Oh, Man!
(6 November 2000)
Contents:
man To Man
Holding Space for Space
Holding Space for Your Underworld
Holding Space for Feelings and Emotions
Holding Space for Stellating Archetypes
Holding Space for Context
Holding Space for Self
Holding Space for Other Men
Holding Space for Your Gremlin
Holding Space for Woman
Holding Space for Commitment
Holding Space for Children
Holding Space for Community
mAN TO MAN
The entire teachings of any consciousness expansion tradition, of every true path of spiritual evolution, rests physically encoded within the body of every man. (It also rests within the body of every woman. Those considerations are written about elsewhere.)
HOLDING SPACE FOR SPACE
Stated most simply, a man lacks nothing to becoming Man. What we are referring to by “man” with a small “m” is man as produced by modern western culture, self-referenced man, problematical man. What we are referring to by “Man” with a capitalized “M” is an Adult man on the Initiatory Path, a Warrior, an Alchemist, Man Number Four, Man Unfolding, the Archetypal King, etc. We are not referring to “Enlightened” Man or “God” Man. We are merely referring to the designed-in, natural capacity which every man has for becoming more and more responsible and aware, having integrity, gaining constructive agency, conscious attention and intention, the basic prerequisites for growing up. The premise we begin with in this consideration of Man is that every factor and ingredient necessary for the transformation from man into Man is available in the body of every man.
The intention in this writing is to clearly outline those factors and perspectives so that men (and women) readers can consider what is possible for themselves and also what is possible in relationship with each other, men with men, and men with women. The capacities outlined below are ground zero; they represent “first position” for Manhood. They also indicate what the Evolutionary Path can be expected to expect from a man at the outset of a mature Apprentice relationship with the Universe.
We must begin this consideration by looking directly and unreservedly at something we know to be true in our guts but are probably unwilling to carry around with us in our day-to-day perspectives because it at first appears to be so disgustingly dishonorable. We must begin our consideration of man by fully acknowledging that man, as known and lived in our Twenty-First Century Western cultures, is not Man. We men are living as selfish, lying, obsequious, insecure, self-hating, self-aggrandizing, weak-visioned, small-berried, will-less, momma-hating or momma-owned little boys. This includes all of our role models, political leaders, military leaders, corporate leaders, religious leaders, and popular entertainment stars, entirely without exception.
Upon reading such a scathing indictment we may at first feel insulted and defensive, readying our rebuttal with examples of personal exception. After understanding what is written below, I wager that another more concurring and sober perspective will emerge for you. I suggest rather than arguing to defend your weak and unexamined position here, that instead you slog forth.
And ask yourself, “After all these centuries of life, why would an intelligent Western culture promote and reward man for being without dignity, clarity and power? Why would man be revealed with unquenchable neediness and neurotic insecurities?”
Consider this answer: Because when a man feels like he does not know himself, he can be manipulated, controlled, and marketed to.
In Western culture, if a man cannot be sold to, he is considered worthless to the military industrial multi-national corporate machine which takes it upon itself to determine what is of value for everyone who does not declare that for themselves. (You might as well read that as “everyone.”) Men have no option but to accept the massive proclamation of ineptitude because men have not been taught to live as anything different.
What we are describing is the transformation of boy into Man, which occurs through expansion of consciousness and includes in no particular order the capacities described below. Such transformation occurs in a transformational space. Transformational space is not provided by modern culture, because if it were, men would shift out of adolescence into an ever-evolving and expanding adulthood, a process which is so exciting and precious that men would no longer naively volunteer to be cannon fodder. The adulthood Path begins with learning to cavitate and hold transformational space.
HOLDING SPACE FOR YOUR UNDERWORLD
Mommy will never cut the “apron strings” that are tied to a man’s brain, heart, testicles and soul. Never. As long as a mother regards herself as a mother, then her self-definition as being identified with the mothering role requires that she always have children, regardless of how old they are or how old she is. No amount of struggling, isolating, explaining, pleading, revenging, complaining, blaming, or fighting between a boy child and his mother will change the fact that for a mother, her boy can never become a Man. If he did, then who would she be? Not a mother. And if she is not a mother, then she is without identity, which, as you know, is a terrifying state for the untrained psychology.
