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May 23, 2013
Preparing Yourself
By Clinton Callahan
Rob Kall's timely observation included a key to personal action when he said: "I'm coming to believe that the answer to rescuing America is not to take the giant corporate behemoth head on. Mammals did not make war with the dinosaurs. They were ready to adapt when the world changed." Next-culture human mammals are relocalizing and building communities that will survive. Do your thoughtmaps allow you to adapt?
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The thoughtmaps you are using determine how reality works for you. A thoughtmap is what you use to think with. I am asking you now to think about what you are thinking with. School gave us tons of facts and formulas to think about. That is the content of your thinking. What I am talking about is the context of your thinking. This would be like considering changing the rules of the game rather than blindly playing the only game you were taught. Well-being in a rapidly changing world involves the capacity to evolve the context of your thinking. How does one do this?
When cartographers first sketched the outline of local territories onto papyrus and parchment the maps extended only as far as the cartographers knew anyone had travelled. Beyond that the world dropped off into a void inhabited by brutal monsters. The clear but unspoken consequence of using a flat-world thoughtmap is that if you go beyond the limits of known territory you will fall off and die a horrible death.
The flat-world thoughtmap caused diverse cultures to evolve in adjoining territories separated only by the mutual fear of leaving home. In this tribalistic orientation the word used for our people and the word used for human beings is the same word. Foreigners, meaning those people not using our one-and-only true set of thoughtmaps, are recognized as barbarians. In other words, people not in our tribe are the edible ones.
About five hundred years ago new technology was invented, namely sailing ships large enough to carry soldiers, horses, guns, and sadistic religious fanatics across the great oceans. Cartographers brought back new information. The world became spherical, giving rise to the question of which nation owned what resources. While "discovering new lands" a nationalistic orientation emerged. Western oligarchs adopted the tyrannosaurian concept still operational today: our thoughtmaps are better than your thoughtmaps if we can kill you. Hierarchical power structures allow a few wealthy but terrified sociopaths to snuff out cultural diversity by planting franchised coffee houses and burger joints in every village of the world. Modern plutocracies war against foreigners (meaning the not-humans of other plutocracies) to see who can burn and consume Earth's remaining resources the fastest. It doesn't look good.
Fortunately, new technology has emerged. The internet and smart phones open a next evolutionary phase of cartography, particularly in those people who have travelled beyond the borders of their birth culture. The next phase is to realize that all thoughtmaps are lies, including your own.
Thoughtmaps are approximations, interpretations, stories about what is. They are not what is. What is comes without a story attached. This is easy to see. When people shifted from a flatworld thoughtmap of the Earth to a roundworld thoughtmap, they suddenly gained tremendous new possibilities even though the planet itself did not change. This is because human beings do not interact with the world as it is. We interact through our thoughtmaps of the world. When you get a new thoughtmap, you get a new world.
Discovering that all thoughtmaps are lies begins the next chapter in human evolution. Suddenly the game changes from life-or-death competition to having personal choice amongst different flavors of bullshit. You obtain the ability to simply walk out of tribalistic and nationalistic identities and orient yourself globalistically. You achieve the capacity to choose which culture you live in regardless of what continent you were born on or the culture of your parents because although none of the cultures are true, some definitely lead to a sustainable human presence on Earth.
By recognizing culture as arbitrary fiction you also gain the capacity to declare entirely new cultural space in the global ethnosphere and can immediately begin living in your new country together with like-minded individuals.
This is remarkable in that you no longer need to despair until you have convinced a fifty-one percent majority to achieve a critical mass of people agreeing with the new thoughtware. Instead you can enter sustainable culture and enjoy the fruits of creative collaboration and good will that you know are possible.
By declaring and stepping into a new cultural context with a committed group of at least three adults your new country serves as a seed crystal of next culture that others can more easily copy, like the lead goose in a V formation makes it easier for the rest to move forward.
Actually millions of people around the world are already evolving sustainable culture. But even the most exciting successes never appear on the evening news. Does this mean the successes are not occurring? Don't be stupid. It only means the plutocrats don't want you to know how simple, dignified, rewarding and fun next culture is.
Through small group thoughtware upgrade experiments whole new forms of culture are emerging that never existed on Earth before, such as archearchy (google it"), the creative collaboration of initiated archetypal adult women with initiated archetypal adult men.
New meeting modalities combined with circular and spiral power structures revolutionize the utilization of nonlinear group intelligence.
In addition, cartographers are now mapping not only physical space, but also intellectual space, relational space, and energetic space. The multi-dimensional qualities of a space determine what is possible in the physical space. This explains, for example, how firewalking is possible. In one energetic space touching your feet to glowing coals causes severe burns, whereas, in another energetic space not even the hairs on your toes singe. And these two spaces may be only a context-shift apart.
