I am telling you from first-hand experience that resentments do not go away all by themselves. Resentments are strategically maintained snack food for hungry Gremlins needing a reason to fulfill Shadow Principles. One single undealt-with resentment about your partner undermines the integrity and presence needed to enter with them into Archetypal Relationship.
Take the risk of being radically honest with yourself, and with your partner. Keep asking them if they have any resentments about you, any expectations about you, and ferret them out of yourself. Resentments and expectations are relationship killers. Go through them by going to the heart of them and feeling the feelings, making the feelings conscious, and communicating your feelings, because love is a function of communication, and because consciousness creates freedom. When you need help in your relationship, go get it. With only two people talking to each other there is no objective sanity. You need a third intelligence. Keep persisting in communication until you are understood and until you understand. Do not give up on yourself. Do not give up on your partner. Trust your intuition entirely. If you do not understand and appreciate what is going on within yourself or with your partner, then keep digging until the festering discrepancy is lanced, wherever it is.
Not being yourself is betraying yourself. Self-betrayal is insidious because no one else can discover that you are doing it and no one else can cause you to do anything different. Your Box can live in immense denial forever, because the Box is denial. Your Box can adjust to accepting anything as normal. Just because your Box has accepted something as normal does not mean that thing should go unscrutinized. Do not let your Box eat your life. Authentic aliveness is precious, rare and worth fighting for. Take your life back from your Box. It can be the most humiliating embarrassment to publicly admit that you have deceived yourself for a long time. It may be far worse to lie on your deathbed knowing that you lived falsely but did not have the courage to do something about it.
4. Take Responsibility
The decision of whether or not to stay and keep trying is going to be up to you. It comes down to three possible options, and you are the only one to choose.
1. Choose to engage the learning opportunity that may be sitting in your lap with the circumstances of your present relationship. Choose to stay.
2. Choose to engage the rest of your possible life that may be knocking on your door with the next relationship. Choose to leave.
3. Especially do not choose to play victim and wait around hoping that circumstances will dictate what choice you must make. Choose to choose.
Take responsibility. Make your choice. Get on with your life.
SECTION 19-C
Requiem: A New Ritual for Accepting Changes
I want to start a new ritual in our culture in addition to birthdays, funerals, and Christmas. It is a change-accepting ritual called Requiem. Requiem comes from the Latin, requies, meaning “to rest.” A Requiem is a facilitated process specifically held and dedicated to completing the rest of whatever needs to be completed in any sudden change – divorce, death, house burns down, natural disasters. It is a place to rest, so people can come together and feel the rest, say the rest, understand the rest, and let everything about the change be experienced and expressed and finally come to a rest.
In the six or seven times that I have gone through a split up of a relationship, I wished that I did not have to do it so alone. I had no guidance and I did not know what I was doing. We do not have lessons in how to split up a longterm relationship. What I tried did not necessarily work so well. I did what I had to do to split up, but the process lacked elegance and often dignity. The process has taken years. There are people who are still offended. There are people who have communications in their heart with no chance to make the communications because we have not been together about this. My parents, her parents, her brothers’ and sisters’ families, my brothers’ families, our shared friends, no one came and truly shared and went through together what they have to share and go through about the split up. Most of us probably have these longstanding messes, painful scars in our personal humanity, undigested heartaches that if we used Requiems would not still be undigested. Without a Requiem the wound of certain life-changes may unnecessarily fester for the remainder of everyone’s days, the pain unexpressed, the voices unheard, and communications uncompleted.
Sure, there are reasons for not coming together. For example, my friends and family are spread all over the world. But if I had died, many people would have come together for the funeral. Not for me, but for themselves. A Requiem serves the same purpose: a change-accepting ritual for the people who attend. We need this ritual in our culture to move elegantly into being present with new circumstances, whatever they are, because these days there are so many new circumstances. Without such a ritual we carry around so much unnecessary emotional residue. If you would like to evolve the culture and start using Requiem, a description of a sample ritual follows.
Instructions for Requiem
• In the case of a couple ending their relationship, after going through meetings, support groups, and investigations to create clarity about what is happening and why and how – a Requiem is indicated. When it is clear that the relationship will break up, then immediately the whole community of friends is informed that there will be a Requiem. Everyone who knew this couple, from all over the world, is invited to be together to participate in the change of relationship. There is a great circle – chairs, and cushions – all in a spacious room.
• Requiem starts and ends with the voice of a Requiem moderator, trained to hold space for total chaos in total safety for as long as it takes. The ritual starts as soon as at least two people are present, when the Requiem moderator says, “Let the Requiem begin.” The moderator stays in the room all day and all night from the start to the finish of the ritual. He or she is the first person to arrive and the last person to leave.
• The coming together is chaotic. The time when people come is when they arrive. Whoever comes is exactly who is supposed to be there. No one is missing. When people are hungry they bring out their food and share it with each other. When people are tired they sleep. When people leave they leave. It may look like absolute chaos according to linear standards, but if the Requiem process is trusted it is perfect – magnificently orchestrated, awesomely beautiful to be a part of.