It should be noted that there exist procedures (such as the Archan culture’s Mother Graduation Ceremony) whereby a woman with children can actually graduate from the role of mother when her children reach the appropriate age of sixteen or eighteen years old. During this exquisite transition the woman forcefully and violently eradicates her singular identification with the role of “mother,” automatically regaining access to her full repertoire of characters including friend, wife, concubine, professional, adventurer, poet, teacher and so on. She frees herself from the tyranny of a single character’s limitations on reality thus re-declaring herself as a woman. By accomplishing this bit of self-surgery, a woman enters a vaster, less definite, and far more authentic relationships with the world. Annihilating the “mother” script contradicts years of “irrefutable” circumstantial evidence, and shatters a woman’s long held and strongly reinforced self-image. As can be imagined, the procedure is not comfortable, and is therefore rare. On the other hand, nothing less than this will free a woman to also become a spiritual student and establish a Woman’s relationship with a Spiritual Master. However, we digress. We were speaking of men.
The man must cut the cord between himself and his mother, or it will not be cut. The corollary to this is that if you have not consciously and completely cut the cord, then it has not been severed, and you are still living as an addendum to your momma, answering to her every beck and call whether you think you are or not. You should know that these quaintly named “apron strings” truly exist, and, when viewed with eyes opened to perceiving such things, are actually a bundle of stretchy, resilient, white-colored energetic strings tied into various parts of your body and following you wherever you go and whatever you do in your days and in your nights, even if your good old ma is long dead and buried. With the cord intact, she owns you, boy.
Males have learned under life-threatening circumstances to be “Good Boys” or “Bad Boys.” These acts are merely the shell covering the pain and confusion of un-transformed existence. Neither defense strategy has an advantage in surviving the fire of what is to come, because surviving the fire, in the case of becoming a mature, adult Man, is the opposite of success. Burning is the only way through to Manhood. The question is, how does this occur? What burns? Where is the match? What serves as the equivalent of oxygen?
If the transition to adulthood was built into the natural development of psychology, conditions for entering the athanor of maturation would occur by themselves and we would not be having this conversation. Obviously, such conditions do not arise by themselves. Most of us men will play out our love-hate relationship to mommy, and, in a similarly ineffectual way to daddy, for the totality of our lives, never once setting foot into the world as Man, and never knowing except at a tormented unconscious soul level what we have missed. And then we will die.
To become someone who has the fierceness, clarity and balls to slice away contact with the only known safe refuge, namely, the boobs, something devastating must occur. A man has to enter a domain in which irreparable damage is done to the “Good Boy / Bad Boy” scam. The game has to be nuked. The implication is that moving beyond the defensive context cannot be undertaken by oneself as one’s self. The shift must be sourced from someone outside the psychological defense machine, because the machine will never “monkey wrench” itself. If a man does not find a way to liberate himself from the being-fetters of psychology before engaging a Spiritual Master, then the only work that the Spiritual Master can do with that man is to try to get him to grow up. If you wonder why the Spiritual Master keeps giving you the same rudimentary feedback (or no feedback at all), guess where you are on the map of evolution. Though it may be painful to acknowledge, it is far better to learn where you are on the map than to continue fooling yourself into thinking that you are somewhere else. Rather than tangling the Spiritual Master in a game of search and destroy, other men can be engaged. The purpose of the men’s group must be declared at the outset and adhered to with a commitment beyond dissuasion. Such an agreement among men cannot generally be fruitful without a Man at the helm, acknowledged by the group in that role. Most men’s group fail to arrange this formality and are quickly lost on a psychological sea, foundering on rocks ingeniously placed by ego’s hidden purposes of self-defense.
