Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth Page 18
Previous experiences with feelings may have included hurtful outbursts from parents, teachers, bosses, neighbors, or even from yourself. These may have been outbursts at inopportune moments or toward innocent or inappropriate people. Perhaps they were directed at your children, your colleagues, or your partner. Emotional explosions may have resulted in broken objects or broken dreams. Afterward you may have regretted what happened, but too late. The damage had already been done, and scars may be long lasting.
If these or similar associations accompany the thought of approaching feelings, it is no wonder that you approach them with trepidation.
GIVING BIRTH TO FEELINGS
I must tell you here that I am not guaranteeing that learning to feel will be free of outbursts. On the contrary, your first six months of feelings work may include some rather rough and rowdy moments. A close friend of mine, for example, is just beginning to seriously engage his feelings work. The other day he came to a meeting so full of anger that it took three adults listening nonstop for an hour and a half to hear all the things he was angry about. It was not a quiet conversation, either.
When I heard about this incident I cheered with joy because this man is in his fifties. He is long past his midteens when the human nervous system is designed to go through the maturing process of changing its relationship to feelings. Middle-aged nervous systems have settled into habit patterns, some of which may be quite deeply grooved. In this man’s case he had spent the previous thirty years studying and practicing a system of philosophy anchored in pure intellect. Experiencing and expressing anger breaks so many of the system’s rules that the likelihood of a practitioner learning to feel would be highly improbable. And yet he is doing it!
When you make this journey yourself it can help to realize that you are going through a natural birthing process. Natural births are not particularly famous for their smoothness. Birth tends to be unique (unless contractions are drug-induced by doctors needing to get to their golf appointments, or handed over to cesarean surgeons with vacation-home payments to make. Did you know that the percentage of cesarean births has doubled in the last twenty-five years? Don’t get me started on this! Too late! I’m already started . . .).
The uniqueness of each birth offers a precious gift of understanding. Its mystery magnetically draws women together in huddles to share their birthing stories.
Since modern people are not generally educated about the birthing process we might not notice that transitions from one life phase to another reveal teachings necessary for life in the next phase. Just as when giving birth, paying attention to, relaxing into, and accepting the immediate experience of your feelings journey can prove to be more rewarding than tensing up, trying to tough it out, wishing it were all over, and focusing on a fantasy image of what the end result will be like.
WHAT DO I FEEL?
The sixth of the ten feelings distinctions says that feelings are experienced from 0 to 100 percent intensity. In each moment you are feeling all four feelings, but one is always bigger. To find what you feel, scan through your four feelings and identify what percentage of 100 percent maximum you feel of each of the four archetypal feelings.
For example, if you order a part from a supplier and you learn that the part will arrive late, on the 0 to 100 percent intensity scale you may feel 55 percent angry that the part will be late, 27 percent sad, 63 percent afraid, and 48 percent glad that you are hearing the news in time to do something about it.
In this moment it is the fear that is most intense, so you tell yourself, “I feel scared.”
Then you inquire about what the fear is telling you to do. Perhaps the fear is suggesting that you immediately contact the production manager so he can modify his delivery schedule. Perhaps the fear is suggesting that you try to order the same part from a vendor who already has the part in stock. Use the inherent energy of the feeling to carry you through the necessary actions.
As soon as the action is complete the feeling will vanish and will be replaced by your next feeling. Then you are not so exhausted by the end of the day, because you have not been depending only on your own resources. You have been using the abundant and neutral energy and information of feelings.
A complete feelings communication would include reporting all four feelings. When someone asks, “How are you?,” you can now say, “I feel angry that I am hungry and it is still two hours until lunchtime. I feel sad that my mother is not feeling well. I feel scared that I am about to be promoted to managing a new project. And I feel glad that you asked how I am.”
MAP OF FEELINGS INTENSITIES
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
You are feeling all four feelings about everything. In each moment one of the four feelings is more intense. This is what you are feeling. Feelings come with action steps attached. Feelings provide the power for accomplishing those actions.
Net result: I feel scared.
The adult says: “I feel glad about the power and intelligence of my fear.
My adult feeling clarifies exactly what to do and provides energy for doing it.”
FEELINGS DETECTOR AND FEELINGS VALVE
We are making distinctions here. The distinctions are simple and remarkable. The distinctions say that in your body-sensing system you have both a feelings-intensity detector and a feelings-intensity valve.
Your detector is at first distorted by leftover child level perceptions. It needs to be calibrated into adult level feelings by comparison with another person who has already calibrated their feelings at the adult level. Once your feelings-intensity detector is adjusted, you can detect in yourself, and in others, the precise intensity level of a feelings experience, somewhere between 1 percent intensity (just above numb) and 100 percent intensity (the archetypal maximum for the human body).
Not only that, but through making distinctions among the four feelings and feeling them in their pure form, you gain access to a feelings-intensity valve. In Phase 2 of feelings work, this intensity valve lets you turn on and turn off your adult feelings. By consciously using your feelings-intensity valve you can raise or lower the intensity of any feeling to the most effective level for delivering a particular message or taking a particular action.
