Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  As you explore the new terrains yourself, personally, under your own volition and at your own risk, your authority becomes authentic. When your authority is authentic then the stories that you tell about your life can awaken a long-forgotten longing in other people to experience radiant joy and brilliant Love. Hearing such stories is how we remember that true love is possible. Going first is what makes you a leader. Changing yourself simultaneously changes your culture.

  Keep in mind that this book cannot be your final guide. The real-time feedback and coaching needed to adjust your attitudes and behaviors only comes from other living, breathing, feeling human beings, not from a book, and not from your own mind. So, plan to talk with people about what you are learning and trying. Getting a group together to discuss and practice these ideas can prove to be exceptionally productive, especially as an aid to digesting the new ideas and creating practical ways to apply them.

  When experimenting, be generous and kind with yourself. Give yourself plenty of space and time. Spending a part of your day exploring Archetypal Love is time well spent. Consider in comparison how much time you spend watching television commercials, sitting in traffic jams, or waiting in line at the post office.

  Please remember that experiencing wild phenomena is not the goal of this work. The goal is for you to get into the laboratory and start doing experiments yourself rather than watching safely from the observation room. Should some delightful experience actually occur for you, regard your ecstasy as an accident, and take careful notes. Developing the discipline to experiment invites more than the usual number of fortuitous accidents.

  “But What If My Partner …?”

  You might be quite enthusiastic about the possibility of self-development that this book represents. You might feel inspired by the thought of entering new domains of relationship and of exploring deeper intimacies with your partner. You might also imagine that to make use of this book your partner should be at the same place as you in their development with an equivalent enthusiasm for doing experiments. The third part of this misery-making formula is noticing that your partner is neither at the same place as you nor do they carry the same level of interest. At this point the whole proposal of developing relationship intelligence devolves into a painfully insoluble paradox with you being the victim of the joke.

  I don’t know where this fantasy of harmonious growth got its beginnings, but it is arguably never the case that two people are at the same place in their development or have the same level of enthusiasm about relationship experiments, ever. We are human beings, living organisms. We have the possibility of being reborn into a new experience of life with every breath. Stasis and orderliness are nowhere in the picture.

  The procedure for using this book equally applies in any quality of relationship: you read the book and you practice the experiments. You have fun. You try your best and crash and burn, pick yourself up and try again. Play around. Stretch beyond your limits. These experiments open fabulous new universes of perception and experience – your perception and your experience. Your partner will do whatever they will do. Sure you can invite them to play along with you. Either they will play or they won’t. But the moment you expect anything from your partner the possibility of authentic relationship is killed, because what you then have is your expectation instead of the relationship.

  Even if your partner is thoroughly antagonistic to creating an extraordinary life and profound intimacy, this never had nor ever will have any impact on what you decide to learn about and explore. No matter if you take huge risks in being vulnerable and communicative and every effort you make seems to explode in your face, no effort is wasted. Your matrix builds regardless of your apparent lack of success. One thing I have been learning about is having faith. One thing I see worthy of great respect and faith is evolution. Your actual circumstances turn out to be irrelevant. What matters is your relationship to those circumstances. You can have faith in evolution happening in whatever your circumstances.

  There are no failed relationships, because in every relationship evolution is happening. Even if you live in total denial of what is really going on in your relationship, something is cooking in you, and sooner or later it will come to the surface for your benefit. So relax about your partner, and keep making efforts; see what you can learn. Do whatever you can to accept things as they are – accept things deep within yourself and completely outside of yourself. In the moment you accept, those things are free to suddenly change form.

  When Nothing Happens

  Even after reading this book and doing the experiments off and on for five or ten years, nothing might happen. This is not a problem. There is nothing wrong with you. Trying experiments and having nothing happen does not mean that Archetypal Love does not exist. The fact that the possibility of experiencing something great is just a possibility does not detract from its greatness.

  Radiant Joy Brilliant Love is a tough book, a difficult book. You will look directly in the face of your own incompetencies, your unconsciousness, your irresponsibilities, and your “underworld.” This is painful, and the pain will not go away. You will learn that what has been motivating your actions is not what you thought. You will see that you have hurt the people you love; that in fact you wanted to hurt them because you thought you had no other options. Now you will have other options to try, and they are simple, solid, and clearly explained options to create more Love and intimacy than you may have thought existed.

  Suddenly, relationship may take on a value and importance that will draw from you the highest regard. Suddenly, being with your partner might become delightful in ways never before imagined.

  Probably the best overall guideline for how to use this book is: Have fun!

