Only you can hold within yourself this sword’s level of alertness. No one else can do it for you. In many subtle ways modern society is against you having and using your sword of clarity. So the first use of your sword may be to untangle what in your life comes from mainstream society and what comes from your personal culture of integrity.
While sorting this out you may come to discover more of yourself outside of mainstream society than inside of it.
This is no surprise.
Modern culture is evolving, as all cultures do. Finding yourself acting, thinking, feeling and being beyond the limits of modern culture means that you are one of the leaders in its evolution, what Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson call a cultural creative. This will work out fine for you as long as you keep your sword of clarity at the ready.
One does not come by such a sword without a price. Gaining the capacity to hold and use an archetypal sword of clarity involves turning on (stellating) your four archetypes through a formal rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. That is the direction in which this book is heading, but we can’t further explore these ideas until you know about (and hopefully gain skills in) consciously feeling and communicating with feelings. Practice using your sword of clarity when making boundaries, distinctions, decisions, and agreements; when starting, stopping or changing things; when keeping your center, keeping your attention, keeping your intentions; when holding space; when venturing into new levels of intimacy, and so on.
I mention these things before we can effectively talk about them in order to paint a picture of why it is important to build a solid basis in consciously feeling. Consciousness is built like a house, from the basement upward, not from the roof down. When constructing a house, much time and effort is invested erecting a proper basement and foundation before building anything above ground that much resembles a house. This is what you are doing right now: building substructure—building matrix to hold more consciousness.
While studying this book please keep in mind that learning to feel is not the end in itself. Consciously feeling is actually the beginning of entirely new ways of relating to yourself, to other people, and to your future. Without first learning to consciously feel you will not have the energy or the intelligence of your feelings as fuel for creating with your life what is truly within you to create. We are heading toward liberating and directing your unbounded creating.
FOURTH DISTINCTION: FEELINGS ARE COMPLETELY NEUTRAL
The fourth of the Ten Distinctions for Consciously Feeling says that feelings are absolutely neutral, neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. Feelings are feelings.
Did you ever have the impression that fear stopped you from creating? For example, were you ever too afraid to make a telephone call? Too nervous to talk to someone you wanted to meet? Too hesitant to say clearly and out loud what you really want? Too uncertain to make solid plans? Too uneasy to make a boundary? Too afraid to start a project? Take a trip? Ask someone to help you or join you?
Almost all of us can answer yes to at least a few of these questions. Given the Old Map of Four Feelings, where fear is one of the bad or negative feelings, it is no wonder that fear would stop us from proceeding. If fear is bad or negative, then when we feel afraid we stop, even if where we are afraid to go is the only place we really want to go!
Living your moment-to-moment feelings as sources of neutral energy and information rather than as negative or positive, good or bad, is quite a different view than was given to us by modern culture.
HURTING PEOPLE’S FEELINGS
Have you ever been manipulated into “walking on eggshells” around certain people so you do not “hurt their feelings”? It is a common trick, one of the eighteen standard Box defense strategies.
The poor fragile soul keeps you at a certain distance by threatening you with hair-trigger buttons that launch their emotions. If you succumb to their strategy in order to keep them from exploding in anger (the bully), shivering in fear (the china doll), or drowning in sadness (the crybaby), you are forced to give your center away, behaving as an adaptive child and sacrificing your clarity and power. That is a high price to pay to be around this poor fragile soul without disturbing them.
In the New Map of Four Feelings, you cannot hurt someone else’s feelings.
If someone feels something, they are not hurt. They simply feel something.
Having a feeling is not a problem. Having a feeling is having neutral energy and information to use for living life closer to your own truth.
Feelings are feelings. No feeling hurts more or less than any other feeling. Did you ever smile until your cheeks ached? Or laugh ‘til your sides hurt? Feeling glad hurts your face and sides just as feeling angry hurts your throat and fists, fear hurts your spine and neck, or sadness hurts your heart. Intense feeling sensations may be somewhat painful, but suffering is your own creation. In the end, feelings only hurt if you hold them in.
Instead of walking on eggshells around people, you can make it a practice to listen to what they feel and clearly repeat it back to them so they know that you heard what they said.
YOU CAN FEEL ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING
Modern culture suggests that if a person has a feeling it means something. But this ignores the easily observable fact that any person could come up with a reason to feel mad, sad, glad, or scared about anything, and that four different people could each feel differently about the same thing.
Here is an exercise that you can practice alone or with a partner whenever you get the chance. This exercise is part of your rite of passage into adulthood. In this exercise it becomes irrefutably clear that what you feel is no one else’s fault. You take responsibility for creating your own feelings.
