Human beings do not change until it is too painful to keep doing the same thing. Discovering the implication of this distinction starts with remembering that each human being develops a unique psycho-emotional survival construct entirely dedicated to keeping things the same: your Box. Your Box logically deduces that if you have survived until now with the way things are, you will keep surviving as long as things stay the same. Your Box’s predisposition seeks comfort of the know and avoids the pain of change. Your Box’s safety reactions were built over years, decades of habitual grooves patterned-into your nervous system.

Considering the Box’s fear of the pain of changing its own survival habits, positive thinking, methods and motivation are weak forces. The pain of awareness, on the other hand, is a much more powerful force for change because the place from which life decisions are made is built out of awareness. The lack of awareness leaves us to make no new choice. Expansion of awareness gives us new options to choose from scary as they might be.

The pain of awareness is not to be confused with psycho-emotional pain. Psycho-emotional pain is created by your Box to keep you at home for your own survival. Awareness pain is the pain of expansion from being exposed to the unknown. Because your awareness expands it does not fit inside of your home anymore. You know this from trying to go home for the holidays after you have become more aware than your home context allows.

For decades, in your ‘comfort zone’, you might constantly feel depressed, lonely, guilty or shameful. At some point in your life, you figured out that being depressed (or anxious, self-doubting, hateful, resentful, hopeless, betrayed, ...) was safer than setting one foot beyond known limits. Depression is a mixed emotion of sadness and anger. If you are depressed, your pure anger remains inaccessible to say ‘Stop’ or ‘No’, change things or make clear decisions. Your pure sadness also waits unavailable for you to connect heart to heart, grieve or let go. In a culture where it is not allowed to feel angry or sad (or scared or glad), it is a common survival mechanism to mix emotions to avoid experiencing the transformative energy and information of pure feelings. Similarly to depression, loneliness is a mixed emotion but of fear and sadness. Guilt and shame are also both mixed emotions of anger, sadness and fear. Mixed emotions are painful, sometimes to an unbearable degree. Strangely enough, suicide is more often than previously recognized chosen over transformation because home pain is familiar. Home pain gives you an identity. Who are you if you are not depressed? Who are you if you do not feel alone? What dangerous new adventures might you create if you did not constantly feel shame or guilt?

Home pain drains your life force to the degree that you are left with little to no vitality for leaving home. A certain amount of activation energy is required to recognize that something completely different from home is possible right now. A candle wick will not start on fire until it is close enough to a burning match. The unlit candle stands for eternity alone in the dark. Until that surprising moment, you might have not even considered that you could have had a choice to leave home.

It can be that even as you are faced with choosing between the painful experience of home and the painful awareness that something else is possible, home wins. It wins because it is known. Whereas you don’t know how the transformational pain goes. You fearfully imagine that it will be bigger.

Therefore you will not change until the pain of not fulfilling your desire for something different becomes greater than the ordinary pain of home.

I want to share an inside trick, a trick I learned from Tom Sawyer. Tom Sawyer suddenly packs a few things into a cloth, ties it to the end of a stick, throws the stick onto his shoulder and leaves home to set out into a whole new world. The trick works because home will not change, you can always go back there. Whereas the opportunity to leave home can disappear in an instant, buried under an avalanche of reasonable addictions to mediocrity.

It is your spirit. To let your spirit suffocate and die may not be your true life wish. Something completely different from this is possible right now.

Possibility Management emerges out of the radically-responsible context of Archiarchy. The instant you set into a Possibility Management space, you are in Archiarchy. Archiarchy functions very, very differently from Patriarchy Modern Culture. Archiarchy can be compared to another Universe where everything is different: the gravitational pull, the atmospheric pressure, which makes the core element reacts in unpredictable ways, at least to someone who only knows Ordinary Modern Culture.

Archiarchy does not overlap even on inch with Patriarchy. The behaviors, thought patterns, relationship behaviors that have saved your Life in Patriarchy do not work in Archiarchy, they stick like a sore thumb.

Immediately, you might have the sensation that 'you do not know how to be', 'you do not know what to say (implicitly adding: to survive)', 'you do not know what the 'authority figures' wants from you'. Your well rehearsed show is useless.

How can that be when you have sacrificed so much for this show? This is a absolute betrayal. Yes indeed, you might experience betrayal from 'all these people who think they are better because they live in Archiarchy'. You might experience Rage, intense Fear, or huge Grief, maybe even Resentment against the Path or Archiarchy.

