Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  For example, if you experience in excruciating detail that Archetypal Love is possible, yet is not consciously present in this moment in your relating, and you can hold the intensity of that experience, you can use that energy as a resource to do what is needed and wanted to create Archetypal Love.

  It is your Principles that provide a vision of what is possible. If you bring integrity to the instructions provided by the Principles of your destiny you will end up with a project. Your project will show up as a way for you to serve the greater humanity. Your project will include practical details for holding space so that the spaces where you work and live become an intersection of worlds. Through the work that you do you are your destiny Principles in action. Tolerating the intensity of being a space where Principles of the upperworld can do their work in the middleworld makes you a transformer. A well functioning human being lives as a transformer bringing more Archetypal Love into the world.

  MAP OF INTERSECTION OF WORLDS

  You cannot make the middleworld perfect. That is not your job. Your job is to call Bright Principles into your workspace. You are then holding space as the intersection of worlds through which the Principles that you serve can do their work in the middleworld. What happens in this space will never be perfect. But it will be as good as it gets. And this is good enough.

  SECTION 13-I

  Serve as the Center of a Gameworld

  Stars cannot be a solar system by themselves; they need planets to express their full potential. Neither can planets be a solar system by themselves. Planets need stars. Planets naturally are attracted to orbit around stars to be involved in the “games” that stars can create. This section is about such games and the gameworlds that you – the star – can attract and serve.

  You become a star by stellating your four feelings, thereby igniting an unquenchable fire of inspiration that burns in your belly and moves you from action to action during your day. You radiate! But a star without planets is just a lone star, bright but not really serving anything but itself. And planets without a star are shadowy interstellar debris, dangerously imperceptible when you are traveling at high speeds. But the combination of a star and planets together is a configuration that is far more than just the sum of the star and the planets. The configuration is a solar system, a complex, integrated flowing interconnectedness that evolves and can be used for things far greater than either stars or planets alone.

  Your projects will develop over time to include a more sophisticated level of experiments. More sophisticated experiments require that you have your own laboratory. The time for you to have your own laboratory will not necessarily be obvious to you. You may think it is long overdue for you to have your own laboratory when in fact you are not yet ready because, for example, you have not yet acquired the soft skills or learned to maintain your attention and responsibly hold space. Or you may think that you will never be close to the point of setting up your own laboratory because, for instance, you find evidence for devaluing yourself at every turn, when in fact it is already past time for you to start. You will need to trust the feedback and guidance from your coach and from your environment as to when the timing is right for stepping into your own laboratory.

  Your laboratory will show up as a project with a goal, involving people and resources to make something happen. The interaction between you, your Principles, your stellated Archetypes, the other members of your project, the project purpose or goal, and the obstacles to reaching the goal all come together in the form of a living organism called a gameworld. The gameworld is your laboratory. Whether that gameworld is small and simple like a book-writing project or a relationship with another person, or larger and more complex such as a family, a theater production, an alternative energy initiative, a company or a project for a bigger organization, the mechanics of gameworlds apply.

  From the Glossary

  A “Gameworld” is a dynamic environment created by two or more people agreeing to relate according to an internally consistent story. Gameworlds can range from temporary and of minor consequence to longer lasting and of major consequence. Examples of gameworlds include “let’s go up the elevator,” “let’s have a party,” “let’s have a relationship,” “let’s have a family,” “let’s have a company,” “let’s have a town,” “let’s have a country,” “let’s have a religion,” “let’s have a war,” and so on. Gameworlds can be responsible or irresponsible, depending on their purpose and their results. Gameworlds become defensive if their stories are believed to be true or are kept invisible to the participants, in which case the participants are said to be identified with their gameworld. Even if a gameworld is considered to be the “one and only true reality” by a majority of its players, it is still a gameworld. Gameworlds founded in beliefs build false community and survive through competing for limited resources through war. Gameworlds founded in Bright Principles and responsible results build authentic community and thrive on creative collaboration to source the resources. Taking responsibility at the level of being the story maker for gameworlds is the entry door to Possibility Management. Responsible gameworlds tend to be more galaxical than hierarchical in design. In a galaxical gameworld the source people are found serving as its center.

  Gameworlds come together around a center and are sustained by the energy that flows through them. If the gameworld is a family, then it is the job of the mother and father to be the center of the family and to supply energetic food into the family that keeps the family nurtured and flowing along. This is the parents’ job, not the job of TV, the job of the grandparents, or the job of the children.

  If the person who is the center of the game-world tries to nourish the whole gameworld with their own personal energy they will soon run out of “primate” power and become the normal exhausted parent or overworked project leader. The gameworld will cease growing and can easily wither or die because it will have insufficient energy to survive. Participants will eventually go somewhere else – including leaving their mate – to get the food for making their lives more vital.

