Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  This book recognizes your interest in discovering further possibilities. This book is strong support for “people” people, whose success and joy come from creatively relating with others, including parents, managers, nurses, educators, entertainers, stewardesses, therapists, trainers, waiters, public speakers, caregivers, leaders, consultants, customer relations personnel, climbing expedition members, astronauts, sports teams, personal development coaches, spiritual students, mediators, directors, healers, film makers, conductors, sales persons, counselors, or anyone longing to enter these vocations. This book supports you in taking a different series of actions, actions that shift your relating into new worlds of relationship. Years of experimenting confirm that the human body, mind, heart and soul thrive in a breath-by-breath and glance-by-glance whole-body experience of radiant joy and brilliant Love. An endless abundance of love can be directly experienced by any human being who prepares himself or herself. It is specifically this preparation that interests me.

  NAVIGATING THE SPACE OF RELATIONSHIP

  ORDINARY HUMAN RELATIONSHIP, EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN RELATIONSHIP, OR ARCHETYPAL RELATIONSHIP

  As one of my heroes, Buckminster Fuller, said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This book is about building new models for relationship.

  The Challenge

  This book is a call for men to grow up and for women to wake up. Life in a patriarchy – the form of our current culture – does not require men to grow up. Since the patriarchy protects adolescent men from the consequences of their actions, adolescence never matures. As a result, much of what the patriarchy promotes is irresponsible, designed for short-term indulgence and consumption rather than for long-term holistic sustainability. The patriarchy does not introduce men to the wide and creative future that is crying out for mature masculine intelligence. Men are not shown that there are more challenging aims than how to maximize quarterly profits. A man discovers who he is and what his life can actually be about through growing up and struggling toward authenticity. These discoveries allow a man to find his power and his destiny in the world, and to experience the rewards of using masculine kindness and attention for creating the possibility of relationship.

  This book is a call for women to wake up and for men to grow up. Women are smarter, faster, and in many instances stronger than men. Women live longer and have better orgasms. Women have known this about themselves all along but have also been using it to complain and manipulate. It is now time for women to own their strengths and put them to use responsibly. It is a waste of effort to try to beat the patriarchy at its own game. Women can, of course. But what do women get if they play the men’s games better than the men? They get more of what they already do not want: fear, hatred and aggression from men. The invitation in this book is for women to play a different game. Play Woman. Woman can enact and serve the Archetypal Feminine even within a patriarchy. As women distinguish between feminine and masculine power and take more and more possession of feminine responsibilities, they will find that they have jobs of the highest importance to do with plenty of power and challenges. Not the least of which is bringing men into experiencing a greater depth and breadth of intimate relationship.

  Every word in this book is written for both men and women readers. Even if a section seems written specifically for women it is actually intended for both men and women, and vice versa. In other words, read the whole book. Most of the clarity and perspectives in Radiant Joy Brilliant Love originate from a context that is broader than our familiar culture. That context is woven into every word. The new context is what provides you with new possibilities, so try to get as much of that into you as you can.

  About Me

  I almost gave up attending the university in my third year because I was dissatisfied with what I was being taught. I loved my field of physics but I was immensely disillusioned about what I thought a university should be. It was 1973 when I took a three-month sabbatical from school to read books from a list of titles I had gathered from respected friends. The questions I wrestled with felt immense and complex. What is a human being? What is a life? What is a man? My three months quickly came to an end with no definitive results. I stuffed my writings into a manila envelope and returned to classes. My unanswered questions sank into subconsciousness to fester for a year and a half.

  In the fall of 1974 I discovered that the magic of the mind had been busily weaving a new set of neural networks for me. Complete concepts began bubbling into my awareness. I decided to create an experimental laboratory, not out of stainless steel and glass but rather out of intention and agreement. The laboratory would be energetic, a meeting format in which it was very okay to be yourself, to ask unusual questions, to try out new ideas and new ways of being. It would be an opportunity to be together that was at the same time safe, stimulating and active. One night I dared to share this idea with three friends. I proposed that we get a group of students together for discovering what was really going on that was not being taught in classes. They were in. The laboratory would start with an introductory meeting. We set the date for Friday, January 10, 1975. We reserved a room at the University Union and cobbled together some flyers to post around campus. The game was on.

  I figured a few people might show up for an evening’s discussion. The meeting was set for 7:00 PM and by 6:30 people were arriving. I sat, pretending to be one of the audience. I had never spoken to a group of people before and had no idea what to do. As more and more people entered I sat there nervously sweating, waiting for some kind of inspiration to move me to my feet, but nothing came. Finally, at ten after seven, my friend Roger Taber elbowed me in the ribs. “Hey! You have to go up there. You are the guy who thought of this.” I remember creeping to the front of the room and facing more than seventy-five eager listeners.

