Even long-time spiritual students who have not made the Gremlin distinction can be counted upon to regularly create Gremlin games with the people in their life. Gremlin keeps its foot in the back door, never allowing the Archetypal Relationship chamber to seal. The internal heat and pressure can never get hot enough to ignite genuine remorse because Gremlin blows it off with a joke or a comment, or doggedly persists in whistling unconsciously along his merry way. Without the intense and lasting pain of the remorse of recognizing that the Gremlin is getting ready to feed, and then you doing something completely different, nothing changes.
Gremlin feeding activities typically include: flirting, masturbating, playing video games, eating junk foods, men not lifting the toilet seat to pee, women gossiping, breaking time agreements (coming in even a few minutes late, even if you have a good excuse or if you apologize), complaining as if you are a victim, forgetting appointments or promises, playing practical jokes, stealing insignificant things (pens from work, silverware from the restaurant, grapes at the grocery store, airline blankets, special leftovers from the refrigerator), driving even a few miles an hour over the speed limit, not exercising, trying to cut ahead in line, energetically “trashing” spaces even in small ways (e.g., walking through the space being visible, inelegantly opening or closing the door, coughing, yawning, farting, looking out the window, moving the chair, dropping a pen, conspicuously drinking from your water bottle at delicate moments), having little accidents or breaking something and not cleaning it up, littering, sneaking, swearing, sleeping in when you’ve previously made a commitment to yourself to get up at a certain time, trying to get more than somebody else, returning the car with the gas tank on empty, talking to keep everyone’s attention, leaving floating turds in the toilet, overeating, not changing the empty toilet paper roll or the burned out light bulb, looking on other people’s desks or into their drawers, reading other people’s mail, sleeping during meetings, lying, making jokes or comments about other people, making up excuses, not doing what you say you will do, feeling resentful, changing plans without telling anyone, and so on.
As you can see, many of these activities are quite familiar, indicating that you have an entire underworld ecology thriving within you, determining the quality of your life day and night. It is your responsibility to recognize the full horror of the situation. It is your responsibility to learn the hierarchy of underworld creatures feeding upon each other within you, upon you by other people, and by you upon those people who are dearest to you. Until these dynamics are brought to light, your Underworld is controlling your life.
The procedure for distilling the three, four or five Shadow Principles of your hidden purpose is appropriately named the Hidden Purpose Process. In contrast to its sensible name, the process itself is horrendous. The term “disillusionment” does not even come close to depicting what it feels like. For this reason, the Hidden Purpose Process is best done under the guidance of someone skilled in navigating underworld spaces with absolute clarity; someone who will never forget, for an instant, that the manifestations that arise, the feelings, the tones of voice, are all an act of underworld theater – all a story, and only one way to look at things. Distilling your Shadow Principles has nothing to do with beliefs, and especially nothing to do with good and evil.
Once you have distilled your hidden purpose from the incidents and accidents of your life it can take you months or years to digest and integrate the experience into practical application. All that you have, after distilling your hidden purpose, is a way to detect who is in charge of what you are saying right now. That is a useful distinction.
Gremlin creations are far easier to spot in someone else than in ourselves. One way for people to serve each other and hold the space for the possibility of Archetypal Relationship is by making an agreement to “spot the Gremlin.” Each time your Gremlin reveals its grimy little paws and yellow-tooth, bad-breath smile, your “spot the Gremlin” team mate has permission from you to greet it by name and purpose. “Hello Dinki. Feeling betrayed again, are we?” Identifying your Gremlin by name and hidden purpose gives you a way to interact with your Gremlin responsibly. This is a small but necessary step.
Own Your Gremlin
Once you have your Gremlin’s name, all that you have is the knowledge of its existence and an ability to distinguish “it” from “you.” This is significant and still insufficient. There are further steps to take. Your job now is to change your relationship to your Gremlin through responsibility. Whereas previously Gremlin ran wild, knocked you unconscious, and did whatever it wanted with your life, now your job is to make Gremlin your ally instead of your owner.
