When Cynthia created a responsible story about her father’s suicide, the results were remarkably different. To create the responsible story in this example, Cynthia asked herself, “Who picked my parents?” and answered that question by affirming that she did. The choice was hers…as our choices are ours. Suddenly it was clear that she was not a victim at all, but had actually had a part in setting the whole thing up. Through creating a responsible story Cynthia claimed the responsible power of choice.
By choosing to adopt a responsible perspective today, we get to see how we set things up for ourselves all along the way, and then derived benefit from having an outstanding victim story for all the previous years.
When we create a responsible story about what happens, we vibrate with a different sort of power. We have responsible power, the power of ownership, the power of causing to be, the power of being at source. Choosing to create responsible stories about what happens to us creates high drama and opens the doors to extraordinary human relationship.
Instead of saying, “I do not have time for this,” as a victim, we responsibly say, “I will not make time for this.” Instead of saying, “I can’t do this,” as a victim, we responsibly say, “Until now I have always chosen not to do this.” It soon becomes clear that of the two stories we could create about what happens to us, victim or responsible, the responsible story gives us more power.
Now we come to an even more interesting question, the Archetypal question: Of the two stories we could create about what happens to us, which story is true?
What a puzzling question! Which story is true?
Some of us think that the victim story is true because what happened to us really did happen to us. We really were victimized. Therefore we really are victims. Those of us dedicated to creating victim stories tend to live in ordinary human relationships.
Some of us think that the responsible story is true, because we cannot avoid responsibility so easily. Regardless of what happens to us, we cannot deny the fact that it is we who made the choices that got us into those specific circumstances so that these precise things could happen. We could have made other choices and we did not, so we are responsible for making it happen exactly that way. Those of us who declare and step into responsible stories tend to live in extraordinary human relationships.
But there remains this nagging question: Which of the two stories is true?
Try answering the question, “Which story is true?” with another question: “How could a story be true?”
Stories are stories. There is no such thing as a true story. How can a story be true? No matter how convincing a story is, no matter how useful a story is, a story is just a story, a fiction, an editorialized point of view.
Unconsciously made, a story is an interpretation of circumstances slanted to produce a certain meaning that is useful for supporting our Box’s unconscious purpose: low drama.
Consciously made, a story can be useful for supporting us being our destiny Principles in action: high drama.
In either case, we use stories to create the theatrical performances we call relationship. We make up a story and then we walk into the universe of conditions created by that story as if the conditions were actually true. We play our characters as if our lives depended on it, even though we just wrote the script ourselves!
Taking an Archetypal step beyond stories requires tremendous courage. Can you admit that no matter how grim or how funny your piece of theater is, it is still theater? If so, you free yourself of the confines of any particular story and you become a story maker. Taking actions from the realization that I am the story maker is part of radical responsibility. Radical responsibility is based on the tacit, irrefutable understanding that every story is a fiction. Using radical responsibility, the story maker goes ahead and consciously makes stories anyway, not because they are true but because they are useful. Taking radical responsibility for being the story maker permits us to produce stories where we can behave with kindness, generosity, and compassion with ourselves and with others, no matter what the circumstances.
MAP OF STORIES
When something happens we do not leave it as neutral. We create a story about it. If we want to use what happened for doing low drama we create a victim story. If we want to use what happened for doing high drama we create a responsible story. Of the two kinds of stories it is the responsible story that gives us more power. But which story is true? How can a story be true? Are you ready to take radical responsibility as the story maker?
But, responsibly observing the stories we make may reveal another pattern: that Gremlin is controlling our in-house movie projector. We may have a long history of making stories that include propositions such as: I can’t. It is impossible. You are wrong. That is not fair. It is not my fault. You are bad. You are stupid. You hurt me. I hate you. I am better than you. I can get away with this. This does not apply to me. You betrayed me. I don’t trust you. I will get back at you, and so on. Radical responsibility reveals the true intention of these stories: to serve the unconscious Shadow Principles of our hidden purpose. Taking responsibility for being the story maker assumes our willingness to find ourselves personally responsible for hurting other people and feeling glad about it. This makes responsible self-observation risky. What we see may not be a pretty sight.
Observing the intention of our stories does not mean trying to change our victim stories to responsible stories. This could lead to us regarding victim stories as “bad” and responsible stories as “good.” Victim stories are not “bad.” Victim stories are just victim stories and produce certain known and predictable results, namely low drama and ordinary human relationship. Responsible stories are not “good.” Responsible stories are just responsible stories and produce certain known and predictable results, namely high drama and extraordinary human relationship. The whole “good vs. bad” dichotomy is itself an irresponsible Shadow Principle, and automatically produces the likes of the Catholic Inquisition and Nazi death camps that typically proceed in our mind and heart during ordinary human relationship. Replacing victim stories with responsible stories is a process that occurs gradually, over time, through the painful experience of redemption. We are redeemed when objective impersonal remorse about creating victim stories becomes so intense in our moment-centered experience that it is too painfully ridiculous to continue creating victim stories.