The betrayal, of course, does not come from Archiarchy. It is a much more profound, and long awaiting betrayal. It is the betrayal from your parents, your mentors, your teachers, your friends, your partner who did not tell you. They did not tell you that they sacrificed their aliveness on the altar of survival in Modern Culture. They did not tell you that you could choose something different. They did not show you a different way. They send you to school. They supported your show. They required that your show support their show. They demanded that unconsciousness prevails, because the pain of realizing their sacrifice and yours is too much to bear.

It has become more clear that one of the first steps on the Path is to thoroughly go through the grieving process of such betrayal sacrificing the Gremlin-feast of projecting your betrayal on your future friends and foes on the Path of Evolution. This Growing Up process would not only include Sadness, but also Rage and Fear and could easily include taking apart Resentment born from Expectations and Assumptions you (reasonable I might add) made about your caretakers. Expectations such as: I expect my caretakers will love me, I expect my caretakers will make the best decision for me and not for them, I expect my caretaker to know better, I expect my caretaker to not use me as Gremlin food, I expect my caretakers to be edgeworkers or researchers or lovers of the unknown, I expect my caretakers ... (you complete the sentence).

Quickly, in Archiarchy, you will notice your incompetence for sustaining, not even mentioning empowering Archiarchal spaces. It is quite possible that you have wired in yourself that incompetence equals being wrong, being wrong equals failure, that failure equals not being worth it, that not being worth it equals being rejected or kicked out or exiled, which is ultimately equated to death. This means inside of you, you have wired incompetence with death. If we follow this reasoning to its end, your cross-wiring triggers imminent death any time you step into Archiarchal spaces. Your Being might be longing for the Clarity, the Connection, the Love and Intimacy that it experiences in such spaces. But your Box and Gremlin are in constant full death alert.

When you notice that you are incompetent in Archiarchal space, and you do not know what to do about such incompetence, then you might use of the following survival strategies to deal with your incompetence:

• You might move into a full Gremlin attack towards the assumed 'authority figures' repeatedly the spaceholders of such spaces by accusing them of abuse, or threatening them to destroy their reputation, or trying to rally others in the space to notice how evil-minded the spaceholders are.
• You might put on your most delicate 'White-Widow-I-will-seduce-you-into-submission' show.
• You might choose the chameleon strategy by which you give your center away so thoroughly and invisibly that you manage to behave as it is requested from the space, but not from your own centered Authority, only from your mastered ability to notice what is needed and wanted and immediately giving the spaceholder what they want, (not knowing that an Archan spaceholder does not want anything from you).
• You might lock yourself away in an ivory tower so high that no one can touch or reach you. Any attempt to reach you is destroyed with justifications about the benefits of 'taking care of yourself'.
• You might play the weak and powerless child victim of your own own Gremlin, Child, or Parent Egostate Emotions and behaviors. You notice them. You might even be able to explain them. But changing them is outside of your range of actions. You might even think that your powerlessness give you permission to abuse others with your behaviors. (Let me assure you, it does not.)

Your survival strategies are doomed to crash against the Reality of the Path of Evolution. It is a good news! It is what you have come to Archiarchy for - at least to some degree. The attempts of your Box and Gremlin to destroy Archiarchy are ridiculous. Archiarchy is a Possibility. A Possibility cannot be eliminated by Gremlin attacks. A Possibility is available for anyone who has the Coin of the Realm (of such Possibility). Without the Coin of the Realm, you are stuck at the door. Banging on the door, pleading with the guardians of the door, bargaining with them, threatening them, or seducing them cannot get your through the door. You might be able to corrupt a guardian, it still does not give you the Coin of the Realm. The door remains closed. Why fight the guardian instead of doing what is necessary to get the Coin of the Realm?

In Archan cultures, Authentic Adulthood Initiatory Processes begin around eighteen years of age. They are essentially the same regardless of your gender - which is a very different approach from traditional indigenous initiations which are completely different depending on if you are male of female. In Archiarchy, Adulthood Initiations could begin as early as sixteen years old if you have been truly 'unschooled' your whole life - not sent to public school or forced to follow a strict 'homeschool curriculum'. In unschooling you would already have a closer connection to your Archetypal Lineage, your true Potentials, and the Infinite Resources, and would have built more Matrix that allows you to take Radical Responsibility than is ever permitted in public schooling, which is instead dedicated to the opposite, to suppressing your Creative Agency.

When you begin your Authentic Adulthood Initiations you are at the stage traditionally referred to as Apprentice. Much needs to occur at the Apprentice level before you are moved by your Trainers and Initiators - not by your own choice or will - into your Journeyman phase. (NOTE: Reading the six volumes of the Alvin Maker series of books by Orson Scott Card helps set the stage for you to understand these terms 'Apprentice' and 'Journeman' in resonance with the meanings meant here.)

