Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  MAP OF THE PURPOSE OF RELATIONSHIP

  Why are you in relationship?

  The Archetypal Purpose of Relationship is Evolution.

  Use the Active Form of “What Is”

  You do not have to understand this next paragraph to continue reading in this book, but if you do understand it, then you needed it to continue.

  If you are aware of the illusion of opposites (e.g., the illusion that light and dark are opposites because you cannot have one without the other), you also recognize that using the perspective that time flows from the future through the present and into the past is naïve. I bring this up because I have suggested that the Archetypal purpose of relationship is evolution. The standard understanding of evolution is that evolution drather consciousness of “evolution happening” now.epends on the flow of time. We ordinarily imagine that things slowly or suddenly evolve during a passage of time. By saying that the Archetypal purpose of relationship is evolution I am not associating relationship with a past-present-future “trying to achieve a goal” flow-of-time orientation. Nondualistic clarity sees the eternal now as having no flow of time. To understand the overall purpose of relationship as evolution without discounting the Archetypal clarity of the nondual perspective that the eternal now has no time flow, you must have the additional clarity that, in the timeless eternal now there are actually two forms of “what is.” There is a passive form of “what is” and an active form of “what is.” The passive form of “what is” is accepting what is, as it is, here and now in the moment without judgment (Swami Prajnanpad). The active form of “what is” is conscious creation. In the same way that creating does not happen in time and only happens now, evolution also only happens now. Archetypal Relationship lives in the orientation that what happens now is either accepted or created, both of which include conscious responsibility. Archetypal Relationship is not about trying to evolve into something different in the future but rather consciousness of “evolution happening” now.

  SECTION 12-B

  Radical Responsibility

  Learning how to function in Archetypal conditions starts with you taking responsibility for having the potential to represent Archetypal Masculine and Feminine forces. Since Archetypal understanding is not provided to us by our culture, the first steps in gaining that understanding on your own can be a little shocking. It is important to allow yourself time and space to grow accustomed to handling the sharpness of the clarity that is characteristic of Archetypal perspectives. Sharpness is sharp.

  MAP OF ARCHETYPAL / ORDINARY RELATIONSHIP

  ADULT EGO STATE IS THE GATEWAY TO

  MASCULINE AND FEMININE ARCHETYPES

  BEING THE SPACE THROUGH WHICH THE PRINCIPLES THAT YOU SERVE CAN DO THEIR WORK

  As a college student, I was home visiting my parents over Christmas. I had been practicing fencing in college and was eager to show off my swordfighting talents to my girlfriend. My parents were not at home and I took advantage of the opportunity by removing one of the two Spanish swords from a false shield-at-arms that an interior decorator had mounted over my parents’ living room fireplace. The blade of the sword was not sharpened, but the sword was pointed and made out of steel. I parried and lunged around the living room, barefoot, proudly showing off as best I could. Then, when my demonstration was over, I absentmindedly let the sword drop to my side, assuming unconsciously that, since it was a fake sword, I did not have to take any of the usual precautions. In one swift move the sword sliced open the top of my right foot. I still carry the scar today, a reminding factor that handling sharpness requires extraordinary and unbroken attention. The same is true with the sharpness of Archetypal perspectives. Handle them with care. No matter if a clay water pitcher hits a rock, or a rock hits the pitcher, it is going to be bad for the pitcher. Diamond clarity easily slices through illusion wherever it touches the illusion. Holding Archetypal perspectives requires more than ordinary responsibility. Holding Archetypal perspectives requires radical responsibility.

  For example, from the Archetypal perspective, everything that happens is neutral and completely without meaning. If something happens it does not happen for a reason and does not imply anything. When something happens, it happens without any story attached. There is no good or bad, no better or worse, no right or wrong, and no positive or negative. From the Archetypal perspective, what is, is, just as it is, without implication and without meaning. Your job is to be neutrally present to what is on all levels, to accept what is, just as it is here and now, without judgment.

  From the Archetypal perspective, there is no such thing as a problem. “Problem” is a human term invented to establish a dramatic relationship between a person and a specific set of conditions. Defining a problem as a problem is completely subjective and changes from person to person, from moment to moment and from situation to situation. One person’s problem is another person’s perfect paradise.

  From the Archetypal perspective, you cannot be “in” a situation, because you manufactured the perspective that creates the opinion that you are “in” a situation in the first place. There is no situation without a person there to claim that they are “in” this particular situation. Without the person’s story about the circumstances, there exist merely neutral, unconnected circumstances.

  From the Archetypal perspective it is impossible to be a victim. Consciously or unconsciously, you made the choices and took the actions that got you into those exact circumstances, whatever they are. Pretending to be a victim of the circumstances is simply a theatrical role that you would play in order to serve unconscious Shadow Principles, thereby causing an energetic exchange to feed your Gremlin. In the Archetypal view, you cannot choose to take or not take responsibility. You are responsible. Irresponsibility is a delusion.

