Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  I have been caught, like a monkey with his hand around an apple in a jar. No way will I let go of that apple. No way will the jar let go of me.

  Now that I know what I have been looking for, You tell me that it is not permanent, and that the method for gaining access to it again is out of my control?

  Well, that sucks. And… I would not trade it for anything in the world.

  And yet, for right now, I cannot stay here any longer. I must break from You. I stand up and walk away. I leave the space. I go about my business. My experience of You unavoidably drifts into the realm of memories. That jungle of memories. Such a shame. So disrespectful that the most valuable treasure would sink into the same swamp with memories of pain, failure, and ordinary life. What else can I do? You are gone into the past. I am still in the present, and helpless.

  Time goes by. Days. I breathe, walk, see, talk. Everyday life creeps back in and normal overlays the extraordinary. But, not all the way. I notice that there is something different now, forever changed.

  There is a place around my heart that aches. It never ached like this before. So tenderly, so insistently. I experientially know what is possible for a human being now. I cannot deny what I know. And since it was a personal experience, neither can anyone dissuade me. My old view of life has been irreparably shattered, replaced with direct knowledge of a world that is vaster, more alive, and filled with a mysteriously wonderful heart-rending awe. The aching remains. It is the ache of longing to have You visit with me again. Now I know what is the most important thing. I want nothing else.

  I want to hoard You. I want to command You to return to me immediately, whenever I desire it. And, at the same time, I somehow know that You will not let me possess the key. You will come whenever it pleases You. There is no key.

  Now it is my turn to wait. Can’t You see? I have been had. I have worked all my life for this. My heart longs for the tiniest assurance that there will be a next time. Please don’t make me wait too long. Please.

  I am waiting…

  SECTION 15-B

  Countenance at 30,000 Feet

  Around 1988 (plus or minus five years), I read an article in a national news magazine. It was a long and unusual letter sent in by a reader who told of a life-changing experience that touched me deeply. Back then I had no idea what the man was talking about. Now I think that the man had his first experience with Countenance.

  At the time this story happened the writer was a passenger on a commuter jet. He was sitting in the front row of an economy-class night flight. The weather was extremely stormy. Something happened and suddenly the plane was going down.

  Fear broke out everywhere, but of course, there was nothing anyone could do. The pilot gave the command for all crewmembers to buckle into their seats. A stewardess pulled down the folding chair mounted on the bulkhead directly opposite the man. She strapped herself in. Then she looked at the man straight in his eyes. He looked back.

  Neither the man nor the stewardess knew what was going to happen. All they knew was this: that they did not know what was going to happen. The dissolution of certainty about the next moment brought them both suddenly into the immediate present with each other. Their minds stopped chatting because, in the present, their minds had no way to know what to chat about. Their attention was totally focused and alert because of the immanent danger. They were prepared to die because the option was out of their control. There was nothing better to look at than each other.

  Then the space shifted. Time disappeared. The man wrote about how he fell into an immense and unconditional Love for this woman who the moment before was a complete stranger, a nameless stewardess on an airplane bound for some city. Finding themselves in the middle of Archetypal Love, neither of them looked away.

  The lifelong cement wall around the man’s heart crumbled away while the two of them were locked together in the whole body experience of what we might assume was Countenance. He had never in his life encountered an intimacy that was so accepting, so open, or so total as this. The intensity grew and grew. Minutes went by and he just kept breathing, being-with her more and more. This woman stayed with him too. She was not afraid. His faults were obvious and she did not turn away. The man could only bask in her beauty and feminine radiance.

  Then the plane crashed. All hell broke loose. The shear physical violence and thunder of exploding engines and ripping metal shattered the space. Flashes in the night. The total unrelenting chaos of absolute destruction. Time passed. Things settled down. The man found that he was still alive, not too badly hurt. A miracle! Although I forget the details now, I imagine that perhaps he regained consciousness in a hospital the next morning. He remembered the stewardess and asked for her. She was killed in the crash.

  The story never ends for this man. He was a normal businessman – with wife, kids, job. But his life changed. The veil was ripped away in those moments of Countenance while the plane was going down. The man’s life was changed because from that moment on he could neither forget nor deny that Countenance existed. And he didn’t even have a name for it.

  This man wrote his letter to the magazine years later in hopes that someone else knew what had happened between him and the stewardess. He wanted to find someone else who could understand what he was talking about. At the time, I had no clue. I only knew that his letter touched a longing deep within me that, before then, was dormant. Now he and I could have an interesting conversation. Are you still out there, my friend? Talk to me.

  If you, reader, know of this article, could you please send me a copy? I tried to find it and had no luck. I would like to read it again. If you know of this man, could you please ask him to call me? I would love to meet him.

