Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth
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8. DISTILLING YOUR DESTINY
(NOTE TO THE READER: In this chapter you will be clarifying the four, five or six Bright Principles of your destiny. If you have skipped ahead to this chapter without carefully studying the previous seven chapters, it’s a clever idea but I don’t recommend it. Learning to consciously feel has similarities to rock climbing, which is actually quite simple. Slip into a harness, design your approach, chalk up your hands and its monkey time. But they make you take lessons and get a certificate before letting you climb El Capitan. It’s for your own good. That’s because if you shout “off belay” when you mean “on belay” you could scream ten meters and wrench your back. If you thought your rock face is grade IV 4.2 but it is actually VI 5.8 you could be in for hard knocks. If your carabiner isn’t fully locked when you’ve got your climbing rope clicked into your quickdraw the wrong way you might need more than a new brain bucket (helmet). I am not saying anything like this will happen if you skip over the previous chapters. But I am saying that the world of conscious feelings operates under different laws than the world of numbness, just like rock climbing is different from stair climbing. Before you rope up for distilling your destiny I strongly encourage you to study the first seven chapters of this book. It’s for your own good.)
“I want to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.”
– Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
This chapter contains a process through which you can distill out of your life the four, five or six Bright Principles of your destiny.
What are Bright Principles?
Bright Principles are forces of nature. Each Bright Principle is a facet of the bright jewel of responsibility, the practical manifestation of consciousness, as shown on the Map of Possibility. (The term responsibility here means adult responsibility as described on the Map of Child and Adult Responsibility in Chapter 5.)
MAP OF POSSIBILITY
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
This is a map of what is possible right now.
What you are doing right now is creating conscious or unconscious stories about what is.
Without your storymaking, what is would have no meaning. This is not bad – it is how it is.
The world is rich in evidence, so you can make up any story about anything.
You do not make up stories for no reason. Every story has a purpose.
You are either aware of the purpose of your story or you are not.
If you are aware of the purpose of your story, then your actions serve conscious purposes.
If you are not aware of the purpose of your story, your actions serve unconscious purposes.
This map is not about good or bad. It is about conscious or unconscious creating.
This map is inside of you. Each of us has a bright world and a shadow world. This map is not about good or bad, only about the kinds of results you want to create. The king or queen of your underworld is your Gremlin, which feels glad when someone else feels pain and serves Shadow (hidden purpose) Principles. The king or queen of your upperworld is archetypal man or woman, who feels glad when someone heals, learns, changes or succeeds, when the game is about winning happening and serves Bright (true destiny) Principles. When you have gained clarity about both your hidden purpose and your true destiny, what you get is the possibility of making a conscious choice about what you are creating right now. This can be a most useful choice.
Responsibility is consciousness in action: the actions you take have a level of responsibility that reflects your level of consciousness.
There is no deception possible about your level of responsibility because the results never lie. For example, if you come late to an appointment, no matter what your excuse is, the result is that you are responsible for being late. You are the source of the consequences in your life. Consequences cannot be avoided. To quote an old saying, “You can’t fool Mother Nature.” For example, it’s a fool’s game to think you can externalize business costs. What goes around, comes around. Profit is an illusion.
ARCHETYPAL WORLDS
Archetypally speaking, there is a middleworld, an upperworld and an underworld. You normally live your everyday life in the middleworld. You shift from world to world according to whether Bright or Shadow Principles motivate your actions, communications and relationships.
If you do not consciously choose to serve Bright Principles, you unconsciously choose to serve Shadow Principles.
Bright and Shadow Principles are both diagrammed on the Map of Possibility. But the map is general, merely a concept. You cannot consciously navigate your everyday moment-to-moment thoughts and actions through Bright and Shadow Principles until you clearly distill out those Principles from your life.
The Distilling Destiny Process is how you find your Bright Principles and, except for the final check, you can do it yourself by following the instructions in this chapter.
The Hidden Purpose Process, on the other hand, is how you find your Shadow Principles. The Hidden Purpose Process is a two-hour chaotic, loud, intense group experience navigated by a highly experienced facilitator. “Intense” meaning the maximum of what you could imagine a journey into the archetypal underworld might be like. Needless to say, the Hidden Purpose Process is not something you would try at home on your own from a book.
I equate your distilled Bright Principles to your destiny, the significance of which is that you do not have to wait to find out what your destiny turns out to be. With clarity about your Bright Principles you can live as your destiny in action right now.
The Distilling Destiny Process has four parts. The whole thing might take you a couple of hours. Not all four parts need to be done at one sitting. The four steps are:
Part 1: Discovering Your Destiny
Part 2: Choosing Your Destiny
Part 3: Adding Mass to Your Destiny—Your Practices
Part 4: Implementing Your Destiny—A Project
Parts 2, 3 and 4 bring Part 1 out of intellectual curiosity into authenticity. To do Part 1, reserve a half hour of private time and sit at a writing desk with several sheets of paper to answer the Distilling Destiny Questions.
