Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth

by Clinton Callahan

  Within a short time, even a few months, you will gain enough personal experience with liquid states to be able to hold a safe space for other people to navigate through their own liquid states. (Advanced space-holding skills are taught in certain rigorous trainings, such as the Possibility Trainer Labs from Next Culture Research and Training Center. We sometimes call it Space Pilot Training School.)

  After gaining more and more familiarity with navigating through the liquid state you may actually come to enjoy this experience. Groundlessness may start feeling like home.

  You may even come to the realization that human beings are not designed to defend their religious beliefs, political positions, or cultural prejudices. Human beings are not designed to weigh themselves down with property and titles and material possessions. Human beings are designed to experience moment after moment in a state of full four-body intensity and extraordinary possibility. Human beings are designed to fly.

  NEW MAP OF FOUR FEELINGS

  When feelings are different from thoughts, when feelings are different from emotions, when feelings are neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative, then you have established the basis to enter and make use of an entirely New Map of Four Feelings, where feelings serve you professionally.

  How can you use the neutral energy and information of anger? Use it to start projects, end projects, clean up the garage or your love life, make boundaries, ask for what you want, ask for help, finish tasks even if you have to stay up all night, make yes or no decisions, speak with clarity, commit to a job before you know how to do the job, commit to finding answers before you know where to look. Would these serve you professionally?

  What about sadness? How can you use the neutral energy and information of sadness? Use it to open up, share yourself, connect with others, listen to their sincere wishes, let the past go, be vulnerable, be authentic, drop the lonely-wolf tough-guy show, become trustworthy, make strong communications with compassion, acknowledge the truth of what is going on, find brotherhood and sisterhood, bond with other human beings, find acceptance, find your place in a team of people, build community, receive recognition and appreciation and give this to others. Would these serve you professionally?

  NEW MAP OF FOUR FEELINGS

  World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org

  ASSUMPTION: FEELINGS SERVE ME PROFESSIONALLY

  What about fear? How can you use the neutral energy and information of fear? Use it to trust your sense of danger so you can go first into unknown territory and make it safe for others to follow, take precaution-ary actions, plan ahead, make clear agreements, stay awake and attentive, take care of details, act with precision, detect subtle needs, manage delicate maneuvers, go to the edge of your Box or your organization’s Box and take important calculated risks, learn new things, discover, explore, innovate, step into the unknown and create something that has never been created before, listen to more than you can understand, and serve something greater than yourself by providing what is wanted and needed even if you don’t know how. Would these serve you professionally?

  What about joy? How can you use the neutral energy and information of joy? Use it to say hello and make contact with people—even people you don’t know yet. Use it to celebrate those three-second moments of happiness that occur among all the moments of life’s business: that freshly dusted countertop, that smile. Use it to be present and okay with yourself for no reason; to step into your own power by choosing what is, to say yes to life, to be open to nonlinear opportunities and go play. Use it to include diversity, empower others, be a leader maker, heal, appreciate, find ways through, and embrace the strength and intelligence of conscious feelings for living a life closer to your own truth. Would these feelings serve you professionally?

  If so, you have just taken possession of a new map of the world of feelings.

  What about feelings of depression, despair, melancholy, hysteria, schadenfreude? What about jealousy? Greed? Superiority? Inferiority? Shame? Guilt? What about rage fits? Panic attacks? Emotional collapse? Would it be okay for you to live without these? Would it be interesting for you to be able to help other people gain clarity and freedom from these debilitating experiences in their lives? Could you see yourself doing this professionally to help people through the coming changes? Then you are ready for the next of the Ten Distinctions.

  FIFTH DISTINCTION: FEELINGS ARE MOST POWERFUL IN THEIR PURE FORM

  The fifth of the Ten Distinctions for Consciously Feeling says that feelings serve you most powerfully in their pure form, not mixed with each other. Much disempowerment occurs through unconsciously mixing the four root feelings together.

  For example, when you mix anger and sadness together you will have an experience known as depression. Depression is simply the name that has been given to what it feels like to blend anger with sadness. You can have the experience of depression any time you want simply by mixing anger and sadness together. You can also end the experience of depression any time you want simply by separating the anger and sadness from each other and experiencing and expressing each of them in their pure form. The same is true for the other feeling mixes, as is shown in the Map of Mixed Feelings.

  Mixing sadness and fear creates isolation or despair.

  Mixing anger and fear creates frenzy or hysteria.

  Mixing sadness and joy creates nostalgia, sentimentality or melancholy.

  Mixing joy and fear creates excitement or careless risk taking. Mixing anger and joy creates schadenfreude: feeling glad when someone else loses or feels pain.

