Been journeying the workshop scene lately: Dancing Eros for Men – a 7-week journey into the female archetypes, Expand The Box and Possibility Lab, two 5 day journeys into radical responsibility and the Tantra is Love Sexuality workshop last weekend.
Each comes with notes and exercises of sorts and I am really enjoying reading and expanding from Clinton Callahan/s book Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings: Grab a copy. In this life-altering book, there are the distinctions between low and high drama. Low drama is what we play out with each other, fulfilling one of the roles of victim, rescuer or perpetrator in our day to day scenarios, we are very skilled at this as we are trained from a very early age to fill one of these roles.
High drama is taking responsibility for change in your life. The page I opened the book to has a list about how to train yourself in living in a high drama state, here it is:
- Refuse to leave the adult ego state, where you are yourself in the minimized now of the present moment. Put a stake in the ground there.
- Declare that you are not a victim. If there is not a victim, there can be no low drama.
- Consciously feed your four distinct feelings: anger, sadness, joy, fear.
- Detect if you are experiencing a present feeling or an emotion projected from your past or from an authority figure or institution ( Hint, if the feeling lasts longer than a few minutes, it is an emotion.)
- Use your emotions to detect the healing you need to do.
- Use your feelings to responsibly handle things
- Make a boundary/become the boundary
- Ask for what you want
- Make a decision yes or no
- Make a distinction, be precise
- Start something/End Something
7. Neutrally observe what is going on. Choose what is.
8. Make a paper thin gap of nothingness between you and your box
9. Take radical responsibility for creating your circumstances. It is no one else’s fault.
10. If there are other people’s voices in your head, blast them away with your voice blaster.
11. Apologise for your patterns that have caused the breakdown.
12. Willingly enter the pain of remorse. Clear your resentments.
13. Be authentic about your inauthenticity.
14. Determine whose problem it is. If it is your problem, take responsibility. If it is not your problem, it is none of your business.
15. Get centred, Find and keep your attention. Stay unhookable.
16. Use your innate genius to continuously invent new ways to get out of a low drama. Share what you learn with your friends and your enemies.
For the terms you do not understand, I recommend getting the book. Responsibility is one of those words that can plug you in if you are operating from low drama, so what does our society say about it, here are a few statements about it:
1. Being in your now is another part of the training, some of us hang around in our now for 15 years, what if now was three seconds.
2. But I can’t, Its too hard, I’m scared, which way is this: The Real Slim Shady.
3. One plays in the dirt, the other soars above storms.
4. Yes, you, you are one powerful motherf****: Diamonds.
5. What is your word for it?
6. Hal actually died at age 20. Hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour, he was clinically dead for 6 minutes, broke 11 bones, and eventually woke from a coma to be told by doctors that he would never walk again. Not only did Hal walk, but he also went on to run a 52-mile ultra-marathon and become a hall of fame business achiever—before the age of 30: Back From The Dead.
7. Another word for a perpetual victim.
8. The most natural path to fulfilling your destiny, take responsibility for your life: Buttons.
9. If you can own no matter, you instantly become free.
10. Actions not words, for me. I watched Question Time for our legislature yesterday and could clearly see why they lost the confidence of the general population a long time ago, it was like a bad stand up comedy performance: This is Me.
11. Reading mainstream media makes it okay not to do this, it is all low drama.
12. The three-sided triangle, the cause, the solution and the matter, Yes, please: What makes you Stronger.
13. What a great insight to have in our lives.
14. Are you really a leader if you do not ultimately accept it: Responsibility.
15. “A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it. This new civilisation brings with it new family styles; changed ways of working, loving, and living; a new economy; new political conflicts; and beyond all this an altered consciousness as well…The dawn of this new civilisation is the single most explosive fact of our lifetimes.”
Alvin Toffler, from The Third Wave (1980)
Here is an example of low drama vs. high drama: You are the dinner table, and you would like some water to drink, and you say “I am really thirsty,” you are playing victim to a low drama, trying to manipulate someone else into rescuing you. If instead, you say, “Harry, will you please pass the water, you are playing the warrior in a high drama. High drama is that simple.
All but one song are from this century on today’s playlist: We begin with Eminem and Rhianna. We then shift to rock with Skillet, then three pop divas, firstly The Pussy Cat Dolls, Kesha and finishing the trio with Kelly Clarkson. Finally one for the kids by Dolly Parton. Here’s the playlist link: How Do I Make It Up to You.
Namaste until next time, my dear friends.
I am an Interculturalist 