Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  When doing Edgework avoid the temptation to dive into the new perspective with as much fanatical fervor as you had committed to staying in the original perspective. Returning to certainty, regardless of where the certainty is, turns out to be more of a handicap than a benefit. With certainty, many options are lost. Fluidity is replaced by rigidity. Available resources are ignored – we can’t see them because we are blinded by our certainty that no more resources are available.

  MAP OF EDGEWORK

  1) Find an exciting edge.

  2) Go all the way to the edge and stay there.

  3) Do Edgework experiments.

  Even with the handicaps of certainty being so clearly spelled out, it is not as easy to abandon certainty as one might imagine. For example, one religious fundamentalist miraculously freed from the thought-prison of her original beliefs found that she had the strong tendency to establish herself in new beliefs with equal extremism. Recovering fundamentalists may take on vegetarianism or ecology as replacement fanatical belief systems, because the uncertainty of having no belief system feels so unsolid. Uncertainty is unsolid. However, consistent experimentation with Edgework reveals that certainty is an illusionary safe harbor, not sponsored in a universe that flows. The groundless experience is a hard earned and hard kept treasure for the Edgeworker. That treasure, once found, can be well put to use.

  Find an Edge

  Start experimenting with sliding out of your marshmallow zone and moving toward edges in unexpected or unusual ways. You will discover that your Box is constructed with myriads of fine to rough edges. Examine each edge, long enough to get a sense of how strongly that particular edge shapes the way the world looks to you.

  Edges reveal themselves when you internally ask certain rare questions. If you listen openly to your answers, you may find that the universe has been asking you such questions for quite some time: How honest can I be? (Notice if your body has an immediate contraction away from the edge that such a question reveals.) How much fun am I allowed to have? For how long? How long can I stay unhookable when talking to the opposite sex? How totally can I accept my okayness? In what circumstances? How much discipline can I practice? How much can I ask for help? How few beliefs can I have? How much of a problem can I be? How exciting can I let my Edgework experiments get? How insane can I appear? In front of whom? How intensely can I love someone? For how long? How long can I work without needing to be successful? How much sorrow can I experience and share? How close can I come to my soul? How long can I go without a fight, an argument, or a rage outburst? How persistently can I align my actions to creating what really matters to me? Questions like these bring us immediately into the “edgy” sensation of being at an edge. Finding an edge is not necessarily comforting, but it is definitely out of the marshmallow zone! Take note of any edges that would excite you to explore in Edgework experiments.

  Stay At the Edge

  Recall that the second step of Edgework is figuring out how to stay at the edge, not to simply touch the edge and go back. We touch edges of our Box and go back to our marshmallow zone ten times a day.

  And, don’t think that the goal is to go over the edge and “get out of the Box” – y ou cannot get out of the Box! Did you ever meet anybody without a Box? Neither did I. The image of getting out of the Box is linguistic sleight-of-mind. You may have met someone with an expanded Box, bigger than your own, yes. But we all have a Box. To successfully engage in Edgework it is enough to go to the edge of the Box, and then stay there. Developing an ability to stay at the edge of your Box will take significant work. It helps to observe and gain familiarity with your Box’s particular strategies for avoiding the intensity of staying at an edge. Strategies can involve creating physical, intellectual, emotional or energetic complaints, even combinations of several mixed together. Let the seconds tick by while you continue to tolerate the intensity of staying at an edge. Every second counts.

  SECTION 7-C

  Edgework Experiments

  We have already been considering edges. Let us now consider experiments. To experiment means to try something about which you cannot, with certainty, predict the outcome. Experimenting is making actions or non-actions on purpose. As the experimenter, you apply your conscious intention to serve a conscious purpose. For example, you could apply your conscious intention to read no further beyond the following list of Edgework experiments until you have actually done three of the listed Edgework experiments yourself. Your conscious purpose would be to avoid a common tendency to marvel at cool ideas in your mind, rather than actually integrating them into your life. That would be an Edgework experiment.

  Since the exact structure and outcome of such an experiment is not already known, the environs of an experiment are alive and flowing with options. This experiment will live through your committed participation as the experimenter. From start to finish, you will make subtle and instant choices as to the direction and mood of the experiment. You will do this with the tone of your voice, where you place your attention, the timing and intention vector of your moves and gestures, and so on. If you decide to set a romantic mood, for example, you might take your partner to a more elegant restaurant rather than to a fast-food drive-in. If the experiment involves increasing intimacy with your partner and you already know that there are some fears about this for you, you might take an acting workshop or a therapeutic coaching session to shift your ability to experience and express fear, before beginning your intimacy experiment. Then your explorations and sharing will have a greater range of movement.

