Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth

by Clinton Callahan

  Gaining adult responsibility in practical matters starts when you personally go through a Second Copernican Revolution. Prior to the First Copernican Revolution, Western civilization asserted that the Earth was the center of the universe and that all the stars, planets and galaxies orbited around it. When Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and others began pointing out how wrong we were, it proved to be quite an embarrassment.

  Today we laugh that our forefathers could be so arrogant and egotistical as to think that the universe would swing around our insignificant water ball, invisibly perched on the rim of one of billions of galaxies in the universe. But entire religions and economies were based on the childish perspective that the whole universe revolves around me, me, me, and they all came crashing down when the truth became irrefutable.

  Although the First Copernican Revolution was a rough ride (ask Galileo), Western culture only matured partially. We only stepped from childhood to adolescence. We merely upgraded to a more sophisticated flat-world map.

  REORIENTING YOUR PERSPECTIVE This is the M104 Galaxy. It is 50,000 light years across and 28 million light years from Earth. You are looking at 800 billion stars. Photo © Copyright 2003 by NASA Hubble Space Telescope.

  We may have learned that the Earth goes around the sun, but mainstream society still believes that the Earth and all its resources belong to the RWGs (Rich White Guys).

  Whoever wins in the I win-you lose political and economic power struggles is thought to acquire the rights to quarrel over, ravage, and consume the world’s remaining resources in a teenage-mentality pyramid scheme of endless growth.

  Our globalized society asserts that the Earth and its resources can be owned by people. This is a false assertion. We have not yet realized our ignorance. The shit is about to seriously hit the fan.

  Our adolescent vanity has reached its maximum physical limits and is culminating in a “perfect storm”: a brutal combination of global warming, peak oil, falling water tables, desertification, economic collapse, false education of our children, biodiversity loss, failing fisheries, rising ocean levels, pandemics, and fundamentalism.

  These conditions are not independent of one another. They synergize into what Dennis Gallagher calls “a devil’s brew of reinforcing consequences—consequences which are going to fundamentally alter the physical and biological systems of the planet and degrade the environment we will leave to our children for hundreds, if not thousands, of generations.”

  How could we have been so ignorant?

  Ignorance is easy when modern society equips us with only an adolescent understanding of responsibility—without telling us that it is adolescent. This is not a justifiable excuse. It simply explains that we have been methodically encouraged to give our authority away to adolescent leaders, and we acquiesced, for generation after generation.

  We still have no role models for adult responsibility within modern society. To gain a new relationship to responsibility you have no option but to journey beyond the horizons viewed from the knowledge continents of modern culture.

  Describing a new view of responsibility to one who has not yet realized the limits of the old view may seem ridiculous. Yet still we must attempt it. On a round-world thoughtmap, responsibility is the willingness to see what is actually going on and the interest to respond accordingly.

  Responsibility no longer makes me a victim. Responsibility is a privilege because I am at source. Taking responsibility is my opportunity to create new results.

  Your first steps into adult responsibility will confront you with the Second Copernican Revolution, the realization that people cannot own the Earth.

  Patriarchal empire began by fencing off farms and claiming rights to land ownership. Kings protected their claims with armies. People specialized, becoming soldiers, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, bureaucrats, priests—each role having a different status in the patriarchy. The convention of claiming land and resources resulted in adversarial, materialistic, hierarchical cultures competing against each other, creating many losers and few winners. The game where elite owners ruled masses of slaves became so common that we forgot it was only one of many possible gameworlds to live in. We thought it was the only solution to life on Earth. We regarded ourselves as our own handiwork, not realizing that playing God is a childish delusion guaranteed to blow up in our faces.

  Human beings are a biology experiment being performed by planet Earth. Human beings cannot own the Earth. The Earth owns people. After billions of years, the Earth has evolved an organism complex enough to hold sufficient consciousness to self-reflect, to be aware of itself. The Earth would like her experiment to succeed.

  Success would mean that our consciousness would conquer our intelligence. This is the war going on right now, the war between wisdom and cleverness. So far, cleverness is winning. Human beings may be too clever to survive.

  Every previous species has been subject to the natural checks and balances that keep populations within sustainable limits. Human ingenuity has manipulated conditions so we avoid the checks and balances. The result is that the human population exceeds the sustainable carrying capacity of Earth by somewhere between two and five times. We have overpopulated into overshoot, and are headed into a well-predicted and easily avoidable Malthusian catastrophe. We overconsume with no more intelligence than a bacteria colony expanding beyond the sustainability of its food supply and dying in its own poisonous wastes.

  It’s not our planet. Photo © Copyright NASA.

  We have avoided waking up to the Second Copernican Revolution for so long that the chaos that erupted when society crashed into the First Copernican Revolution will seem like a sunny day at the beach in comparison to the upheavals we will likely experience in the next few decades.