So again, how? How does a man leave the fantasy world that is held together by the presence of mommy? He cannot succeed by continuing with actions resulting from being attracted or repelled. Rather he must go where the floor falls out from underneath the whole mommy game, where he finds himself flailing hopelessly in an overwhelming whirlpool of confusion, rage, terror and grief until reality, as it has always been known to exist for him, is fully disassembled, flung away, frame by frame, so that nothing solid remains intact, and everything comforting is seen for the mirage-veiled trap that it is and lies charred, burnt black, or blowing about in little puffs of grey lifeless ash.
How can a man “hit bottom” hard enough that the demolition of impact is total? Most of us, if we get this far in the consideration and even dare to ask such an insane and terrifying question, allow ourselves to remain stuck in the question of “How?” forever, never truly willing to experience the answer. Because the answer to the question “How?” is itself utterly devastating.
The answer is: you already know how. For eons the way has been told. It is in our bones. Described by story tellers, wise-men, poets, witch-doctors, troubadours, and shaman, the journey from naivete to wisdom has only one beginning. Either by accident or by folly, the way begins by entering headlong into the dark cave of the underworld.
What does this mean, go into the underworld? What happens there? How does one come out again?
Where is the underworld? One does not have to go far to find the underworld, because it lies within us. The underworld is in fact us. We are functioning daily, minute by minute, in the service of underworld demons, and we think that we are just being our “good” and “righteous” selves. We think that life is like we have always known it. Such a conclusion is obvious. We think that what we have been doing is proper because it is the only possible way to respond to the problems that are incessantly battering us. Since we are identified with the character of ourselves, and since we are justified in our actions, the underworldly nature of our daily activities completely escapes our perception. We must have a view from outside the box to notice the box.
A fish says, “What water?” We say, “What underworld?” And in our delusional blindness the demons slurp down our life energy and the life energy of those dearest to us, then they lick their lips smiling, take a little nap, wake up hungry, and use us to go conjure up their next meal. We have been calling this life.
Going into the underworld means having the world-shattering bodily experience of “getting it” that moment to moment our primary commitment, previous to any other commitments, is to create and live in hell. Our first commitment is to serve our hidden purposes, motivated by scarcity, clouded in irresponsibility, creating low dramas, designed for survival, competing for limited resources, stopping at nothing, using the weapons of chaos, confusion and destruction, causing ourselves and other people deep and long lasting pain, deriving great pleasure at the other person’s demise, or vowing endless revenge at our own. This is where we live. This is home. And we love it.
Once in the underworld, how does one come out again? This is an interesting question. One exits the underworld only through drawing the woolly veil of unconsciousness back over one’s eyes, wrapping one’s heart once again in stainless steel and barbed wire, numbing one’s feelings with dullness and denial, and placing one’s soul back into hibernation. That is the only way to exit the underworld. And if you exit it that way, there is little chance of ego allowing you to ever go near the entrance again. You choose amnesia instead.
Success in the underworld journey is only achieved by never leaving the underworld. Ever. Success in the underworld journey occurs when one irrevocably re-defines one’s self as also including the underworld.
Success in the underworld journey results from always being conscious of the full implications intended behind all of one’s evil, twisted, unconscious, and hateful thoughts, feelings and actions.
Success in the underworld journey is realized when one takes total responsibility for all of one’s irresponsibilities as if responsibility were an illusion. (It is.) As if there were no such thing as a problem. (There isn’t.) As if there were no enemies. (There aren’t.) As if it were impossible to be a victim. (It is.) As if circumstances were irrelevant. (They are.) As if reasons were a joke. (They are.) As if every interpretation, every meaning, and every story about a situation were nothing but a self-serving lie. (It is.) And stewing in it, in full present-time experiential awareness, without judgement, without cynicism, without self-recrimination, without excuses, without escape, without self-pity, and without forgiveness.
If you took a stainless steel fork and pushed the points hard against the dry surface of a chalk board, back and forth, over and over again, never letting up, cringing in the screeching intensity of every nerve-shattering scrape, this is what it is like to own your underworld. There is nothing glorious about it. Nothing funny. Nothing nice. Nothing comforting. It is just raw pain, dusty sand in the eyes, mouthful of bitter dirt, freezing snow down your neck, sharp stones in your shoes, a dead stinking rat in your lunch box, each incident finding an unbelievably rude way to let you know that the underworld is real and that the underworld never goes away. Lee Lozowick refers to this area of work as: “Just good, clean fun!”