• And people come. Everyone who has ever been involved in your relationship, everyone who loves either of you, everyone who loves your relationship, they all come together. The meeting is a community, gathering together in the name of Love. Then we sit, talk, cry, shout, blame, hate, scream, defend, argue, dance, eat, sleep, ask questions, share stories, sing, and keep going and going with everyone, all sharing, and all at once, about everything that needs to be shared. The Requiem is for experiencing and expressing the feelings, and digesting all the ripples and after effects of the change. It goes on and on until the echoes have died out and all is said and done. People leave when they are satisfied, when they have emptied the past and are full with the present, accepting what is, ready to create a new future together. When the Requiem is down to the last person, the Requiem moderator says, “The Requiem is ended,” and he or she closes and cleans the space.
CHAPTER 20
A Short Handbook on Living Happily Ever After
Why do the storytellers always forget to tell us exactly how we are supposed to manage to live happily ever after? Why do most stories end just after the marriage ceremony? The man and the woman are still blissfully in the passion of infatuation, before he sees her without makeup, before screaming kids and varicose veins, before scratchy beards and farts, before cellulite and arthritis, before dirty socks and overflowing trash cans preempt the honeymoon phase of Archetypal Love.
Maybe nobody knows how to live happily ever after. Maybe it is impossible. Or maybe if you find out how to live happily ever after you pop into another universe and never come back. Maybe the language of “happily ever after” is a language th
at we cannot understand until we can already speak it ourselves. I mean, where are the role models?
Where are examples of relationship where Archetypal Love happens? Politicians? No. Religious leaders? No. Business executives? No. Movie stars? Big no. Where then? We may find a few motivational speakers who look really good. They are rich, clever, confident, handsome, strong, healthy, inspiring, and happily married. It looks perfect. You walk out of one of their seminars thinking, “I can do it! I can do it! I can do it!” And then you don’t do it. Even if you could do it, let’s get practical. How many millionaire motivational speakers can the planet support?
I suggest that we take a new kind of role model – one who is not perfect. Somebody who does not know for sure how to be in relationship and who goes ahead anyway. Somebody who feels afraid, is uncertain, makes mistakes, just tries as best they can – a human being. Somebody who does not have it all together and who does not even have it in them to try to be perfect. They may not even know that they are a role model. These people are not necessarily happy, rich or healthy, and yet they still go ahead and live their life well. They are fully engaged and playing full out. They have immense fun. Their life makes sense according to their own standards, not media standards. They are excited and are on the path of healing. They play, create, and love life as it is now, rather than if and when it meets some future criteria for success, “I will be happy when…”
Well, that role model may be you. Yes, you creating a relationship of true Love.
We are not talking about “let’s pretend” here. We are not talking about fantasy or blissful ignorance. We are not talking about being a zombie, an airhead, or a grinning ninny. We are not talking about airy-fairy tales, dream-land, or denial.
We are talking about true Archetypal Love. What if you try and it lasts? What if true Love sticks around?
We have all had moments of miracle and wonder. Even an instant of personally experiencing paradise gives us enough hope that we would buy and read a book like Radiant Joy Brilliant Love. Not that it matters, but most of what has been written in this book is true. If you seriously consider the maps in this book, do some exercises, practice the practices, and perform the experiments, it might actually work for you. That brings up an interesting question. What if it really works?
One summer during college I found a book titled Outdoor Survival Skills by Larry Dean Olsen. It showed how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I decided to try it. I sat alone on my parents’ back porch; one foot held the book open while I followed the clear step-by-step instructions. I rubbed the sticks together until they made a tiny delicate glowing ember. I nestled my precious ember in a handful of dry shredded tinder, just like the book showed. I raised the little nest to my lips. I took a deep breath and blew steadily on the smoking, glowing ember to give it more and more oxygen. Then suddenly, just like the book said, froompf! The smoke burst into flames. I was in ecstasy. Look at that! A real fire! I had a handful of flames. It worked! The leaves and grass in my hands were actually burning. Fire! Burning! In my hands! Hey!…
What was supposed to happen next? I had not read any further in the book! What was I supposed I do?! I dropped the whole flaming mess and almost started the book on fire.
The moral of the story is: When trying to make fire it helps to be prepared for the possibility that it could work.
SECTION 20-A
What If It Works?
What if you do the experiments in this book and they actually work? Then what? What do you do when Love does not go away? When Love comes and stays with you? When the radiance between you and your partner lights up half the city for the whole day and most of the night? What do you do when you can hardly breathe because your attention is subsumed by waves of causeless ecstasy and you are not even doing anything?
What do you do when joy is so intense that your brain shuts down and you think your nervous system will fry? What do you do when Love is obviously everywhere, and everything else becomes an irrelevant illusion? What do you do when all you want to do is be in the presence of the being of the other person and absolutely nothing else matters?
