Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  Sooner or later you come to a point of consciously choosing between donning the straightjacket of your familiar blocks, and entering never-can-be-made-familiar intimacy. In Archetypal intimacy the other person is a complete unknown.

  SECTION 12-D

  Prerequisites For Exploring Archetypal Intimacy

  If you have the intention to enter Archetypal intimacy it is helpful to know that access requires a number of serious prerequisites:

  1. The courage to take radical responsibility for your choices and actions rather than hiding behind traditional rules and commonly accepted customs

  2. The courage to have your center in your body and to be just who you are rather than feigning to be someone other people can feel comfortable around

  3. The courage to experience large amounts of raw fear

  4. A lack of thinking about the past or future because intimacy only happens in the present

  5. A shift from doing to being

  6. Control of your attention so as not to be distractible

  7. A vulnerable willingness to have no secrets

  8. An almost violent refusal to carry even one resentment about your partner

  9. An inexplicable trust while being exposed and completely seen

  10. A profound innocence born of acceptance rather than out of naiveté

  11. A capacity for deeply grieving about impermanence because you can neither protect or possess another person’s being, no matter how precious it is to you

  12. A capacity for enduring the intensity of ecstatic causeless joy

  13. A willingness to undergo a perpetual longing to re-enter intimacy whenever it is not present (and sometimes even when it is present!).

  SECTION 12-E

  Three Archetypal Experiments

  Intimacy is never finally achieved. Moving toward greater intimacy involves stepwise experimentation. Here are a couple of places to begin.

  Experiment #1: Go Nonlinear and Go Cold Turkey

  You are already quite familiar with relationship as produced by standard human intelligence thoughtware. Your next experiment in relationship is to “go nonlinear” from that domain. Going nonlinear means to try something completely different, something that is not already listed in the instruction manual for dealing with a certain set of conditions. Going nonlinear makes use of extraordinary human thoughtware.

  Here is a suggestion for doing an experiment with ordinary human relationship from the perspective of Archetypal Relationship: Give up trying to win. Several times a day, for as long as you can stand it, collect all of your habits of entanglement, control tactics, expectations, entwinements, strategic manipulations, resentments, techniques of seduction, victim stories, blaming, and so on. Place them all neatly in a little imaginary package. Tie the package closed. Lay the package on a back shelf in your mental closet. And do not go there! Game over. In the language of drug addiction, this exercise is referred to as “going cold turkey.” The experiment is to aim for complete and absolute abstinence from behaviors that create ordinary human relationship. Until you do this experiment with ordinary human relationship you will not likely succeed with experiments in Archetypal intimacy.

  Experiment #2: Recognize that the Woman Chooses

  This is not a rule, but, if you think about what has happened in your life, and whatever you know about what has happened in the lives of others, you may find that you have already noticed that it is the woman who chooses the man, not the other way around.

  Experiment #3: Constantly Detect Where You Are

  In each of the three relationship domains you will have experiences, but the quality of the experiences will be detectably different.

  • Ordinary human relationship tends to be experienced as defensive, mechanical, selfreferenced, and riddled with irresponsible emotional reactions.

  • Extraordinary human relationship tends to be experienced as consciously created, present time, other including, responsible feelings and actions.

  • Archetypal Relationship tends to be experienced as exquisitely objective, passionately intense, utterly neutral and highly conscious ecstatic sensations.

  For example, there is ordinary human sex, extraordinary human sex, and Archetypal sex. If the sex includes the body, then it includes the gorilla. But the gorilla’s body senses all three pleasures: unconscious irresponsible “pleasures,” conscious responsible pleasures, and Archetypal pleasures. You can constantly detect where you are by the quality of your experience.

  Unconscious irresponsible pleasures are extremely seductive. Distinguishing between unconscious and conscious pleasures requires consciousness, and the first thing that unconsciousness will claim is that it is conscious. But unconsciousness is not conscious. It is only well justified. In our overly developed intellectual body we consider justification to be consciousness! Such is the self-validating power of the Box! Unconscious irresponsible pleasures include innocuous behaviors – such as overeating pizza and ice cream (which is not even necessarily a pleasure because it can really hurt!). But unconscious irresponsible pleasures can also include the reciprocal feeding of psychological Gremlin entities through positionality, territoriality, competition, power struggles and low drama.

  The way to detect where you are is to pay attention to the purpose of your actions.

  • The purpose of ordinary human relationship is low drama, is making your life a playground for irresponsible Gremlin games.

  • The purpose of extraordinary human relationship is adult responsibility, high drama, being present as yourself with your center and your attention in a minimized here and now to make your life a playground for fulfilling your destiny.

  • The purpose of Archetypal Relationship is evolution and serving something greater than yourself by being the space through which Archetypal Principles can recognize and be-with each other consciously.

  Noticing the purpose of your actions helps you to figure out which domain you are enlivening.