  I don’t remember what I said that night, but the next week, on Thursday evening, fifteen people showed up at my apartment for a meeting. They continued showing up every week for the whole school year. The experiment worked. Wherever I lived after that, I would put up flyers and assemble a new team of experimenters, from local townspeople, to meet every week and explore the edges of what was possible.

  The material in this book comes from working directly in these small groups; from our committment to provide for each other whatever was needed so that we could take the steps we wanted to take for authentic personal development. We found that the commitment needed to come first, before we knew how to produce the results needed. Such commitments took either foolishness or courage, and as I look back I can see we had both. We learned that authentic commitment created a necessity to which the universe could respond. Things would turn out unexpectedly well for people at our meetings – they had fun and they would keep coming back to do the experiments.

  We used a simple method that I now refer to as “rapid learning,” a method of trying something immediately, extemporaneously, instead of figuring a strategy out in advance. In such an approach it doesn’t matter what you try, because whatever you try produces some kind of results – either favorable or a flop. The universe is a giant feedback generator, quite dependable for saying what works and what doesn’t. Rapid learning was simple: if it was working, we kept going. If it wasn’t, then we shifted our approach and tried again.

  I was and still am a rampaging note taker. From these early stages on, I wrote down the feedback we got from the universe. My bookshelves are filled with three-ring binders over-stuffed with hand-drawn diagrams and experimental process descriptions. I paid very careful attention to what worked and what did not. Things not working did not stop us from proceeding. They challenged our imaginations to invent entirely new procedures. The distilled results slowly collected themselves into what I now call “Possibility Management,” a new way of working with people both individually and in groups, both personally and professionally; a way that creates clear communications, responsible enlivenin
g relationship, imaginative innovations, and effective results.

  My commitment to the universe was that whatever secrets it revealed to me I would document impeccably and share as widely as possible. That is why I worked so hard to bring this book together: to complete my end of the bargain – because the universe has certainly kept its end!

  What Was Learned

  Working in small groups in trainings and in Possibility Labs we figured out how to “voyage” into spaces of incredible clarity. That is, we learned to use group intelligence in nonlinear ways to bypass ordinary limits of perceiving and relating and could enter new territory repeatably. We learned how to plug directly into the source of unlimited possibility, which turns out to be an Archetypal Principle, a “force of nature” as George Bernard Shaw called it, a facet of Archetypal Love out of which the entire universe is made.

  We learned how to navigate our group to the center of what author and artist E. J. Gold refers to as the “Great Labyrinth of Spaces,” predictably, repeatably, as a felt sensation, and then to stay there for three or five days in a row and work for what people wanted and needed. We discovered entryways into the same spaces that other explorers and researchers had entered to retrieve the clarity and poetry that they brought to the world. People like John and Antonietta Lilly, Charles Tart, John Holt, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Eric Berne, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Gordon, Linda Adams, Stephen Karpman, Valerie Lankford, Rupert Sheldrake, David Bohm, William Glasser, Ilya Prigogine, Carlos Castaneda. Even the way that healers and saints reportedly work with people became familiar to us.

  I spent a number of years attempting to establish workable alternative cultures, only to find that the experiment failed each time due to human emotional conflicts. My focus turned to learning more about relationship. I became hungry for guidance and sought input from a series of traditions, including Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, Jose Silva’s UltraMind System as taught by John Magera, Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship, Gurdjieff Foundation meetings with Ron Bosanquet, E. J. Gold’s Institute for the Development of the Harmonious Human Being (IDHHB). And, since 1989 I have been a student of Lee Lozowick and the Western Baul tradition.

  In 1990, I changed careers – from designing computer hardware for biomedical research, to designing human “thoughtware” for developing “relationship intelligence.” In 1995, I moved to Europe. In 1998, I started our training academy in Germany. Today the work continues in corporate trainings, Possibility Labs and Trainer Labs.

  How to Use This Book

  First, I ask you to be patient with the jargon that shows up in this book. In order to investigate conditions not normally addressed, I use quite a few words in unusual ways, borrowing terminology from Possibility Management. When introducing a term for the first time I have tried to put it in “quotes” and give you a brief working definition. For further explanation these quoted words are listed in the “Glossary of Possibility Management Terms” in the back of the book. Reading the Glossary is in itself an education in Possibility Management, and that is not the point of this book. Try not to get stuck in the new terms. If you find that while reading you do not understand something, my suggestion is to just keep reading on. The book says things in many different ways so that people with different ways of thinking and different personal experiences can still understand. You are not expected to understand everything. Later on you can return to what was not clear if you want to.

  There is a lot in here. Don’t anticipate getting everything all at once. I didn’t. This book is a culmination of more than fifty years of learning, and not much of that learning was easy. Give yourself some slack. I hope that, as you read along, the new terminology makes understanding these ideas easier for you, and that the words become more and more familiar or even comfortable through usage.