The things I just said won’t necessarily make sense to you at this point. But knowing that you can have a calibrated feelings-intensity detector and feelings-intensity valve sets the stage for consciously feeling without fear of annihilating your apartment and waking the neighbors (not that your neighbors don’t need waking).
Giving birth to adult conscious feelings occurs stepwise; in the company of an experienced guide, you select one of the four feelings and feel it at 1 percent or 2 percent intensity, and then stop entirely. The guide will instruct you to let your nervous system and your self-image get used to the tingling in your fingers and toes while new life surges through them. After assuring yourself that you are okay experiencing and expressing feelings at the 1 percent or 2 percent level, you will be encouraged to make the next daring move and go all the way up to 5 percent intensity!
In fact, this exact exercise has just become your homework.
MAP OF EXERCISE TO GAIN FEELINGS CONSCIOUSNESS
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
Following these instructions establishes a responsible adult relationship between you and your four feelings (mad, sad, glad, scared) in all four bodies (physical, intellectual, emotional, energetic). This is a three-month exercise.
1. Find someone to partner with you - someone who you see most every day and who also wants to enliven their adult feelings.
2. Agree that at random times during daily life you will interrupt and ask the other to tell you at what percent intensity they are feeling each of the four feelings right now, and about what. Remember, you feel all four feelings about everything all day long, but in each moment there is always one feeling that is most
intense.
3. For example, while standing in line together at the post office, Sam might turn to Bob and say, “Bob, what are you feeling right now?” Bob might say, “Right now I am feeling 3 percent angry that I am standing in this line at the post office. How come no matter how long the line is, it always takes the same amount of time? Now I’m feeling 11 percent angry. What about you?” Sam might say, “I am feeling 22 percent scared that we will be late getting back for the meeting. And 45 percent glad that we are talking about our feelings while waiting in this line. I am also feeling 8 percent angry that I am not feeling more angry!”
4. When no partner is around to practice detecting subtle feelings, you can arrange to telephone or email each other.
5. In addition, you can turn on the hourchime of your wristwatch. Each time it chirps, you stop, no matter where you are or what is going on, and write down the percentages of anger, sadness, fear and joy you are feeling in that moment and about what. Write this in your Beep! Book (a little black book for recording feedback, carried in your pocket or purse along with a pen. You’d be surprised how cleverly the Box can cause you to forget the pen at certain times so that you can’t write down particularly auspicious suspicious observations.).
6. If you do this exercise consistently for three months, your moment-to-moment awareness of what you are feeling will become greatly amplified. The new awareness enables you to take adult responsibility for your feelings and opens the door to using your feelings for high drama and also to stellating (initializing) archetypal feelings.
5. RESPONSIBILITY AND HIGH DRAMA
(NOTE TO THE READER: If you have skipped ahead to this chapter without carefully studying the previous four chapters, it’s a clever idea but I don’t recommend it. Learning to consciously feel has similarities to learning to drive a car, which is actually quite simple. Strap on your seat-belt, turn the key, grab the steering wheel and push your foot on the accelerator. But they make you take lessons and get a license before letting you drive. It’s for your own good. That’s because if you take a turn at sixty that you should take at thirty you can slide right off the cliff. If you don’t have right-of-way rules deeply absorbed into your reflex patterns you can get flattened by an eighteen wheeler. And if you don’t take care to check your fluids the brake pedal can sink to the floor while you slam into the back side of a cement truck. I am not saying anything like this will happen if you skip over the previous chapters. But I am saying that the world of conscious feelings operates under different laws than the world of numbness, just like driving is different from walking in a park. Before you hop into responsibility and high drama I strongly encourage you to study the first four chapters of this book. It’s for your own good.)
SEVENTH DISTINCTION: THERE ARE TWO PHASES OF FEELINGS WORK
The seventh of the Ten Distinctions for Consciously Feeling says that there are two phases in feelings work. In Phase 1 you learn to feel using the Ten Distinctions for Consciously Feeling. In Phase 2 you learn to create high drama by consciously applying the information and energy resources of your feelings through adult responsibility. It can be misleading to think that you are able to do Phase 2 before you have gone through the two-year rite of passage work of Phase 1.
MAP OF PHASE 1 AND PHASE 2 OF FEELINGS WORK
World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org
Before you can use your feelings you must first learn to feel.
PHASE 1: LEARN TO FEEL
• Know the Map of Four Feelings: anger, sadness, joy and fear.
• Regard your feelings as neutral energy and information.
• Feel your four feelings in their unmixed purity.
• Distinguish between feelings and two kinds of emotions:
o Incomplete feelings from your past.
o Inauthentic feelings from religion, business, politics or parents.
• Learn to start and stop your feelings consciously and for no reason.
• Experience and express each of the four feelings from 1 percent low intensity to 100 percent maximum Archetypal intensity.