HOLDING SPACE FOR FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS
Success in the underworld journey means that you have lowered the bar for the level of intensity that it takes to feel pain. When the bar is lowered, things that did not used to be painful before suddenly hurt. When the bar disappears, everything hurts. Everything is bullshit. This is success in the underworld journey. Failure in the underworld journey is if you somehow manage to forget this.
Of what use is this pain? Why feel pain?
Let us investigate emotional pain for a moment. There are four kinds of pain: mad, sad, glad, and scared. (The fact that there are only four kinds is good news for the men. Then it is simple enough for us to deal with.) We call emotional-body pain “feelings.” We can experience this pain at different levels of intensity, zero to one hundred percent. At some level of intensity, all of these feelings hurt. (Remember laughing so hard that your cheeks cramp up and your sides ache?) In a Man, each of these four feelings appears in the body as the body’s way of communicating with consciousness about everything that is happening all day long every day. Feelings are the gateway to the body. Experiencing feelings is never a problem. Feelings only become a problem in spiritual work when we identify with them. In a Man, such feelings are owned and valued for their wisdom and insight. The basic ground of being in feelings is gladness, what Chögyam Trungpa called “Basic Goodness,” and what Lee Lozowick has called “Wise Innocence.” For a mature man, it is quite normal, for example, to feel mad (angry), and simultaneously to feel glad about feeling mad. The same is true of feeling glad about feeling scared, and glad about feeling sad.
However, as children we were faced with sometimes dire consequences if we experienced and expressed our feelings. “Big girls/boys don’t cry,” we were told, over and over again, until we stopped crying and our sadness was turned off. “Hah, hah! You are a scaredy-cat. Chicken!” they said if we showed that we were afraid. Being mad is “not nice,” “not safe;” we all know that. Even expressing happiness is a sign of our childish naivete and lack of a serious grip on reality. “If he really knew what was going on he would not be laughing about this!” they say. It does not take too long before we shut off our feelings except as used to support our stories about reality. We then use our feelings only to self-define.
HOLDING SPACE FOR STELLATING ARCHETYPES
We need our psychological defense strategy like a butterfly needs a protective chrysalis until we are about fifteen years old or so. At this time the deep masculine archetype structures which are hard-wired into our bodies are mature and ready to be switched on. Wrapped in plastic, waiting for batteries, the archetypes will sleep within us for the rest of our lives untapped if we do not go through a “rite of passage” experience from childhood to adulthood during which the archetypes are activated.
We can refer to the process of activating the archetypes as “stellating” if we think about the difference between planets and stars. A planetary body absorbs more energy than it radiates, and a stellar body radiates more energy than it absorbs. The transformation of a planet into a star is like starting the whole planet burning from within, changing itself from mass into energy. The transformation from planet to star is called “stellating.” Adult human beings are designed to stellate. We are designed to be turned on, to explore, to go ahead and experience the fullness of life. We are designed to live out loud. How does stellating happen?
There are four archetypes available within every human body. Each of the four archetypes is directly associated with one of the four feelings. The Warrior archetype is associated with the feeling of anger because it is the energy of anger which is used to make boundaries, make distinctions, start or stop things, make decisions, say “Yes,” or “No,” take initiative, or Go! The Lover or Communicator archetype is associated with the feeling of sadness, because it is through sadness that our vulnerability is revealed, that we discover the commonality between ourselves and others, and we allow ourselves to surrender into contact, to listen with compassion and intimacy. The King archetype is associated with the feeling of gladness, because the King blesses and shares with his people, inspires and leads with vision, and calls forth the joy of others to work together. And the Sorcerer archetype is associated with the feeling of fear, because only by being okay with experiencing total fear and still being able to function can the Sorcerer step out beyond what is known into the unknown and invent by calling forth out of the nothing whatever is wanted and needed. In general, the Warrior, Sorcerer and Communicator serve the King. A man trying to live without the powers and insights available through one or more of the archetypes would be as severely handicapped as a King without Warriors or Sorcerers or Communicators, or as is sadly often the case in today’s world, he would be living in a Kingdom without a King.