We slip into Archetypal Relationship reflexively through a shift of context. Included in the shift of context is the awareness that, “I am the story maker. I make up no story accidentally. Every story is meaningless, and, every story has a purpose. Either I am not aware of the purpose of my story – in which case I serve unconscious purposes and I enter ordinary human relationship – or I am aware of the purpose of my story, in which case I serve conscious purposes and I enter extraordinary human relationship.” The context of Archetypal Relationship has such clarity about story making that you can let all stories pass, as if they were a series of waves and you were a surfer. Keep this distinction in mind – you are the surfer, not the wave. The wave does not automatically drag the surfer along. With each wave (each story) that comes along you have several choices – to ride it without consciously choosing, thereby giving the story importance and power; to ride it consciously, knowing that it is only a story; or not to ride it at all, thereby letting the wave slide by you and crash purposelessly on the seashore.
Freedom from the meaningfulness of stories does not imply freedom from stories. There will always be stories. You may as well use stories that let you walk through your day with some bounce in your step. For example, no matter what has happened to you so far in your life, and no matter what previous stories you have so far used, you could make up an entirely new story right now that releases you from being a victim of all of your previous victim stories. Your new story would be a responsible story. It could go something like this: “I am so grateful for everything that has happened to me so far, no matter how painful it was at the time, be
cause what happened has given me the wisdom to make better choices now.”
The new story is you taking full responsibility for creating your past circumstances just exactly the way they went, so that you could learn all that you needed to learn to get exactly here, in this moment, in this book. The new story tells how you start over at this point to create an interesting, challenging, love-filled future, full of experiments in relationship and adventures delivering your full contribution to humanity.
SECTION 12-C
No Such Thing As Relationship
One of the many unquestioned stories planted into our Box by our culture establishes what we – from then on – assume is the nature of relationship. Ask anybody about their relationship and they will tell you about their joys, their communication problems, what habits they wish their partner would change, and their future hopes and worries. Implicit in everything they say is the idea that they “have” a relationship and that their relationship is a real thing. It is the “thing”-ness that we assume about relationship that locks us into certain narrow conclusions, and prevents us from accessing a wide range of other interesting options.
Concluding that relationships exist as a thing subjects our interactions to the laws of physicality. If our relationship is a thing, we can change it, work on it, build it, destroy it, take care of it, threaten it, protect it, start it, or end it. A thing is like a house. It has physical characteristics that persist all by themselves. You can go on vacation and when you come back your house is still there. But if I ask you to show me your relationship, you cannot do it. You may point to your partner, or to your ring, or to your wedding certificate, but these are only a person, a ring and a piece of paper. They are not your relationship. Where is your relationship?
What if relationship is not a thing at all? What if the idea that relationship is a thing is only a superstition? What if there is no such thing as a relationship?
If relationship is not a thing, what is it then? Consider the idea that rather than being a thing, relationship is a space. If relationship is a space, then all of a sudden relationship has an immense amount of flexibility and aliveness that it did not have just a moment before when it was as a thing. If your relationship is a space, then your relationship only exists in those moments when you are regarding it into existence. There is nothing there until you enliven it through relating. If your relationship is not a thing, then it has no past and no future, no story and no fantasy. You can make of it whatever you want to make of it, right now. You cannot count on your relationship to continue to exist without you putting your attention on and flowing energy to your partner. The quality of attention you give and the energy you flow is then the quality of your experience of relationship. Relationship is a space that you can live into through your way of being, feeling, communicating and acting. Your way can be any style that you want. You do not have to be a certain way. Your partner or children do not have to be a certain way. And, you cannot know what to expect. None of your old relationship assumptions or expectations work anymore. There is just this space of possibility between you and another person that holds a potential of excitement. It is a doorway to the unknown that can become whatever you can make of it with each other now. Each night your relationship vanishes completely. Each next morning you can bring it alive in some surprising new way. Your relationship unfolds as you ongoingly create into the possibility that being together is for you. Each moment of your relating is no longer held within the physical constraints of having to be now what it was just a moment before. In each instant, the relationship unfolds exactly the way you create it happening in that instant.
“Relationship Gets in the Way of Intimacy” – E. J. Gold
Ordinary human relationship occurs between Boxes. Person A’s Box interacts with person B’s Box. Our Box lets another person come no closer to us than the edges of our Box. Their Box does the same. Box meets Box. That is the limit of ordinary human relationship. No amount of psycho-emotional processing will allow two Boxes to enter intimacy because the ordinary purpose of our Box is to create and sustain separation between Boxes. Our seeming separation guarantees the preservation of what we have come to believe is our “self,” but which is actually just our Box.
