To reframe the onerous task of Manmaking into a more interesting perspective, consider yourself as a treasure hunter. Some treasure hunters look for gold, jewels, lost texts, or ancient artifacts. They spend their entire lives tunneling relentlessly through solid rock, dynamiting hillsides, sifting through tons of sand. It is backbreaking work in desolate lands under scorching sun or in damp darkness deep in the bowels of the earth. Why would someone do these things? They would do it for the adventure! For the possibility of finding the treasure! For the joy it gives them to know themselves as a treasure hunter!
You could try this yourself. Try regarding yourself as a treasure hunter. What would be a worthwhile treasure for you to hunt? Here is where you should hunker down in your seat and listen carefully. The following information is not theoretical. It comes from firsthand experience – not only my own. Archetypal Sex can lead directly to an experience of something like extended consciousness. It is like leaving ordinary reality (“dying before you die”) and voyaging deep into the fabric of consciousness itself. Women have the ability to melt into and become ecstatically joined with a bigger consciousness in the moment of orgasm. But there is a crucial point just before the orgasm, one second or some seconds before, where the woman must decide if she is safe enough to enter into this approximation of death. If she is not completely certain that she is securely attended by a Man of attention, she will not or cannot melt and “go extended.” To find this treasure you need a Man with you, awake and present to protect you while you journey away, leaving your body completely vulnerable. With Archetypal Man at your side the treasure hunt can begin. Doesn’t that sound like an interesting enough reason to make yourself a Man?
Archetypal Adoration
Archetypal Adoration takes place in a different domain from chocolates and flowers. Not even a 42-carat “girl’s best friend” will necessarily open the door of Adoration. Archetypal Adoration takes place in a domain that is different from the domain of ordinary social convention and human exchange.
Ordinary human exchange includes expectations, hidden agendas and demands. Since we want to keep our relationships smooth, we normally try to keep our expectations, hidden agendas and demands to ourselves. Keeping them to ourselves does not mean that they are not there. They still deliver their effect in our relationships whether we are trying to hide them or not.
Archetypal Adoration of the Woman by the Man is a response of such absolute purity that in the moment of Archetypal Adoration all the deals we want to make with one another are completely erased. Through a kind of relaxed hyper-attention, the unconscious mind completely disappears and has no influence on the actions that are happening in the space. If the unconscious mind were still influential, the purity would not be high enough to open Archetypal Adoration. This is because the unconscious mind (the Box) always has its little negotiations and counter strategies going on.
In that moment of purity, when Archetypal Adoration is flowing, Woman naturally responds. This is a delicate moment. Both the Adoration and the Woman coming to life are wordless and thoughtless responses to Archetypal Law. The Woman wakes up in the woman and She responds to the Archetypal Man. This is what we have all always wanted from each other.
The new, powerful, hyper-aware Archetypal Woman keeps it safe for the Man to see what has happened. In seeing and being seen by Archetypal Woman, man is confirmed as Man. Archetypal Woman might be tempted to use her newfound power in familiar ordinary woman ways to dominate the man or to try to enjoy the experience of her power alone. This would instantly destabilize Archetypal Woman and bring her back to ordinary woman. Archetypal Woman uses her power tenderly to bring the Man with her in communion on the journey toward the Heart of the Labyrinth.
Conditions for a Happy Accident
Our natural tendency is to grab a hold and try to possess an ecstatic experience so it does not go away. Trying to possess experiences that happen when Archetypal Woman leads Archetypal Man through the Great Labyrinth of Spaces is like ripping the wings off a butterfly because the wings are so beautiful. As soon as man grasps at the experience, Archetypal Woman vanishes. Instantly, the human woman returns and she says, “You always do that! You just ruined the moment!”
Try to develop the habit of letting beauty lead you where the beauty wants to lead you. Avoid acting on your desire to extract and analyze the experience. Beauty is impermanent. Part of experiencing beauty is longing for the experience to endure, and at the same time knowing that the experience is transitory. Learn to have greater and greater longing while making no sudden moves. Enjoy the ride. Grabbing hold decreases the intensity. Learn to ride with your hands waving free. Let it be intense, and just glide. Communion evolves through you learning to sustain the moment.
With years of intention and practice, Archetypal Adoration arises. The Man is in awe, in wonderment, and Woman feels it and responds. When Archetypal Woman is awakened and responds, the two can voyage through a series of spaces where Woman tenderly and lovingly leads the Man into greater and greater intimacies. We end up having a very fine time together or, if sexual play is included, the experience is a great sexual moment.
Afterward, the first thing we naturally want to do is repeat what just happened to us this time, the next time. The mind gets a grip on the memory and decides that, since this memory is just a memory like other memories creating the circumstances that lead to creating another such memory would be as easy as going to see a movie over and over again. You just have to buy a ticket, walk into the theater and sit down to watch the same movie again. But as soon as we actually try to duplicate “the experience,” we discover that it does not work that way. Suddenly the precious uniqueness of the original moment becomes apparent. It was there, and now it is gone, and it can never, ever, be the same again. Original moments become rarer the more we try to duplicate them. We try and try again, but they seem as far away as ever. Finally we can only surrender. Each journey is unique and can only arrive unexpected. We wait.