  Each domain – ordinary, extraordinary and Archetypal – functions according to its own particular laws of mechanics. In Archetypal domains the laws of animal and human no longer apply. This is not to suggest, for example, that animal behavior will not arise, because it will, and you will need to tell the unconscious animal parts of yourself to go sit in the corner and wait, until you are done with voyaging in the Archetypal, before they can come back and do their thing again. This is also not to say that rules, tools or procedures from one domain are better or worse than the rules, tools or procedures of other domains. Effectiveness in a new domain depends on you learning the mechanics of creating results in that domain. To borrow a metaphor from author and high-tech shaman E. J. Gold, consider how the tools for jewelry making are different from the set of tools for house building. Needle-nosed pliers and fine wax-shaping tools cannot accomplish the job of a cement mixer, circular saw and nail gun, and vice versa. Learning the new rules, tools and procedures can feel like starting over from zero, because whole libraries of knowledge may be absolutely irrelevant in the next domain. Your success will come through distinguishing which domain you are in, and shifting from gorilla male and gorilla female to human man and human woman to Archetypal Man and Archetypal Woman, and back again accordingly. Knowing where you are indicates what actions work best to get the desired results. In Japan you bow from the waist, take off your sandals, and eat with chopsticks. In New York you shake hands, leave your wing tips on, and eat with a steak knife. With a little practice, navigating domains becomes that obvious.

  SECTION 12-F

  Create A Box Free Zone

  In certain conditions you must choose between having your Box or having intimacy. You don’t get to have both at the same time. The Box precludes intimacy because the Box will only let someone get as close to you as itself. If someone gets closer to you than your Box, they could glance over their shoulder and see with perfect clarity that your Box is only a Box. In that instant, your Box would become irrelevant to you, and the Box has a propensity
for not allowing that to happen.

  So you end up with an either or choice: Box or intimacy. To defend itself, the Box cleverly generates an endless stream of logical or emotional needs for motivating you to take action. But intimacy does not include action. The Box’s desires suck you into action. You may experience almost irresistible urges to know, to control, to conquer, to dissect, to interact, to understand, to predict, to win, or to get the hell out of there. Intimacy is being. No matter what the Box says, there is nothing to do in order to be. If you take action, you lose the opportunity for intimacy and the Box wins.

  Here is an experiment that helps to build a foundation for Archetypal Relationship. Declare your home to be a “Box free zone.” In ordinary human relationship the home is the primary feeding ground for Gremlin. Gremlin views your partner as an all-you-can-eat low drama buffet, open 24 / 7. You could make a pact with your partner, both of you swearing on a stack of bibles never to allow Gremlin to again feed on the premises. Gremlin is fully capable of gulping down enough junk food to keep its belly full at work, with the neighbors, or while shopping. No Gremlin feeding in your home!

  If your home is established as a Box free zone, then it is also an expectation free zone, a resentment free zone, an assumption free zone, a conclusion free zone, and a competition free zone. Your home becomes a sanctuary for the intimacy of not knowing, the intimacy of undefendedness, the intimacy of simple kindnesses, and the intimacy of Archetypal Love. Your home is no longer a known world.

  To start this experiment the practice is very clear: When you come home, you check your Box at the door. Take off your Box and hand it to the closet like you would check your coat when entering the theater. No words come out of your mouth until your Box is safely stowed away. Plan to pick it up again on your way out the door, if you want to.

  Some couples have the practice of taking their shoes off at the front door because shoes carry dirt from the outside world and are not needed in the clean soft sanctuary of their home. Take your Box off the same way. Enter your home naked, without plans, without needing anything, without shouting, “Honey! I’m home!” and thereby shattering the sanctuary space with the Box’s childish desires for recognition and enmeshment. Enter your home as if you have no personal history, and no history with your partner. Enter not knowing what will happen, prepared to contribute whatever is wanted and needed.

  If you enter your home environment leaving behind your Box, you will be able to appreciate the quality of things with unprecedented freshness. People will have possibilities that you never saw before. Simply breathing in the company of your partner will become like singing holy Hallelujahs.

  After a taste of being in your home-sanctuary with your partner and without your Box, an intense series of questions could arise for you. Why would you ever want it different from this? Why would you ever let your Box eat your life? Why would you permit your Box to minimize and control such expansive and transcendental experiences? Why would you hesitate even for an instant to tell your Gremlin to “Sit” by your feet, and take care to feed him or her a controlled regular diet, elsewhere, anywhere else but at your home?

  Sanctuary for Woman

  When you, as the Archetypal Masculine, place your Box on the shoe shelf and hold a safe-enough space for your partner to set her Box aside, then the Archetypal Feminine may appear. When she is there, she is not to be analyzed with your cold logic or hit with masculine criticisms. She is not to be cross-examined for intellectual consistency or for meeting your mind’s linear standards. She will not fit into those constraints. Stop your testing. The Archetypal Feminine comes from a place beyond testing, and if you fail to realize this you will not be able to meet her where she is.