Sit across from someone and choose something—anything. Choose a person, place, or thing, a concept, a scratch on the wall, your tax bill, the sound of the ticking clock, the smell of a cup of coffee, the tiniest particle of dust, the hugest mountain. About each thing you can feel anger, sadness, fear and joy. It turns out that what you will experience in this exercise feels like a feeling but is actually an emotion. I will write out the exercise here as an example, but ordinarily these words are spoken. For the topic in this exercise I will choose “America.” But as I suggested, you can choose a paper clip, a ceiling light, how cold or warm it is, the quality of a person’s voice or smile, a leaf on a bush, a bicycle seat, anything, and the exercise still works.
Here we go.
The coach asks, “What do you think about America?”
“I think America is a young country of three hundred million people from mixed cultures who adopted the English language but drive on the right side of the road.”
The coach says, “Thank you. What do you feel about America?” (This part of the exercise helps you distinguish thoughts from feelings. The only acceptable words to follow the answer, “I feel . . .” are the four feelings: angry, sad, glad or scared. Saying, “I feel like America should take the lead in shifting to sustainable culture” is a thought.)
“I feel angry about America.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“Because I think the organization that calls itself the government of the United States of America has been hijacked by corporate interests and is betraying the trust of the American people, and the people of the world. For example, after signing a United Nations agreement banning the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons, the American military has illegally used tons of DU in all its wars since 1991. The radioactive DU dust already contaminates 8 percent of Earth’s habitable land for 4.5 billion years and causes birth defects and multiple cancers, even in our own soldiers. America just sold a thousand more DU Bunker Buster bombs to Israel. This makes me angry at the American government.”
The coach says, “Thank you. Is this anger a feeling or an emotion?”
“It is an emotion.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“Because I have felt betrayed by authority figures all my life. My fi
rst-grade teacher betrayed me by teaching me that learning was linear and boring. Feeling betrayed is familiar to me, almost expected.”
The coach asks, “Okay then, could you feel sad about America?”
“Yes, I could feel sad about America.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“Because I had a vision that America was leading the world into a bright future and I have lost that vision. Now I see a psychopathic organization deceptively eliminating civil rights and profiteering in resource wars instead of creating a sustainable future for my children. This brings me great sadness.”
The coach says, “Thank you. Is this sadness a feeling or an emotion?”
“Again, it is an emotion.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“I had a very clear vision when I was a child of a world that could work for everyone and it was shattered as soon as I was put in school. I was heartbroken, sad, and depressed.”
The coach says, “Thank you. Could you feel scared about America?”
“Yes, I could feel scared about America.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“America’s vast secret service agencies spend billions to big-brother the world and bring expedient demise to anyone who is regarded as a nuisance. The six hundred fully operational FEMA detention centers spread throughout the USA built by Halliburton Corporation send shivers of fear down my spine.”
The coach says, “Thank you. Is this fear a feeling or an emotion?”
“Again, this is an emotion.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“I noticed as a child how mainstream culture reacts threateningly toward thoughts or actions that originate beyond its definitions of normalcy. The hysterical reactions of a mindless mob have always frightened me.”
The coach says, “Thank you. Could you feel glad about America?”
“Oh, yes! I could feel glad about America.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“American freedom of thought and social entrepreneurship inspired me to create anything I wanted to create as soon as I left my parents’ house. I have been experimenting my whole adult life. The courage to explore the unknown came from my father and from so many American men that I as a man could love and respect: Martin Luther King Jr, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers, Harry Houdini, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Robert Heinlein. I was also very glad about America’s 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle.”
The coach says, “Thank you. Is this joy a feeling or an emotion?”
“This too is emotion.”
The coach asks, “Why?”
“Because the examples I thought of to feel glad about America are all examples that fit my preexisting fantasy worlds. The fantasy worlds come from my past. Whenever I want to feel glad about America I only need to select inspiring examples that match my pleasing fantasy images.”
So, here we are. The exercise is complete. It is clear that I could feel emotional anger, sadness, fear and joy about this thing called America and, in fact, about anything. These are not merely thoughts. I could actually feel the feelings in my body.
Where do the emotional sensations come from?
They come from me. They do not come from the thing, and not from the circumstances. The way I create the emotions is by carefully choosing a thought or an image for my mind’s eye. Whatever meaning I give to my thought or image determines the emotion I will feel. The thought comes first, and then my emotions follow a few seconds later. I choose my thoughts to induce emotions that support the conscious (or, more likely, unconscious) purpose of the story I am telling.
Recognizing and taking ownership of the mechanism through which you create your own emotions is an act of radical responsibility.
EXPERIENCE COMES WITHOUT THOUGHTS ATTACHED
In contrast to decidedly nonneutral emotions, feelings are neutral experiences of energy and information needed for fulfilling your destiny in this particular moment.
Experience comes without a meaning attached. The same experience presented to ten people provides ten different interpretations. The interpretations come through adding a thought to the experience. It is the thought that calls up emotions.
