• Flirting with the guys or gals at the exercise club.
• Swearing at other drivers.
• Paying your taxes late.
• Blaming the government.
• Keeping your desk buried in an almost nonfunctional pile of papers.
• Kicking the dog.
• Add your favorites . . .
It might take you a couple of weeks to collect the details for your list, but then again, maybe you can make the list immediately. Once you have your list of favorite Gremlin foods, develop a reasonable strategy for a regular feeding schedule. A strategy that works well is to choose one day during the week, for example Saturday, and promise your Gremlin that on this one day, from 6 A.M. Saturday until 6 A.M. Sunday, he can feast as much as he wants on the specific five items that you have selected from your list. Write out the five available Gremlin foods on a paper and keep it in your wallet. Then for the other six days of the week go completely cold turkey on all Gremlin foods.
In the beginning you might make it through one day of no Gremlin food before Gremlin knocks you unconscious and you wake up on the far side of a binge or a quarrel. Do not feel guilty. Do not beat yourself up. Do not punish your Gremlin. This is just more Gremlin food. Simply remake your commitment and keep your promise of maximum feeding on the specified day only.
After a while you might make it through three days before getting knocked unconscious. In the meantime Gremlin might put a constant stream of voices in your head, “This is stupid! This is really stupid! I hate this! Mmmm, look at those tits! Just a little piece of chocolate would be okay. Then I’ll be satisfied. What a jerk! Let’s stop this nonsense. I can’t do this anymore. Where’s all the fun in life? I’m a failure. I’m not good enough. I’ll never make it. Whoa, this is too much for me. I can’t stand it! Whose idea was this anyway? Not mine. Fucking book!” And so on. These are only voices. You may wish to keep in mind that you own a fully loaded Voice Blaster strapped to your hip. Blast away! (We’ll get to the Voice Blaster in Chapter 5.)
Gremlin might lose a little weight, but he will soon start feeling more fit and alive without so much fat around his belly. He will appreciate his new trim feeling and will recognize that you respect him and are treating him well. After a few months you and your Gremlin might get through an entire week with no snacking. Stay on this regular weekly feeding schedule for the rest of your life.
GREMLINS These are slightly exaggerated Gremlin faces, often seen on others, sometimes seen in your own mirror . . .
At some point you might notice that a feeding day went by and your Gremlin forgot to feed. Do not change the feeding day that week. If Saturday slipped by with no feeding, do not feed him on Sunday or Monday. Just wait until Saturday comes around again.
You might also notice that a feeding day arrives and none of the five special Gremlin foods appeal to Gremlin. This is okay. You do not have to force-feed your Gremlin. But also do not let it graze on the banned Gremlin foods. Stick to your feeding schedule.
Being accountable to your Gremlin for providing it with a regularly planned feeding schedule establishes a relationship with him like an owner has with his Doberman pinscher. Your barely tamed, potentially vicious beast is willing to sit at your feet on a short leash whenever you say SIT! because he knows that he is respected, he is taken care of, and in particular, he is regularly fed. This really works.
THEN PUT YOUR GREMLIN TO WORK
Contrary to what you might expect you will use Gremlin more in high drama than in low drama. In low drama Gremlin is starving, sneaking around as a ronin, a lone samurai without a master, devouring whatever he can steal just to survive. In high drama the rightful place of Gremlin is established: awake, attentive, sitting at the feet of Archetypal Man or Woman with a short chain around his neck, ready to serve.
At first, when discovering the true nature and intention of Gremlin, it is quite difficult not to simply declare with disgust that Gremlin is bad and must be imprisoned or banished forever. Such thinking serves the Good/Bad Shadow Principle and will leave you with your Gremlin invisibly at work, busily creating his usual unconscious horrors in your life, just like the priests at a parochial school justifying violence and sexual intimacies with the boys in their care.
Gremlin is Gremlin. Gremlin does what Gremlin does. We all have Gremlin and no matter what you think or try to do, Gremlin will never go away. Gremlin is a force, like sulfuric acid, like plastic explosives, like a laser beam, like a crowbar or lock picks, neither good nor bad, but definitely capable of producing certain results. As with all tools, Gremlin can be used to fulfill responsible or irresponsible purposes.
This is a wild world. It helps immensely to have direct access to an intelligent inner wildness for taking care of yourself, your community and your destiny. The source of that wild intelligence is Gremlin. Once you have possessed your Gremlin a source of wild intelligence sits at your feet, a trained attack animal, ready to do what it always does but doing it as you responsibly and maturely direct.
Gremlin is an exceptional tool of nonlinearity, particularly suited for creating high drama where only low drama existed before. The application of this tool is counterintuitive. You use Gremlin’s ability to destroy anything at any time for no reason as the force to dismantle the mechanicality of your own Box. Gremlin is the only one who knows the secret ways to get through your own defenses, the only one clever enough to free you from being trapped by your own tricks.