  SECTION 15-C

  The Map of the Evolution of Self and Relationship

  The explanations that accompany this series of energetic diagrams are brief and contain any number of inexcusable generalizations. Your life experience may differ greatly from what is described. At the same time, when you review what happened to you and what may be happening now with you or with your own children, these diagrams can provide significant clarity about what is or has been going on for you in your relationship. These maps cover the evolution of self and relationship from before ordinary human relationship begins all the way through the far fringes of Archetypal Relationship.

  MAP OF CHILD TO ADOLESCENT

  A child lives in their parents” home, eats their parents” food, spends their parents” money, and follows their parents” rules. In order to survive, a child adapts their Box to fit with their parents” Boxes. The level of behavior adaptation may be extreme. At early adolescence a healthy child wants to get out. They do whatever it takes to make the break. Healthy parents facilitate the transition out into the world. But a child in the world is still a child, naïve and without clarity about his or her center, space or Purpose.

  MAP OF EARLY ADOLESCENT RELATIONSHIP

  The adolescent in the world experiences raw energy without boundaries or distinctions. The purpose of actions is unclear. Sexual energy is mixed with Principle energies and Archetypal energies. Sexual energy is exchanged indiscriminately with anyone in the gang because it feels good, or at least it feels interesting. Flirtation at shopping malls or parties is stimulating but temporary, and ultimately unfulfilling. At some point a relationship of more stability may be sought. Since a rite of passage is not provided by the culture, substitute experiences, created by the adolescent, may be quite dangerous.

  MAP OF LATER ADOLESCENT RELATIONSHIP

  We search for intimacy without clarity about personal spaces, so we duplicate the co-dependency we experienced at home. We are involved in our partner's space and they in ours, enmeshed. They belong to us and we belong to them. We know what they think and feel almost before they do, and we enable each others' neurotic defense strategies. We experience irresponsible intimacy that feels like subtle jolts of electric ecstasy. It can be an emotional roller coaster of low drama. We give our center away a
nd use adaptive behavior to manipulate for validation. Fusion feels like a drug dependency. This may be our understanding of what is to be "friends." Long hard work may be required to extricate ourselves from fusion, but until we do we have no hope of entering extraordinary human relationship.

  In the early 1990s my men’s group first informed me that I only created enmeshed, fused relationships, and that in fact I had no idea what it was to experience mature adult friendship among men. We had been meeting regularly for over a year. I already trusted these men. I had already repeatedly experienced their uncanny ability to hit a nail on the head at exactly the right moment, so when they landed this hammer on me I could only surrender to the truth of it. I was totally blind and stuck, and relied heavily on their guidance. Of my own volition I ended all informal contact with both men and women until such time as the falling apart could complete itself and something else could begin growing out of the ashes. It took longer than a year. The beginnings of new contact began of its own accord and was a startling experience with qualities of a completely different nature. No longer was my personal space enmeshed in the other person’s personal space. We were simply in contact, and not entwined into each other to possess, as had been the case previously. Only then, when I was over forty years old, did I first experience adult responsible relationship. This was one of the hardest periods in my life. Nobody knew me. I am forever grateful to these men for having the courage and integrity to put my face into the reality of my unconscious behavior until, through the pain, I could be reborn. Without that, none of my further explorations of relationship could have been possible. (See next three Maps.)

  MAP OF EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN RELATIONSHIP

  This is the first relationship where we take responsibility for our center and our space. We have few role models for this. Individuality is clearly experienced. If we find a partner also willing to have integrity we discover extraordinary human relationship, based on respect. Our spaces are in contact but not enmeshed. We each have our center. We are conscious of and avoid low drama. We practice to stabilize in the responsible Adult ego state, the gateway to deep Feminine and deep Masculine Archetypes. We can choose, act, decide, create, take risks, communicate and explore, and still be in relationship. Without men's and women's culture for support we may only experience extraordinary human relationship for a few hours on our marriage day, and spend most of our time in fusion and flirtation whenever we are away from the house at work, at parties or while shopping.

  MAP OF RELATIONSHIP AS HIGH DRAMA

  An extraordinary human Adult relationship can itself become the space through which the Principles that it serves can do their work. The relationship then becomes the place where two are gathered in the name of the Principles. Archetypal Relationship can occur. The relationship can serve as the center of a gameworld. There is a slight gap between partners through which the Principles function to serve the organization or project, and also to feed the relationship. High drama relationships are rare.

  MAP OF ARCHETYPAL RELATIONSHIP

  Archetypal masculine meets Archetypal feminine only when certain criteria are met, such as holding space, being centered, being present, paying attention to attention, staying unhookable, and being unafraid to die so that the person can become a space. Notice that in each person's space the person is not there. The individual's space becomes the mouthpiece of a tube conducting Bright Principles and Archetypal Love. Archetypal Love through one can gaze upon and make contact with Archetypal Love through the other. If Archetypal Love becomes conscious of itself through recognizing itself in the other, it completes a circuit and as a side effect creates a physical experience I call Countenance.