  A gameworld thrives through the exchange between the participants in the gameworld and the resources of the gameworld. The exchange is mutually beneficial. Your gameworld needs access to the energy and information resources of the Principles and Archetypes, and the Principles and Archetypes need the gameworld as a physically manifested circumstance in which to work. You, as the center, are the space holder through which the exchange takes place. You are both crucial to the aliveness of the gameworld and completely replaceable – except for the fact that, in general, all available space holders are already busy being used at their maximum capacity to source other gameworlds and are not available to replace you in yours. It is your baby.

  As the space holder at the center of a gameworld you do not have to worry about your own evolution. You will be taken care of by the Principles and Archetypes, because as much as you need them to flow through you to feed your gameworld, they need you to be fit enough to handle the flow. Your capacity to flow energy is the bottleneck of the gameworld. When it comes time for you to handle a bigger flow of energy or to handle a flow of a different kind of energy, the Principles and Archetypes will arrange in some completely practical and unpredictably nonlinear way for your limits to be expanded.

  Your personal limits function as “restricting sphincters” on the energy flow into the gameworld. In the beginning of a gameworld, the energy flow through the space you hold is more than sufficient. As the gameworld evolves it is natural for the gameworld to require more energy than you can originally handle. Through cycles of stress and relaxation your development will be managed by the Principles.

  The sphincters that restrict the flow of energy into your gameworld are rigidifications of your will, the same rigidifications that establish the shape of your Box. Under a wide variety of conditions, willpower can rigidify into decisions, emotional trigger points, vows, beliefs, assumptions, rules, defense strategies, and so on, for example:

&nb
sp; • Old self-preservation decisions made in circumstances that no longer exist

  • Unexpressed feelings that fester into sensitive wounds that automatically react whenever a psycho-emotional “button” or trigger point is touched

  • Past-life vows made at the moment of a horrendous death and therefore strong enough to last through lifetimes with sufficient force to shape behavior

  • Beliefs placed over a question in the side of the box for which no answer can be found (e.g., Who am I? What is God? Where does consciousness come from? What happens when I die?)

  • Assumptions about how things are that in the past proved to be accurate in some important circumstance

  • Rules taken to be true and believed to carry heavy consequences if broken

  • Conclusions, opinions, stories, memories of “bad” experiences, expectations, prejudices, attitudes, dreams, myths, desire for comfort, misunderstandings, superstitions, propaganda, hidden conflicting commitments, addictions, habits, interpretations, and so on

  MAP OF RESTRICTING SPHINCTERS

  The quality of relationship you create with the people in your life and with the projects you are in formats your gameworlds. Clarified Principles and stellated Archetypes provide energy and information resources for you to feed your gameworlds. Old decisions, blocks, past-life vows, etc., can be restricting sphincters limiting the flow of energy and information into your gameworlds. Part of your ongoing development will include relaxing the sphincter's grip so more resources can flow through you. Relaxing the grip expands your Box.

  Flexible or rigid, your willpower is stronger than your destiny Principles. In order for more or different energy to pass through the restricting sphincters, the sphincters themselves must change shape or expand. Certain conditions bring the rigidified will of a sphincter into the chaotic disequilibrium of the liquid state, where it can relax its grip and reorient itself to a wider acceptance and perspective. The Principles themselves serve as the morphogenetic field, giving the sphincter its new shape as it re-solidifies. When the expanded sphincter permits more energy and information to flow through from Principles and Archetypes, the Box expands and the game-world is brought back into fruition at a wiser and more intelligent level of organization. When that happens you have more matrix on which being can grow. When you live in the service of something greater than yourself, that same thing takes care of you in mysterious ways so that you can continue to be of service. After some personal experience with this phenomenon you may begin to radically rely on it happening.

  Imagine designing both your personal and professional gameworlds to be sentient environments functioning in the service of Archetypal Love. Could you do this? Every interaction, moment after moment, would be an experiential expression of Archetypal Relationship happening. And to think that we have come to a consideration like this in a chapter called Underworld.

  SECTION 13-J

  Report From an Underworld Journey

  The following is a personal journal entry that I wrote in 1996. It is not included here because it is typical, but rather to give you an idea of how unromantic it can be to experience what Don Juan Matus and Carlos Castaneda called “stopping the world” and “shifting assemblage points,” meaning to melt down the ideas that shape our understanding of life that we always regarded as unmeltable. I also share this story because you may have experienced similar moments and may find some solace in confirming that this can be how it goes.