The first use of Gremlin is very exact: use Gremlin to monitor itself to not do the Gremlin thing. It takes a thief to catch a thief, and Gremlin is the ultimate thief. Only Gremlin knows exactly how devious, cunning, and shrewd Gremlin is. Only Gremlin is sensitive and fast enough to catch itself before he steals your dignity with his shenanigans. Conscious use of Gremlin involves giving your Gremlin productive yet impossible jobs to do.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF GREMLIN
• Use Gremlin to sharpen your self-discipline.
• Use Gremlin to stop overly judgmental thinking.
• Use Gremlin to keep your attention free from being hooked and your heart free from emotionally reacting.
• Use Gremlin to hold your tongue when all it wants to do is lash out and destroy.
• Use Gremlin to not snicker, not sneer, not sigh, not yawn, and not roll your eyes.
• Use Gremlin to not speak the hurting cynical words, not make the cutting-tone-of-voice insinuations, not tell the nasty, stupid, degrading little jokes that hurt people.
• Use Gremlin to keep your center when everyone around you is giving theirs away.
• Use Gremlin to stay awake and pay attention when everyone around you is sleeping and hypnotized.
• Use Gremlin to look in shadowy places at what is normally ignored.
• Use Gremlin to not throw stones at the adulteress.
• Use Gremlin to stay still when other people move and to move when other people stay still.
• Use Gremlin to do the right thing even when the consequences are frightening.
• Use Gremlin to make and hold necessary boundaries even when the kids, customers, or lobbyists are screaming at you to give in to their demands.
• Use Gremlin to ask dangerous questions that no one else can even think of because the forces rigidly holding certain previously made conclusions are so strong.
• Use Gremlin to break the rules that minimize expressions of kindness, generosity or compassion.
• Use Gremlin to distinguish subtle details that make invisible things distinct from their camouflage.
• Use Gremlin to dismantle your own denial, walk directly into your own pain, and let your assumptions and beliefs go up in flames, burning to a cinder without your knowing what is next.
• Use Gremlin to remain alert and communicative and to avoid being sentimental, hysterical, isolated, or nostalgic while some element of your reality construct unexpectedly transforms.
• Use Gremlin to let yourself be seen ra
w, naked, stupid, crippled and wounded—exactly as you are—and not care about other people’s opinions or judgments.
• Use Gremlin to energetically spin so that you hold no position and stay a moving target to other people’s positive or negative comments.
• Use Gremlin to wait patiently through the unknown until the next thing can effectively be done.
• Use Gremlin to have the courage to commit to creating a result you want to create before you know how to do it, even if this thing has never been done before.
It is Gremlin who can stand completely revealed and vulnerable and not care. It is Gremlin who can allow chaos and destruction to rain upon you with the same neutrality that he allows blessings, appreciation, respect and love to rain upon you, neither attracted nor repelled, not making any sudden moves. And it is Gremlin who can feel deep compassion for other people whose Gremlins still own them and keep them living (if you can call it living) in an underworld created by their still unconscious and all-powerful Gremlins.
GIVING YOUR CENTER AWAY
Another typical characteristic of unconsciously feeling is adaptive behavior. Adaptive behavior is a childhood survival strategy incorporated into the design of your Box. There are certain authority figures who do not take well to being challenged. If one of these Gremlin authority figures is confronted with someone who sees what is going on and asks pointed questions about it, or who has their own ideas for alternative solutions, the Gremlin authority cannot stand it. The Gremlin authority is so frightened of being out of control that unconscious anger starts sputtering out of them every which way, like a Roman candle.
The Gremlin authority may have been one or both of your parents, your relatives, or your teachers. The person who could see what is going on and had dangerous questions to ask may have been you as a little person. You presented such a threat to the authority figure that you called down upon yourself their merciless wrath.
Suddenly you had to make a life-or-death decision. Should you continue with your outspokenness and desire for fairness and responsible actions, furthering your disturbing invasion into the Gremlin authority’s domain? Or should you instead develop a technique for fogging yourself, disempowering your awareness, playing small and adaptive, giving away your center of responsibility and creative imagination so you become less dangerous and the Gremlin authority does not have to kill you?
The choice you made is obvious. You still live.
You learned to give your center away to Gremlin authority figures. This technique may have saved your life as a child, or at least made things more manageable for you, but now, as an adult, this same behavior may be sabotaging your life and relationships. What worked as a child might not be so valuable now.
What if you took your power back? What if you took your voice back, your imagination back, your sword of clarity back? What if you became dangerous again because you can perceive, you can feel, you can speak, you can take creative self-directed actions?
This all begins with taking your center back and learning to be centered. What does this mean?
A human being has two kinds of centers, a physical center, and a center of being. Your physical center is the center of balance of your physical body. This point is located about three fingers’ distance below your navel, approximately behind your belt buckle, and halfway back through your abdomen. It is in the center of your physical body.