In the Archan Adulthood Initiatory Path, 'Mastership' is never conferred because the Path has no end. There is ongoing development and learning, in particular with the art and skills of Replacing Yourself, providing Authentic Adulthood Initiations, and expanding the fields of Research and Discovery, building out and Mapping new Archan territories, territories which have never been inhabited on Earth before.

During Archan Journeyperson phase, you actually journey. You get far away from your birth culture, for years. Southeast Asia is a good place to start...

Archan Apprenticeship goes from sixteen or eighteen years to twenty-two or twenty-five years of age.

Archan Journeyman goes from twenty-two or twenty-five years to your early thirties, at which time it would automatically be occurring that you would be implementing your Nonmaterial Value building out your part of Archiarcy Infrastructure through Cavitating, Holding, and Navigating Spaces for Archan Gameworlds.

An ongoing implementation in every Archan Gameworld is, "Who are the next Archan Gameworld Builders?" Each Archan Gameworld is designed for its own demise, in so far as it is also a Gameworld Builder School for that particular Archan Gameworld. Apprentices and Journeypersons continually circulate through learning how to build out the next Gameworld of this type in Archiarchy.

I want to share something here with the group. I sometimes struggle to speak during calls. I’m looking into why that is, but for now, I will share this here.

Part of my journey with this Study Group is a journey into seeing how crippling my niceness, charm, and charisma have been. A few weeks ago, I received some feedback that made it so that for about 36 hours, I could no longer NOT SEE the unbelievably high price I have paid and continue to pay in my life for the sake of being a smiley, likable guy. I have forfeited my Authenticity. This forfeit has gotten me a life that to almost everyone around mean looks “really good” – and what a golden handcuff that “really good” is.

During this 36 hours, I went through an emotional healing process, but all throughout, I was being worked. My body shook everywhere, tears were in my eyes constantly. An involuntary rage seared through my body. How did this happen? When did I install this “inauthenticity software?” How is it that I live in a world where at every turn, I see more encouragement for being inauthentic, for smiling more, having no balls, having no spine, having no one at home.

The weeks since this moment happened have seen me being wildly different in my relationships. A new and inelegant intolerance at the ways I’ve built connection in my life has emerged, and I have begun to take radical action. In the past, I have liked the notion of saying the scary things that risk the relationships I have in order to finally have a chance at creating the relationships I want. I have thought this was a very pretty idea. And now, these last weeks, I am living it in a way that is rocking my world.

Each relationship has needed a kind of destroying and reset, and my Gremlin has been so helpfully (and lovingly) indispensable in finally letting me say the things my Box has been unable to say. I am crying writing this.

Some friends who’ve encountered me during this phase have told me that they need to take a long pause from the relationship. One friend who I told, “I cannot be funny with you for the duration of this experiment,” initially freaked out, and then the next day sent me a text thanking me for my courage. Another friend told me, “Devin, you have a great personality – one of the best – and everyone likes it. And, if that personality is coming at too high a cost, I am in your court as you go through your process.”

What do you even say to a friend who says a thing like that? I couldn’t say anything other than, “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

There is a last friend that I am working with now. When I told him that I could no longer tolerate the way I had been in our connection and that I wanted something different, his answer was essentially, “No.” This friend is powerful, wealthy, and a man I have looked up to and given my center to for years. There has been a benefit of knowing him – he sends clients my way, he has given me large sums of money, he has introduced me to important people.

But what has the price been? My dignity. Yes, my priceless dignity has been the price. I didn’t know that until recently.

Right now, I stand in my terror as that relationship crumbles. My Box is FREAKING out. My heart feels broken. But my commitment to myself and my path does not feel broken. That is so new for me.

I want you all to know that, because when you know it, I feel held by this Village. I feel the courage to really pull the rug out and stand on the groundlessness.

Thank you for reading this and for doing this work with me.

And on we climb, not just me, but a whole group of us, a community, a Team. And....the mountain.

When we reach what we thought was the peak, we look around to see... another peak! Another peak with more obstacles and blockages, that we couldn't have planned for ahead of time!

Some of us cry, others laugh. Some rage, others tremble.

We know we can't do it alone, so we stick together.

Sometimes we forget about the necessity of the Team, at least I do.

But I'm a different person now. I'm a fellow climber, making my way on a Path on the Mountain of consciousness, and paying Attention to what's in my pack, so I'm not carrying what no longer serves me.

I Notice that my determination feeds others' determination to stay the course, to proceed, one step at a time, the next step only after this one is accomplished.

And I take that earnestly, because I am a Spaceholder.