PART 1: DISCOVERING YOUR DESTINY
The following Distilling Destiny Questions have no right or wrong answers. Your answers are for you alone. Answer as many of these questions as you can, keeping in mind that you are not looking for the linear answers to the questions. You are looking for the themes, principles and values that have been at work in your life. The questions lead you to recognize these overall patterns.
You do not need to write complete sentences. Neither do you need to answer all of the questions. Just write the ongoing principles and values that the questions reveal. The purpose of these questions is to help you identify what really matters to you.
The Distilling Destiny Questions (Reminder: Don’t write answers to the questions that are printed in straight type. Do write answers to the questions in italics.)
1. What was your favorite story as a child? Who are you in that story? What do you resonate with in this character? What turns you on about him or her? What qualities do you have in common with this character?
2. What is your favorite film? Who are you in the film? What do you love about this character? What inspires you about him or her? What qualities are the same between you and the character? His or her attitudes? His or her way of being? What decisions, conflicts, solutions are the same?
3. Where are your favorite places to be? What in you is expressed at these places? What in you comes alive there? What is stimulated? Fulfilled? Amplified?
4. What are your favorite things to see? To smell? To touch? What delights you about these experiences? What inspires you about them? What values do you appreciate about them?
5. What are your favorite fantasies? Where do you go when you daydream? What is happening there? What attracts you to that? What happens for you there? What is your need? What is
it that you want to be true? What are you longing for?
6. What are the best times you ever had? What happened? Why was it so good? Why do you classify it as the best of times?
7. What are your biggest successes? What motivated you to try so hard? What value did it have? What did you get?
8. What awards have you received? What honors? What in you was recognized? What was your purpose?
9. If you were fully rested and had a week of unscheduled time, and money was not a consideration, what would you do? Who would you do it with? Why would you do this? What would you get out of it?
10. What are your favorite possessions? Why are they favorites? What do they mean to you? What do they represent to you? What in you is expressed by these objects? What do they stand for? What do they touch in you?
11. What are the most valuable experiences or adventures you ever had? Why do you consider them valuable? What did you enjoy? What did you learn?
12. If you had 100 million dollars, no strings attached, no taxes, what would you do with it? Why? What is the value for you in doing this? What would it accomplish? What is the worth of that to you?
13. What have you made with your own hands? What did you get from doing this? What motivated you to make the effort?
14. What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy most about them?
15. In what ways do you have substance? (Just write the first answer that comes to mind.)
16. If there were a group of people who were undefended, what would you defend for them? What would you care enough about to take a stand for on their behalf?
17. If your parents were to brag about you to their neighbors, what would they say?
18. In what ways are you authentic? (Just write what comes to mind.)
19. What do your friends really love about you? (Be honest!) What do they see in you that makes them want to be your friends?
20. What qualities are you famous for? What is your reputation about? What are the qualities about you that are legendary?
21. If you had fifteen minutes of free worldwide TV exposure, so everyone could understand you in every language, what is the most important message that you would want to communicate to people? What core message do you want people to know?
22. What traits or characteristics or values would you want your children to inherit from you?
23. If you went to a costume party, what favorite character would you like to be? What do you admire and respect about this character? What does this character communicate to you?
24. Who are your heroes in history? What do you admire and respect about them? What radiance do they have that you notice and appreciate?
25. If you painted your own self-portrait, what characteristics would you want people to experience when looking at the painting? What mood would you want them to have? What possibilities would you want them to gain?
26. When you die, what words would you want printed in your obituary in the newspaper? What do you want them to say about your life?
DISTILLATION INSTRUCTIONS
After you have answered the questions review what you wrote and circle the four to six main Principles that have been revealed running through your life, the central themes that really matter to you, the qualities that resonate deeply with your inner wish to be alive. Try to avoid using your mind to analyze what you wrote. Instead, use your body to sense core Principles that have the most resonance for you in the long term.
After you have circled four to six Bright Principles copy them to the bottom of your page. These Bright Principles have been with you since you were born. You could even say that you were born to enliven these Principles in the world.
Sometimes we think that what we have to do is different from what we are supposed to do, which is different from what really turns us on to do. In fact, these three things are all the same thing. This becomes clear when you distill your Destiny Principles out of your life. No matter what you do you are serving the purpose of bringing your Principles to life. This is what really matters to you.
When you make yourself conscious of what really matters to you and write it down on paper, what you are looking at is your destiny.
In your list of Bright Principles it turns out that there is a pattern. What matters to you fits together as a whole, balanced and complete portrait. Certain elements will be included. Your list of Bright Principles should include at least one heart Principle (such as Love, Friendship, Family, Togetherness, Oneness, Acceptance, Joy, Harmony, Community, Communication, Teamwork), at least one sword Principle (such as Integrity, Clarity, Trustworthiness, Impeccability, Reliability, Respect, Commitment, Discipline), and at least one soul Principle (such as Possibility, Transformation, Healing, Beauty, Empowerment, Adventure, Leadership, Service, Creativity, Growth, Patience, Vision).
