Why does your heart ache? Because you never used it before.
PRETENDING TO BE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WANT YOU TO BE
It may surprise you to hear that you have feelings about nearly everything all the time: where to go and how to get there, what to see, what to wear, what to buy, who to talk to, what to say, what to eat, what to study, and how to relate to what is going on. You have feelings about politics, religion, business, sports, science and the arts, about philosophy, about beliefs, about what you possess and don’t possess, about what you think and what others think, about stuckness and change, about experiencing life and experiencing death. We even have feelings about our feelings!
Through accessing your true feelings you can sense what is authentically going on for you, become more present to yourself, find out how you really want to live, discover what is important for you and what you deeply wish to be doing.
Some of your feelings might surprise you completely. If you could consciously feel what your heart is feeling, you might be moved to take actions that are the complete opposite of the actions you have been taking.
Decisions to act in contradiction to your true nature commonly arise because, lacking your own feelings, you are easily distracted from being yourself. Then instead of enacting your own life you animate a life that fulfills other people’s expectations. By welcoming back your own feelings, previously unseen features of life resolve into focus and ignite unquenchable inspiration about what you are doing.
I know of what I speak.
IT HAPPENED TO ME
After graduating from the university with a degree in physics in 1975 I took various jobs as a research assistant in technical development and manufacturing companies. Eventually I started my own business, Computer Effects Company, in Northern California, a tiny electronics prototyping and production firm. We developed biomedical equipment for DNA research, such as thermal cyclers for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and fly-back transformers in power supplies for gel-phase electrophoresis. This is all standard equipment now, but back then it was cutting-edge technology. We were making very cool stuff.
As a hobby I attended seminars and classes here and there that interested me. In 1989, at the encouragement of my wife, I participated in my first training.
A training is quite different from a seminar or class where you learn something new. In a training you become something new. I was not prepared for this. Perhaps one cannot be prepared for this.
In any case, the profound safety of this particular training space permitted me, for the first time in my life, to truly experience and express my deep feelings with clarity. People encouraged me to feel and listened to me with respect. They made distinctions for me about things I’d never suspected distinctions could be made. As a result of the training, my door to feelings was opened. I went through that door. Feelings began flowing through my nervous system in a completely different manner.
A short while after the training somebody casually asked me, Why do you do the work that you do? I had never considered this question before. It turns out to be a dangerous question to consider.
I liked my work. I had fun fooling around with the latest circuit boards and electronic manufacturing processes. But when I allowed myself to truly feel into the question, a completely startling answer arose in me. I opened my mouth to speak and what came out was, I do this kind of work because my father does this kind of work.
I was shocked. Feelings raged through my body. Something old and tired in me began to die, and at the same time something new and joyous was being born. One future dropped away while a new future became more probable. Suddenly I did not have to do that kind of work anymore. Plans outlining the next decades of my life dissolved into a horizon that was less predictable, less defined, less oriented toward technology and more oriented toward liberating human potential. Something in me relaxed and levitated itself effortlessly into a new level of excitement. I felt deeply elated. On that day I took possession of my own inspiring life. I was thirty-seven years old.
I am not saying that something so dramatic will happen for you when you begin learning to feel. On the other hand, I am not saying it won’t. By finding out what you actually feel you will find out who you are and what your life is about. You will move toward taking your own steps, and will move away from being a known character stamped out by modern society’s mold, fulfilling other people’s plans.
THE REWARD FOR NUMBNESS
The central distinction in this book is between unconsciously feeling and consciously feeling. Don’t worry! At this point you are not expected to have any idea what this means. The rest of this book will explore the world of conscious feelings.
As you read through these pages, practicing skills and engaging processes, you will build onto your internal foundation for experientially understanding feelings. While your understanding grows, the distinction between unconsciously feeling and consciously feeling becomes tactile. Newly recognized sensations lead to developing internal navigation skills. Whole new forms of experience, perception and behavior will flourish in you. But there is preparatory work to be done.
Since we have a heart, we have feelings. But since modern culture trains us to repress rather than express our feelings, we don’t discern our sensations. Just as a person born blind can’t imagine the brilliance of a rainbow’s spectrum, we who are trained to stay numb can’t imagine the visceral sensations of feelings.
How could our lack of feelings continue so long undetected? How could we sacrifice such an intimate aspect of being human?
It turns out that numbness produces an ambiance of stability and security. When we are numb, life seems to be more manageable and consistent, less volatile, more civilized, exactly the way life looks in magazines and TV ads. If we are not in touch with our ever-changing true-heart feelings then we will not be moved in unpredictable directions.
Our life can then be scheduled to fit into a linear plan, regulated to be the same from day to day, week to week, month to month, planned years in advance, another mass-produced item. We feel powerful to have diminished life to be so predictable. We find security in life’s repeatability.
This is our reward for staying numb: we become socially acceptable. We become a source person promoting the expectations of civilization.