  If you are sick, you are sick, no story about being punished. If you lost your keys, you lost your keys; it does not mean you are stupid. If you win a contract or lose a contract, either way it has no meaning about the value of your work. There may be consequences to what happens. There may be after effects or side effects to what you do or do not do, but even the consequences do not mean anything. It does not even mean anything that the consequences do not mean anything!

  The perspective that everything is neutral can at first seem to be inhuman. For example, how could it be neutral that someone is raped or beaten or robbed? How could it be meaningless if millions of innocent people are killed in political upheavals? That children are enslaved or sexually molested? That animals are routinely tortured? There must be meaning to the “terrorist attack” on the World Trade Center! Or to the devastation of tropical rain forests! To ignore the meaning of such atrocities seems completely inhuman. Read On!

  Whereas we were previously exploring ordinary human relationship and extraordinary human relationship, we are now exploring Archetypal Relationship. In the phrase Archetypal Relationship you will notice that the word “human” is missing. That omission is on purpose. The reason that human beings do not enter the domain of Archetypal Relationship is because human beings as originally packaged are too cumbersome. Human beings come with their Box. The Boxes used by us human beings to give ourselves the secure feeling of having an identity are meaning-making machines. The entry-way to Archetypal territories is too narrow to bring ordinary Boxes along. Taking radical responsibility cuts away the entanglements created by the meaning-making machinery of the Box. But it also cuts away ordinary and extraordinary humanness.

  MAP OF PARALLEL CULTURES

  Standard Western culture is classified at child level responsibility because a child makes messes and does not clean them up (e.g., toxic nuclear wastes, deforestation, greenhouse gasses, non-sustainable lifestyles, etc.). Parallel cultures centered on taking greater levels of responsibility are becoming more plentiful and more powerful. For example, the number of known international NGOs has grown from 6,000 in 1990 to 26,000 in 2000. (Source: High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them, by J. F. Rischard, p.48). R
eading a book such as Radiant Joy Brilliant Love may contribute to shifting into a parallel culture of higher responsibility.

  You do not have to worry about becoming inhuman, superhuman, nonhuman or subhuman. Shifting to Archetypal is not volitional, meaning that you cannot just decide to go there. You can only put yourself into a position of necessity as a proposal to enter the Archetypal. The Archetypal itself decides if shifting you would serve the Archetypal. Shifting to Archetypal gives you no freedom from conscience, from moral principles, or from respecting human dignity. Quite the opposite is true. Shifting to Archetypal occurs spontaneously in response to objective necessity, and such necessity only arises if you have appropriately prepared yourself. One of those preparations is taking radical responsibility for conscience, for Principles, and for dignity.

  If you do enter the Archetypal you will find that the shift unleashes tremendous energy reserves that were previously consumed in dealing with human meanings. The extra energy is powerful. Aligning yourself to Archetypal forces makes you a conductor of Archetypal power. What you soon realize is that, although you have access to Archetypal power, the power is not yours. The power cannot be used to accomplish the Box’s or the Gremlin’s purposes. Archetypal power can only be used to accomplish Archetypal tasks and purposes.

  We are accustomed to the many shortcuts and loopholes in the rules for using power in the ordinary human domains. Moving into extraordinary human domains, there are fewer rules but also fewer loopholes. Fewer excuses are accepted. The rules are broken with greater consequence. In Archetypal domains the rules apply even more strictly. There are chambers and spaces where there may even be but one rule for using power, but that rule applies absolutely. Understanding and following that rule requires radical responsibility.

  Take Radical Responsibility for Feelings

  Here is an eye-opening experiment about feelings from the Archetypal domain. Read and think along with this conversation between a trainer and a participant.

  Trainer: “What do you think about this pencil?”

  Participant: “I think the pencil is yellow, has bite marks, and needs to be sharpened.”

  Trainer: “Thank you. What do you feel about this pencil?”

  Participant: “I feel like I would rather use my pen instead of that pencil.”

  Trainer: “That is a thought, not a feeling. I am asking what you feel about the pencil, not what you would prefer to do or not do with the pencil. There are four feelings: anger, sadness, joy and fear. In your statement there is a hidden feeling. Find your feeling and try again. What do you feel about this pencil?”

  Participant: “I feel angry about this pencil because they made me use a pencil like that in English class and I hated my English teacher for not explaining things so I could understand them.”

  Trainer: “Thank you. Could you feel scared about this pencil?”

  Participant: “Yes. I could feel scared about this pencil because I have a black scar in my finger where I once fell on a pencil like that and it jabbed me. That pencil could hurt me.”

  Trainer: “Thank you. Could you feel glad about this pencil?”