At first Gremlin will hate you for your efforts. Gremlin hates you because you represent responsibility. Responsibility, to the Gremlin, is like water to the Wicked Witch of the West. If you douse the Gremlin with responsibility he fears there will be nothing left. In being recognized by you, Gremlin is terrified of soon starving to death from lack of irresponsible, low drama energy food. Your job is to put your Gremlin on a regular feeding schedule so that starvation is no longer an issue.
There are certain foods that your Gremlin loves to feed on – foods that will deplete your relationship energy reserves; and other foods that can maintain a healthy diet for Gremlin without costing you so much in terms of the quality of your relationships. Your task is to distinguish between the two kinds of foods. Then, you can choose to feed to your Gremlin foods from the second list on a regular basis.
To start, make a list of what your Gremlin loves to eat when it has free rein. For example, your Gremlin might love to devour the following:
Typical Gremlin Foods
• Creating the story that your boss is an enemy and having regular confrontations
• Weekly social gatherings with alcohol, coming home late and drunk
• Three large ice creams a week
• Incessantly talking to fill up any empty space with the sound of your own voice
• Staying up until three AM on business trips watching triple-X movies
• Not paying your telephone bill and having the phones almost cut off
• Arranging to have fights with your mate as an excuse to throw dishes and lamps against the wall
• Wearing funny, strange or mismatched clothes to get attention
• Behaving insanely to shock people
• Interrupting other people to blurt out whatever you want to say
• Teasing your mother-in-law so she is too flustered to criticize you
• Bingeing on videos every other week
• Drinking colas all day
• Regularly complaining
• Changing everything into a joke that you can laugh at
• Eating daily doughnuts, cookies, candy, cake and coffee
• Smoking
• Gossiping, speaking about someone when they are not there (triangulating)
• TV, newspaper, magazines
• Holding resentful grudges and plotting revenge in the bottom of your heart
• Thinking about chocolate
• Sleeping past your alarm
• Devouring salty, greasy, junk food, such as hamburgers, chips, pretzels, popcorn, peanuts, Taco Bell, and fries
• Catalog shopping to the maximum limit on your credit cards
• Biting your nails, scratching your face, pulling your hair, picking your nose
• An hour or so of internet sex here and there.
• Having an ongoing feud with your neighbors, and feeling right about your position
• Eating so much pizza and ice cream for dinner that the endorphins kick in
• Having power struggles with your mate; proving they are wrong in public
• Manipulating your relatives and colleagues with your illnesses
• Leaving messes around the house that drive your partner crazy
• Flirting with the guys or gals at the exercise club
• Swearing at other
drivers
• Paying your taxes late
• Blaming the government.
• Keeping your desk buried in an almost non-functional pile of papers
• Kicking the dog
• Add your favorites …
It might take you a couple of weeks to collect the details for your list, but then again, maybe you can make the list immediately. Once you have your list of favorite Gremlin foods, develop a reasonable strategy for a regular feeding schedule. For example, a strategy that works well is to choose one day during the week, for example Saturday, and promise your Gremlin that on this one day, all day long, midnight-to-midnight, he can feast as much as he wants on the specific ten items that you have selected from your list. Write out the ten available Gremlin foods on a paper and tape it on your refrigerator to see. Then for the other six days go completely cold-turkey on all Gremlin foods.
In the beginning you might make it through one day of no Gremlin food before he actually knocks you unconscious and you wake up on the far side of a binge or a quarrel. Do not feel guilty. Do not beat yourself up. Do not punish your Gremlin. Just remake your commitment and keep your promise of maximum feeding, on the specified day only.
After awhile you might make it through three days before getting knocked unconscious. In the meantime Gremlin might put a constant stream of voices in your head, “This is stupid! This is stupid! This is really stupid! I hate this! Mmmm, look at those tits! Just a little piece of chocolate would be okay. Then I’ll be satisfied. What a jerk! Let’s stop this nonsense. I can’t do this anymore. I am a failure. I am not good enough. I will never make it. Whose idea was this anyway? Not mine. Fucking book!” And so on. These are only voices. You may wish to keep in mind that you own a fully-loaded Voice Blaster.
