RITE OF PASSAGE

A rite of passage is the formal and formidable procedure of leaving behind adolescence and stepping into adulthood. The ritual must be authentic or it is ineffective in unquenchably igniting adult responsibility for unfolding one’s own destiny.

In 2007 I visited a museum in Munich in which there was a display of cultural artifacts from Oceania, particularly the Polynesian Island cultures. I stood for a long while in one corner studying an ornately carved board about five feet long and two feet wide. This board had been handed down from generation to generation for many years. It was the board used in the men’s rite passage to carry the bodies back to the village of the boys who did not make it. They would lose ten percent of the boys during the rites. This is what I mean by formidable.

We have no rite of passage in Western culture. Although rite of passage has played a central role in human cultures round the world for 40,000 years we seem to have forgotten its necessity and its value. The result is that we have no true adults in our culture. The leaders in government, education, military, business and religion remain as adolescents inhabiting older bodies. We do not even know what being adult means. We also have not recognized what this costs us, but we are about to. Having no adults is boomeranging in our face in the most startling and permanent ways. For example, the lack of adult responsibility is what allows us to accept two thirds of the earth’s population starving while the other third pays thousands for liposuction. Adolescent level responsibility shows up as massive overuse of technical toys while ignoring the lethal messes we are making, so many poisonous byproducts that it is changing the entire climate of the earth. We are so committed to adolescent and childish levels of responsibility that we are still fighting each other over territory and resources instead of creating fair ways of sharing.

There is a detailed chapter in the book Radiant Joy Brilliant Love by Clinton Callahan (that’s me) that explores what a modern rite of passage might entail, and particularly how it differs from the traditional rites of passage mentioned above in the way it repositions the assemblage points (a term from Carlos Castaneda’s teacher Don Juan Matus). I have found no other resources to provide this much clarity.

Here I will suggest two elements missing from the educational context of Western culture where you could personally begin to explore, for both yourself and your children. (These ideas are also more completely developed in Radiant Joy Brilliant Love.) The two missing elements are feelings and stellating archetypes. To engage the field of feelings I will use a thought map created by Valerie Lankford in the 1970’s. In her map she divides all human feelings into four categories: anger, sadness, joy and fear, as shown in the Map of Four Feelings.

Having such a map creates tremendous clarity in a domain that can at first seem totally overwhelming. As Valerie says, this map helps you to think while feeling. This way you can learn to clearly communicate about feelings. You can learn to distinguish which of the four feelings you are feeling in any moment, and you can say, I feel (mad, sad, glad or scared) because ___________. And you can also teach this to your children, colleagues, boss, employees, and even your partner. What a gift this is!

In 2005 this map was further developed by Marion Krause in her feelings workshops. Marion realized that much disempowerment came through people unconsciously mixing their root feelings together. For example, when people mixed anger and sadness together they had an experience known as depression. The depression is an automatic result of mixing anger and sadness together experientially. You can have the experience of depression any time you want simply by mixing anger and sadness together. You can also end the experience of depression any time you want simply by separating the anger and sadness from each other and experiencing and expressing each of them in their pure form.

This is a revolutionary discovery, as yet unknown in Western culture, whose healing practitioners, for the most part, continue approaching the symptom of depression through the modalities of psychotherapy, drugs, or so called positive thinking.

Marion went on further to discover that mixing each of the other feelings produced equally disempowering experiences as shown in the thought map below, and that each was as easily remedied through internal experiential clarity produced through separating the feelings from each other and experiencing them in their pure form. This has been remarkably proven innumerable times when persons suffering from near catatonia through mixing three or all four feelings together went through the short guided process of respectfully separating their feelings one from the other and through this suddenly regained levels of functionality and relationship they had not experienced in years, if ever.

These simple distinctions about feelings are central to the well being of humans hoping to live together in a being culture. The having culture is largely oriented towards withholding feelings, regarding feelings as dangerous, uncivilized, immature, childish, feminine, unsightly, and so on. Quite the contrary is true. But to learn this is formidable. The new learning undermines and brings into question large segments of traditional Western culture, including its cerebral oriented education that ignores feelings, medical and healing technologies that regard feelings as some kind of illness, and the mass marketing media that uses unconscious feelings to induce insecurity and manipulate consumers to look for an identity in what they purchase and consume rather than in who they are.