Stellating an archetype occurs when it is okay for a person to experience and express one-hundred percent maximum of one of the four feelings as an adult. It is only possible to experience and express some maximum of a feeling. Experiencing one-hundred percent maximum of a feeling does not make the feeling go away. The process of stellating is not about discharging energy. The purpose of stellating is not catharsis. Stellating is a process whereby we change our relationship to a feeling. We recognize through experience rather than concept that we are bigger than the one-hundred percent maximum feeling rather than being smaller than it. We contain the feeling rather than being contained by it. We own the feeling rather than being owned by it. During stellation we see that archetypal feelings never dissipate, that they live in the underworld or upperworld, and that they are accessible at anytime, anywhere, for no reason, to serve us, rather than us being in the sevice of the feelings (eg. keeping them contained and bottled up).
One-hundred percent experienced and expressed anger is called rage. One-hundred percent experienced and expressed sadness is called grief. One-hundred percent experienced and expressed gladness is called joy. And one-hundred percent experienced and expressed fear is called terror.
As children we could tolerate neither the immensity nor intensity of one-hundred percent maximum feelings, so we blocked the terror, rage, joy and grief, locking it away somewhere in our bodies. Unstellated, these blockages remain intact for the totality of our lives, often manifesting sideways in unexpected ways such as lethargy (think of how much energy would be used internally to keep the lid on the trashcan of our whole underworld of unexpressed feelings), depression (depression is hibernating spirit, rage in the refrigerator), or as various debilitating physical diseases.
During stellation the nervous system and the cells in our tissues learn that they can tolerate the one-hundred percent maximum feelings and not disintegrate, short circuit or overload. On the contrary, we are fine, and attain tacit permission to come alive. Feelings are no longer rejected but rather received. The relationship to feelings changes and many stored energies once locked away suddenly become liberated, along with their integrally associated wisdom, insight, and perspectives.
Cutting loose with one-hundred percent experienced and expressed feelings is so intense it can at first feel like liquid-fire, or insanity. After some indefinite amount of time in the liquid-fire state, experiencing raw uncontrollable meltdown begins to become the norm.
This does not mean that the liquid state becomes less intense. It means that you learn to function in the midst of breakdown. You learn simple things at first. For example, you learn how to be in breakdown and at the same time to breath, or to raise your hand and scratch your head. Some time later, you learn to brush your hair, make your bed, eat. Resolidification only ever occurs to about 10% maximum, and this only for theatrical purposes. You learn to speak to another person from within breakdown, but every interaction becomes a conscious piece of theater, almost never painless. The only alternative is just being. And the only place to be is nowhere, in the nothingness gap between the inner-world and the outer-world, which is not any less intense of uncomfortable.
Successfully stellating the archetypes results in you becoming whole, becoming redefined. You now include an upperworld and an underworld, and are capable of serving the light and the dark sides. There is no right or wrong about this. What determines your moment to moment actions are the results which you are committed to producing.
Success in the underworld journey gives you only one thing that you did not have before, and that is a choice. Who you are now includes the distinction that every act of creation, every movement on every level, where you place your attention and where you do not, every thought, feeling or gesture, serves either conscious or unconscious purposes. And you choose which. If you are not choosing consciously, then you have chosen unconsciously. There is nothing for which you are not responsible.
Living at this level of reality gives a man the refinements of awareness prerequisite to holding space as a Man.