  PART I

  Expansive Learning

  CHAPTER 1

  Learning About Joy and Love

  In school we are taught to learn by fitting new information into our already existent understanding like fitting pieces into a jigsaw puzzle. This is what I call “defensive learning.” Defensive learning assumes that we already know the most important things there are to know. Anything new is an extra puzzle piece that must be fitted into the portion of the puzzle we have already assembled. If we encounter something that does not fit into our current “knowledge continent” we tend to ignore the new thing as irrelevant. Our relevancy filters are so fast that many times we do not even recognize when we have decided to ignore something because it does not fit in anywhere. If we ignore something before realizing we have ignored it then that thing becomes invisible to us.

  Defensive learning, although widely used, is extremely linear: it allows us to only learn more about what we already know. When we gain maturity and have a wish to enter “the unknown” we may discover that our defensive approach that at first seemed to protect us has now become our prison.

  Expansive Learning

  The secrets in this book will be discovered through stepping out of the defensive learning prison and experimenting with a nonlinear learning method that I call “expansive learning.” Expansive learning is what we did as children before we went to school. Think of how much a child learns in his or her first years: hand-eye coordination, standing, walking, speaking, social etiquette, to name a few skills. Compare that with how much you learned in this past year.

  Expansive learning assumes that we know almost nothing. It encourages us to accept new puzzle pieces on their own merits. It allows unrecognizable information to stand alone in us, still permitting us to use it without demanding that it fit anywhere into our present field of understanding.

  Expansive learning occurs in parallel by allowing us to build understanding on many isolated construction sites simultaneously. It is nonlinear because some pieces may not fit together for years, perhaps ever, while other pieces may come together in moments, sliding into place whole chunks at a time.

  Expansive learning is not about trying to create one all-encompassing unified field theory, such as Einstein sought during t
he later part of his life. The expansive approach involves staying open and flexible – keeping new options available even if they make no sense (at first) compared with what we already know. Expansive learning is therefore indispensable as the foundation for Radiant Joy Brilliant Love, which explores domains of human relationships and love – fields interlaced with much that we do not know.

  With expansive learning it is okay to not know. You simply move into the unknown and start looking around, already assuming that you will not understand everything. While not knowing, you allow yourself to see what you see and feel what you feel, without trying to fit it in anywhere. This means that you might not know what it is that you are experiencing, at first, or how it works, or how it all fits together. In time, the new things that you notice will become more and more familiar. Eventually they can establish whole new continents of understanding for you that vastly enrich the quality of your life and your relationships.

  The challenge of expansive learning is that if you are accustomed to defensive learning, expansive learning may seem disorderly. In the midst of these explorations you may have the sensation that you are no longer standing on a solid foundation of logic, with defendable reasons, and that you are less in control of the learning process. This is exactly how expansive learning feels.

  Observations and arguments encountered in these pages will tend to be less heady and more experiential. Radiant Joy Brilliant Love will instruct you in using language as a bridge to communicate new experiences based on your own internal reference points – your personal sensations in the immediate present.

  While expansive learning includes diversity and chaos, don’t assume that it will only cause anxiety or disruption. As you venture further into the territories that this book explores, you may be quite surprised to find that you can actually relax and be effective without being in total control or having your usual level of certainty. You may even find a sense of empowerment and experiential freedom when you no longer need to carry around a heavy platform of linear arguments on which to defend your actions or inactions. You may discover a refreshing excitement in uncertainty, as the experience of not knowing indicates that you have entered a gateway to new possibilities.

  Discoveries do not come without some reorientation, however. The wilder the reorientation, the more interesting the discovery! If you guard yourself against disillusionment and disassembly, you eliminate the chance of discovery. Conversely, the more accepting you are of wild reorientation, the more interesting your discoveries will be.

  You can rely on your mind’s astonishing ability to establish new definitions for normal. Think how quickly you adopted into your daily life new technologies like microwave ovens, fax, DVD, CD, mobile telephony, personal computers and Internet. The mind can quickly adjust what it calls normal to include new ways of thinking, feeling, acting and being. During continual expansive learning new normals do not last long. Soon the next disorientation comes along and you again experience the uncertainty of being in strange territory. Such is the life of an explorer.

  A true explorer can count on being periodically uncomfortable for the rest of his days. Learning about radiant joy and brilliant Love is comparable to being in a space pilot training school where becoming functional in groundlessness is part of the program.

  If you question whether or not you qualify as such an explorer, lay your worries to rest. If you have read this far, you can be assured that you are already an explorer. If not, you would have put this book aside long ago. Welcome aboard!

  This chapter will present ten essential actions and attitudes of expansive learning to guide you through everything that follows in this book. Considering these perspectives can help you catalyze a significant deepening of your relationship intelligence.

