Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth
ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR
DIRECTING THE POWER OF CONSCIOUS FEELINGS
“Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings can help us peel off decades of pain and numbness to unearth our powerful, authentic selves. Genuine, here-and-now feelings are messages to help us behave appropriately and courageously, and to make the changes we need in our lives. Callahan’s book is full of potent, accessible tools for clear, effective communication and responsible action. This—our ability to be real and true—is what activists, ecovillage pioneers, and all of us (in my opinion) need to make the world a better place.”
— Diana Leafe Christian, author of Creating a Life Together
“I am so glad to have this book. Its enlightened distinctions changed my life: they changed the way I think and feel about myself and the world. This book maps higher consciousness and is a work of Conscience. I recommend this book wholeheartedly for its honor, insight, wisdom, and integrity. You can spend $10,000 on therapy or you can buy this book and change your life, which changes the world.”
—Red Hawk, author of Self Observation—the Awakening of Conscience.
“To be alive is to feel; not to think we feel based on what society tells us we should feel, not to imitate superficial emotions programmed by TV and the movies, but to be in touch with the richness of our shared humanity and be able to bear it all with grace, dignity and, eventually compassion. Clinton’s book teaches just that to all those among us who aspire to get closer to what it might mean to actually be a human being. A song of experience and innocence regained, may it serve those who are ready.”
—Gilles Farcet, author of The Anti-Wisdom Manual—a Practical Guide to Spiritual Bankruptcy.
“Learning to feel is essential to us being able to stay alive as a species. We need to open our hearts and minds to the shift that is happening on the planet, allow it to penetrate deep into the center of our being, allow the pain to be felt and released, feel ourselves re-awaken to who we are as sentient, pulsing human beings, deeply connected to the Earth and the universe at once. Numbness is suicidal.”
—Peter Merry, author of Evolutionary Leadership
“In the Middle East one experiences numbness not only as hopelessness about achieving any solution to the conflict, but as a tactic for survival itself. In this book Callahan introduces individuals, communities and nations to tools that allow awakening and transformation to occur. Here is an opportunity for all of us to gain a future worth living for.”
— Sami Awad, Executive Director of Holy Land Trust
“We project the horror of what happened to us as children onto the world. We cannot heal Gaia because we don’t believe in ourselves, in our true value. Thus we have turned ourselves dumb. It is in this that Clinton’s work is so precious. This great book is a guide to consciousness. Only this level of self-development can bring out the attitudes that we and the world need to heal the Great Mother, our Earth.”
— John James, author of The Great Field
“It has been with great appreciation that I have found Clinton Callahan’s work and writing. He so clearly and comprehensively details the path of feeling that those who approach it with a sense of open inquiry will likely feel compelled to undertake their own feeling journey. The work to regain such a fundamental ability as feeling is revolutionary, and inevitably transformative, both personally and collectively. And once one has a long drink of the experience of feeling that Clinton writes about, it will be difficult to quench one’s thirst with less.”
— Sally Erickson, Film producer
“Clinton blends a rare combination of accurate psycho/political state-of-the-world awareness with truly valuable emotional-healing skills. We deeply need them both and this book leads the way.”
— Bill Kauth, co-founder of New Warrior Training Adventure, and author of A Circle of Men.
“This book puts a simple key in your hand: Allow yourself to feel. The key releases you from paralysis, opens true insights, and gathers energy. It awakens the inner adult to step forward and make the changes we long for. Thank you for this guide to a new culture. May this book spread in the world.”
—Sabine Lichtenfels, peace activist, author, co-founder of Tamera
Clinton Callahan
HOHM PRESS
Chino Valley, Arizona
Copyright © 2010 by Clinton Callahan. All rights reserved. It is copyright law that no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of quotes used in critical articles and reviews. And, copyright owner hereby grants permission for readers to copy and use portions of this book as study material in discussion groups, seminars, trainings, websites, newsletters, ezines or PowerPoint presentations provided that the material is given for free, that distinctions, maps, and exercises are attributed to Possibility Management, and that copies include the following copyright block:
World Copyright © 2010 by Clinton Callahan. Excerpted from the book, Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings – living your own truth. Permission is granted to copy and distribute as long as it is given for free and this author, copyright and website block is included on each copy. All other rights are reserved. Thanks for experimenting with Possibility Management!
Cover design: Adi Zuccarello,
Layout and design: Kubera Book Design, Prescott, Arizona
Photo of author: Laurent Belmonte
Cover photo: Shinichi Maruyama,
Photo team: Sonia and Tassilo Willaredt, Roswitha and Peter Kuder, Marion and Clinton Callahan, Regina and Jürgen Birlinger, Britta Vrettos, Layla Scheffler, Christian Thoma, Simon A. Westermann, Joachim Antweiler, Nicola Nagel, Stefanie Heidtmann, and Moritz Krause. Thanks to Joachim for sticking his head in the sand, and Simon for photo editing.