  Mixing three feelings together creates sensations that are particularly gripping, such as superiority, jealousy, greed, envy, guilt, shame, vengeance, and lack of self-esteem. Because three feelings are involved and the sensations are so strong, it can seem as if the situation is unresolvable. Yet three-feeling mixes can also be directly unmixed.

  Mixing four feelings together is what causes burnout—emotional paralysis and psychological breakdown—a very confusing, disempowering and disturbing experience. Yet even these states can be easily and suddenly transformed when the feelings are separated and experienced in their pure form.

  I have seen this demonstrated in remarkable fashion innumerable times when persons suffering from near catatonia by mixing together three or four feelings went through the short guided process of respectfully separating their feelings one from the other. These people suddenly regained levels of functionality and relationship they had not experienced in years, if ever.

  This is a revolutionary discovery, as yet unknown in modern society. Even healing practitioners, for the most part, do not yet teach the simple inner navigation skills of separating the feelings. And they could.

  Although largely unknown in mainstream culture, having clarity about mixed feelings is a cornerstone of next culture. If you are a psychotherapist, mediator, trainer, consultant, healer or nurse and you demand that your clients separate their feelings while they communicate, you may be shocked by how effectively this procedure brings a person back into their own natural health and sanity.

  MAP OF MIXING FEELINGS

  World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org

  Unmixing your mixed feelings changes everything.

  This Map of Mixing Feelings was originated in 2005 by Marion Callahan (www.nextculture.org) in her Adventure Feelings workshops in Munich, Germany, based on Valerie Lankford’s 1975 Map of Four Feelings. Unmixing feelings transforms sensations of depression, despair, hysteria, burnout, etc., into manageable pure feeling components. This is a powerful healing process during Phase 1 of feelings work.

  Here is a scary question: how many people take brain drugs or are locked away in institutions simply because they submit themselves to the belief system of a society that does not yet have clarity about mixed feelings?

  Bringing feelings clarity into mainstream society starts with teaching teachers. If you
care about children then you have a job on your bench: find ways to require teachers in modern-society schools to gain adult level feeling skills and communications training as elements of their qualification before being certified to work as a teacher.

  UNMIXING YOUR FEELINGS

  No one can unmix your feelings for you. It is a job you do yourself, internally. At the same time, please keep in mind that the idea of un-mixing feelings is most likely new for you. Modern society has provided very few if any examples of feelings clarity during your lifetime. Unless you are in a workshop or training where people are using and teaching the tools and techniques of Possibility Management, you are on your own in fresh territory. But don’t worry. You can do this. It is simple. You can unmix your feelings by learning and using inner navigation skills.

  The following series of photos demonstrates the procedure for un-mixing depression. Unmixing other combinations of two, three, or four feelings is done in the same way, although the mixture of feelings may be different.

  In the first moment that you notice your feelings are mixed and you are experiencing the telltale results, such as depression, melancholy, despair, hysteria, shame, jealousy, or guilt, stop whatever you are doing and unmix your feelings—unless, of course, you prefer to keep feeling the sensations of mixed feelings. Mixed feelings are not bad or wrong. They simply produce certain results, both personally and interpersonally. If you want those results, keep your feelings mixed. If you want other results, unmix your feelings.

  Set aside a few minutes of time in a place where you can feel big feelings and perhaps make some noise without bothering too many people. If people are around, simply inform them that you will be doing some feelings work and that you might make some sounds, but you will be done in a few minutes and you will be okay.

  Then, with eyes open or closed, energetically extend your entwined fingers deep into your chest and start untangling your anger from your sadness like separating two colors of spaghetti noodles.

  To unmix depression, pull your anger (red spaghetti) into your right hand and your sadness (blue spaghetti) into your left hand. Take your time. This is done for real, not by thinking about it. It can be painful and quite intense. Separate your feelings through experiential distinctions.

  When your feelings are cleanly separated, hold them outside of you and put one of your feelings, in this case your sadness, on an imaginary shelf to your left. You will come back to it in a moment. Now pull the pure anger back into your body to receive the benefit of its energy and wisdom.

  Yes, you will feel angry. Let your anger inform you precisely what you are angry about and what you need to do about it, if anything, such as make boundaries, new decisions, changes, etc.

  Now reach in with your right hand. Take your anger out. Put it on an imaginary shelf to your right. Use your left hand to reach out and grab hold of your sadness from its shelf. Slowly bring your sadness into your chest and feel it as it comes.