About now it is important to mention that there are two phases in feelings work. In Phase One a person learns to feel. This is a significant learning that will take a year or two of guided practice. Phase One means learning to internally navigate the experiences of anger, sadness, joy and fear, consciously distinguishing one from the other in their pure form, in oneself and in others, not mixed together, starting and stopping them for no reason, maturing them from child to adult responsible expression, and to detect what percentage intensity is expressed between zero and one hundred percent archetypal intensity. This is straightforward to learn in certain training programs (for example, Callahan Academy trainings www.callahan-academy.com). Although it involves a year or two of practice, Phase One of feelings work is integral to a true rite of passage.

The old culture Map of Four Feelings looks like this, where it is not okay to feel any of the feelings. We have been trained about not feeling for many years.

On the new culture Map of Four Feelings, it is okay to feel. Phase Two of feelings work involves developing your talents to apply the energy and information of your newfound feelings responsibly. Then feelings become an irreplaceable resource and serve us professionally in these ways:

Phase Two of feelings work cannot be done before Phase One. Through successfully accomplishing Phase One and Phase Two of feelings work you gain the possibility of stellating your archetypes, another aspect of a true rite of passage.
 

Stellating Your Archetypes
The word “stellating” means to change from a planet into a star. The difference between planets and stars is that planets, like the Earth, absorb more energy than they radiate. Stars, like the sun, radiate more energy than they absorb. The planet and star difference is analogous to human beings. Human beings are trained to live as planets. You are taught to consume as many resources as you can afford, absorb knowledge from what is already known, imitate styles, critically judge if things are good or bad or if they meet your preferences and match your expectations or not, default to someone else’s authority, complain if things do not make you comfortable, and petition those in power to make changes.

Although you have been trained to live as a planet, human beings are in fact designed to live as stars. You are designed to produce more than enough resources for yourself and your “gameworlds”. You are designed to generate more than enough intelligence, love, creativity, inspiration, money, energy, time and collaboration to bring your projects, your family, and your work abundantly to fruition. You are designed to radiate, to be the source, to self-redesign, to discover, explore, invent, learn, develop, try new things, and make changes without regard for any other authority.

As pirate Jack Sparrow says – Captain Jack Sparrow that is – The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. I challenge that you have nowhere near an idea of what you really can do cut loose as a star.

The shift from life as a planet to life as a star is a procedure that ignites your innate and unquenchable inspiration. Stellating occurs through consciously and intentionally experiencing and expressing 100% maximum archetypal levels of each of the four feelings for no reason.

There are four archetypes to stellate, one associated with each of the four feelings.

• 100% rage stellates the Warrior or Warrioress, in modern language the Doer.
• 100% fear stellates the Magician or Sorceress, in modern terms the Creator.
• 100% sadness stellates the Lover archetype, in modern terms the Communicator.
• 100% joy stellates the archetypal King or Queen, in modern terms the responsible leader or what we have come to call the Possibility Manager.

It is preferable to begin stellating with the Warrior or Warrioress because with anger responsibly and consciously activated it can be used to make it safe to experience and express the other three feelings at their 100% archetypal levels. The Warrior, Magician and Communicator all serve the King or Queen. This is the proper beginning of mature responsible adulthood.

Stellating involves progressively expanding your Box through examining your Box’s present set of maps, while at the same time being exposed to upgraded maps that offer greater clarity and possibility. Taking on new maps changes the shape of your Box. Each change of shape requires your Box to go through the liquid state and involves deep emotional work – with anger, sadness, fear or joy. Stellating done safely and sustainably will mean taking a serious step, like being in a transformational training environment for several days in a row once every three months or so, for a couple of years, at least. The result of stellating is not guaranteed happiness, wealth, health or enlightenment. The result of stellating is having the dignity of living your life in the service of your destiny Principles.