For example, some people love to eat durian, a large spiked tropical fruit that tastes like a mixture of sweet coffee and onions. Some people hate even the smell of durian. The actual experience of smelling a durian is neutral. Liking or not liking the smell is story. Associating story with an experience follows a purpose. This leads to a valuable question that can be ongoingly asked of each thought, word or deed: is the purpose of this action conscious or unconscious? What is my purpose?
A hint is that if an interpretation becomes a preference or, stronger yet, hardens into prejudice, intolerance or dogma, the purpose behind seeing things that way is probably still unconscious.
FINDING THE PURPOSE OF AN INTERPRETATION
It can become an informative practice to follow interpretations back to their original purpose. This makes the purpose conscious. Even if the purpose is not a pretty sight, once the purpose is conscious it frees the interpreter to choose a new interpretation.
To continue the durian example, when I first tasted this amazing tropical fruit I did not like it. My purpose was to enjoy my experience, but the durian was, at first, not pleasurable to my taste. The second time I tasted durian I noticed it was breaking my taste combination expectations. I did not like it but it nurtured me. The third time I tasted durian I loved it. My interpretation of the experience of eating durian changed around completely during three trials in as many weeks.
For another example, all during my childhood I blocked any connections to my youngest brother. He was two-and-a-half years younger and, for the most part, a total stranger to me. The block was still in place even after we had become adults. I used my interpretation of my brother’s behaviors as the reason to stay away from him, but I did not know why. At one point, some years after participating in my first training, I followed my interpretation of my brother’s behavior back to my interpretation’s original purpose. I found that my original purpose was to be perceived by my parents and teachers as a good boy. Since my brother often behaved in ways both I and my parents considered to be typical of a bad boy, I had to stay away from him. In the moment my purpose for blocking him became conscious I did not have to block him anymore because I had grown out of needing to be a good boy. My old purpose no longer applied. My brother and I have now become good friends.
INTERPRETATION OF FEAR
Preferences also apply to feelings. Take, for example, fear.
Some people love to feel afraid. Fear-lovers stand in line for hours to ride a roller coaster. They also speed down the highway, gamble their money in the commodities market, have sex with strangers, or insult people with big fists and small brains.
Some people hate feeling afraid. Security-lovers stay at home for hours not wanting to face anything unexpected. They buy more insurance, know the telephone number of their lawyer, already have their vacation reservations for next year, and order the same thing at the same restaurant each visit.
Some people neither love nor hate to feel afraid. Fear is a natural feeling in their life, one of their four feelings. Life-lovers feel their subtle and intense feelings when they arise and they follow them back to their source. They take fear as neutral energy and information and use it to navigate and impassion their life.
Which emotion arises in any given circumstance depends entirely on which particular thought and story you attach to the circumstance. The universe might be happening all around you in a pure and neutral form, but you are a human being, and human beings are storytellers. What if you took responsibility for your power to weave stories?
IS-GLUE
How do you attach meaning to experience? When something happens, how do you make it into a story? How do you decide what something means?
The human mind has an uncanny ability to imagine things that are not so. For example, we c
an easily imagine never, as in, “You never take me out dancing!”
Never is a really long time.
We easily imagine always, as in, “Why do I always have to wipe the mirror clean?”
We easily imagine perfection. For example, we can imagine a sphere—all points equidistant from a single point in space. But, in fact, there are no perfect spheres anywhere in the universe. They are all approximations. The smoothest ball bearing, bubble, or glass bead looks like the Grand Canyon when you inspect it under high magnification. The Earth is not a ball. It is pear-shaped, and its shape is not stable. For example, as the ice melts off Greenland, the whole land mass is floating upward, gaining four centimeters per year in altitude!
There is nothing perfect in the physical world. Everything changes, vibrates, grows, evolves, rusts or rots. Our concepts serve as thought models for everything important in our reality. We imagine our theoretical image more easily than we perceive the actual conditions, and then we superimpose our concept over the actuality.
For example, you can effortlessly conceive of one apple in your imagination, but no discreet single apple actually exists! Apples are one element of an ecological system, an entire biosphere of soil, rain, sun, air, honeybees and apple trees. A shiny Red Delicious apple sitting on the table is not still life. It is alive: busily ripening, defending itself from bacterial and fungal infections, and furiously pumping out methyl butyrate esters—fruity apple scents—to entice you to eat it so you deposit fertilized apple seeds in a place where a new apple tree can grow. Human beings are transport systems used by apple DNA to make more apple DNA. In our complex and flowing, multidimensional universe there is no such thing as one, except as a pure concept.
Perhaps the most pervasive and distorting application of human imagination is the concept of is. In nature there is no is.
Is is a concept of the human mind that allows humans to make stories. Stories are the basis of our personality, relationships, philosophies, technologies, and the domains of life included in our multiplicity of cultures, daily activities, rituals, customs and beliefs. Without stories, what we regard as humanity would not exist. But without humans there would be no stories!
Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth Page 15