  October 1996

  It has all suddenly stopped working. The illusion spins apart. I sit here alone in a tiny hard room on the Mediterranean island of Crete, on vacation. On vacation from what? Good question. I take a pen in my hand and start writing how it really is, how it looks from the place where nobody is looking.

  The truth is that I have been living in a fantasy world. When my fantasy world is unplugged from the cosmic cable-TV connection and my picture fades, what I see really going on is not at all what I thought was going on.

  I am not in relationship. I am not connected to anything or anyone. I dangle here in endless unsettlement. Things are no longer hanging together like they did even moments before. There is nothing to stand on. The floor drops away, the whole scene is shattered, like a glass kaleidoscope dropped on a tile floor. Shattered to tiny irreparable bits. Except that it is not the kaleidoscope that is shattered this time; it is the viewer who is shattered. What I always regarded as me. The oil painting of my nicely formulated self-image violently disorganizes itself. The picture disintegrates into tiny irregular pieces that are already lost in the dirt. Through shock and dismay another feeling arises. The feeling is fear. What at first seemed like a short fluctuation, a small shudder, is quickly escalating into total annihilation. In the back of my head a quivering voice is beginning to squeak: “This could get serious…”

  Before now, my picture was seamless – everything blended into everything else and formed a whole flowing picture that I could glide through. Now there are seams everywhere, and the seams are open. There is an infinite gap between each object, between each word, between each movement.

  What made everything stay connected before? Some kind of glue? Whatever it was, it worked for a long long time and it fooled a lot of people, including me. But now the glue is gone. Dissolved forever. Nothing is continuous anymore. From here I see that it never was continuous. The seamlessness was only a mirage. The picture is now fully shredded, back to its original formlessness. There are no instructions for putting it back together again. It is far easier now to fall into an infinite gap than to hold any two things in association. The movie projector machinery in my mind that generated the world as I once knew it grinds to a screeching and total stop. No one else is there. It is all I can do to keep breathing.

  I used to imagine that everything was fine. Where did I ever get that idea? Look around. Things are not fine. Who am I kidding? All of my movements are so mechanical, so robot-like, so predictable. All of my thoughts are the same stale thoughts I always think, same tone of voice, same opinions, same emotional reactions to being offended, same judgments, same expectations. This sharp little mind of mine, so proud of itself, so tight and quick and final. All of the thoughts that I have ever had fit into a precise formula, the same formula I have always used. The purpose of the formula is to create a delusion. I have been living according to a self-generated fantasy master plan. Mentally smearing everything together into a seamless whole is specifically intended to make me think that I am living my life, that I am safe, that I am in control, that I can understand, that life has meaning and makes sense, and that what I think I understand is important.

  But not now. The show has stopped. Now nothing works. Nothing is together. Everything is in stasis. And the truth has been revealed: it is a real mess.

  Who I thought I was is no longer coherent. I do not even remember what that was anymore. I do not even care. My self-concept is some vague image, a ghost, a cartoon. Sadness arises now. The fear is replaced by a sense of deep loss. If the image that I spent so much effort holding together and presenting both to myself and to other people is actually just that: an image, then how could people still like me or relate to me? How can people still like me if there is no me? If I am not what they thought? How can people like me if I am nothing? How can I function? What if I never come back together? The sadness changes to fear again.

  I have invested years in making a consistent character presentation of who I am. I sacrificed a lot to keep the image solid. So often I did what my image dictated, what the image said was necessary to maintain the image rather than what I truly wanted. I have paid in blood. I really tried to be good, to be nice. I tried to be sincere – Oh God! How I tried! A good son, a kind brother, a perfect student, a friendly colleague, a loyal trustworthy mate, a strong man, a generous and compassionate father. I have paid. I sacrificed my soul on the alter of acceptability. So many years of my life I have thrown away trying to keep my image together.

  Now it is obvious that all tha
t effort was a lie, a sham. I have been a fantasy. No, it is worse than that. I have been false. I have been adaptive, trying to have at all times good reasons for my behavior in case any authority figure wanted to know just exactly why I was doing what I was doing – even when there was no authority figure available. I have spent my life trying to connect the next thing with the previous thing I did, trying to be predictable and consistent, trying to follow some logical progression. I have tried not to frighten people. Really. I have tried to be sane.

  But now the sanity framework is gone. The compelling force for maintaining the show no longer compels. There is no sense in it any more. The old standard reference point of “I” has suddenly vanished. What remains sees things from a different perspective – something previous to my fabricated ordinariness has shifted.

  This new view is extremely painful to endure. There is rage with panic and hopeless grief all mixed together. I cannot stop the waves. I want to scream. I want to hit somebody. I want to run. I want chocolate, doughnuts, cookies. I want a drink. (I don’t drink!) I want to watch a video. Stop this pain. Get me away from all this confusion.