Launch Letter: The Embodied Man’s Path of Initiation Program
Why Create a New Men’s Community?
When we decided to launch this initiative around Embodied Men’s Work together, Ezekiel and I anticipated a common question people might ask: What for? Why do men need embodiment? It’s an important question. It deserves a detailed, honest answer.
Simply put, men need embodiment because it helps.
The truth is, for a majority of men, regardless of how high-functioning we may be, we spend a lot of time in our heads. Some of us could even be said to be stuck there.
In our heads, we men spend a lot of time telling stories about what’s going on for us and to us, stories that uphold beliefs about the world that limit us as much as (or more than) they enable us.
These beliefs can be seen to have a single over-arching narrative: I am separate. Separate from our bodies, separate from nature, and separate from each other.
The institutions and mixed incentives spawned from these beliefs, writ culture-wide, create a world that, unsurprisingly, is desperate to reconnect with a deeper truth: that we are healing, remembering and reembodying our rightful role as protectors, stewards, and champions of the sacred earth and our souls’ mission on the planet.
The truth is, being a man is actually much bigger than we were told as boys. (Being a woman is, too, or any gender for that matter… but those aren’t our stories to tell)
The truth about our inherent goodness, worth and interconnection is often seen as at best a hippy dream and at worst a dangerously naive boondoggle with aims antithetical to an individual man’s success and society more broadly– self-indulgent! a subversive attack on capitalism itself!
It’s like we’re stuck. The sacred cows we serve keep us fed, yes, but at what cost? What deal was struck a millenia ago that we inherited, seeing us serve a system that rewards us with predictability, stature and safety while imprisoning our brotherhood, our dignity and our purpose? Our separation belief has trapped us in a rat race that rewards us for not questioning its premise and threatens us with death or worse if we disobey. And yet - even still - men are dying at multiples higher rates than women by suicide because this system does not fundamentally work for us.
We need to shift. We need to heal.
Ezekiel and I have been on personal and communal paths of self-healing, transformation and embodiment for 40+ years between us both. What we’ve learned in that time is the body is the key ingredient in helping humans - especially men - move the needle in our personal healing work.
Embodiment moves us. Literally. From story, stuck and stagnant to powerful, present and purposeful.
It’s not easy. But it’s not impossible. And even though each man’s journey to heal and reclaim his soul is unique and specific to the life circumstances he alone must face, there are archetypal forces, gates and powers that all of us must engage.
We start to gain traction when we engage these forces together, and in the body.
Beyond separateness, remember?
It bears mentioning: certainly there are destructive and reactionary ways to undergo this adventure of reclaiming our bodies, hearts and souls from forces that would rather we stayed stuck.
Ways that lead us only into further pain, alienating the people and values we do cherish, in an adolescent lust for freedom. However, generations of courageous men before of us have taught us this: there is a way out, and it is through. The way is a path of maturity and accountability. A path of heart. A journey marked by a willingness to feel and a conviction to act.
And a brotherhood to welcome us on that journey.
One of the core concepts of our initiative is the Radius of Concern, the idea that, starting with our own bodies and working outwards, men are designed to care about the world beyond our isolated egos. This would include aspring to ask questions like: how is our family? how is our community? how are the streams and forests? how are the animals? how can we help in a way that makes the world better for generations? And of course, How am I?
The 4 levels of this concern include:
Self - By connecting to our bodies, emotions and purpose, we Cultivate a connection to our primary vessel for fulfilling our potential as men.
Other - By reclaiming projection, mastering polarity, and dancing in the agony of the paradox of being alone vs being accompanied, we Court our connection to ourselves and our primary romantic partners in this lifetime: one, none or several; human and more-than-human.
Land + Nature - By taking responsibility for our innate longing to Steward, we reclaim our rightful role as protectors and caretakers of the lands - not just “our” land - that surround us, feed us, water us, clothe us and nourish us. Starting with our own watershed and moving out from there.
Community - By seeking a vision for our lives and endeavouring to live that out, we Serve our people in a way that is aligned with the fullness of our soul’s expression in this lifetime. We take our place in the chorus of beings, as is our great potential.
It could certainly be that, in this age of anthropocene, we expand our concern outwards to the limits of creation only to hold each other as it all collapses around us. But the fear of this tragic possibility should never stop us from showing up as the men we are born to be. Does the wild flower surrounded by the forest fire cease to bloom and gift its fragrance? Never. Not for a moment.
The arrogance of attempting to change the whole world is perhaps only as arrogant as the willingness to abdicate altogether from our whole-hearted participation. We seek to support men in the middle: the crazy audacity to live as if all of life depended on our soul’s genuine engagement, while letting go of an outcome we will never see and can’t ever know.
In short, as if our life - and life itself - mattered. As if life’s wild expression through our particular embodiment required our courageous fidelity to its brilliance. And- as if we were the protectors and stewards of the world’s soul.
We seek to build a coalition that is neither flashy and appropriative, nor stagnant and opinionated.
Our initiative exists to support men to transform and lead lives of conviction, leadership and soulful vision. We hope to provide an embodiment curriculum, course framework and community that will be a fresh, generative addition to the world of men’s healing and spiritual transformation work. More broadly, we hope to provide a harbor of genuine belonging, soul and life-affirming purpose and embodiment that inspires the kind of personal and societal changes still so badly outgunned and underserved in our postmodern world.
We are a work in progress. We hope you will follow along to help us promote the holistic, body, soul and earth-based vision of men’s inherence and belonging that so many of us intuitively share.
We do this for our children, for the generations to follow, and for the future they justly deserve.
Thank you.
Come, dear brothers,
let us cheerfully acknowledge
that we are the last hope of the world,
for we have no excuses,
nobody to blame but ourselves.
Who is going to sit at our feet
and listen while we bewail
our historical sufferings? Who
will ever believe that we also
have wept in the night
with repressed longing to become
our real selves? Who will
stand forth and proclaim
that we have virtues and talents
peculiar to our category? Nobody,
and that is good. For here we are
at last with our real selves
in the real world. Therefore,
let us quiet our hearts, my brothers,
and settle down for a change
to picking up after ourselves
and a few centuries of honest work.
Wendell Berry