There are a series of conditions that permit a man to shift into Man so that he becomes the space through which Archetypal Adoration occurs, so that he can place his attention upon his woman in such a way that the woman awakens into Woman and remembers how to guide the Man through the Great Labyrinth of Spaces. Falling into that series of conditions happens almost by accident. However, certain conditions can make us “accident-prone,” conditions that arise as a side effect of practicing the new skills. The way to optimize the possibility of entering that series of spaces is to live in resonance with the context that was experienced during the previous ecstatic journey together. That means, to live our day-to-day relationship on the basis of what we realized during the shift of spaces. We simply dedicate ourselves to obeying the laws of radiant joy and brilliant Love. The specifics of the laws of radiant joy and brilliant Love are the contents of this book.
When you enter a moment of Adoration – Woman has been awakened in a woman and She starts to lead the Man through the Labyrinth – and sex happens, and we know exactly what is happening, and the sex is over, and we go on about our lives and at the same time we are thinking that we want to continue journeying together on and on in these domains of clarity, ecstasy and Archetypal Adoration, it is extremely useful to remember that it only goes further if we are intelligent about living on the basis of what we realized during the shifted spaces.
In practical terms what “being intelligent” means is to take into account the fact that your partner may be able to be a doorway to the Archetypal Man or Woman, but they are not the Archetypal Man or Woman. They are just the doorway. Whenever they are not being the doorway to the Archetypal Man or Woman, you are faced with them dealing with their life as an ordinary human being in an ordinary human body. This means that they have physical needs like enough sleep, proper high-quality food, good water, a healthy nurturing environment, enough exercise, enough money, enough time to simply be, creative projects to be involved in to express their inner life, a desk and shelves and s
torage cabinets of their own, decent clothes, recreation, and education such as books to read that continue to expand their understanding of and provide nutrition for their continued evolutionary relational development.
SECTION 16-D
An Ordinary and Extraordinary Nurturing Environment
Many factors affect the nervous system and the body on all of its physical, energetic, emotional, psychic, auric, and etheric levels. This section will explore what a “healthy nurturing environment” could include, since the ordinary and extraordinary domains always serve as the platforms for setting off on Archetypal voyaging. Keep in mind that these considerations are not intended to be stretched to neurotic extremes or made into rules, and at the same time they are real issues.
A healthy nurturing environment would avoid repeated shocking loud sounds such as trains, highways, subways, airports or construction sites; contaminants such as nuclear power or chemical manufacturing plants, lead-soldered water pipes; late night party music from a disco with a beat that is dissonant to the heart; neighbors who scream and fight with each other or with you; incessantly barking dogs; electro-smog from mobile telephone repeating towers; television station or high-voltage electric wires; neon or fluorescent lighting; an old building with leaded wall paints or asbestos insulation or roof tiles, and so on.
The environment is also not nurturing if every open space is filled with some kind of knick-knack, if it holds things that are not necessary (you can define things as “not necessary” if they are things that you have not used during the last year or two), if it contains gifts or mementos from a person with whom you are no longer actively engaged in a relationship, items passed on from generation to generation that contain family history or significance, too many photographs of ancestors or friends or relatives, artifacts from wars, carpets soiled by other people, kid’s toys scattered everywhere, remnants or reminders of unfinished projects, mass-produced interior design artwork, new age or tourist-faux cultural objects, artificial flowers or plants, live plants that are suffering from lack of sunshine or care, animal hair or animal smells, a buildup of kitchen grease or dirt, and so on.
Your environment becomes healthy and nurturing through care, attention and intention. Every object in your environment has a meaning and a purpose. (If an object does not have a meaning or a purpose then it is just litter.) Every object radiates its purpose and meaning into your environment. The objects in your environment did not get there by accident. This is your environment – an extension of your own mind, heart, body and soul. You are the only one who is totally responsible for an object being there. (This remarkable statement should perhaps be repeated.) When an object is in your environment it is there because you alone permit it to be there. Each object is fulfilling its purpose whether you are aware of what that purpose is or not. Look carefully and slowly around your environment. Pick up and examine each and every object that is there, even in closets, basement, attic, kitchen and medicine chest. What is this object’s purpose? What does it do to the space? What is it for? Why is it here? What does it cause for you and for others? Do you want and need this purpose to be fulfilled in your environment by this object? If not, it is a simple matter to get rid of it.
You can start to create a healthy nurturing environment for yourself and your partner or family by being clear about the purpose of the objects in your spaces and also their relationship to each other. Objects that help to produce a healthy nurturing environment are objects that are placed with a conscious nurturing purpose. The art of placing objects and arranging spaces originated in India and is still practiced today as vaastu. Later, the form spread to China as feng shui.