  If you begin experimenting with Archetypal Relationship and suddenly Archetypal Woman shows up, you have got to realize that this is really her. What stands before you is nothing that you already know about. This is she, the Feminine being, the fifth element, Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar, the authentic Goddess. Wake up, man! Pay attention. Be most careful with your movements. Do not do what you ordinarily do when you do not understand. She is so perceptive, so fragile, more delicate than snowflakes, lighter than feather down, fresher than a newborn baby, fluid as a mountain creek, direct as light. She will not tolerate cross-examination. Any thoughts that promote in you an attitude of testing, judging or criticizing are still coming from your Box. Go back to the front door and start again. Leave your Box at the door. What will work for you is experientially appreciating the richness of subtle details over long moments, standing in awe, and wakeful alertness with utter internal silence. Breathe. Wait with infinite patience and without expectation. Follow her lead while you hold space for her magnificence. Pay attention to her. Be-with her. Create a way for this to go on for a long time. This is sanctuary for Woman.

  Sanctuary for Man

  When you, as the Archetypal Feminine, come into your home and hang your Box in the closet along with your coat, sanctuary for your Man will start by making an internal vow: no Gremlin feeding on my Man. He is then off limits to your Gremlin. Express no complaints, no gossip, and do not treat him as a pawn on your chess board. This is your King, and still not a piece on your chessboard! When you relax in the understanding that the Archetypal Feminine is just as powerful (although with a different sort of power) as the Archetypal Masculine – regardless of the propaganda purveyed by the patriarchy – the power struggle between you two is over. You play two different games simultaneously on the same playing field, and can discover that the two games are perfectly complementary.

  You have the capacity to create a sanctuary where your Man can stop defending himself. In your nurturing womanliness, his true Archetypal benevolence can appear. When he is there he is not to be controlled like a dog or manipulated like a marionette. He is not to be shredded with your Gatling gun of fault finding, nor filled up like a dumpster with the remains of your day. If you try any of these behaviors, he may resort to defending himself with aggression or disdain, and rightfully so. Stop behaving as if he disgusts you and then he will stop disgusting you. The Archetypal Masculine comes from a place beyond manipulation and control, and if you fail to realize this, you will not be able to meet him where he is.

  If you experiment with Archetypal Relationship and suddenly Archetypal Man shows up, you have got to realize that this is really him. What stands before you is nothing that you already know about. This is he, the Masculine being, Tarzan, Achilles, Zorro, Zeus, Albert Schweitzer, George Gurdjieff, the authentic Man. Wake up, woman! Pay attention. Be most careful with your movements. Do not do what you ordinarily do when you do not understand or you will chase him away. This Man is so perceptive, so precise, that any deceptions flay his heart.

  What will work for you is experientially appreciating the richness of subtle details over long moments, standing in awe, and wakeful alertness with utter internal silence. Breathe. Wait with infinite patience and without expectation. Follow his lead while you appreciate his magnificence. Pay attention to him. Be-with him. Create a way for this to go on for a long time. This creates sanctuary for Man.

  SECTION 12-G

  Serve Something Greater Than Yourself

  We do not receive much training about what it could mean to serve something greater than ourselves. We have some idea about family honor, protecting our reputation, civic pride, or doing a good job for our team or our company. We can conceive of having patriotic duty toward our political party or our country. Or perhaps we are affiliated with one of the world’s great religions and we feel enough affinity to promote some aspect of its customs or beliefs. But the concept of serving something greater than ourselves feels rather foreign to a Westerner, schooled in the values of independence, individuality and personal rights and freedoms. Being of service seems outside of our ordinary concerns.

  Our entire Western culture is imbalanced toward the intellect. That is why our culture provides an abundance of education and a shortage of training. We are comfortable and
skilled with making content distinctions in logic and reasoning because that is what schoolteachers demonstrated to us for the whole of our schooled lives. But, we had no role models who showed us how to make context distinctions so we could detect what space we were in and how to navigate our relationship from space to space according to what was needed and wanted for serving Archetypal Principles. We had no living al-chemists, healers, medicine men, magicians, mystics, bards, shamans, yogis, gnostics, sorcerers, spiritual teachers, wise elders, or wizards in our village or family to imitate or apprentice to. Such characters are addressed by modern culture with the same negative connotations as silly fairy tales, dangerous brainwashing sects or new-age esoteric nonsense. If you have a deep attraction for gaining competence in the domains of making context distinctions as a vocation, you are left wandering on your own. No culturally-sponsored training can supply you with the kind of clarity and experience food needed to fulfill such a destiny. To proceed you must courageously follow your gut-level intuition to find an authentic source of training, which will invariably come from a context greater than that of standard Western culture.

  Throughout these pages I use terminology such as Principles, Archetypal Principles, Bright Principles, Shadow Principles, destiny, true purpose, hidden purpose, and deep Masculine or Feminine Archetypes. These expressions are defined in the appended Glossary of Possibility Management Terms and pepper the rest of the book. Please bear with me. Even though including jargon is cumbersome and expensive in the added effort it takes you to get through a paragraph, being able to linguistically distinguish between specific energetic experiences gives you reference points when creating and exploring vaster dimensions of relationship.