EbOOK ISBN: 978-1-942493-00-6
DISCLAIMER: This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information regarding the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering relationship, emotional, or psychological counseling, medical treatment, or other professional services. If professional advice or expert assistance is required, readers are advised to seek the services of a competent professional.
HOHM PRESS
P.O. Box 4410
Chino Valley, AZ 86323
1-800-381-2700
THANKS
Finding one’s way along the path of personal development seems to depend on three things: your teamwork with fellow explorers, the quality of your maps, and the accuracy of your compass.
My compadres on this journey are the most trustworthy of friends; for you I am truly appreciative.
My maps come from raw research at the intersection of worlds; for these experiments I am extremely grateful.
Until I was thirty-seven years old I specialized in being in discovery groups and collecting treasure maps.
Then I found a compass. His name is Lee Lozowick. He exactly pinpoints my little X on the map that says, “You are here,” without which all treasure maps are useless. Now I specialize in expressing gratitude for my compass.
Any value in this book derives from the heartful kibitzin
g of Lee Lozowick.
CONTENTS
Foreword xi
Introduction xv
1. The Numbness Bar 1
2. Expanding Into All Four Bodies 47
3. Unconsciously Feeling 65
4. Consciously Feeling 92
5. Responsibility and High Drama 168
6. Communicating with Feelings 212
7. Stellating Feelings 244
8. Distilling Your Destiny 280
9. Next Culture 296
Appendix A: List of Thoughtmaps 329
Appendix B: Ten Distinctions for Consciously Feeling 332
Appendix C: Map of Possibility 333
Appendix D: Bambi vs the Collapse of Civilization 334
Further Unlearning 345
Index 353
Further Experiments 365
Midsummer 2008, I was standing alone on a luscious green mountainside behind a hut in the Austrian Alps. It was beautiful. I noticed a momma horse trying to get my attention. Horses are not normally my thing, but I climbed through the fence and started rubbing her nose, scratching her back and shoulders. After a while she looked over to her baby who was observing us from a safe ten meters away. She told him I was okay. He came over and presented himself for the same treatment. Since he was smaller, I could give him a complete back massage digging my fingers deep into his thick soft fur. For fifteen minutes we were both in ecstasy. In my heart I planned to tell my horse-loving daughters about this interaction. They would love hearing about it.
Then the farmer came out. He had seen me with the baby horse. He said, Too bad it’s a boy. I said, Why is that? He said, In a few months we have to kill it. Can’t have boy horses around here. The sausages will be very tasty, though.
I couldn’t say anything. I started walking up the mountain. The trail is steep and narrow. I didn’t seem to notice. At the ridge I sat on a bench. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I had just heard the human prescription for planet Earth, and the cause of the end of civilization.
I connected into the mountain, trying to share my pain. The mountain said, Idealizing the strong numb hero has possibly exterminated the human race. Write a book about conscious feelings. Make it safe for people to become no longer numb.
FOREWORD
Here’s the thought that kept springing to mind as I read Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings: something picked Clinton Callahan up, sat him down, and used him to write this book. And that something—that muse, that force, that helper, that spirit, that consciousness—was exactly right to do so. For the task of showing the path out of our collective cultural insanity, through our true and authentic feelings, and back to our birthright of sanity and connectedness, you’ll find few voices as clear and conscious as Clinton Callahan’s. Good choice, Cosmos. Thanks!
It’s all here: straight talk and a courageous willingness to look unflinchingly at our individual and collective situations; gentle acceptance and encouragement; clear teaching and practical insight; personal revelation and cultural analysis. The tone is sober and open and friendly and real. The maps take you right where you want to go. As George Gershwin wrote and Gene Kelly sang, “Who could ask for anything more?”
Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings organizes and makes plain my own messy journey through feeling from numbness and distraction to conscious feeling, something approaching sweet, sweet sanity. And it gives me useful language and images and metaphors, which, by sharing the book, I can then share with others, expanding the conversation and spreading the healing that is available to all who choose to take this path. I’ve already started a list in my head, of the people with whom I can share this book. And sharing this book is essential. We cannot do this work alone.
I guess I’m just trying to help you understand what it is you have in your hands right now. This book is not just “a good read.” It’s full of exercises. It’s a training. A movement. The maps take you places. You have to go somewhere new. A species of living creatures may have gone extinct in the time it has taken you to read these four paragraphs. Maybe two. Climate is destabilizing. Oil is slowing. Oceans are dying. Forests are falling. You know the drill. This book is a way to navigate your way through this mess in a manner that might actually help the situation. Clinton Callahan says, and I agree, and so, apparently, did the forces who spoke through him, that learning to consciously feel is a fundamental and necessary step to take if we wish to make some sane response to our present predicament.