Some of the things that create a healthy nurturing environment also help to create sacred space, the sanctuary that nurtures the level of respect and conscious attention required for bringing the Woman to life. Consider making one or two parts of your living environment into sacred space, such as your bedroom, a silent sitting room, a bathroom (sacred cleansing chamber), perhaps even your kitchen. When your kitchen is kept as a true sacred space, the food that comes out of your kitchen contains sacred energetic ingredients that feed and nurture more than just the physical body.
Consider removing mirrors, which tend to emphasize and promote vanity and self-consciousness, and replacing them with objective artwork, paintings, lithographs and prints from classical artists. Consider placing sacred artifacts such as bronze statues of deities, or stone or wooden carvings in prominent places in your home. If the pieces come from some culture with which you are not so familiar, make sure that they are intended to invoke Bright Principles rather than Shadow Principles. Some of the pieces coming out of Africa and Southeast Asia that are sold as art these days do not necessarily promote peace, harmony, openness, consciousness and evolution. Be a little careful.
Clearing out extraneous, distracting, cluttering objects from your living spaces helps to promote the well-being and fulfill the physical needs of your partner by providing a healthy nurturing environment.
SECTION 16-E
Archetypal Possibilities in Ordinary Life
In addition to physical needs, your partner also has emotional and psychological needs such as the need for respect, information sharing, appreciation, recognition, humor, and playful repartee. In your daily life together your partner will be going through the usual processes of evolution that may or may not include having to deal with issues from their past. They may or may not have to heal and transform abuses, betrayals, or old decisions about themselves, other people and the world, decisions based on circumstances that no longer exist. The processes that they need to go through are not your fault, nor are they your responsibility to fix. Do not take such processes personally. Your partner may be projecting their mother or father onto you and may attack and blame you for your behavior, but it all may not be about you. Again, try not to take such things personally. Your job is to accept it as it comes up for you or for them to deal with, and to consistently return to the thing that makes your life together precious and real, the important thing: bringing the Woman to life and navigating space to the center of the Labyrinth. Let the Archetypal aspect of your life together be what is real and significant, and let the rest of your life be of secondary importance and happen around that as it may.
This invitation is a practical one. Do not allow the possibility of Archetypal Relationship be devoured by the compelling forces of everyday life and the ordinary human condition. The way to avoid being hooked into diminished possibilities by your Box’s reactions is through awareness. Consciousness creates freedom. When you know what is coming from your Box and from your partner’s Box, you can take one step to your left and let both of your reactions pass by you without getting hooked in the guts, just as a skilled toreador stays aware of what bulls do so he does not get hooked in the guts. Expending little energy, the bullfighter stays in compassionate contact with the bull, but just at the right moment stands elegantly aside and lets the bull run past him so he does not get hit. But the bullfighter stays unharmed only if he remains aware and alert at all times. This means he must remember he is a bullfighter and that, in this moment (and many moments), he is bullfighting. In the same way, you can remain aware and alert by continuously reminding yourself that what usually passes for reality is a mere smear of a vaster world of experience. You can remind yourself that the bigger world is what is truly of value to you and simply refuse to engage in anything less than that. You have reference points for the experience of dignity, nobility and respect. You can develop the alertness and skill of a bullfighter to go nowhere else.
Set Your Priorities First
Both you and your partner already know that as ordinary human beings you each have nasty habits, hidden irresponsible purposes, unconscious agendas, and psycho-emotional reaction buttons. Either singly or simultaneously, your trigger buttons can be pushed by any number of unexpected stimuli that vaguely resonate with unexpressed or incomplete emotional experiences that lie dormant in you
r body. When something that is happening in the present even vaguely resembles an incomplete experience from your past, a residual emotional charge unwinds and springs out like a coiled rattlesnake at any convenient target.
Keeping your daily relationship loving and glowing, or at least neutral and open, requires maintaining a delicate balance. Do not retreat into adaptive behavior, trying to please your partner and giving your center away in the meantime. Also do not dominate your partner with rigid demands or be so emotionally needy and reactive that your partner has to conform to your demands and give their center to you. Keeping the balance is a matter of paying attention and noticing. We know what our partners like and what they do not like.
For example, if you are a man and you work as a car mechanic and your woman has told you that she hates it when you come home from work wearing your greasy clothes and having black grit under your fingernails, then to live in accordance with what you experienced when Woman was awake you would not hesitate to alter your patterns. It is a no-brainer to figure out that your woman would be more interested in going on the next intimacy journey with you if you changed your clothes and brushed out your fingernails before you came home from work. Not once. Not once a week. Change your pattern across the board. What does it cost you? You now have a higher priority than sloppiness. Compare the price of paying attention to your appearance in new ways to the value of what you gain: the possibility of living with a woman who is doorway to the Goddess. It is simple. Do the ordinary day-to-day things that please your woman. Do not do the things she hates. Your small efforts will keep your woman open and vulnerable so that the doorway is not blocked by ordinary psychological defense mechanisms.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 69