to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Distant lowing of restless cattle
Purr of an idling diesel tractor
Alarm cackle of a swooping jay
These sounds cut the still air
Between green grass and blue skies
Dead stick cracks under booted foot
Stream bubbles over smooth stones
Quicksilver body of water
Pulls me mesmerically into itself
Onwards home to the sea
Heifers jostle on the brook’s bank
Wall-eyes staring in wild unknowing
Slime strings hang from wet noses
Raw instinct nuzzle and nudge
Disturbed by alien dog and me
Dog is in her element here
Released from domestic prison now
Lifts her nose to test the air
Stands in wait for nature’s sign
Then suddenly – off into the soft landscape
For this moment I too feel at one
With all that IS and can be
All civilised thought eschewed
Locked in the freedom of here and now
No past regrets or future hopes distract
Heifers’ tails flick
Birdcalls paint the air
Dog’s tongue hangs loose
Standing still and panting steam
Fused in this moment of time
Crossing the field’s boundary
I leave this innocence behind
Dog too knows the shift
And comes to heel to face the world
On its own harsher terms
“When the Sacred Masculine is combined with the sacred feminine inside each of us, we create the ‘sacred marriage’ of compassion and passion in ourselves.” – Matthew Fox
The age of armored masculinity is dead and dying at our feet. It’s a bloody tangle of weaponry and bloated egos glued together by myopic one-upmanship and congealed rage.
Celtic deity – from the Gundestrup Cauldron, Denmark, 100BC.
But buried in the rot and decay are the seeds of a new way of being a man in this world, a reawakening of our awareness of the sacred brought on by the reemergence of the divine feminine. No amount of armor can suppress it. No amount of weaponry can keep it at bay. The New Shiva is growing robust and powerful alongside the New Shakti.
The world may not be ready for this New Man to emerge, but emerge he must, if we are to continue living on a planet which is demanding that a healthier more sustainable man appear.
In the same way that both men and women have a feminine aspect, so too do both genders have a masculine aspect. According to analytical psychologist Carl Jung, the feminine aspect of a man is called the anima and the masculine aspect of a woman is called the animus. The New Man, this Shiva incarnate, has the ability to tap into his anima, thereby awakening the divine energy of Shakti from its unconscious state into a state of conscious awareness.
He uses this energy to create rather than destroy, to catalyze rather than militarize, to heal instead of injure. He understands, as Andrea Gibson wrote, “We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.” And so he continually creates ever-changing arenas for further creation.
For thousands of years mankind has been afraid of the light. Even Plato recognized it in his day, saying, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” No more.
The redefining of the sacred male principle is the dawn of a new vibrant light, a mature masculinity that is not abusive, domineering or grandiose, but generative, creative, and empowering. He is vulnerable without shame, revealing that his now discarded armor of invulnerability was nothing more than an illusion that hid his true power. He is now free and open to rediscover and reconnect with the power of nature and the cosmos. Tanks be damned. War mongers be damned.
He is ready to establish true relationships with authenticity and integrity. The Great Mystery moves through him, reminding him constantly that he is it and it is him. He is a force of nature first, a man second, the spear of Gaia herself. And no amount of perceived invulnerability can guard against it.
Without the parochial armor of old weighing him down, he frees himself to honor the path of descent, where he engages with the unconscious underworld and is initiated by the Great Mystery itself. Through this initiation he discovers his anima. He discovers his shadow. He discovers a plethora of sub-selves all in contention for his subconscious.
He learns how to make them all conscious. He learns how to wrestle with them, engage with them, play with them, ushering in the beginning of his individuation. After his initiation he takes the first steps toward self-actualization, leaving behind the codependence of his youth and the independence of his courage, and engaging soulfully with the interdependence of his divine masculinity. He has gone from New Man to New God in a mighty feat of self-overcoming that he realizes will require many more feats of the same.
Together with the Sacred feminine, this New God is prepared to engage with the world in a way never before seen. He is Whitman’s multitudes, Goethe’s Faust, Shelly’s Prometheus, Camus’ Sisyphus, and Nietzsche’s Übermensch.
He is Robert Moore’s King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover all wrapped up into one overtly evolving creature. Animal happy, he is Iron John, Wild Man, Father Sky, and Green Man. He is eco-systemic, soul-centric, the prolific planter of the seeds of healthy sustainable change.
He rides alongside the fifth horseman of the apocalypse, protecting her when need be, but mostly empowering her and helping her to see that she is the most powerful thing to ever have existed on the planet.
He is the tip of the spear, self-overcoming and constantly adapting to the constantly changing “air” he flies through. He understands, as Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen said, “The real struggle of the heroic individual is not solely to liberate himself from conflict with society, but rather to use the conflict within himself as a source for self-regeneration.”