HOLDING SPACE FOR CONTEXT
Men are nothing. This means that when a Man shows up archetypically, he shows up as a distinction. To understand what this means, think of the zero. The concept and function of the zero was an Arabic invention. (“Allah be praised! I’ve just invented the zero!” “What!?” “Oh, nothing, nothing…” This quote comes from a 16mm film titled Why Man Creates made in 1968 by Saul Bass and Mayo Simon ) In primitive counting systems there did not used to be a zero. After the zero was declared to exist, it allowed us to name a context that had no content. We would see a zero while counting or figuring, and we would know that there was a place where a certain quantity could be represented, only, in this particular instance, there was no number to go there. The zero is not actually a number, but rather functions as a spaceholder.
The same is true of Man. Holding context or holding space is man functioning as Man. It is Man in action. A man’s neurosis arises through him trying to be something rather than being nothing. Man’s power and service arise when Man knows himself as nothing but the context holder of each and every situation that arises. With this clarity, Man can declare the context of the conversation which can occur in that space. He can declare for himself and others the Principles to which the space he holds is dedicated to serving.
Since the assumptions inherent in a conversation determine the allowable limits of the associated reality, Man gains access to the power of shifting realities by shifting the context of the conversation.
And being nothing, Man is massless. This means that he can go light speed, turn on a dime, or reverse directions in an instant in order to serve the Principles which are doing their work in the space he is holding. These are high level skills, but skills nonetheless, and therefore learnable through practice.
The unconscious negative manifestation of man is stupidity. Stupidity arises when man does not know that he himself is the context holder of every conversation in which he is involved, and instead acts as if he is the victim of the conversation. Then he can be hooked, manipulated, and fed upon by any roving psychological entity who happens to be hungry and in his vicinity.
HOLDING SPACE FOR SELF
Since Man is nothing, the concept of self becomes negotiable. Rather than thinking that he has the needs of an imagined self, a Man can come to make the declaration, “I already have everything that I need.” This suddenly makes him no longer needy. He then can enter a situation needing to get nothing from it, which then opens the option for him of giving.
Rather than holding space for some fictional imagined self, what a Man discovers is that who he is, is the Principles which he is serving. Principles include kindness, generosity, compassion, reliability, acceptance, gratitude, faith, being yes, commitment, integrity, responsibility, possibility, clarity, dignity, sanctuary, elegance, service, relationship, trust, and so on. Each Principle represents a facet of the Divine, a name of God. A person is born to fulfill a Destiny, usually described by three to five Destiny Principles. By consciously being the space through which the Principles that he serves can do their work, a Man becomes his Destiny in action right now.
Since Principles are vast forces in nature, when a Man knows himself to be the space through which the Principles that he serves can do their work, he is functionally serving something greater than himself. The Principles move through his life, using him to accomplish their various ends. In this way a Man becomes valuable to the Principles. He has learned the secret of creating necessity for himself through his service.
Principles have jobs to do, and by radically relying on the Principles to provide for him whatever he needs in order to successfully accomplish their tasks, the Man is taken care of, almost as if he were magically protected, or exceptionally fortunate. People around him will not understand how this has come to pass, but the Man knows exactly what he has sacrificed to establish this kind of relationship to the world. He does not usually tell anyone, because most people do not really want to know. No one asks. In studying the relationship between archetypal Man and archetypal Principles, one begins to see that a Man holding space for the Principles he serves will be involved in an archetypal life, squeezed forward at the cutting edges of the evolution of consciousness, passionately concerned with establishing the possibility of transformation, expansion, learning, change, realization, leadership, and growth for many other people, holding the space for God. In particular, he will be the stand for the Manhood of other men.
HOLDING SPACE FOR OTHER MEN
There is a story about a jogger who runs every morning at six o’clock along the same path through the forest. One night an insane man digs a hole in the middle of the path, six feet across, ten feet deep with poisoned barbed spikes at the bottom, and then covers the top of the hole with branches, leaves and dirt to make it look as if the path has been undisturbed. He makes this “tiger trap” and then exits the scene. Next morning, as usual, the jogger comes running down the path, falls into the tiger trap, and dies.
Question: Who is responsible for the jogger’s death?
Answer: The man who dug the trap.