The Principles cannot be too general. For example, if the theme ecology runs throughout your answers, ask yourself, ecology in relationship to what? For what purpose? To what end? For example, ecology could reflect a resonance with any of these Bright Principles: Balance, Fairness, Beauty, Elegance, Respect, Sustainability, Harmony, Efficiency, Connectedness, Exchange, Innocence, Evolution, and so on. Sense into it and figure out precisely which specific Bright Principle the theme of ecology represents for you.
Take your time with this. Strive for an accurate reflection of your inner motivation, your true purpose for being alive.
Over the years that we have been Distilling Destiny with people we have learned to avoid particular Bright Principle formulations because Gremlin can grab hold of them, create theoretical loopholes, and then twist you into serving its own shenanigans. For example:
• Honesty. Gremlin can say, “But I’m just being honest with you . . .” while dumping a mountain of destructive criticism, blame and hatred on your head. Instead, use Clarity, Vulnerability, Integrity, Openness, Courage, or Transparency.
• Freedom. Gremlin says, “Yeah! Freedom from responsibility! Freedom to not keep my promises! Freedom to betray!” Instead, use Abundance, Choice, Creation, Nonlinearity, Possibility, Diversity, or Appreciation.
• Power. Remember, Bright Principles are the way you serve other people. You may have been attracted to power your whole life, but serving Bright Principles is about empowering other people, not yourself. Gremlin can take Power twice around the block before you blink an eye. Instead, use Empowerment, Encouragement, Clarity, Commitment, Persistence, Teamwork, Fulfillment, Enthusiasm, Inspiration, Discipline, Healing, or Wholeness.
• Justice. Gremlin is perfectly justified to take revenge in the name of justice—after all, has it not been written An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Instead use Fairness, Sharing, Connecting, Relationship, Understanding, Being With, or Communication.
• Trust. Trust is actually a decision, not a Bright Principle. You don’t have to collect enough evidence before you can trust, or wait around until you have a certain warm internal sensation before you can trust. You can simply decide to trust or to not trust. Instead of trust, you can represent and serve the Bright Principle of Trustworthiness. Then you empower others to become trustworthy.
• Intensity. Gremlin devours intensity by jumping from one stimulation to the next: food, drink, emergency, confrontation, risk, accident, entertainment, online sex, drugs, business deals, competition, shopping, etc. A commitment to intensity is Gremlin’s excuse for more, more, more. If you are oriented toward intensity, instead serve the Bright Principles of Integrity, Commitment, Discipline, Impeccability, Ruthless Self-Observation, Accountability, Vulnerability, or Community. Truly embracing any of these Bright Principles will bring you to levels of intensity far beyond the intensity of self-indulgence
• Being Special. Gremlin loves to be special. Then it has a reason for doing anything it wants, because it’s special: special needs, special requirements, special privileges, etc. Gremlin claims that everyone is special. He is just a little more special than all the others. Instead, use Self-Respect, Diversity, Appreciatio
n, Impeccability, Elegance, Gentleness, Generosity, or Kindness.
Try writing your list of Bright Principles over and over again until they come together in their most clear and powerful natural order. Remember, you are making a working draft. Your destiny principles will continue to refine themselves and evolve over time as you apply them in daily situations. When your Bright Principles feel round and resonant you have distilled your destiny.
PART 2: CHOOSING YOUR DESTINY
It may surprise you to learn that your destiny is optional! Most civilized people unconsciously choose not to enact their true destiny. (NOTE: Many of these distinctions about what really matters to you come from Robert Fritz’s amazing little book Creating, a book I highly recommend.) You have distilled your destiny Principles, but you have not become your destiny Principles. Here are some considerations to ponder before it would be possible for you to consciously choose to align to your Bright Principles.
While reading over your Bright Principles, get in touch with the part of you that might resist serving these Bright Principles, thinking it to be an overwhelming burden. Specifically, what makes it seem like a burden to you? Write down your thoughts and ponder what you wrote. Such ideas have been at work in the back of your mind your whole life. Do they still truly apply to you now? Would you like to change your mind about any of these now? If so, go ahead. Then write down your new perspectives.
After distilling your Bright Principles, you can see that the Principles have always been there. What behaviors or excuses do you use for explaining why what really matters to you does not show up first and foremost in your life? Typical excuses might include: I don’t know how. I can’t. I’m not good enough. I’m not allowed to. I’m too old, too young, too stupid. People will hate me. I am a bad person. I am crippled. I am addicted.
Perhaps you experience your destiny as an incredible opportunity and good fortune. If so, what still stands between you and being your destiny? Write that down.