  Yes, you will feel sad. Allow your sadness to inform you exactly what you feel sad about and what you may need to do about it, such as grieve, make contact, accept, etc. Please note that you may feel sad about the same things you feel angry about, or something entirely different. Respect your sadness. It can help tremendously if someone is with you while separating your feelings to hear or even write down what you are angry about and what you are sad about.

  You may be surprised to find that after so recently feeling pure anger and pure sadness, your new clarity and power from consciously feeling results in great joy. No, you are not crazy. These are feelings, not emotions. Emotions go on and on for minutes, hours, days or weeks. Feelings come up, and after their information and energy are used they can simply vanish. Then comes true adult joy!

  Unmixing your feelings requires an inner process of distinguishing among the four feelings, and also noticing when they are not distinguished. These are times when you may feel powerless, discouraged, confused, and without the desire to participate.

  MAP OF HOW TO UNMIX MIXED FEELINGS

  World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org

  The four primary feelings – mad, sad, glad, and scared – are useful and empowering when felt in their pure form. Mixing feelings is not bad or wrong; it simply creates certain disempowering results, such as superiority, lack of self-esteem, confusion, or depression. Modern culture does not want its citizens empowered to think and feel independently or it would provide an entirely different educational system. Next culture requires clear feelings from you. Your first steps into next culture may well be through unmixing your feelings.

  Phase 1 of feelings work includes unmixing feelings two, three or four at a time. For this example we will unmix anger and sadness, which when mixed cause the sensation of depression. Mixing anger with sadness is like mixing cow poop and milk. Cow poop has its uses. Milk has other uses. Mixing the two together produces slime. The same is true of feelings. Even if you feel both anger and sadness about the same thing, the two feelings can be experienced and expressed distinctly and clearly, each in its own measure and to its own end.

  HOW TO UNMIX DEPRESSION

  To step out of depression (or other mixed feelings), follow this procedure:

  1. The instant you notice sensations of depression, set aside ten minutes to separate your feelings. It helps a lot to have a trusted listener with you. They can help detect when your feelings are pure, and they can listen to your feelings to complete communications with you.

  2. Take a deep breath, center yourself, and relax into your sensations.

  3. Close your eyes. Then energetically reach deep into your chest area with both hands. Use your fingers and intention to untangle the feelings. This can hurt.

  4. Collect all the anger into your right hand and all the sadness into your le˝ hand. Take your time to slowly pull them apart. Let the sounds out.

  5. Put the sadness on an imaginary shelf with your le˝ hand so you can get to it later. Bring the anger back into your chest with your right hand.

  6. Responsibly experience and express pure anger. Make boundaries, start/stop things, change things, say yes, say no, make decisions, etc.

  7. Next, with your right hand pull the pure anger out and put it on a shelf. Then with your le˝ hand pull the pure sadness into your chest.

  8. Responsibly experience and express pure sadness. Share your pain, grieve changes, let go of expectations, connect heart to heart, etc. You may feel sad about the same things you were angry about, or sad about other things. But now the feelings are pure, no longer mixed.

  9. Stay on guard. You have habitually mixed your feelings for many years, and you are just starting to insist on pure feelings. The instant you notice feelings creeping back together, immediately repeat this procedure. Keep your feelings apart with clear intention. Get used to your new clarity.

  10. In daily life you may feel angry in one moment and sad in the next, but there is no more depression. You never need to mix your feelings. By keeping your feelings separated, the symptoms of mixed feelings vanish.

  Don’t wait. As soon as you notice the mixed feeling state, unmix your feelings.

  Reach your fingers into your chest and untangle the feelings, pulling them away from each other. This is work. Take your time and feel it happen. Let your face and body move. Let the sounds out.

  Put the weaker feeling (in this case sadness) on the shelf with your left hand.

  Then bring the stronger feeling (in this case anger) back into your body with your right hand and respectfully experience its energy and clarity with full intensity.

  Then take the stronger feeling out and put it on its shelf, and bring the weaker feeling in (in this case sadness) and experience its intelligence and impulses with full intensity.

  The joy of consciously using adult responsible feelings is nearly irrepressible.

  SIXTH DISTINCTION: FEELINGS CAN BE EXPERIENCED FROM 0 TO 100 PERCENT INTENSITY

  The sixth of the Te
n Distinctions for Consciously Feeling says that feelings can be experienced from 0 to 100 percent intensity and that in each moment you are feeling all four feelings, but one is always bigger. The clarity this brings to your feelings experiments can cause a significant breakthrough.

  If, like most modern citizens, you have been forced to repress feelings since childhood, the idea of intentionally experiencing any feelings at all may seem as crazy as unleashing a pack of rabid bulldogs in church. Such an assessment is not without basis.