Imagine what might happen if scientists and politicians and industrialists and economists and you and I and the man-on-the-street and the girl-next-door were able to sit with our feelings of anger and grief and fear and joy and fully feel them. Imagine us facing head-on into our helplessness. Imagine us fully feeling the impacts in the world of our actions to-date. Maybe we’d stop inventing plans to launch millions of old shoes and used ABBA CDs into the upper stratosphere in order to stop those pesky sunbeams from reaching the planet. Maybe we’d sit down for a minute, bow our heads, admit that we are powerless in the matter of controlling the world and that our culture has become unmanageable, and begin the process of sobering up. Maybe, just maybe, we’d begin to open up to a power greater than our collective ego. Maybe we’d start to actually be of service to the planet.
There’s an old joke, one I’ve told many times, one I’ve heard others tell. When looking at the “missteps” and “wrong turns” and “lost years” of my life, I’ve said this: Well, it’s not like we come with an owner’s manual when we’re born. As if to say, “Hey, I’m doing my best!” As if to say, “It’s not my fault!” As if to say, “If only. . . if only. . . if only. . .”
Well, guess what, folks? Whether true or not before, it’s not true now. We have an owner’s manual. It’s in your hands. You’re reading it right now. It’s an owner’s manual for Sane Human Being. Follow the diagrams. Reconfigure the wires. Adjust the dials. Pretty soon you’ll reclaim who you have always been, who you came here to be. Deep and authentic feeling. A conscious life. And a chance to play a part in the healing of our collective nightmare, and the creation of What’s Next. Not too shabby, eh? A human life lived in alignment with the Cosmos. Yours if you really want it.
This book can help with that.
May your copy become dog-eared and yellowed with use.
Touching the ground,
Tim Bennett
Filmmaker
Rochester Abbey
August, 2009
INTRODUCTION
Every man, woman and child on Earth lives within the continuously fluctuating sensations of intelligent feelings, but this intelligence remains suppressed and misdirected under the brutal imperatives of a patriarchal empire.
Many of us are lost between two shores, not truly committed to supporting the greedy madness of a globalized consumer society, yet not knowing what else to do. We wait in timid fear, hoping that the ship of state will somehow right itself and sail us into a bright future. But will it? Can it?
The question remains, how much longer will you wait? This book is for people who have waited long enough.
This book is about taking responsibility for the intelligence and power of your own feelings and using them to lead a life closer to your own truth.
SOURCE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE
These ideas do not come from mainstream culture. Neither are they derived from psychology, sociology, Christianity, Eastern traditions, aborigines, or the new age. These ideas come from more than thirty years of unprecedented exploration with private groups of people. For days at a time, in spaces of great safety and mutual trust, we repeatedly ventured beyond traditional understandings into unknown territory. Together we wrestled with our deepest uncertainties, tried numerous approaches, distilled the outcomes, and brought back a collection of distinctions that permit men and women to create extraordinary lives. We have come to call that work Possibility Management.
You will find these pages directed toward the practical: filled with thou
ghtmaps, examples and exercises. The skills are to be practiced with feedback and coaching from peers until their effectiveness becomes experientially undeniable.
In some ways this is an extended version of the feelings information in Radiant Joy Brilliant Love, my previous book, yet it is more than that. Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings takes you by the hand, builds a foundation of understanding beyond mainstream culture, and then experientially leads you into reclaiming your own feelings as steps across the bridge into next culture.
These skills become vitally urgent in the moment you recognize that global climate disruption combined with peak oil and population growth will collapse civilization as we know it within the span of our lifetimes.
The devastating consequences of humanity’s collective actions during the twentieth century remain concealed from view of the majority (as of March 2010), but I predict they cannot remain so much longer. The clarity and power of your own feelings will support you to create a new life for yourself when civilization is no longer there to create a life for you.
As Tim Bennett writes in his blog, Bambi vs the Collapse of Civilization (included as Appendix C): “Some of us need to do this work, because most will not. Refusing to feel their fear now, they will be forced to feel it upon impact, when the trauma is greatest, the losses so hard to bear. They will need our help.”
WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?
Social entrepreneurs, leaders and managers who read this book equip themselves with new clarity for empowering their team, organization or project.
Educators, social workers, healers, parents, coaches, and especially students can use these ideas and tools to enhance their effectiveness even during times of rapid change. Especially young people need activated feelings for transitioning into their own adult lives. Feelings provide real-time energy and information when students discover that much of what they learned in school is at best irrelevant.