  About “Archetype”

  One word used quite frequently is the term “Archetype.” The Archetypal terminology used in Radiant Joy Brilliant Love comes from Possibility Management and is not derived from or associated with the popular work of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung evolved his understanding of deep-psychology archetypes in reference to the psychoanalytical context that he inherited from his teacher Sigmund Freud. Instead of relying on Jung’s experiences, we have done our own empirical research for over thirty years. These experiments brought us directly into contact with the same sources that Jung must have tapped into to formulate his particular terminology. Instead of a psychological context we researched from a possibility context. Because we went fishing with a different net, we caught a different sort of fish, although we fished in the same sea.

  In Possibility Management, Archetypes are potential configurations hardwired into the energetic structure of human beings. Archetypes are either responsible or irresponsible. Irresponsible Archetypes are awakened during childhood and used to create a workable defense strategy. Responsible Archetypes lie dormant until they are turned on through an adolescent rite of passage (which is notably missing from our culture). Much is written in later chapters to further explore Archetypes, so this is enough for now. I have capitalized Archetypal words in this book because they are … well … Archetypal.

  Everything Is Changing

  Implied here is the understanding that nothing in this book is perfect. Nothing is final. All of it is in the process of development. Over the years of using and sharing these ideas and procedures I have watched them change before my eyes. They change even while I am speaking about them in public or using them in trainings. These ideas do not come from the known and the certain, rather they seem to be alive and continuously evolving.

  I am not writing this book because I am a scholar who is recognized as an authority on the subject material. If I were writing from scholastic authority then I would say, “I will explain to you what is possible,” or “I will reveal to you what is possible.” Instead I say, “Let us investigate together what is possible.” Fortunately for you I do not know what I am talking about. If I originated this writing in what I know for certain, then we would have a very short and boring conversation.

  Instead of writing from certainty I am willing to be at risk. Being at risk means that I am willing to be in the uncomfortable position of not knowing and still responsibly proceeding. (I tell you this so that you can do the same kinds of experiments yourself.) Even in this moment I am on the spot, and because of my commitment to you, the reader, I am using everything I can to create useful results, even though I do not already know how to do that. Together, like this, we enter and investigate what could be possible in unknown territory.

  Prove It for Yourself

  In no instance should you use the fact that you have a book in your hands as an excuse for giving away your “personal bullshit detector.” No matter what this book says, it also insists that you prove it for yourself. There are no shoulds or should nots in this book, no good/bad, right/wrong, better/worse, positive/negative. There is no system of beliefs, no precepts, no moral codes, no rules. There is no ideal relationship to try to emulate, no model behavior to try to remember. Neutrality derives from the simple understanding that every action creates its own consequences. This book proposes new actions to cause new consequences, tested through your own experimentation. You get a chance to rethink your decisions about speaking, listening, feeling or being in relationship. Deep new clarity comes to you about how you create what you are creating, and how you could, if you wanted to, create something completely different. You have in your hands all that you need to further your own research.

  Therefore, do not be surprised if you find yourself writing notes in the margins of this book, and adding details and dimensions of clarity to the diagrams based on what you yourself discover. Possibility Management is “open code,” meaning, in this case, that its origins cannot be hidden because its origins are Archetypal. If you can understand Possibility Management, then, you are standing at the source of Possibility Management, and have the ability to further develop it. Just lik
e open code computer software, Possibility Management will continue to be developed by you, the responsible user. If you eventually get copies of your findings back to me we can share what you have discovered in future editions. Or write your own books and articles if you want. You are encouraged to use these tools and techniques however you can to serve people. Make this material your own. At the same time please keep in mind that the value of referencing Possibility Management as your source is that Possibility Management will then hang together as a body of knowledge that will continue to serve people for many generations to come. We can continue developing it together. If you, however, mix these maps with new-age metaphysical esoteric psychology, rename them and pass them on to other people, then Possibility Management will be scattered and diluted. I hope you make choice A.

  Keep Experimenting

  This book is not a work of logic and the mind. This book is an investigation into “experiential reality,” that is, reality before it is influenced by words. This book is not about saying how it is. This book is an invitation for you to make experiments to discover for yourself how it is. Talk is cheap – worthless in many instances. Especially talk about the possibility of directly experiencing Archetypal Love. Doing experiments – now that has value. Hopefully, while reading this book, doing experiments will become your way.

  Over and over again this book will beg you, entice you, even trick you into actually trying new behaviors. Because what you do and what you stop doing is what creates the results you have in your life, not what you think. Understanding what this book says is not enough to make a difference for you. Certainly, understanding is involved. But understanding is not sufficient. Satisfaction in human relationship comes less from how you think about it and more from how you experience it. How you experience relationship will come through the novelty of your actions.