Seven Rooms Deep - Talk 15 of 25
Topic: Seven Rooms Deep
Theme: Depth
Author: Barry Sweet
Date: January 7, 2018
Music: Distant Love by Sierra Brooke Sweet
Video Production by Tim & Karen Morse. Morsephotography.com
We are all Seven Rooms Deep.
And we decide who we're going to let into rooms one and two… Who we're going to let into rooms three and four… Who we are going to let into rooms five and six… And hardly anybody gets into Room Seven… we hardly go in there ourselves. We hardly let God in there. And some people, we keep in room one and stay shallow with them our whole lives. Other people we let into rooms 3 and 4 or 5 and 6 and only the closest people in our lives do we let into Room Seven.
There's a richness in those rooms. And there's a richness to letting yourself…into Room Seven. Its not a place to be afraid of…
I sometimes call Room Seven the Honesty Room. Where I can be completely honest with who I am in front of myself, in front of my God. Just completely vulnerable and honest, because I can't fool anybody in there (anyway). But I am also not judged in Room Seven. It's a beautiful thing. And being comfortable in Room Seven, I think is one of the most important things we can do in this life.
Let me back up a little bit and tell you how I've learned about the rooms. The Clinebells did the studies on depth in human communication. AndI'm going to synopsize their teachings, and sort of cast it in my own terms with the rooms.
In Room 1 you talk about the weather, because it's safe and it's not personal. In room 2 you talk about personal history. “I have this many brothers and sisters. I grew up in Arizona…” It's personal. But yet it's still safe.
In Room 3, you talk about thoughts, feelings, opinions and beliefs outside the group. A group can be two people. It can be you and me, but we will be talking about Robert or Lisa. So we're talking about thoughts, opinions, beliefs but they are outside of our group.
In Room 4, we talk about thoughts, feelings, opinions and beliefs inside the group. So this would be… my feelings about you. “It really bugs me when you pull on your ear when you talk to me” or “You are one of the people that makes me laugh the hardest in this life”.
In room 5, we talk about the innermost center of who we are… and 6… and 7….
So there's sort of the recast of the Clinebells…
I teach camp counselors in the summer. I had one of the camp counselors say “Barry, I'm scared to death. It's my first time being a counselor and I just don't know… what if nobody talks in my cabin?”
And I said “Just remember the Clinebell model, and use it because it works, and what happens is you just need somebody (usually you as the leader)… you’ll go into to room one, if nobody follows you… go back out… and then… after a while go back into room one, someone will follow you. And then go into room two, and talk about history. If no one follows you… go back to room one and talk about the weather. And then later go back into room two, and then go into room three and talk about thoughts, feelings, opinions, beliefs about people outside the group, (and it can be good, it doesn't have to be bad…it can be just about other people), and then if no one follows you, go back… and if someone follows you, stay there… and then talk about thoughts, feelings, opinions and beliefs within the group. If no one follows you, they are not ready. Go back to room 3 and stay there. Then when you go in the room 4, someone will follow you and that's how you go through the levels. Not that we encourage them to go into room 5 with kids at summer camp… because we're not therapists, just camp counselors, but this makes you a master of the whole spectrum.
If it gets too deep… you know exactly how to take it back down to shallow. If it's been shallow for too long… you know exactly how to take it back up to get them into the deep end of the pool. So I taught the Clinebell model at the beginning of the summer and I went back at the end of the summer and met with the counselors and that same counselor put her hand up in that group and she said “I just want to thank you, Barry, for telling me about the Clinebell model… I was petrified. It was my first night as the cabin counselor and I thought ‘Oh no, they're not going to talk, and I'm going to be a failure’. And then I remembered what you said. Just follow the Clinebell model. So I said
‘So… how about this weather?’
She said 45 minutes later they were in the deepest conversations she could have ever imagined… and the rest of her summer went that way.
And so there is a mastery that we can use by knowing the developmental models, by knowing that Clinebell model… and by accessing Seven Rooms Deep and being vulnerable.
Let me talk about vulnerability for a minute. There is a story called The Crystal Heart and it goes like this… Inside each one of us there's a little black box, very padded, very padded, velvet soft and when we get to know someone, we take that box out, open the lid let them peek in and see a little bit of who we are. But then, very carefully we closed the lid and put it back inside where it's safe.
In our relationship, two things happen, time and trust… comes the day that we take that little box out, open the lid and we actually take our Crystal Heart out of the box and hold it up to the light so that they can see all of our beauty and color and all the facets and rainbow of refracted light. But we're careful to keep that backside toward us where that little yellow discoloration is, and that fracture is that we don't want everybody to see. Then we put the Crystal Heart back in the box, closed the lid, and put it back inside where it's safe. And then in relationship two more things happen… more time and more trust… comes the day that we take out the box, open the lid take our delicate Crystal Heart out and we actually hold it out to them so that they can reach out and accept our Crystal Heart and they too then can hold it up to the light to see all of the beauty and the facets and the spectrum and color of who we are.
But they also can turn it around, and see that little yellow discoloration for themselves and that little fracture that you never wanted anyone to see.
And this is what we call The Grand Risk.
The passing of your crystal heart over to another is The Grand Risk of Life because they could (even inadvertently) drop it and it would fall to the ground and break into the proverbial thousand pieces or… they can actually hold your heart.
And to be held in the hands of another trusting and knowing that they would do you no harm, and if they did, it would only be by the gravest of accidents.