Another way to find your physical center is to draw an imaginary line between your hip bones, then go straight back into your body from the middle of the line. There is your physical center. It is a location that stays there.
In addition to this you have your energetic center of being. Your center of being starts out about the size of a grapefruit and it is mobile. It can move around. In modern culture we have been trained to keep our center of being in a certain place in our body. Where is that?
Think of Rodin’s astonishing statue The Thinker.
Where is this man’s center of being located?
Yes. He has put it in his head. This is what you were trained to do too. This is your role model for modern man (also modern woman!): put your center in your head and think.
Either you give your being center away to Gremlin authority figures, or you put your center of being in your head. Both are more socially acceptable than putting your being center on your physical center and being present as your true, powerful and fabulous self.
Why would you give your center away to a Gremlin leader? What are you thinking when you do that? You think, “I am safe. The leader will take care of me because I’m no longer a threat to him.” This is why many people choose to work for governments or corporations. They think they can find a Gremlin leader with whom they can exchange their center for lifelong security and good retirement benefits.
THE THINKER Modern society has adopted Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker (1902) as its icon, compelling us to defer to the intellect. Over thirty casts of The Thinker sit prominently in modern universities and museums around the world.
What does the Gremlin leader think when he has your center? Oddly enough, he thinks the same thing you do: “I am safe.” He thinks he is safe because you are no longer a threat to him. He thinks he owns you.
It is important to recognize that no one can take your center away. They can invite you to give them your center through subtle threats of retribution or rejection, but they cannot take your center. If someone else has your center, you gave it to them.
This is good news. It means you can always change your mind and take your center back.
What happens if you try to give your center to a true leader?
They don’t want it. They say, “What are you trying to do? Where are you? I don’t want your center! I want you to have your center so that you can take responsibility for yourself and for this project. I want you to ask questions, create solutions, make decisions, take intelligent risks, execute actions, check your results. I want you to have your power. My intention is to surround myself with leaders.”
True leaders are leader makers. Have you ever had the honor of working for a true leader?
Have you ever worked for a Gremlin leader?
Which kind of leader do you tend to be?
Unconsciously felt fear causes you to give your center away so you are no longer a threat to the authority figure and they do not have to energetically kill you. Unconsciously felt fear causes a Gremlin leader to surround himself with people who give him their center so he feels safe and all powerful. In neither case is the feeling of fear felt consciously. If it were, it would be used for an entirely different purpose than seeking the illusion of security.
To get your center back, or to keep your center so that you don’t give it away in the first place, you will need to develop a couple of skills. The first skill is to place your attention on your being center. The other skill is to keep your attention on your being center and at the same time use your intention to move your being center onto your physical center. These are precise instructions.
Learning to place your attention on your being center is like learning to place your attention on any one particular thing. You can place your attention on this dot (•), then you can place your attention on the center of a clock in the room or on a leaf on a plant outside. Then you can place your attention back on that dot again, then on the clock or leaf again. Slowly and deliberately move your attention back and forth between the dot and the clock (or leaf) until you know what it feels like to consciously place your attention on something. Then place your attention on your center of being. Learn what that feels like.
Now develop your intention muscles. Hold your open hand out in front of you with your fingers together and your palm facing upward. Hold it that way.
MAP OF GIVING YOUR CENTER AWAY
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
MAP OF BEING CENTERED
Then, using your intention, slowly turn your hand over so it is fa
cing palm down. Now hold it that way. Hold your hand palm down until you change your intention to turn it palm up again. Then turn your hand palm up. Slowly and deliberately rotate your hand one way and then the other way, but only in the moment when you intend that it face a certain way. And in between, use your intention to hold it the way that it is.
Now place your attention on your being center, follow your attention with your intention, and intend that your being center moves to your physical center. When your being center is on your physical center you will stand differently, move differently, breathe differently, and interact with the world differently. It feels nobler, more relaxed, more light-footed, more flexible and balanced. Stay centered by using a portion of your intention to keep your being center on your physical center, preventing it from drifting away.
This is what it is to be centered.
When two centered people meet each other, they exchange a certain kind of greeting, something similar to the respect implied in the Na’vi greeting, “I see you” and in the Sanskrit word namasté, which means approximately “I salute in you that which is divine” or “I recognize the place in you where the whole universe resides, and when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, then we are one.”
To be centered is to locate yourself here and now in the present moment, in your body. One reason centering is not a standard teaching of modern culture is that when you are centered here and now in your body, you will begin to feel all of the feelings that have been held back deep in your guts for all the years of your life. The feelings didn’t go anywhere. They have been held in stasis, unexpressed. They have accumulated as silent things within you, incomplete communications. You may have an entire volcano of them.
If you are going to practice being centered, now would be a good time for you to learn about how to consciously experience and express your feelings. The dam is about to break, and then the flood will come.
Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth Page 10