  Expansive Learning Includes:

  1. Building/expanding matrix

  2. Making vital distinctions

  3. Getting on the One Team

  4. Thinking beyond separation

  5. Taking your time

  6. Letting your patterns disintegrate

  7. Being okay with looking bad

  8. Avoiding naiveté

  9. Apprenticing to a guide, and

  10. Being lovable.

  By making sincere efforts to blend these actions and attitudes into the basic mix of your daily life you become an expansive learner. The surprise awaiting your discovery is that the precious innocence and raw passion of expansive learning makes you an authentic aphrodisiac exuding the scent of radiant joy and brilliant Love.

  1. Building/Expanding Matrix

  There are secrets you cannot understand even if they stare you in the face for decades. This kind of secret keeps itself. It stands invisibly before you until something in you changes. This book does not intend to reveal this kind of secret to you – it cannot. But by you doing the expansive learning experiments in Radiant Joy Brilliant Love you gradually build in yourself something that makes it possible to see what you could not see before: consciousness – commonly defined as greater awareness or expanded view. Consciousness does not grow until it has something to grow on. What you build is called “matrix.”

  Matrix is the energetic framework upon which consciousness can grow. Learning that matrix exists and how matrix can be built adds tremendous clarity to the whole issue of personal development. For example: Noticing that one person can easily learn and retain a new soft skill, like expressing feelings honestly, while another person struggles and falters merely indicates differences in their matrixes. Proceeding with personal development begins with building matrix.

  Think of a climbing rose bush. Before it can climb it needs some kind of trellis to support its growth. Likewise, before human consciousness can grow there needs to be a structure for consciousness to expand onto. The trellis for consciousness is matrix (in no way related to the film of the same name). Many of the exercises and experiments described in this book are specifically designed to build matrix.

  Keep in mind that understanding how to do an experiment does not build matrix. Only doing the experiment builds matrix. Doing an experiment is called “practice,” and practice is the means to radiant joy and brilliant Love.

  The primary way in which we “practice,” and thereby build matrix in relationship, is by living and “being-with” others as determined by our commitments, rather than as determined by our circumstances. For example, you might decide to be more patient with your children, and to spend more time simply sharing your presence with them, without an agenda. However, when the day is done and you notice that you had no more patience, you might want to attribute the failure to circumstances, like: a conflict in your schedule; things starting too late; everyone being too tired; an unexpected visitor. This is not practice; this is defense! As an expansive learner building a new matrix for relationship, your practice would entail creating new ways to meet your commitments rather than caving in to the circumstances. Practicing would be to produce the promised results regardless of reasons, excuses or conditions.

  Practice builds matrix for holding additional consciousness. Consciousness is everywhere. The more matrix you build, the more consciousness can show up through you. At the same time, however, it is useful to know that no matter how sincerely or how diligently you practice, matrix can only grow at a certain maximum rate of speed. While you can slow the growth of matrix to a minimum, the upper speed limit for building matrix cannot be broken. It can also be useful to know that there is no “top end” to building matrix.

  MAP OF BUILDING MATRIX

  Consciousness is everywhere. The more elegant the being, the more consciousness it reflects. Consciousness shows up as responsibility. A person's being starts out about the size of a grapefruit. Matrix is the framework upon which being can grow. Without a matrix, being does not take elegant form. Matrix can be built through exposing yourself to beneficial stresses (such as visiting a foreign culture or trying to understand this book), certain radiations (such as being in the company of saints or sacred ar
tifacts), certain substances (such as a true alchemical elixir, like Tonic Gold™), the efforts to stay awake (such as by paying attention to your attention and staying aware of what you are aware of), and your efforts to practice (such as flossing your teeth every night before you go to bed no matter how late it is or how tired you are). No one can build matrix for you.

  Expanded matrix automatically gives you the ability to venture into new territories of awareness. (The corollary to this is that if you are surprised and suddenly find yourself experiencing unfamiliar territory, it could be simply that your matrix has been growing further than you thought!) At first, the idea of taking a journey into new territory sounds romantic and adventurous. And, well, it is romantic and adventurous, better than any tropical island white-beach-and-warm-seas fantasy. But, as you may already know, the experience of actually entering new territory can awaken hidden emotional surprises. Unexpected reactions can come from long-repressed insecurities, outdated irrelevant decisions about yourself, emotional wounds from communications never expressed or never heard, and so on. Since this book is designed to build matrix, any or all of these reactions may occur for you. I suggest that you take a breath and prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for meeting the unexpected before each reading session. Don’t be dismayed if you find that some parts of your life turn upside down, or you feel unusually agitated, while reading this book.

  Feeling uncomfortable while reading this book does not mean that anything is wrong, or that you should turn around and try to find your way back to the illusionary safety of what you formerly regarded as solid ground. Feeling uncomfortable or disoriented, as we’ve noted before, simply indicates that you are in the process of expansive learning; you are building matrix.