  The experiment would not be happening except for you doing the experiment. Experimenting makes you inarguably responsible for the existence of the experiment, which puts you at risk. This risk is authentic and serious because your actions have consequence; for example, your partner could take offense at the unexpected doors to new experience that get opened up during one of your experiments. Since the culture does not teach you to experiment, the culture does not protect you from the consequences of your experimental actions. The actions you take will be yours alone. You are the epicenter of the experiment, so all repercussions bounce back to you. There will be no buffer zone.

  Doing Edgework experiments involves an extreme level of risk from the Box’s point of view. The Box’s perception of risk automatically keeps most people from experimenting. Deciding to experiment, even in situations beyond the limits of cultural awareness, makes you the source of the experiment, rather than the culture being the source. There is no more hiding for you behind the traditions and standards of the culture, which itself may subtly or overtly be telling you to “leave things alone.” When experimenting, you go to the limits of the reaches of your Box, but external to the reaches of your culture’s Box. In other words, your mother never did such experiments. (Or did she? It is an interesting experiment in itself to spend time making it safe enough for your mother to tell stories about some of the private experiments she has done in her life so far. After all, you gained the confidence to experiment beyond the culture from somewhere. Perhaps it was from your own mother!)

  MAP OF THE 4 SECRETS OF BRINGING YOUR LIFE TO LIFE

  SECRET #1: This is the greatest secret of bringing your life to life. The edges of your Box are not permanent. From the center of your Box the edges look as solid as a brick wall. But when you get up close you can see that the edges are only as solid as a brick wall painted on tissue paper. You can push your finger right through the edge. Key question: Who is the artist?

  SECRET #2: As soon as you see an edge you are at the edge. Just seeing the edge makes it possible to go there and experiment. Whenever someone or something causes you to recognize an edge of your Box, feel grateful. The more unexpected the edge, the more raw opportunity it represents. Key question: Even here at the edge, am I okay?

  SECRET #3: There are no special qualifications for doing Edgework experiments. You do not have to be licensed, rich, sexy, lucky, Italian, spiritually enlightened, or have a certain I.Q. Go ahead and do wh
atever responsible Edgework experiments turn you on. Key question: Who should give me permission?

  SECRET #4: Edgework is personal and not ready-made. You must do it yourself. Here is the secret: You already have everything that you need to do Edgework. You have had it for a long time. You just need to remember that you are an Edgeworker and then keep practicing. Key question: If not me, then who?

  Being involved with originating an experiment means that you are creating in the pure form. You are creating as the source of the creating. By placing yourself in the driver’s seat of an experiment, you are solely responsible for the outcome. Creators who take this level of responsibility often report that creating feels like being in extraordinary human love.

  The tactile presence of love establishes the connection between creating and relationship: relationship is ongoing nonlinear creation. Relationship is ongoing experiment: You choose a partner with whom to do experiments and you learn to do experiments together. Then, relationship is no longer a static thing, but a continuous dance of discovery and adventure – not as a fantasy, but as a never-ending series of multidimensional experiments investigating the nature of love and what is possible as a human being. Edgework experiments bring extraordinary human relationship to life.

  Edgework Experiments

  Now that you have a clear idea about what edges are and what experimenting is, remember that to do Edgework you simply: 1. Choose an exciting edge. 2. Go all the way to the edge and stay there, and 3. Do Edgework experiments.

  While doing your experiments, keep in mind that the immediate, natural feeling response to entering the unknown is fear. As a child, that fear was interpreted as curiosity and excitement. Try interpreting it the same way now as an adult. Feeling the fear of not knowing is a reliable indicator that you are in the unknown. Do not put the fear away or numb the fear. Welcoming your feelings will help you use the feelings to effectively navigate through unknown territories.

  Experiments for Four Bodies

  Because we live quadraphonically – through four bodies: physical body, intellectual body, emotional body, and energetic body (as noted in Section 5-A) – we can do Edgework experiments in these same four domains. While designing and engaging in your Edgework experiments, direct part of your attention to noticing the balance in your experimental diet. It is a common tendency to overdo one kind of Edgework, not realizing that we are completely ignoring one or more of the other three kinds. In the same way that a balance of food nutrients nurture extraordinary physical health, a balance of four kinds of Edgework experiments are needed to nurture extraordinary human relationship.

  Physical Edgework experiments include diet, exercise, how you groom yourself, how you move, how you stand or sit, the timing of your actions, how you breathe, learning physical skills such as balancing, centering, using tools and equipment, engaging in new physical intimacies such as travel to different cultures, wearing different clothing, dancing, swimming, sporting skills, gardening, hiking, health treatments, fasting, and meditation.