Alrighty, then. Here is the next version of the story. The same insane man digs the same tiger trap in the jogging path and then departs. Only this time, you are the jogger. It is six in the morning. You have always jogged through the forest at this same time. As you pass between the trees, a barely visible pattern triggers your jungle-warfare training and before you know it you have leaped horizontally into the air making a perfect dive, smoothly rolling unharmed in the dirt by the path. Crawling on your belly, you inch forward, scrape away some leaves and peer into the pit, thinking, “My God! A tiger trap! I could have been killed! What is going on here?” You carefully recover the hole, back away, and go stand behind one of the trees to watch what happens next. Soon another jogger comes down the same path, does not have the advantage of jungle-warfare training, falls into the pit, and dies.
Question: Who is responsible for the jogger’s death?
Answer: You are.
Question: What makes you responsible?
Answer: You knew that the tiger trap was there and you did not warn the jogger about it. You could have stopped him from falling in.
Question: So what exactly makes you responsible?
Answer: Awareness.
Awareness breeds responsibility.
As men we are letting other men fail around us every day. We know the tiger trap is there in front of them and we say nothing. We let them fall in and die. We think, “Oh, I don’t have time for this. It is not my problem. It’s their life. I am not responsible. I don’t want to get involved.”
But we are involved. We are responsible. Our seeing the situation has automatically and irrevocably made us responsible for it. By not talking with them about it we are letting our brothers, our fathers, and our sons fail around us all of the time.
Holding space for other men in our life means we don’t do that. It means that we care about them, and we express our caring in very specific ways. We say, “Hey, buddy. If I don’t tell you about this, then I would be letting you fail, and that is out of integrity for me, because I care about you.”
Such actions come from big Men, archetypal Men. And such communication is called “feedback” and “coaching,” with feedback being about what happened that is not working, and coaching being distinctions that reveal new actions they can take to produce different results.
We men of the Work, we men of the Sangha cannot afford to let our brothers fail around us. Avoidable mistakes are too costly for the organism of the school as a whole. It hurts the school. It hurts the Teacher. He feels it. (Stop kidding yourself about this. He knows. Every time.) Letting men fail around us wastes precious resources. We think we are making things easier for ourselves by ignoring the problem and not getting involved, but this is the small self-centered viewpoint. We are involved because we are of one organism.
Becoming aware of a fault, a lack of attention, a compromised distinction, a broken promise, or sloppy integrity, is not an accident. It is the Universe putting a “job on our bench.” If we do not handle the job by doing whatever is necessary to set things in order, then we are not doing the jobs that the Divine has sent down the tube onto our workbench. Essentially we are saying “F___ you!” to God, and God remembers such things. See what kind of job we get next. Avoid four or five jobs, let them pile up, and pretty soon the mouth of the tube gets blocked. No more jobs can arrive. Clever strategy. But what purpose does it serve? Conscious purpose or unconscious purpose?
HOLDING SPACE FOR YOUR GREMLIN
We all have parts. Sometimes we are identified with one part that speaks as “I.” Sometimes it is another part. One of our parts is committed to serving unconscious purposes. The part of us creating results where we are right and the other person is wrong, where we win and the other person loses, or where we derive pleasure at someone else’s expense (those “harmless” little jokes and comments), this part of us is called the “Gremlin.” Giving it a name is a powerful alchemical tool. It gives a “handle” to use to get ahold of it. Without the handle, it does what it wants whenever it wants to do it.
We all have a Gremlin. Until such time as we have named the Gremlin within us and can identify it by the characteristic energetic signature experience of the gleefully irresponsible smug little giggle. (That one! Do you feel the smirk? Right NOW Gremlin is occurring in your body. That is Gremlin energy.) Until we self-observe to the point where we make the Gremlin’s activities conscious, then Gremlin’s activities will be unconscious and will destroy the possibility of being a stand for serving Principles. Instead our lives are dedicated to serving Gremlin.