He is a lover par excellence. But he understands – balls to bones – that love does not imply pacifism. His love is his honor, his honesty, his sincerity in an otherwise dishonorable, dishonest, and insincere world. He has learned how to swallow his pride. He has learned how to forgive.
Indeed, he has learned to forgive all things, not because all things are worthy of forgiveness, but because he is worthy of peace. And through such vulnerable forgiveness his love shines like a mighty beacon of hope for others. He understands that love is a double-edged sword, with which he chooses to stab himself, over and over again, in order to discover the harsh pain of Truth. He accepts that true love is a beautiful annihilation. Like Ken Wilber said, “Real love will take you far beyond yourself; and therefore real love will devastate you.”
Shiva In the end, the sacred masculine exists precisely because of such devastation, rising up from the ashes like his sister the Phoenix. The outdated modes of power that came before him, militaristic and uncouth, are the ashes from which he gathers himself into a force to be reckoned with, a new power that will turn the tables on mankind’s notions of power hitherto.
A power that will co-create a new breed of Hero who has the capacity to expiate his power in order to become a prestigious game changer as opposed to merely a powerful game controller; a truly robust infinite player with the ability to play multiple finite games while respecting the overall infinite game of life.
Militaristic men beware; the time for congratulating yourselves on being conquerors of the world will soon be at an end. Your unsustainable ideals and parochial idols are fast disintegrating all around you. Soon there will be nothing left of your so-called invulnerable constructs of power. It’s time to make way for the healthy New Man, the vulnerable New God, and the truer power of the sacred masculine.
I just found this short poem I wrote a long time ago during a time of upheaval in my life. My circumstances are different now and it is an ‘autumn’ poem, not a spring one. But it may be no coincidence that I have come across it again at this point in my life, so here it is:
I stand by the brook and listen
To the rush of water under the bridge
I step into the darkness
Beyond the streetlamp’s reach
And hear the restless sighing
Of wind in the tired leaves
My dog’s familiar shape
Moves in the disquieting night
I feel the cleansing bite
Of autumn on my cheeks
My pace quickens against
The chill of season’s change
And I welcome it with an anxious heart
Heralding the challenge of the new
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
I feel the piercing eyes of the school master boring into me, transfixing me, demanding an answer. Not just any answer I might blurt out from fear, but the right answer, the one and only answer that will allow me to escape from this terrifying predicament.
I have witnessed this scenario from the outside enough times to know what happens next; the two possible outcomes. The poor victim either gets the answer right and the teacher moves on, or he gets it wrong and the teacher shouts in anger, pouring on as much public shame as he can for good measure, to ensure that the lazy, ignorant pupil learns his lesson and pulls his socks up in future.
Its hard enough to be a witness to this familiar scene, but this time its me in the hot seat, the shame bucket. My paralyzing fear brings me close to tears of self pity. Then suddenly my fists clench, signifying an angry defiance that brings me a feeling of welcome power and protection.
“I refuse to give you anything. You can put me on the spot in front of the whole class but I will NOT succumb to your cruel games. I will NOT let you see my fear, my tears, my anger. I cannot win this battle you have forced on me, but I will NOT let you win either. You can hold me captive for as long as you want, but you canNOT take my inner pride from me. You will not humiliate me and make me wrong. I defy you by giving you NOTHING! NOTHING to get hold of, NOTHING with which to turn the screw and hurt me more than you have already”.
It is indeed a battle I cannot win, because I cannot be sure that the answer I could give would be the right one. This I dare not risk. So my childlike mind has found a strategy that allows me not to lose, in my own mind at least. That way I get to keep my inner flame alight, my soul intact. My stubborn determination holds a secret power and this saves me from feeling the destructive effects of exposure and victimhood. It feels like it saves me from the risk of annihilation.
What I am describing worked for me at the time, age 9. It was a strategy I had learned in the first days and weeks of being sent away to boarding school to overcome the emotional pain of parental loss. It worked for me up to a point through my teenage years, through the years of psychological abuse I suffered at boarding school. It made me strong in one sense, in the words of the old adage I learned back then like a mantra; ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words alone can’t hurt me’. But I was a sensitive boy and the effects of this strategy (trying to overcome fear and stay safe in threatening situations) were deeply damaging to my emotional body. The words did hurt me, but by refusing to show my feelings, I was not just hiding I was actually shutting down my ability to feel my emotions. Numbing out became my norm.
This self protection was an armour I wore all the time in case it was needed. I was always on duty, on guard. It became my default position. Tragically, I was not only cutting off from my anger and fear. I was inevitably cutting off from my ability to be spontaneous and open, to take risks, to experience passion, to feel unbridled joy; and I have been wearing this armour ever since.