Gremlin might lose a little weight, but he will soon start feeling more fit and alive without so much fat around his belly. He will appreciate his new trim feeling and the interesting challenges you start giving him. Gremlin will recognize that you respect him and are treating him well. After a few months you and your Gremlin might get through an entire week with no snacking. Stay on this regular weekly feeding schedule for at least a year.
At some point you might notice that a feeding day went by and your Gremlin forgot to feed. Do not change the feeding day that week. If Saturday slipped by with no feeding, do not feed on Sunday or Monday. Just wait until the chosen feeding day comes around again.
You might also notice that a feeding day arrives and none of the ten special Gremlin foods appeal to Gremlin. This is okay. You do not have to force-feed your Gremlin. And, do not let it graze on the banned Gremlin foods. Stick to your feeding schedule practice.
Being accountable to your Gremlin for providing him with a regularly planned feeding schedule establishes a relationship with Gremlin like an owner has with his Doberman pinscher. Your barely-tamed potentially-vicious beast is willing to sit at your feet when you say “sit” because he knows that he is respected, he is taken care of, and in particular, he is regularly fed. This really works.
Put Your Gremlin to Work
Contrary to what you might expect, you will use Gremlin more in extraordinary human relationship and Archetypal Relationship than in ordinary human relationship. In ordinary human relationship, Gremlin is sneaking around as a ronin, a lone samurai without a master, serving himself. In Archetypal Relationship the rightful place of Gremlin is established: awake, attentive, sitting at the feet of Archetypal Man or Woman with a short chain tied around his neck.
At first, when discovering the true nature and intention of Gremlin, it is quite difficult not to simply declare with disgust that Gremlin is bad and must be imprisoned or banished forever. Such thinking is a remnant of the good/bad distortion and will leave you with your Gremlin invisibly at work, busily creating his usual unconscious horrors with your life, like the priests at a parochial school justifying violence or sexual intimacies with the boys in their care.
Gremlin is Gremlin. Gremlin does what Gremlin does. We all have Gremlin and no matter what we think or try to do, Gremlin will never go away. Gremlin is a force like sulfuric acid, like plastic explosives, like a laser beam, like a crowbar or lock picks, neither good nor bad, but definitely capable of producing certain results. As with all tools, Gremlin can be used to fulfill either responsible or irresponsible purposes. We live in a wild world. We need access to a kind of intelligent wildness for taking care of ourselves and for creating what we want to create. The source of that wild intelligence is Gremlin. After possessing your Gremlin, a source of wild intelligence sits at your feet, a trained attack animal, ready to do what it always does but doing it as you responsibly and maturely direct.
Gremlin is an exceptional tool of nonlinearity, particularly suited for shaping extraordinary human and Archetypal Relationship where only ordinary human relationship existed before. The application of this tool is counterintuitive. You use Gremlin’s ability to destroy anything, at any time, for no reason, as the force to dismantle the mechanicality of your own Box. Gremlin is the only one who knows the secret ways to get through your own defenses, the only one clever enough to free you from being trapped by your own tricks.
The first use of Gremlin is very exact. Use Gremlin to monitor Gremlin to not “do” Gremlin. It takes a thief to catch a thief, and Gremlin is the ultimate thief. Only Gremlin knows exactly how devious, cunning, and shrewd Gremlin is. Only Gremlin is sensitive and fast enough to catch Gremlin before he steals away your dignity with his shenanigans.