That's where we can begin to understand for the first time… and come to know what I think is as close to the meaning of life as I can get...
And that is this idea of being Fully Known and Fully Loved. To be Fully Known and Fully Loved is this place that I think we all deeply long for… we've wanted our whole lives. But along the way… we've gotten fully known and fully judged. Or we' ve gotten partially known and fully judged or partially judged and partially known. We've had a bunch of bad combinations that have happened. But we've been longing for this place that we could know Fully Known and Fully Loved. And one of the beautiful things about passing your Crystal Heart is that at some point you (sort of) are so afraid of passing it over that you avert your eyes averted for fear of what's going to happen.
But often when you look back… you find that the other person is passing you their Crystal Heart in return. And it’s this beautiful celebration of people, and authenticity, transparency, genuineness, real-ness, everything that is not plastic. That's what it is. And the spiritual side of Room Seven is again my encouragement to invite God into Room Seven… because what I have found… is that for the first three years if you let Him in there… (you think He's going to judge you, like the Judge on the Throne thing), but for the first three years that you invite God into Room Seven…
All he does is love you… and you become Fully Known and Fully Loved for the first time in your life…
with someone that won't drop your heart.
And then finally… somewhere around in year four… yeah, He does judge you. But the judgment is something like this…
It's like your best friend saying “Hey, you know that thing you do…? And you go “Yeah…” (and you both smile).
So it's not the harsh judgement of a cruel king on the throne. It's this kind of “Yeah, we're all going to grow up together aren't we…” (smile).
And the judgment almost feels like love… so Room Seven…
We’re all Seven Rooms Deep.
My encouragement is for you to remember “time” and “trust”… before you let someone in there and you might discover some of the greatest joy of your life.
P.S. to Seven Rooms Deep
I’m a little embarrassed about this so forgive me… but I have seen episodes of The Bachelor and what I have learned is that when The Bachelor starts on the first night… there are these 27 women that are paraded before him, and really quickly those women learn that they aren't going to be able to actually compete on looks alone. They're going to have to compete with another economy. And so what they do quickly in their mind is say “I know what I'll do… I'll get him by my depth”.
And that quickly translates to “I'll take him into Room Seven and I’ll win him by sharing my deepest self with him”. And they all make the same fatal error…
They take him very quickly into Room Seven without doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and they instantly share Room Seven Shadow.
“I was beat as a child. I can't keep a boyfriend. I don't know what's wrong with my relationships. I've got panic disorders…” And they forget to share their Room Seven Diamonds and Treasure… that they volunteer at the Children's Shelter, and that they love spending time with their grandmother and that being a Romantic is one of the best things that they found in life. And guess what? They lose him instantly because they think that Room Seven is just our darkness. It's not! Room Seven is allof us. And you're wise to share your Beauty in Room Seven first...
First your Diamonds, your Gold, your Treasure… and there's an illusion thinking that only your Dark Side is Room Seven.
Absolutely not true.
That's why I want us all to become so familiar with Room Seven that we're comfortable… I'm talking about moving an easy chair, a comfy chair, into Room Seven and not be a place that you just visit once in a while. But a place that you know and are intimate with… and comfortable with.
That's our core and that's where the greatest things in life can happen. In Seven Rooms Deep.
So… Room Seven is the deep end of the pool in relationship.
All of the rooms are separate rooms with walls between them, but if you know the nature of Seven Rooms Deep, you will know that walls are doors… “Huh?” Yes. Walls are doors… and if you push on a wall that looks like a wall, is supposed to be a wall, has every appearance of a wall…
You'll be surprised at how many times that… that wall is a door that you can walk through… and enter into a new new unknown room. And so my encouragement is that when we are exploring the world of ideas or the world of people… push on the walls and see if they open. They might just be walls…
…But they might just be doors… and when I say that, I should very quickly follow up and say also that perhaps even floors are doors or roofs are doors. The encouragement is to explore as many of the rooms, as the rooms will open to you. I had an employee once… a ranger named Ryan Green who said “You know Barry, you only believe about seven things…
Just a little handful of things that you believe. And then you've got ten-thousand thoughts that are just on any topic… but because they're not your beliefs you don't have to commit to them. You're free to think any crazy, bizarre thing that you want to and you're wild, and some of them don't make any sense, but they're all very interesting. And I want you to tell us what they are when you come to work in the morning, because you go home you have these bizarre thoughts, and in the morning when you come to work we'd like you just to tell us what your bizarre thoughts were from the night…”. And he started calling them BBTs standing for Barry’s Bizarre Thoughts. And there are tens of thousands of them. But one of them was that when we come to this planet we take our keys to the meaning of life and throw them in a big barrel.
They get mixed around and randomly distributed to other people so that somebody else is walking around with your keys to the meaning of life. And the one way for you to get your keys back... is do this one word... “Dialogue”. When you jump into the deep end of the pool with people rather than staying in the shallow end (at Clinebell's Level One or talking about the weather or history)… When you get into the deeper into the pool with people you can find your keys to the meaning of life. And when we share that with each other… I can say “Oh my gosh… you've got one of my keys!I've been looking for that my whole life and you just been wandering around with it!” And then you are able to give me that key, and I'm able to then use that key for effective living and happy living for the rest of my life.
So that's the power of swimming in the deep end of the pool with each other and the incentive for swimming in the deep end of the pool of each other because we can begin to find some of our lost keys to the meaning of life.