This morning S helped me to reach down into my feelings via my body’s wisdom and to relive my child’s angry defiance in the face of the original teacher’s cruel interrogation 55 years ago. It only took a few moments of recall and I found myself sobbing tears of compassion for that plucky 9-year-old boy that was me, who had to go through such suffering, who was so brave, whose defiant inner power I could feel alive in me now, including his anger towards his parents for abandoning him at such a young age. I felt I could have cried for a long time; tears of unexpressed grief which tell me my buried anger and grief are big. So big.
The traumas of moments like this classroom scene from my childhood, have left me vulnerable at any moment to debilitating fear, overwhelm and frozen confusion, especially when i am put o the spot. I haven’t trusted myself to manage many of the things I might have attempted to achieve in life, given the talents I have been blessed with. My childhood strategy has kept me silent and suppressed, unable to speak up and speak out, afraid to set boundaries, unable to ask for my needs and often unaware that I have any. I have been living a ‘half-hearted’ life, all conveniently hidden behind the convincing mask of a quietly confident Mr Nice Guy, who has been my strongest ally and yet the enemy of my truth.
Up till now I have not managed to heal and change this self-limiting stance, in spite of years of training and therapy. Being aware of my outer persona and what goes on behind the mask is some help but real change only happens at the level of felt experience. That poignant moment of connecting the adult me with my child through those raw emotions today, lets me see where my locked up power has been lurking. It was there all the time. As S helpfully pointed out to me, it may not now take much to return it to its rightful place, so I can stand as Shiva in all my power and vulnerability as a man, enriched with the sacred masculine.
I write this holding the tension between my fear of change and my deep longing for healing and wholeness. Can I give up my safety and risk ‘exposure’ in order to feel alive and free? Am I willing to feel the pain of that small boy and the grief for my lost years, in order to lead a whole-hearted life again?
Can I trust the strength of this Shiva warrior who is emerging and offering me a new stance on life in service of me? My champion warrior …..who is he?
If you bring forth that which is within you,
then that which is within you
Will be your salvation.
If you do not bring forth
that which is within you,
then that which is within you
Will destroy you.
This flower alone,
which at once
is beauty
is rooted in beauty
and whose petals
reach out to beauty
This flower alone,
whose quiet song is drowned
by the blasts and by
the evening news
of the modern world
(but is heard
by the lucky few
who bend to listen)
This flower alone,
and the ambrosia
it plants in every cell
of my being
This flower standing here alone,
living proof of wonder;
living proof of hope;
living proof of beauty;
living proof that God’s love for humanity
has not lost its devotion.
This flower alone,
who sits patiently like
a prophecy waiting
to be known
This flower alone,
like a messenger in the dark of night
telling me
that everything
is going to be
alright
This flower alone,
is enough to change my life forever.
The glittering distractions of the information age vanish
and there is only me, the lover,
and you, the wonder.
And if the only beauty alive in the world was this flower
and if all the rest was chaos,
this flower alone,
would still instruct me by sensation
that I am held in the arms
of something greater.
And if my whole life was colored by darkness and destruction
to one day be so blessed as to just behold this flower,
that alone
would be worth
my birth
and my dying.
This flower alone
has
in a moment
deprogrammed my mind
to eat faith and not fear
to wait on joy and not sorrow
to expect communion and not solitude
to face the fires of the world with this unwavering knowing
of beauty and all the fruit it brings.
This flower alone,
in its unassuming tenderness and grace
has in a moment
incinerated my grief
like sweetgrass in the flames
and left behind only the
scent of what is real.
These eyes can see
finally
the beautiful song sung
all around.
And if I could rest
in this place
for just a moment
I would remember who you are
and who I am
and where we are
and how it is supposed to be
for everyone.
I see him face me, small, innocent, in a man’s body.
He is asking for nothing and yet needing everything;
afraid to stand before the father he never knew
and yet drawn like a moth to a flame,
to clear so many blocks in his unfulfilled life.
And I, ‘the biological father’, feel that flame inside me now
as I sense the enormity of my role for him.
Waves of sorrow and compassion surge through me,
tears weeping out at every gasp of my heaving breath.
I try to look at him; those pleading eyes that cannot dare to trust
bore into my guilt, with their plea for acceptance.
My eyes look down to the safety of the floor
as my body crumples with my sorrow and my shame.
But still he is there, moving closer,
each tentative step holding both his longing and his hatred
of me, the father who abandoned him – till now.