  Intellectual Edgework experiments include studying wildly new topics, researching areas not explored before, expanding your vocabulary or languages, experiencing new levels of clarity or confusion, expressing yourself in words, sharing of core understandings, playing games, exploring entertainment and media, creating poetry or theatrical pieces, expanding your abilities to improvise, going beyond knowing into being okay with not knowing and still taking responsibility and being able to commit to producing an outcome, mixing with others of widely differing professions or backgrounds, extending your abilities to ask dangerous questions, and letting others ask you dangerous questions.

  Emotional Edgework experiments include explorations of what makes you afraid, angry, sad or glad – from the past, the present or the future – whether alone or with somebody else – male or female, young or old; consciously experiencing and expressing zero (0) to 100-percent feeling intensity, compared to unconsciously experiencing and expressing low dramas; learning the distinctions of feelings vs. thoughts, feelings vs. emotions, starting and stopping feelings, where you are mixing feelings and thus creating depression, despair, sentimentality, hysteria, schadenfreude, or adrenalin rushes.

  And Energetic Edgework experiments include speaking, creating alone or with groups – such as artistic or practical (or combined) design and construction; teamwork; management skills; communication skills; experiencing and expressing your destiny Principles; practices that build matrix; examination of where you are placing your attention and for what purpose; observing where you are flowing your energy or absorbing energy and for what purpose; seeing how responsible you can be and with what new area; accessing how accountable, how much integrity, which of your possessions consume your energy and which of them give you energy; examining the placement of your possessions in your living and working spaces; creating art, appreciating art; noting what spaces you can enter; seeing what spaces you can create and then destroy or can destroy and then can recreate; involvement in evolutionary environments such as talks, workshops, and trainings.

  Mix things up and tell yourself, “It is okay to not know how to do it.” Then, while not knowing, just 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, how it works, or how it all fits together, but it also makes even ordinary experiences remarkably fresh and invigorating. Hold a grape in your hand for a moment without giving it the name “grape” before you eat it, and then instead of having a known object, you see this green or purple blob and think, “Wow. What is this amazing thing?” It is exciting to perceive things raw, even if you do not know what they are. Noticing new unnamed things builds matrix and expands your Box. There is a refreshing excitement in beholding an unnamed thing; the experience of not knowing signals the chance to explore new possibilities.

  Edgework experiments are utterly simple, the simpler the better. For example, it can be significant Edgework to cook rice instead of potatoes, let your phone ring unanswered, wash your windows inside and out, listen without one word of comment or argument, pet your neighbor’s dog with true affection, randomly walk into a stranger’s office cubicle unannounced and meet with them, not eat all the food on your plate, wear clothes to work that don’t match, wake up at 4:00 A. M. to walk to work instead of taking the bus, on and on. We have so many edges and we can reach them so quickly. You know best how. Keep your Edgework experiments simple, but most importantly, keep staying on the edge.

  After an experiment, take time to write a journal entry or a few paragraphs about your experience. What happened? What did you notice? Agree at the outset that your writing does not have to make sense or be grammatically correct. In Edgework experiments the observations and communications tend to be less intellectual and more experiential. Instead of writing in ways that everybody is accustomed to reading, try using language as a bridge to communicate your original experience. Some people find themselves drawing more pictures, writing in free verse poetry, or using words as artistic forms.

  Technopenuriaphobia

  I could provide numerous suggestions for Edgework experiments, but the limitless variety of possibilities begs to be narrowed. Therefore, I will focus in one area – technopenuriaphobia. I have taken the liberty of naming the fear of the lack of technology ”technopenuriaphobia” or “TPP.” The word “penuria” comes from the Latin and means scarcity, or deficiency. It is interesting to note that the word “technophobia,” which is “the fear of technology and its effects,” first appeared around 1964. Here it is, four decades later, and we now have “technopenuriaphobia,” the fear that our technology will leave us. We have grown so dependent on modern technology in this past generation that we can no longer live on our own planet without it. An ideal environment for beginning Edgework experiments is in the arena of healing yourself, your relationship, and your family of this disease of contemporary life.

  In our modern culture we are born h
igh up on a technological ladder. Hanging out before us in the sky, bright as a Las Vegas casino sign, is the vision of the fabled good life that we are encouraged to strive for. We think we can achieve the good life only if we surround ourselves with enough labor saving, comfort providing, or entertainment devices. Even without trying to, we are completely buffered from life on planet Earth with scores of modern conveniences.

  We learned that if you want food, all you have to do is go to the cupboard, the refrigerator, or the freezer and open up boxes, cans, plastic bags, or cartons, and there is an abundance of food. If the food starts to get low at home, go to the supermarket and there you will find food in such quantity and variety as to shame any king, all ready for the taking. Load up your basket and haul it home to eat. Food comes from the grocery store.