  Participant: “Yes. I could feel glad about this pencil because I love the way pencil wood smells. It is cedar like they used to make the wooden arrows that I practiced with during summer camp where I had so much fun.”

  Trainer: “Thank you. Could you feel sad about this pencil?”

  Participant: “Yes. I could feel sad about this pencil because I wrote my first love letter with a pencil like this to a girl who already had a boyfriend, and she decided to stay with him and not come to me. After that I did not try to have another girlfriend for ten years.”

  Trainer: “Thank you. So let me review what we just did. I asked you what you thought about this pencil and you told me what you thought. Then I asked you what you felt about this pencil and you said that you felt angry. Then I asked you if you could feel scared about the pencil and you said yes. Could you really feel it? Was it a real feeling?”

  Participant: “Yes. I could really feel the fear.”

  Trainer: “Then I asked you if you could feel glad about the pencil and you said yes, and sad and you said yes.”

  Participant: “Yes, and I could really feel those feelings too.”

  Trainer: “So let me get this straight. I showed you an object. I selected a pencil to use for this experiment, but it could have been any object. You said that you could feel mad, sad, glad or scared about this object. Could you feel all four feelings about any object?”

  Participant: “I guess so. I never thought about it before. Yes, I probably could.”

  Trainer: “Where do your feelings come from?”

  Participant: “I create the experience of my feelings myself, according to the story I tell myself about the object. Each different story creates a different feeling. To change my feeling all I need to do is change my story about the object. This is astonishing!”

  Trainer: “As we began this experiment with the pencil you said that you felt angry about the pencil. Now we see that you could have felt angry, sad, glad or scared about the pencil. But you arranged to feel angry first. If we had stopped the experiment at that point you would have concluded that you actually felt angry about the pencil. But we kept going and you felt all four feelings. Of the four feelings, why did you choose to feel angry first?”

  Participant: “The anger is my first defense. People say I get angry easiest. If I am angry about something, then I do not have to take responsibility for it. It is someone else’s fault. I get to persecute everybody else. It is very safe and normal for me to feel angry first.”

  Radical responsibility with regard to feelings starts when we declare, “I create my feelings. I do not feel a feeling because of any external experience or circumstance. I feel a feeling because I unconsciously create a story that allows me to feel this feeling to best serve my Box’s survival strategies.”

  Take Radical Responsibility for Stories

  Human beings are massively creative. We do not usually think of ourselves as creative. We allow that we might be a little creative at Christmas time when we wrap presents or decorate the house. But in every moment we are creating the stories that we tell to ourselves and to other people – the stories that give meaning to what happens in our lives. We do not tend to notice how voraciously we produce stories, because every three seconds the Box regenerates stories identical to what it created for us in the previous three seconds. This is how the Box keeps things the same; it ongoingly creates the same stories.

  There are two classes of stories that we can create about what happens. By far the most common story we create characterizes us as a victim of the circumstances. That we were a victim seems completely inarguable. The inarguability comes from our habit of interpreting “the facts” to show how we were hurt, insulted, abandoned, betrayed, abused, neglected, etc., forcibly establishing ourselves as a victim in a low drama. Telling a victim story about what happened from the Parent or Child ego states creates ordinary human relationship.

  But we could take the exact same circumstances, the same incident, the same people involved, the same actions, and we could create a responsible story about being involved in these circumstances. Responsible stories place us “at cause” or “at source” for the circumstances. Responsible stories come from the Adult responsible ego state and create extraordinary human relationship.

  Creating responsible stories is a skill, perhaps a new skill. It may not have occurred to us that we could, in every circumstance, create a responsible story showing exactly how we caused, allowed, or, in some conscious or unconscious way, promoted what happened. We may have failed to listen to our intuition, for example, ignored obvious signals, or hesitated with timing, and in this way landed ourselves directly in the situation on purpose, perhaps an unconscious purpose, but still on purpose, even if it was a less than optimal situation.

  What could we possibly gain from creating a less than optimal circumstance for
ourselves? Consider these: A well-crafted victim story attracts kind attention from powerful people, allows us special exceptions, provides acceptable reasons for receiving extra comforts, justifies us taking revenge, undermines frightening intimacy in relationships, and so on. The idea that we could actually be responsible for creating things the way they turned out in every case may be a very startling perspective.

  Cynthia, for instance, could not make the leap to figuring out how to take responsibility for her father committing suicide when she was only nine years old. This one event, about which she had always felt like a powerless victim, had dominated Cynthia’s life decisions and her relationships to men and to authority figures in general.

  When something happens and we make up a story about it, we can choose between making up a victim story or a responsible story. Cynthia wasn’t immediately able to see that her victim story actually robbed her of responsible power. Like Cynthia, if we create a victim story for ourselves, then we get only the irresponsible power to complain, to blame someone else, to feel resentment, to get revenge, to prove ourselves right, or to prove someone else wrong.