Practical Applications of Gremlin
Use Gremlin to sharpen your self-discipline. Use Gremlin to stop overly judgmental thinking. Use Gremlin to keep your attention free from being hooked and your heart free from emotionally reacting. Use Gremlin to hold your tongue when all it wants to do is lash out and destroy. Use Gremlin to not snicker, not sneer, not sigh, not yawn, and not roll your eyes. Use Gremlin to not speak the hurting cynical words, not make the cutting tone-of-voice insinuations, not say the nasty, stupid, degrading little jokes that destroy people. Use Gremlin to keep your center when everyone around you is giving their center away. Use Gremlin to stay awake and pay attention when everyone around you is sleeping and hypnotized. Use Gremlin to look in shadowy places at what is normally ignored. Use Gremlin to not throw stones at the adulteress. Use Gremlin to stay still when other people move and to move when other people stay still. Use Gremlin to do the right thing even when the consequences are frightening. Use Gremlin to make and hold necessary boundaries even when the kids are screaming at you to give in to their demands. Use Gremlin to ask dangerous questions that no one else can even think of because the forces of conclusion are so strong. Use Gremlin to break the rules that minimize expressions of kindness, generosity or compassion. Use Gremlin to distinguish subtle details that make invisible things distinct from their camouflage. Use Gremlin to kill your own denial, to walk directly into your own pain and to let your whole world go up in flames, burning to a cinder. Use Gremlin to watch your old reality crumble to dust without being even one percent a victim of the experiential circumstances. Use Gremlin to stay present and let your reality construct die without being sentimental, hysterical, isolated, or nostalgic. Use Gremlin to let yourself be seen raw, naked, stupid, crippled and wounded – exactly as you are – and do not care about other people’s opinions or judgments. Use Gremlin to energetically “spin” so that you hold no position and stay a moving target for other people’s comments. Use Gremlin to wait patiently through the unknown until the next thing can happen. Use Gremlin to have the courage to start something that has never been started before.
It is Gremlin who can stand completely exposed and vulnerable and not care. It is Gremlin who can allow chaos and total destruction to rain upon you with the same acceptance and neutrality that he allows blessings, appreciation, respect and love to rain upon you. And it is Gremlin who can feel deep compassion for others whose Gremlin still owns them and keeps them living (if you can call it living) in an
underworld created by their still unconscious and all-powerful Gremlin.
SECTION 13-H
Be Your Destiny in Action
As you work to own your underworld, put your Gremlin to use, and consciously explore the three worlds, you suddenly enter a new game. The new game is about fulfilling your destiny.
Each of us has a destiny. Your destiny is a unique set of three, four or five Bright Principles that are an expression of your soul’s true purpose. You were born to fulfill your true purpose, your destiny in the world, to live as your Bright Principles in action. It is relatively straightforward to use the Distilling Destiny Process to extract your Bright Principles out of your life and name them with clarity. With such clarity you become a tool that can be more consciously utilized by Bright Principles to do their work in the world.
Human beings have free will. Free will is more powerful than destiny. This makes serving your destiny optional. By paying ongoing attention to the creations of your will, not as an action but rather as a way of being, your actions can express a wish to serve your destiny. By putting your free will in the service of your destiny your life then forms itself around the needs and requests of your destiny Principles rather than the needs and requests of your Box.
The mystery of human will is that it is both flexible and resilient enough to contain opposites. Two things do not ordinarily occupy the same place at the same time. If they try, there is a force created, an energy of conflict. Ordinarily, such force is avoided as being uncomfortable or destructive. Human intention has the ability to hold two things in the same place at the same time and make use of the resulting force to serve a conscious purpose. For example, you can take a moment to see the details of what exists now in the present situation of your life. Then you can split your attention, remember what you just saw about your present life, then shift your perspective, and focus another part of your attention to see details of what is possible for you, your potential. What exists and what is possible are not usually the same. Use your intention to hold the conflicting views collected by your two attentions. It will feel like you are a stretched balloon holding too much air inside itself. You are containing a disorderly force that wants to simply disperse itself. The disorderly force of the conflict between what exists and what is possible can be directed towards creating what you really want to create. Directing the chaos is just like letting the air out of the balloon in one direction so that it can push you through the air in the other direction.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 60