  MAP OF POPULATION OVERSHOOT

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

  Fossil fuels quadrupled Earth’s carrying capacity since 1900 through increasing food production and distribution. This graph shows how Peak Oil will reduce human populations back down to Earth’s sustainable 1 billion people within about seventy-five years from now. As food supplies diminish, the population will collapse. Results of this well-predicted and easily avoidable phenomenon were clearly outlined by Rev. Thomas Malthus in 1798. For a more detailed explanation of this graph and the connection between Peak Oil and population die-off, please visit Paul Chefurka’s website at .

  BECOMING ADULT

  It is well past time to grow up. What does this mean, being adult?

  Eric Berne, originator of Transactional Analysis, invented a thought-map in the 1960s that clearly explains what growing up means. He noticed that people identify themselves with different ego states during their daily life. He distinguished three basic ego states: parent, adult, and child. Each ego state maintains its own private set of ideas, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Only one of them is grown up.

  Every time we enter either the parent or child ego state we believe there is no other way to be than as prescribed in that particular ego state. Only in the adult ego state do we see that we have multiple identities to choose from. (We briefly looked at one aspect of this thoughtmap in Chapter 4.)

  When identified with the parent ego state you will be hearing voices in your mind. The voices are either critical blaming voices, such as: You’re not good enough. You will never make it. You’re too weak. You’re too stupid. You’re a failure, and so on. Or the voices are nurturing, praising voices, such as: You’re so smart. You’re so beautiful. You are my favorite. You are quicker than the others. You are perfect, and so on. These voices do not come from you. They are other people’s voices. By listening to these voices you give your power away to the authorities who first said these things to you.

  You take your power back when you speak your own voice in the adult ego state.

  The child ego state is experienced as inc
omplete emotions from the past. The emotions are either the scared, needy or adaptive emotions that you had to accept as normal in your childhood in order to survive, or the emotions are free and natural but irresponsible emotions that you are trying to relive from the happy moments of your childhood. By experiencing these incomplete or unexpressed childhood emotions as if they were present feelings, you give your power away, because these emotions are physical memories from your past. You have no power in the past. You cannot change or relive anything that happened in your past, even if it happened a mere few seconds ago. The past is the past.

  You reclaim your own power through consciously feeling authentic feelings that arise and pass in the present moment in the adult ego state.

  It is significant learning to make the internal distinctions of hearing other people’s voices in your head and yet only speaking your own voice with your mouth, or noticing childhood emotions being triggered from your body’s physical memories and yet choosing to feel your own authentic feelings in the present moment. Such learning is part of your rite of passage from childhood into adulthood. Without living these distinctions in your moment-to-moment interactions, the power of responsible adulthood will remain forever beyond your reach. These are tough words, and yet over and over again they prove to be the simple truth. Responsibility begins in the adult ego state.

  MAP OF PARENT, ADULT, CHILD EGO STATES

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

  An ego state is a set of ideas, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that you identify with as if they are real. Ordinary (low drama) interactions come from being identified with the parent or child ego states. Parent voices come from others; child neediness comes from your past. Your power comes from using your own voice and being in the present.

  This thoughtmap of human interactions is a powerful contribution by Eric Berne, the originator of Transactional Analysis. By u sing Berne’s clear distinctions you can locate your immediate behavior as either:

  1. PARENT EGO STATE: Voices in your head from other people:

  a. Critical (persecutor) voices about yourself or others, or

  b. Nurturing (rescuer) voices about yourself or others.

  2. CHILD EGO STATE: Incomplete emotions from your past:

  a. Free and natural child emotions (victim), or

  b. Scared needy adaptive child emotions (victim).

  3. ADULT EGO STATE: A mature relationship to responsibility through having your own voice and experiencing free, natural adult feelings in the present moment. The adult ego state is your gateway to the archetypal masculine and feminine.

  STAYING ADULT

  The value of staying in the adult ego state is that only through the adult can you create high drama. In the parent or child ego states, you will only create low drama. Since modern society does not hold these distinctions, it could well be that the majority of your life has been spent submerged in low dramas without you being aware of it. The joy of creating high dramas may be an entirely new experience for you. The following pages are intended to be a mini-handbook for staying in the adult ego state.

  MAP OF THE ADULT EGO STATE

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

  Extraordinary human communications come from you staying in the adult ego state and not getting hooked into parent or child states, even if it is not fair. NOTE: Whenever you do not experientially remember this map, you are probably no longer in the adult ego state.

  The adult ego state is where conscious feeling begins.

  The first support for staying in the adult ego state is to memorize the Map of the Adult Ego State.

  Make the adult ego state your new home. It takes conscious efforts to remain in the adult ego state. Hammer a stake in the ground and hold on for life.

  At any moment you and/or the other person could slip into the parent or child ego state. Whenever you are not remembering that this might happen it has probably already happened and you are probably no longer centered in the adult ego state.