Spatial cartographers are also busy mapping the Great Labyrinth of Spaces, in which each space is connected to every other space, meaning that you can get to anywhere else from here. It is key to know that when maneuvering a thoughtmap, the closer your thoughtmap matches reality, the more precisely your maneuvers change the world.
The burning question becomes: how do you prepare yourself for shifting context with your thoughtware?
An optimal place to begin is by questioning the thoughtmaps you are presently using. You may not be able to do this on your own, because your thoughtmaps may defend themselves by confusing you about what you observe and experience during earnest questioning. Questioning the origin and purpose of your current thoughtmaps may be far more effective with a small team of intrepid adventurers meeting weekly for this specific purpose.
Should you happen to resonate with what has so far been suggested in this essay and you wish to activate the process in a small group of your own, the following is a small list of possible thoughtmaps to begin questioning:
What are your thoughtmaps about who you think you are? Are you Jewish? Moslem? Christian? Are you a spiritual student? Are you Chinese? Palestinian? American Indian? Black? Red? Are you upper class? Lower class? Are you a woman? A man? A daughter? A son? Are you a manager? Shaman? Artist? Are you underprivileged? Are you of the ruling class? Are you an alcoholic? A computer sex addict? Are you handicapped? Are you a victim? For example, once I lived three months in the Philippines. Eventually I got to know a village man well enough that he could complain to me. He said, "You are an American. You have money, an American passport. You can travel all around the world. I am Philippino. I am poor. I am trapped here and can't go anywhere." I said, "This is not true. You are a human being and I am a human being. The only difference between us is our thoughtware. If you had the thoughtware that I have and you were in your same circumstances, you could be anywhere in the world by tomorrow." He said this was wrong! He really was stuck there! I said, "If you took away my passport and my money I could be anywhere I want tomorrow. If I gave you all my money and a valid American passport you would still be a poor Philippino and not know how to use them. You would be stuck in your old thoughtmaps."
Question your thoughtmaps. What are you? If you shift your self-identity thoughtmaps you shift what is possible and impossible for you. (Secret Hint #33: The most powerful and interesting identity I have ever discovered is being a Possibility Manager (google it"). Try the experiment of authorizing yourself to be a Possibility Manager with the highest priority, far above any other identity you might ordinarily use, for two weeks. No matter what happens stay being a fully activated Possibility Manager. See what happens.)
What are your thoughtmaps about the resources available to you? Do you think your resources are money? Your stock portfolio? Income properties? Investors with capital? Do you still think you need money to survive? How does holding to these ordinary modern-culture thoughtmaps actually cut you off from your resources of imagination, your energetic center, your being the Earth, your bubble of personal space, your grounding cord, your being of service through Bright Principles, your stellated archetypes, your Gremlin, your pearl, your archetypal lineage, your tool-belt with voice blaster, clicker, sword of clarity, wand of declaration, orthogonal paint brush, disk of nothing, bag of things, Is-Glue and Dissolver? Your ability to inner-navigate your feelings, connecting heart to heart through the Boxes, listening, completing communications, instigating meta-conversations, shifting purpose, holding and navigating discovery-space, creatively collaborating with other initiated adults and going nonlinear?
What are your thoughtmaps about what is stopping you from doing what you came here to do? About what is possible for you right now? Do you still think that your personal, physical, cultural or social circumstances determine what is possible for you right now?
What are your thoughtmaps about who or what has power over you? Do you still think it is the government? The law? Tax collectors? Police? The doctor? Your mother? Your father? Society? Your past? Your fear-inspired stories? The vampire voices in your head?
Do you still blame others? Do you still believe your own complaints? Do you still try to be right? Try to make others wrong? Make excuses? Justify your positions? Secretly plot revenge?
Do you still experience jealousy? Guilt? Shame? Envy? Greed?
Do you still give credibility to emotions instilled by external authorities? From company brands? From a religion? From the television? Do you still leave their hidden purposes unquestioned?
Do you still think you should know? Are you still trying to be perfect?
Do you still hold beliefs? Do you still think you don't have enough time?
In each case the experiment is to invent and implement new thoughtmaps, and refuse to get off it for an extended period of time, then see what happens. (Note: Upgrading your thoughtmaps has NOTHING to do with positive thinking, affirmations, a method, or wishful thinking. Try something completely different. The clarity of a new thoughtmap ignites unquenchable inner inspiration for new action.)
Clinton Callahan, originator of Possibility Management and Expand The Box trainings, author of Building Love That Lasts, Conscious Feelings, No Reason, White Witch of Tenerife, and Good Night Feelings. Clinton is a Possibilitator, Transformational Circle Alchemist, Memetic Engineer, co-creator of the StartOver game, co-founder of General Memetics in the nanonation of Possibilica, Integrity Clarity Possibility Love Initiation and High-Level-Fun, Member of the Possibility Management Trainer Guild, committed to upgrading human thoughtware so we can play together at our highest potential.