My guess is that you would not be reading this book unless you have become somewhat uncomfortable with your comforts. Perhaps you are moved to discover who you are and what will happen if you end the reign of numbness in your life.
NUMBNESS VS FEELING
Because the benefits of numbness have been actively marketed to us since childhood, and the benefits of consciously feeling may still remain a complete mystery, it makes sense to approach the subject of feelings with some caution. Let’s begin with an analysis that compares numbness with conscious feelings. The Map of Numbness vs Feeling presents two lists:
• What we already get from staying numb, and
• What we could get from consciously feeling.
By comparing these two lists you gain a sense of the present balance in your life on the continuum between numbness and feeling. You can assess to what degree you choose numbness compared to making use of your feelings.
Each aspect named in the list is a different facet of life. Each step you take in the direction of abandoning numbness in favor of clear responsible feeling will inaugurate a breakthrough in your life quality and relationships. The more facets that vibrate and shine with the information and energy of feelings, the richer your life.
MAP OF NUMBNESS vs FEELING
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
Numbness and feeling, two sides of the same heart.
WHAT YOU GET BY BEING NUMB
Can blindly follow authority.
Gain a false sense of security.
Achieve the illusion of stability.
Self-separation, -incompletion, -betrayal, -deception, -manipulation.
Trying to stay safe. Survival.
Trying to follow the rules.
Fear of what the neighbors think.
Righteousness—trying to be right.
Frustration, boredom, rigidity.
Lack of possibilities. Lack of flow.
Communication breakdowns.
Belligerence, obstinacy.
Aggressive outbursts. Hopelessness.
Isolated. Seemingly alone, unheard.
Defendedness. Positionality.
Tending toward fantasy worlds.
Out of relationship. Depression.
Preferring power-over and control.
Ongoing annoyance over trivialities.
Seeing only competitors.
Desperate for stimulation.
Having ongoing resentment.
Confusion. Nervousness.
Using or being used by others.
Heaven comes in the afterlife.
WHAT YOU GET BY FEELING
Self trust. Having own authority.
Appreciation of self and others.
Being present, in touch, in contact.
Listening, being listened to.
Acceptance. Being known.
Making clear boundaries.
Making precise distinctions.
Asking for what you want.
Authentic sharing of self.
Intimacy. Exchange.
Creating clarity and possibility.
Making decisions. Relaxation.
Taking care of what arises.
Creating, art, innovation.
Enjoyment. Sensuality.
Satisfaction, flow. Sense of erotic.
Experiencing your experience.
Intuition, insight. Simple joy.
Self-inquiry. Humbleness.
Personal growth. Discovery.
Pleasure, ecstasy, delight.
Togetherness. Connectedness.
Being with friends. Communion.
Delicacy of sensations.
Full communication. Love.
Compassion. Abundance.
Collaboration with others.
Heaven on Earth. Peace. Grace.
CULT OF COMFORT
Modern society has taught us to be strong numb workers and obedient numb consumers—sheeple instead of people—and to seek further numbness through labor-saving and entertainment devices. Modern satisfactions include life being easy, efficient, convenient, and comfortable.
Conveniences have been historically powered by slave labor. Picture yourself sitting on the shaded porch of your southern mansion. It is a sweltering day. You sip a mint julep while a slave wafts a fan over your head to keep you cool. Hordes of other slaves plant and harvest in your fields, wash your clothes, carry your messages, and do the other chores of daily life.
What you are imagining to be true in this exercise is actually how it is today.
It is so natural for us to turn on a stereo, grab a root beer out of the fridge, or send an email. We hop in the car and stop by a fast-food joint or the supermarket if we get hungry, leading a life of extravagance that kings and queens of yesteryear only dreamed of.
At the same time, we are generally oblivious to the fact that many luxuries of modern empire rely on human slave labor in the third world—to sew our latest fashions, dig minerals from the mines, assemble cheap electronic devices, and farm exotic foods like coffee, tea, bananas and chocolate.
As much as modern society depends on children laboring in sweat-shops, it depends even more on enslaved fossil fuels. We no longer need to go out in the cold, soil our hands, suffer the ache of sore muscles or the sting of blisters while chopping wood and carrying water. Oil-powered machines do it for us at the flick of a switch. We have found the secret of the sorcerer’s apprentice! One barrel of oil provides the equivalent of twenty-five thousand hours of hard physical labor. That equates to one person working eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, for more than twelve years! Even if a barrel of oil costs three hundred dollars, the oil slaves cost you little more than one cent per hour to accomplish the most exhausting hard work.
Think about being paid one cent per hour for pushing a car along the road, hoisting or lowering someone in an elevator, or pedaling a generator to keep the lights on or someone’s computer running. Would you do that work for one cent per hour for twelve years? I will answer for you: No, you would not.
