and different story can take its place.

  6. Make surprises. Surprises do not involve money or gifts. Surprises do not involve physical objects or props. Surprises are delightful theater pieces created through wrapping you and your partner into unexpected qualities of space. Surprises are not practical jokes or gags. No one is insulted. No one looks bad. Surprises come from you going nonlinear into a possibility that was invisible just a moment ago and did not occur to anyone else. Learn to shift identity, to speak in different accents, take on a wide variety of characters, go sideways into parallel conversations, adopt extraordinary viewpoints and consider staying there and going back there often.

  7. Be early. Do not make your partner wait for you. Think ahead and be proactive. Learn to move faster than the speed of time. That means do whatever it takes, without rushing, to arrive where you intended to be before the clock gets there. Get present before your partner arrives. Truly enjoy yourself while waiting for your partner to join you.

  8. Ordinary human relationships involve a kind of mutual vampire feeding, “I’ll do this for you if you do that for me.” These relationships will never rise above the ordinary. Whatever you provide for your partner do not make them pay. Provide extraordinary love for free, as if you had an infinitely inexhaustible supply.

  9. Take care of your energetic body. Make it so that you have a surplus of energy for your partner rather than being a drag on them. Flow energy to your partner rather than wanting them to flow energy to you. There may be times when you ask your partner to listen to your pain, but do not make their listening to your pain the main meal of your relationship. Your partner is not mommy or daddy. When you need them to listen to your pain, ask if you can share something with them; say that you do not expect them to do anything about it, but to be-with you. If you do want them to do something, then be specific and ask them directly: “Would you hold me please?” “Would you get the kids in bed tonight?” Do not expect your partner to be manipulated into action by your victim story.

  10. Take care of your physical body. Your physical body is probably the only physical body that your partner gets to play with. Keep it clean, pretty, strong, and in tip-top shape for being played with rigorously. This particularly does not mean preoccupation with trying to make your body like the computer augmented magazine photos! Your partner is not attracted to you because of your tan, your eye makeup, or the size of your penis or breasts. They are attracted to you because you enjoy being yourself, exactly as you are. Your physical body has its own unique state of wellness and radiant health. Take care to have that.

  11. Take care of your intellectual body by studying, engaging in stimulating conversation, attending talks and workshops and seminars that interest you. Feed yourself a steady diet of nonlinear high-meme-content intellectual foods. Do not depend only on your partner for your intellectual nourishment.

  12. Take care of your emotional body by continuously knowing the difference between feelings and emotions. Seek the immediacy of your feelings. Clean up the contaminating residue of your emotions. Your emotional healing process is none of your partner’s business. Handle it maturely yourself. Do not use your partner as surrogate therapist, psychologist, doctor, healer, nurse, teacher, or parent. It is not your partner’s job to heal you. It is your partner’s job to enjoy your company. So, be good company.

  13. Clean up messes. Messes get in the way of perceiving subtle joys of life like dog poop gets in the way of rolling in fresh green grass. A little dog poop can stink up a whole room. A dirty dish or kid’s toy can destroy the elegant sanctuary of your home like a cigarette butt destroys the wa (meaning harmony) of a Japanese garden. Consistently scan with an “eagle eye” for messes that you can put into order. (There is a difference between an “eagle eye” and a “neurotically critical eye.�
�� Use the former. Avoid the latter.) There are little messes everywhere. Even if it is not your mess, you can clean it up as a matter of course with almost no effort. Be careful though. One person’s mess is another person’s museum. Respect the idiosyncratic needs of your partner’s Box. For example, Do not touch their desk! Do not put anything on their desk except at a designated in-box.

  14. Make elegance. Elegance effervesces from revealed details. If you do not have an organic experience of what elegance is, learn. Elegance can radiate from a cleaned room. Elegance can radiate from simple furniture, fine art, carefully prepared food, well-spoken words. Elegance can radiate from the way you move your attention in empty space, how you say, “Good morning,” how you open a door, or how you enjoy your partner’s smile.