• Stellate feelings to turn on the four responsible archetypes:
o anger = doer / maker (warrior, warrioress)
o sadness = communicator (lover)
o joy = responsible leader (king, queen / Possibility Manager)
o fear = creator / designer (magician, sorceress)
Phase 1 also includes:
• Distilling Bright Principles (Distilling Destiny Process)
• Distilling Shadow Principles (Hidden Purpose Process)
PHASE 2: USE YOUR FEELINGS RESPONSIBLY
Learn to use the energy and information of your feelings consciously and responsibly in the service of Bright Principles. Learn to be the intention-space through which your Bright Principles can do their work in the world. Create and develop extraordinary and Archetypal relationships through conscious acts of high drama. Lead diverse groups and teams using Possibility Listening, Possibility Speaking, Discovery Listening and Discovery Speaking.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Stellating (initializing) all four feelings in Phase 1 takes about two years and will usually include seven to ten strong healing processes dealing with parents and childhood issues. Stellating is best undertaken in the company of trusted and experienced guides as part of your rite of passage into adulthood. Do not expect yourself to do Phase 2 before you have done Phase 1.
Even though modern society orients us toward withholding feelings and regarding feelings as dangerous, uncivilized, immature, childish, embarrassing, feminine (i.e., not acceptable in a patriarchy), quite the contrary is true. But reorienting yourself 180 degrees with regard to any familiar pattern is a formidable undertaking, especially if you are older than fifteen years of age and have been repressing your feelings perhaps for decades.
Phase 1 distinctions about feelings are central to the well-being of people intending to live together in sustainable culture. Yet, enlivening these distinctions in your daily life is revolutionary. A conscious and responsible adult orientation toward feelings fundamentally undermines and brings into question large segments of traditional mainstream culture, including:
• a verbal-intellectual education system that ignores and suppresses feelings.
• medical and healing technologies that regard feelings as some kind of illness.
• a profit-driven mass media that manipulates unconscious feelings according to corporate-controlled political agendas to amplify insecurity, causing consumers to bow before so-called authority and thoughtlessly consume rather than becoming who they are.
RAGE TANTRUM This man is doing the 3-3-3 Exercise. He lies on his bed and consciously uses his voice (both words and sounds), face, and whole body to have a temper tantrum for no reason, 3 minutes at a time, 3 times a week (e.g. Monday, Wednesday, Friday) for 3 months. The 3-3-3 Exercise is a core element of Phase 1 of feelings work. Consistent practice safely vitalizes your nervous system to tolerate the intensity of mature adult feelings. It is high drama because you start and you stop consciously. It is part of your rite of passage to adulthood.
Using feelings consciously and responsibly involves acquiring significant new skills and a thorough understanding of their accompanying thoughtmaps. This is the journey you are already engaging.
RAGE TANTRUM The 3-3-3 Exercise refines your experiential distinctions and thus provides a safe way to improve your inner navigation. It is high drama to journey into feelings territories and discover: How does pure rage feel when it is not mixed? What percentage big was that anger? Can I lower my numbness bar even further? The expressions on this woman’s face reveal that high drama can be more than a little bit fun.
RAGE TANTRUM Feelings return at the same level of maturity that they were when you shut them down, usually between one and three years of age. The sensations of finally turning on your adult feelings are magnificent, spectacular, and enjoyable. We are designed to fully engage
our rite of passage when we are about fifteen years old.
UPGRADING YOUR THOUGHTWARE
The human body is capable of operating in different modes, depending on the particular thoughtware you use.
Think of a laptop or PC. This amazing piece of hardware can function variously as a word processor, an encyclopedia, a bank account manager, a direct mail service to other Internet users, a photo or video editor, a video game, a calculator, a radio, a telephone, a stereo CD or DVD player, a recipe file, a graphic designer, and a wide assortment of additional modes, many of which have not even been invented yet. The functionality of your computer depends on the particular software that you install. In the same way the human body also functions in multiple modes, depending on the particular thoughtware you choose to use.
If you give ten people the same job to do with the same resources to call upon, you will end up with ten widely varying results. This corresponds to the diverse thoughtware people build into their Box, including the level of maturity of their feelings skills.
For example, managers do not choose just anyone to handle a particular project. A manager picks a person who has the best qualities to match the project’s needs. Any person could potentially lead the project, but only a few specific people have actualized their potential into the capability to lead the project.
Modern education does not encourage us to use feelings or develop capabilities. In modern society this thoughtware is not available. Nonetheless, from sources other than modern society, this thoughtware is available. And when you begin using upgraded thoughtware you can enjoy extraordinary results out of the same senses, mind, heart and soul that previously gave you mediocre results.
In other words, your hardware is fine. This book is not about fixing your hardware. Blocks and malfunctions may simply be side effects of using very outdated thoughtware. This chapter is about upgrading your thoughtware to use the strength and intelligence of feelings to take responsibility and create high drama. The new thoughtware says: Feelings are for healing things or for handling things.