  Remembering the Map of Adult Ego State is not a mental effort. The thoughtmap is not merely a concept. It is an internal energetic experience. You can sense when you are adult and you can sense when you are not adult. The adult ego state is a clear, present, relaxed, attentive, and relationally strong experience. It is the origin of High Level Fun!

  Adult holding space for child. Joe being with his son Nathaniel.

  If you are centered in the adult ego state it does not matter what ego state the other person is in. Whatever ego state they have you can stay adult. Hold your center in a minimized present moment and only use your own voice, which may not need to say anything at all.

  This sounds simple. It actually is simple. It is not necessarily easy. That is why you were born with a Voice Blaster.

  PARENT EGO STATE AND THE VOICE BLASTER

  To stay in the adult ego state you will be using your Voice Blaster. Each person has a Voice Blaster strapped to their waist since before they were born. If you have not been using your Voice Blaster it may only be because no one ever pointed it out to you.

  VOICE BLASTER Hundreds of voices come from your past, from authority figures or from belief-marketing institutions, not from you. They flutter around outside your head waiting to suck out your life energy like vampire bats. No one but you can use your Voice Blaster. The best conversation to have with a voice is: Bang! You’re too stupid. Bang! You’re not good enough. Bang! You’ll never make it. Bang!

  Your Voice Blaster is for blowing away other people’s voices from your thoughts. This lets you exit the parent ego state and slip back into the adult ego state. The only “conversation” to have with those voices buzzing around your head is, Blam! Pang! Kaboom!

  An adult man or woman’s authentic life generally occurs without mental voices. When you speak authentically you will generally speak before you know what you are going to say.

  These are extraordinary distinctions to make, and become even more fantastic when you bring them to life in your daily experience.

  MAP OF THE VOICE BLASTER

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

  INSTRUCTIONS: Each person is born with a Voice Blaster. If you have not used yours it may simply be because no one ever told you it was there. To use your Voice Blaster, reach down to your holster, pull out the Blaster, aim it into the air, pull the trigger, and slide the Blaster back into its holster so fast that the whole operation takes no time. Your Voice Blaster can never be taken away from you. It has an infinite number of charges, and it never misses. Do not hesitate to shoot voices the instant you detect them – BANG! For fun you can blow off the smoking barrel before you drop the Blaster back into its holster, ready again for use, even in the next instant if necessary. When it comes to voices, shoot first. Ask questions later.

  ADULT EGO STATE AND MINIMIZING YOUR NOW

  The temporal territory that you include when you use the word now can be quite vast. For many people, now includes months or years of memories from the past, and months, years, or even decades of considerations projected into the future. Hugely extended nows weigh you down like having elephants in your hot air balloon. Even if your now includes just a few hours into the past, or reaches a few minutes or even seconds into the future, the added mass makes it almost impossible to make energetic right-angle turns when navigating conversation-space or relationship-space at light speed.

  If you have ever had inexplicable or extended anger, sadness, fear, or joy reactions, such as stage fright, claustrophobia, paranoia, self-loathing, despair, euphoria, boredom, or the thrills associated with conspiracy theory thinking, you were in an expanded now of the child ego state.

  Without making efforts to minimize your now your experience of now will still contain memories of the past and visions of the future. Then you will carry around a big now and you will be more easily hookabl
e into the child ego state. Staying in the adult ego state involves shrinking the size of your now until it only includes this exact moment.

  An immediate escape out of an expanded now is to touch an object gently with your fingertips. Try it now, if you want to. Touch your fingertips together and delicately rub them in a tiny circle. Can you feel that? Caress the side of your pants or skirt ever so gently. Touch your pen, the table top, or any object, using an open yet attentive focus on the experience. Let that one little experience be pervasive. This experience only happens in a minimized now.

  In this moment, while you are having this experience, this is the only moment when now is. Anything else is memory of the past or imagining into the future. It is not now.

  The point is that you only have power in a minimized now. Even a slightly expanded now sucks away your power.

  By bringing your sensations into this minimized now you can take actions that are effective because of their appropriateness to the present moment. Even if the appropriate action is simply to breathe, to center yourself, to place your attention in an unexpected place, or to listen, the action will have power because it corresponds to what is wanted and needed in this exact present moment.

  EMPOWERING YOUR INNER CHILD, NOT

  A strong block to minimizing your now relates to a common misunderstanding that seems to have filtered into popular culture from the field of psychology. It is the idea of “empowering your inner child.”

  Somehow this distortion has become a trendy movement based on the idea that as children we experienced innocent joys that we miss when we are older and that we can regain our lost joy through bringing childhood ideas, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors back to life.

  The fallacy in this concept of empowering your inner child is that children are not designed to take responsibility. When a child makes a mess, who cleans it up? The adults. For example, if your free and natural child ego state buys you an ice cream, flies your kite or plays in the sand at the beach, this may be a temporarily novel experience for a serious modern adult, but the result is that with your inner child in charge you are limited to making only child-sized messes. Your enormous adult linear and nonlinear creation forces are blocked.