I am He who, with his mother, gave him up;
and this recognition brings me to the full pain
of what I did, to this little boy in a man’s body,
forcing me to cut through all those years
of avoidance and denial of my responsibility
for a moment of passion in my dim and distant past.
So now we come to the truth, for him and for me;
with a fresh surge of compassion in my heart
I try to offer my arms in welcome – his welcome home.
But shame seeps back, my limbs go limp, my body shakes.
Tears blur my vision, groans and sobs issue from my throat
as if I am now possessed by someone quite unknown to me;
I am forced to open to what was buried and forgotten.
What seemed conveniently rationalized away
stands inches from me, more real and personal
than I could possible have imagined.
So our eyes become locked in teary wonder;
our need for connection overcoming everything.
I just want to hold him now and allow to flow
into him the healing love I feel pouring out of me.
Waves of golden relief as blame and shame dissolve.
Then my hands, his shoulders, his hand, my face;
he touches me tenderly as if to prove to himself
that he has found his ‘blood’ father at last.
I stroke his hair, his head drops into my neck,
then cheek to stubbly cheek we share this intimacy.
Softening, opening, surrendering a little, father and son
gently allowing those lost years of depression,
knowing the mending process will now go on
through the physicality of the energy flowing through us.
Tender music adds its sweet poignancy as we stand together
witnessed by a circle of forty men and women,
all held in the emotive homecoming of their own pain and loss.
We hold hands, I reach into him deeply with my eyes
and see the flicker of his first smile shining
through the fear and sadness that had marked his face.
I feel parental power flaring up inside my chest,
we breathe together, his hand on my heart.
I put my hand on his heart and offer him benediction:
“I bless your heart, I bless your blood, my son.”
He puts his arms around me and, using my new strength
I hold him in a firm embrace as the music plays and time stands still……
Then we join with his mother and adopted parents in a four-way hug.
Cryptic words of gratitude and love are exchanged among us.
I thank our boy’s adopted Dad for all he has done and tell Francesco,
(whose name I barely know): “I am your Father, but he is your Papa”.
In the hours and days that follow, I am drawing
on the power of this Family Constellation experience
to feel so much love and compassion for my own lost boy.
As a sad and lonely child, I also longed for my father
to be there for me with love, to keep me safe,
to be a shoulder to cry on and a rock to hold onto.
I had a real dad, as did Francesco,
whose stepfather was there for him.
But mine was distant and out of reach
because I was sent away from home.
I became truly the lost little boy waiting for my inner parent
to do for him what his parents couldn’t do.
My lost boy has been waiting for me to step up
with my adult love for him, my fierce protection and my strength.
It has been a long and lonely wait,
but I feel several steps closer now.
I sit cross-legged in deep reverence I feel a slight loosening of the bands that tie me to my ego’s trivial reality, as my heart begins to open to you, my beloved. Waves of emotion begin to flow through me. Mere ripples at first, like the surface of a lake ruffled in the breeze or the murmuring of the wind in pine trees.
In this way I begin to sense you and offer myself for surrender to you whose love my heart longs for, whose reality is the deep ocean, the vast sky, the infinity of space – and yet so intimate, so close.
I sense a fluttering in my chest and then deeper sighs of grief rise from my belly; from the tomb of those lost years in the lonely desert. And underlying the emerging light in my heart, a sadness for the many years of seeking in vain in relationship – my human experience of fear and blocked emotions, my self-made prison of numbness, my avoidance of deep connection for the sake of my wounded ego’s safety. A safety that only prolongued the pain of what my soul knew lay beyond its reach.
Lower down in my second chakra I begin feeling the stirrings of a new aliveness, as you touch me, my inner beloved, as you come to me at last bringing the simple knowing of that deeper connection, filling my loins with the longing of divine attraction – body and spirit meeting in sacred union, as you come home to me or I come home to you. I visualize you letting me in, coupling in divine ecstasy.
My heart is a golden cave made of light where you sit, my beloved – you who knows and adores me completely in all my glory and all my woundedness. You have always been there, my inner companion, guide and lover. My soul has longed for you always, yet you remained unreachable, blocked by the smaller me.
Now I imagine resting my head on your soft motherly chest, relaxing into the total acceptance you offer me, the immense safety of your physical presence that holds me in your protective loving arms. My breath quivers as old grief shivers through me, melting the ice of those wilderness years of aloneness and separation from you.
Be fully with me now, my beloved. Enter me, infuse me with your healing Shakti energy. Liberate me, as we meld together as one, inseparable in a timeless union of passion.
I hover in brief moments of bliss as all becomes still, silent, barely a breath and only the subtlest presence of your love that bathes me, as it pervades everything that exists. Shakti and Shiva in divine embrace.
“Go to the Limits of Your Longing” from the Book Of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
