love freely

The time and place

From Dmitri Bilgere's excellent and in may ways brave book Beyond the Blame Game: Creating Compassion and Ending the Sex War in Your Life:

Women demand that men share their feelings, and men, ashamed, have no idea how. This sometimes makes women so angry that they try to make men share their feelings by applying shame. Rock singer Madonna advises women to "make him express what he feels, and then you'll know your love is real," as if he were holding back his feelings simply to be irritating.

And, even better:

When a woman says to a man, "Tell me your feelings," she probably hopes to hear a tender "I love you," not a fierce "I'm really, really angry!" or a whining "I'm felling really ashamed." Often, anger and humiliation are all a man has to share.

And that is fundamentally why men need to go to safe spaces with other men to do their healing. The time and place for a man to fight his battles, whatever those battles may be, is not in the home or with his family. The time and place is with other men - men who know how to hold the space for another man's battle. In that place a man may bring his anger and humiliation for transformation, so that he might return home the man he has always dreamed to be, the one that is capable of the deep love that his partner and family so hope to hear and feel.

Mentoring

One of the many stages in the journey to become a certified leader in the Mankind Project is to get an existing leader to mentor you. Over the years I've had many leaders suggest to me that I move onto the leader track, and implicitly they've all been options as mentors for me.

In making the difficult choice of whom to approach, I considered many criteria - who did I most get on with, whom did I admire the most, who's style did I like etc. etc. Finally, I went with my gut, and my gut chose the one I was most scared of - let's call him M. Funny that.

I called him up, and after some very probing questions M agreed to mentor me. I asked him what his terms were, and M said he only had two rules:

Don't waste my fucking time
Don't waste your fucking time

... and then I knew my gut had chosen well.

Update

A friend of mine reminded me about my blog last week, commenting that I was smoking whilst the counter of nicotine free days was ticking away obliviously on these virtual pages.

I'm OK with me smoking - for now - so I've done away with the timer. However, I'm still on my journey and right now I could do with the clarifying process that is writing a blog for me. The subtitle has changed too.

So what am I here to blog about now?

Well I'll see what enfolds (if anything), and I have a hint that I'll be talking about my journey to become a certified leader within the Mankind Project that is just beginning.

Sikh Coalition

An excellent downloadable short movie on the persecution of Sikhs in America, simply because they wear turbans and are confused with Muslims.

And it's not just racial attacks by crazies - it's also institutional racist discrimination by the police and rail transport companies on their own American-born employees.

Unusually, the movie doesn't just pose questions, it also suggests solutions. The end of the movie is one of the most moving scenes of reconciliation I have seen.

Go see it: Sikh Coalition (via Turbanhead.com)

Easter - A season of renewal

I'm really enjoying having this blog to look back on, and see where I was a year ago.

Life has been good to me this last year:

My job in Sydney is working out better than I'd even hoped for. I think I have found the perfect place for me to work in, and I intend to stay there as long as I can.

MKP Sydney goes from strength to strength. The last Integration Group I facilitated has become a group of strongly committed men who support and challenge each other in great ways. Our fourth New Warrior Training Adventure is planned for May.

I smoke occassionally. I stop regularly. I'm finding a balance, though it is still a struggle, and I am under no illusion that I'm playing with fire. For now I am accepting the struggle and seeing where it takes me.

RCG and my relationship has not only survived the year of commuting back and forth, it's grown from strength to strength. She's going to move down to join me in July, and we're going to begin building our futures together. Next weekend we're attending a couples' relationship workshop, and I feel excited about that.

My inner world feels serene and peaceful. I am blessed that in my daily life, the universe is giving me less painful lessons. I am blessed that I'm still learning. I am blessing myself.

Yes, Now!

From "Living Enlightenment" by Andrew Cohen:

...Why do I still feel so strongly that I need more time, that I'm not ready to let go yet?

Because the ego always needs more time. The perennial refrain of the ego in the face of the call from the Absolute is, "I'm not ready yet, I need more time." And it always sounds so reasonable- from a relative perspective. But from an absolute perspective there is no time. And the call of the spirit, the call of the True Self - the command to evolve to a higher state of consciousness - comes from that absolute dimension where time does not exist. Once again, the Absolute never hears the ego's pleas. Its ceaseless refrain is: "Every moment that you hesitate, you're keeping yourself from me." Its constant demand is always, "Now!" and the ego insists, yet again, "no, I'm not ready." This is the spiritual drama that has played itself out between man and God for thousands of years - between the individual sense of self and the call of the Absolute. The whole point of spiritual life is to surrender unconditionally to that call, and that means the end of time - the end of your time. This is what the spiritual drama is all about - the dynamic tension between the ego's endless excuses and the call for unconditional submission from the Absolute.