What do you do when the ordinary loses its usual attraction and starts to fall away? When you do not want to take your eyes off of the Man or the Goddess across from you? When your smile muscles cramp up from overuse? When all you want is to cry and laugh for no reason? When the truth seems so simple and obvious, and most of normal life is revealed as irrelevant lies and deceptions?
What do you do when your heart finally gets properly fed and grows to its true, immense size in your being? What if you finally let your heart speak and it says, “I love the Earth. I love the trees. I love the rocks. I love the ocean waves crashing on the beach. I love the air. I love all of life on the Earth. I love people. I love people! And I love you!”
What do you do when Love is happening? When the humming air is so rich with meaning and importance and Love, and nothing else is real?
What do you do then?
The consideration about what to do if radiant joy and brilliant Love is real cannot be trivial or intellectual. There are no final answers. Or, more clearly said, the final answer is that we do not know the answer. Realize that we do not know. And realize now that knowing would only be another illusion. It is completely okay that we do not know what to do if Love works. The ticket for gaining entry into the great mystery of Love is the ability to not know. Let yourself begin to get accustomed to not knowing. And let this process take its time. Let it take all the time it needs to unfold along its way. Be persistent but do not be impatient.
Do not worry about coming to the end of Love. There is no end to Love. You will never get it all. It will never go away. This is what makes your experiments safe. You can fail or succeed in your experiments and Love will never go away.
Much internal reordering occurs while Love is happening, and also while you are making preparations for radiant joy and brilliant Love to happen. Let the reordering occur. Something is being built inside of you. Love is food for that which supports the growth of being. Let your internal self grow. This can be an astounding, world shattering, and immensely fulfilling and reassuring experience. Love supporting the growth of being can also be extraordinarily appropriate. “Love Happening” is exactly as it should be. Let Love Happening be as big as it is.
Be aware that other people in your life, even strangers at other tables in the restaurant, strangers in the elevator, people passing you on the street, people who are not practicing the exercises that you are doing, may also be irradiated by Love coming through. The Principle of Love can completely saturate spaces and can be tangibly felt. Nearby people derive direct and indirect benefit from your experiments. Keep in mind that others are affected by what is happening. Give them the space to go through changes and realizations too, even if you never speak with them directly about it. Honor their possibilities through appropriate, caring regard for their well-being, even if only for a moment, even without words.
The existence of radiant joy and brilliant Love creates the possibility of Countenance. What if Countenance works? What if you find something that is better than chocolate? Better than sex? Better than the movies? Better than shopping? Better than a new car? Better than war? Not that these things are bad. It is just that the experience of Countenance is so all-embracing, so fulfilling, that if you were truly given the choice, then just about everything else that God has ever invented takes second place. That is evolution.
Countenance does not cost anything. You need no paraphernalia. It is not illegal. It is not immoral or fattening. You can experience it anytime, anywhere, without touching or saying anything. You do not have to move.
Life could simply be about living happily ever after.
And.
Here is what our defensive-oriented self-preserving Gremlin-empowered little Box will probably do to try to avoid that.
For three to six months of a new relationship everything is “love.” We receive a period of
grace. Everywhere we look there is only love. It is like a baptism. We are washed clean. We are blessed. We get a taste and an imprint of radiant joy and brilliant Love. The most precious gift of all is just to learn that radiant joy and brilliant Love is possible.
The universe gives us a free sample of paradise. After the introductory offer expires, it is up to us to get ourselves back to the Garden.
At first our Box is “blown away too far” to get its usual grip on us. Box cannot present us with defensible reasons to change anything because the mind is not there to listen. We are in Love.
But we have twenty, thirty, or forty, (or fifty!) years of experience living a “normal” life. Brilliant Love is not normal. We know what normal is. And our Box knows that as long as we use Gremlin’s standard tricks and strategies we can survive in that particular normal. Therefore, our creative powers (the immensity of which we are hardly aware) are dedicated to assembling the factors needed to recreate that specific experience of “normal” no matter where we are. We had already succeeded in warping the universe to conform to our psychological needs… until we encountered Archetypal Love.
Archetypal Love is a surprise. We have a nervous system and a capacity to enjoy and endure the direct physical experience of pure Archetypal Love, so when it first arrives it goes on for awhile. But the Box is still here. Mr. or Mrs. Gremlin did not move out of the house when Love moved in. As soon as we realize that we are gliding effortlessly through the air, Mr. or Mrs. Gremlin conspires to ask the nasty little question, “Hey. What do you think you’re doing up there? What ever made you think you can fly?” The moment we begin to give explanations, we crash. The party is over. Our Box starts looking for checkpoints to verify that the old standard “normal” is in place and it does not find any. “Oh my god!” we think, “This Love stuff is much too intense! We can never bear it! Let’s get back to normal.”
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