Archetypal Relationship occurs between beings. During intimacy, the Box is simply ignored as if it were an irrelevant, surrealistic illusion, an unwatched television. Intimacy operates in a dimension that is very different from the dimension of Box mechanics. While intimately being-with another being, the Box’s writhing gestures do not apply. This does not mean that somehow the Box magically stops writhing. It does not. This means simply that we distinguish the Box’s writhing as the Box’s writhing, and that its writhing does not apply. There are no reasons for intimacy.
The more our being grows, the more it hungers for extended exposure to authentic intimacy. Intimacy comes in a variety of qualities, just like wine. Without an education in differentiating the various qualities of wine, we may overpay for cheap rotgut, or worse, we may knock back a glass of something truly transformational and miss the whole experience. The same applies to intimacy. Without an education to help us discern among various qualities of intimacy, we may soil ourselves with codepen-dent fighting and fucking (pardon my French) and think that this is as good as it gets. There are two typical patterns to achieving pseudo-intimacy, both involve fighting and fucking. Here is a short class on what to avoid.
Fighting Then Fucking Pattern #1: We finally get so pissed off that we go for the throat. The fighting is so vicious and destructive that both people’s automatic defense mechanisms overload and fry. The smoke slowly clears. For the moment, amidst the rubble of blasted structures, our Boxes can no longer defend themselves. A temporary pseudo-intimacy arises. By next morning each Box has reassembled itself and realizes that intimacy occurred. The Boxes recoil from each other and automatically reestablish separateness. Three or four weeks go by and the pattern is repeated.
Fighting Then Fucking Pattern #2: Our Box classifies every person into one of two types: enemy or friend. Our enemies vastly outnumber our friends. With enemies our Box engages in constant energetic warfare so as to conquer them. With friends our Box engages in seductive sexual flirtation so as to control them. Neither the fighting nor the fucking are authentic, only desperate affectation and pretense. Our fighting and fucking both prevent true intimacy.
If you recognize either one of these patterns, try to find something else.
The dictionary defines relationship as “emotional involvement, an emotional connection between people, connection by blood or marriage,” etc. In contrast to relationship, the term “intimacy” is defined as “warm friendship, closeness, affection, familiar feeling, cozy, next to the skin, communion, contact with the innermost or essential nature…”
Which do you choose? Emotional involvement or communion of being? Relationship or intimacy? The quality of the experiences you arrange to have with the people closest to you in your life results from consciously or unconsciously choosing between relationship and intimacy. Ordinary human relationship gets in the way of intimacy.
The emotional involvement of ordinary human relationship may actually be a desire for one or more of the following:
• Having a good excuse to feel – even though it is “false ecstasy,” at least low drama lets you feel something
• Feeling pain to confirm that you actually exist
• Finding a partner to engage in the “I’m okay”-“I’m not okay” intellectual debate
• Finding a partner for domination / submission or persecutor / victim games
• Seeking a hero with a white horse to come play the “rescue me” game
• Avoiding the reality of existential loneliness
• Satisfying your craving for what you believe to be emotional or financial security
• Feeding your addiction to the drug-like high of energetic enmeshment / entanglement / fusion / or co-dependency
• Finding a pa
rtner for intellectual combat, finding a Daddy or Mommy replacement
• Finding a surrogate baby
• Forging interdependency (meaning finding someone to take the blame for responsibilities)
• Establishing a guaranteed food supply for certain psychological-vampire structures in your Box.
Sooner or later you have to ask yourself this question: If the above list seems so repulsive, why does it perfectly describe most of our relationships?
Clearly seeing how deviously and profoundly your Box influences the quality of your relating can be shocking. If you have properly prepared yourself, the shock will start an internal wrestling match between two parts: the part in you that wants to keep things safely in the domain of ordinary human relationship and the part of you that wants to risk entering greater and greater intimacy. If you are lucky, the struggle between these two parts could keep you on guard for the rest of your life. Consider the idea that almost everything that happens in our relationship (cooking, washing, earning money, raising kids, owning a house, having a party, solving problems, doing your projects, going on vacation, even having sex), you can do all by yourself. Without creating a safe space for ongoing intimate sharing and being-with your partner, there isn’t really any relationship.
It is painful to watch your Box repeatedly exchange the pristine sanctuary of intimacy for the emotional conundrum of superficiality. Nonetheless, you can fruitfully benefit from this pain. Follow the pain back to its source and you may uncover a turning point in your life: possibly the point where you decided that true intimacy was too frightening. The point at which, instead of risking intimacy, you decided for survival. You installed a block. Until you consciously change your original commitment to that block, it could still be doing its job.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 52