  SECTION 15-D

  Self-Sitting – Preparation for Countenance

  Some call it meditation, contemplation, reflection, introspection, recapitulation, self-observation, or prayer. I call it sitting. You may or may not have a practice of sitting. Self-sitting is not unique to the work of discovering radiant joy and brilliant Love. In almost every tradition of self-development or self-discovery throughout history and throughout the world, some form of sitting is practiced. For thousands of years, since well before recorded history, people have used self-sitting as a foundation tool for unifying their mental, emotional, physical and energetic bodies and for developing skills in inner navigation. Not that it matters, but the regular practice of self-sitting is scientifically proven to relieve emotional, mental, physical, and psychic stress, and to facilitate shifts through the liquid state. One of the traditional purposes of sitting is self-knowledge. While searching for this elusive “self” what we do observe and get to know is our Box. Self-sitting is therefore a way to study Box mechanics. Furthermore, self-sitting builds matrix. Because of these effects self-sitting also turns out to be preparation for Countenance.

  This section not intended to be a complete explanation of the practice of self-sitting. Rather, it is a simple invitation to begin an exploration of self-sitting as a practice. It contains only enough information to get you started. What I present here is the form of self-sitting that I have found to be most useful, not necessarily the “best” or only approach.

  You already have many reference points for self-sitting. Every day you spend at least a few minutes in some form of reverie, even if it is only those private moments sitting alone on the toilet. To formally begin a self-sitting practice, however, it is helpful to establish a regime – a sitting time, a sitting place, and a sitting duration. Proactively deciding on these details decreases Gremlin’s interference with its complaints, opinions, reasons and stories. Then, your self-sitting has a chance of feeding something other than your Gremlin.

  My suggestion would be to start with sitting for twenty minutes at 7 AM, for five days a week. After gaining some experience you may wish to increase your self-sitting time to thirty-five minutes, and finally to fifty minutes, which in my view is the maximum self-sitting time at this stage. It can easily take a year or two to reach fifty minutes of self-sitting. Do not rush.

  During self-sitting, your posture is an important factor. Self-sitting can be done on a firm cushion on the floor with legs crossed – either one under the other (crossed legs), or one on top of the other (half-lotus style). You can also sit in Zen style, on your knees with legs at the sides of your cushion, or even in a straight backed chair with your feet flat on the floor. The most crucial element of self-sitting posture is having your spine erect and your head resting directly on top of your spine, with your chin slightly and loosely tucked in. The eyes are usually closed during self-sitting, but half open and unfocused is also fine. Hands rest gently on the knees with the palms down. Shoulders are relaxed. Then be still.

  When you are sitting up straight, motionless, not talking, and not sleeping, then by definition you are self-sitting. It is that simple. As you know, simple does not necessarily mean easy. Thoughts, feelings, mental conversations, insights, frustrations, long lost memories, emotions, visions, physical discomforts, disturbing sounds, horrible or inspiring images, reactions, conversations … singly or all mixed together, may invade your experience during self-sitting. Or, perhaps, absolutely nothing will happen. In self-sitting you are not trying to achieve any particular goal. For example, there are no better or worse sittings. There is no such thing as a perfectly accomplished “sit.” The Box can go crazy when it discovers the paradox that it is equally impossible to succeed as it is to fail while sitting. All in all, the details of your sitting experience are not important. What is important is that you sit with consistency.

  In this style of sitting you do not focus on mental imagery (called yantra) to rid yourself of thoughts; you do not chant a word or sound (called mantra) to yourself; you do not hold your hands or fingers in any special position (called mudra), and especially you do not focus on or try to manipulate or control your breathing (called pranayama). Strategic imagery, chanting, finger positions or breath control may be central to other sitting traditions, but not in this form of self-si
tting. Self-sitting is neither superior nor inferior to any other method of sitting. For best matrix-building results it is suggested to not mix methods.

  On one hand, try not to involve yourself with what comes up during self-sitting. If something comes up, notice that it has come up, and when you notice that it has come up, gently return to just sitting. On the other hand, what comes up during self-sitting may be something that you wish to have happened. In that case be sure to write down your experiences afterwards. Writing is a transformational action in that putting ink marks on paper gives physicality to what was previously just a subjective and transient experience. If you do not write it down, then it was only imaginary and did not actually happen, because without being recorded in writing, subjective experiences fade into the memory horizon. Words on paper remain in the physical world like dormant memetic viruses, ready to jump back to life in a reader’s mind and cause changes in behavior. The reason you have this book in your hands right now is that I followed this suggestion to record certain valuable experiences in writing.

  There are no purposes in self-sitting other than to sit. You sit because you have taken on sitting as your practice. Archetypal Man or Woman gradually develops a life that is generated moment-to-moment out of nothing but practice. After some time, you may begin to notice that your Principles take the opportunity of your self-sitting to deliver you with your instructions for the day. Responsibly using such input requires that you discriminate between instructions from your Principles and voices from your Box. Be careful not to fool yourself. One way to distinguish between the two is that Principles do not have voices. Principles simply move you.