But currently around the world, eighty million barrels of oil slavery is occurring each day without one single complaint! Oil is the motive force of modern culture to an almost unimaginable degree, providing a massive army of nearly free slaves, laboring for every comfort in modern society at the flick of a switch.
Without realizing it you have padded yourself in multiple layers of numbness from the real world: numbness as in cut off from your feelings, and numbness as in cut off from the ordinary labors of daily life. As a modern citizen in the first world you do not live in the comfort zone. You live in the double-protected, sticky-sweet, warm soft center of the comfort zone called the marshmallow zone, far away from the raw edges of life. The path to authenticity will require that you dig your way out of that sticky mess!
Not to worry. Half of that digging work is being done for you. The slaves of modern empire are dying off. By most rational accounts, the world’s oil production peaked in the few years around 2005. We are burning far more oil than we are finding. No matter what efforts are made, we will most likely never produce more oil than we are producing right now, and there is nothing available to replace the slave energy of oil. For example, it would take 750 new nuclear power plants to replace the oil that the US imported in 2009. This is more than double the total number of nuclear power plants operating in the whole world in this year, and more than seven times the nuclear power plants already polluting America. A free-energy replacement for oil is not going to magically appear, and aliens are not coming in large spaceships to save us from our own stupidity.
Repressing feelings leads to additional kinds of repression, which is the reason why the following publicly accessible information is not widely known: the widespread fear would be unbearable for a population that has learned that it is not okay to feel fear.
Global oil production is peaking, but the population and industrialization of both India and China are not. As expanding Asian industry builds cars for an expanding Asian population, the demand for oil continues to rise. At some point in the not too distant future the world’s demand will exceed the world’s total production. At this point oil prices will take a one-way trip to the sky, forcing oil-dependent businesses into rather sudden and irremediable bankruptcy . . .
PEAK OIL This conglomerate graph reveals that oil, gas and coal are by far the most important contributors to the world’s present energy mix. Recent data indicates a combined per capita peak of all fossil fuels by 2012 in tandem with Peak Oil, although production is maintained above 10 boe (Barrels of Oil Equivalent) per person per year (the 1979 peak) from 2010 up to 2020. By 2050 that number is below 6 boe per person, and by century’s end, oil, gas and coal will have dropped out of the picture almost entirely. USA oil peaked in 1970. Mexican oil peaked in 2006. Russia and Saudi Arabia oil are peaking now, 2010. (This graph and further explanations can be found in World Energy and Population, by Paul Chefurka, an article I encourage you to read, available online here
. . . irremediable bankruptcy for oil-dependent businesses such as agriculture, for example. Modern food production succeeds exclusively due to the cheap slave labor of fossil fuels:
• Diesel-powered pumps to bring up irrigation water from rapidly falling water tables.
• Fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides.
• Diesel-powered tractors to plow, plant, harvest and process the crops.
• Coal-powered electric plants for night
time greenhouse lighting.
• Oil-derived plastic films, hoses and fittings.
• Petroleum-powered trucks, ships, trains and planes to transport food to your local markets.
And, of course, fuel for the car when you drive to town for groceries.
THE LAST CIVILIZATION This graph shows the combined world total of fossil fuel production divided by the number of people on the Earth (boe/c/year is Barrels of Oil Equivalent of all fossil fuels used per capita per year). Present data confirms the Olduvai Theory that Industrial Civilization has a much shorter lifetime than most of us ever imagined, perhaps only 160 years, from 1910 to 2070. Unlike previous civilizations which have risen and fallen to be replaced by others, industrial civilization would be the last civilization because we would have used up all the easily obtainable resources needed for a civilization to form. (This graph and explanations for the notes can be found by going to
When oil becomes scarce compared to the world’s demand for it, just how long do you think you will find your local grocery store stocked with food? When shelves are bare, what do you plan to eat? Compounded with climate disruptions, heat waves, drought, and vanishing fresh water, our petroleum-based global farming industry could completely unravel at any time during the next decade. Then you won’t be numb anymore. You’ll be hungry. This half of your numbness will handle itself.
The other half of digging out of your marshmallow zone you will need to do yourself.
KEEPING THE NUMBNESS BAR HIGH
The level of your numbness bar establishes your threshold of feeling awareness. Any feeling that is less intense than the level of your numbness bar may not be experienced at all. The combination of idealizing a pain-free hero cut off from his or her feelings and a pain-free modern life cut off from chores pushes our collective numbness bar to its highest point in the two hundred thousand–year history of Homo sapiens.
For example, you may live in an apartment in a city. All day and all night long the sensations of city life pound on your senses. Sirens wailing, traffic honking and spewing exhaust, trains and trucks shaking the building, factories belching toxic fumes, flashing neon lights, dogs barking, telephones ringing, TVs droning on and on, lawn mowers, construction sounds, loudspeakers, jets, helicopters, all contribute to the nerve-pounding roar of city life.
Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth Page 3
