Men and The Work
I am inspired about The Work and how I believe it can support men’s work. In the 90’s I was fortunate to be on the ground floor of the local men’s movement in Ventura County. This was the mythopoetic men’s movement associated with Robert Bly. I met my closest friends here. Men that I am still meeting with and talking to regularly.
For me the men’s movement was an opening into possibility. It honored indigenous perspectives and the feminist movement. Today it would honor the LGBTQ movement and all of the work around race and gender. The models for manhood presented by my father, uncles and the greater culture were limited. (I am being kind here.) Through meeting with men in small groups, I found most felt similarly. We didn’t buy into the dehumanizing models of manhood presented by the media, school and culture.
In today’s language we rejected the male models presented by patriarchal culture. The Work, of course, has shown me that I can question all of it. I can find new ways of being and contribute in ways that feel meaningful and effective. I can take what works and leave the rest behind.
Robert Bly wrote about the shadow as being those things that we put out of our awareness that are not in keeping with what we’ve been taught about being a man. Recently, I was doing The Work on a man in one of my practices who yelled and blamed me. Afterward, through The Work I remembered being somewhere between the ages of 10 and 11 and making the decision to fight back. I felt victimized by my childhood. I feared not making it as a man. So, I beat up a bully and adopted a more aggressive stance in the world. Soon I made new friends around the block who were more in alignment with my attitudes, and I was off and running through my teen years.
This beautifully angry man brought up all of that as I found myself wanting to beat the bleep out of him in session. “No one talks to me like that!”, I heard my mind say. “Damn, I wish I could get him out on the football field, and put him in his place. I’d hit him so hard. He wouldn’t know what hit him!” This was how I channeled my anger as a kid.
The Work leaves no stone left unturned, and isn’t that what we want? The men’s movement was not loud. Politically, it had no power. It was a turn inward. The questions were big.
How can we grow our souls in a culture that doesn’t recognize men’s souls? How can we grow emotionally when our culture doesn’t recognize our emotions, especially sadness, fear and grief? How can we grow in relationships when our culture says we aren’t good communicators, that we are good for making money, creating babies with our sperm and being aggressive protectors if need be? How can we have honest, open friendships with other men when to be intimate emotionally with men is considered unmanly? And, how can we talk about feelings of victimization if men are only seen as perpetrators, if being a victim is counter to male identity.
Are you getting the picture? This is called Toxic Masculinity. It’s up to me to transform this in myself. The Work helps us to address all of it in four, simple and direct questions.
My vision is to start men’s groups doing The Work. I can see authentic, open and honest men sitting in a circle supporting each other doing The Work. Please let me know if you are interested.
(If you don’t identify as a man, I am interested in working with you, too:)