Even twenty-year spiritual students who have not made the Gremlin distinction can be counted upon to create nothing but Gremlin games with the people in their life. Sadly, their Work never becomes fully authentic and reliable because the Gremlin keeps its foot in the back door, never allowing the chamber to seal. No matter how much reality confronts them, the internal heat and pressure can never get hot enough to ignite genuine remorse because Gremlin blows it off with a joke or a comment, or goes whistling unconsciously along its merry way. Without the intense lasting pain of remorse nothing changes. By not giving these men immediate, specific, consistent feedback and coaching about their Gremlin creations, or worse yet, by playing along with them and allowing their Gremlin to call out our Gremlin, we are letting Gremlin win, and letting the Work possibility in these men die.
How else can we identify Gremlin at work? Here are some characteristically Gremlin activities: flirting, masturbating, playing video games, internet sex, eating candy, ice cream, doughnuts and “snack” foods, not lifting the toilet seat to pee, breaking time agreements (coming in even a few minutes late, even if we have a good excuse or if we apologize), pretending to be a victim, forgetting appointments or promises, playing practical jokes, stealing insignificant things (pens from work, grapes at the grocery store, airline blankets, special leftovers from the refrigerator, etc.), driving even a few miles an hour over the speed limit, not exercising, trying to cut ahead in line, trashing spaces even in small ways (e.g. walking through the space being visible, inelegantly opening or closing the door, coughing, yawning, looking out the window, moving the chair, dropping a pen, conspicuously drinking from our water bottle at delicate moments, etc.), having little accidents or breaking something and not cleaning it up or telling anyone, littering, sneaking, swearing, sleeping in, trying to get more than somebody else, returning the car with the gas tank on empty, talking to keep the attention, leaving floating turds in the toilet, over eating, not changing out an empty toilet paper roll, reading other people’s notes, sleeping during talks, sleeping during meditation, going in other people’s drawers, lying, making jokes or comments about other people, gossiping or triangulating, making any kind of drama, feeling resentful, and so on.
As you can see, these activities are quite familiar to us, indicating that we have an entire Underworld Ecology thriving within us, determining the quality of our life day and night. It is our responsibility to recognize the full horror of the situation. It is our responsibility to learn the hierarchy of creatures feeding upon each other, upon us, and upon those people who are dearest to us. An unconsciously functioning underworld subsumes the entire space of our lives. In the company of other men we have a chance to work out how to take our lives back.
Once we have the distinction called “Gremlin,” we can name these activities for what they are whenever they are occurring as a service to each other, Man to Man. Gremlin creations are far easier to spot in someone else than in ourselves. This is one way that Men can serve each other and hold the space for the Man in the other: spotting the Gremlin, naming the Gremlin, calling the Gremlin whenever it shows its grimy little paws and yellow-toothed, bad-breath smile. A Man will not let his brother’s heart and soul be devoured by his Gremlin. When we have accomplished the ability to hold a mature but not stiff-and-dead Gremlin-free space, only then have we developed enough integrity and subtlety to enter the domain of holding space for Woman.
HOLDING SPACE FOR WOMAN
First we must eradicate the evil misconception that Woman needs space held for her. She does not.
How pedestrian. How brutish. How self-serving for a man to think that. “Woman, yeah. You gotta hold the door open for ’em cuz they’s so dainty… nyuk! nyuk!”
Neanderthal conversation reality is so debased that we cannot even begin to transform it here. Most males are unconsciously committed to such spiteful tyranny over the feminine, are ferociously dedicated to such horrific and ruinous revenge that to consider the purity and unbearable lightness of the feminine being will grate so hard against fundamental constructs of their reality that they may respond with amplified efforts to crush it. If that is you (and you know if it is) please skip this section, and don’t come back. To continue this conversation, we must assume a more developed level of maturity.
We are not trying to sound superior or arrogant. Perhaps just a little protective. For so many centuries the Patriarchy has contaminated and spoiled the pearlescence of feminine sanctuary, that locating it enough to speak about it right now can only happen in a personal and private chamber. We are trying to make it possible to enter that chamber together. No pigs allowed. No comments at all. Hold still, be still, so still that the warm breath of woman, the subtle movement of her chest rising and falling as she breathes while watching you askance, the breathing so richly experienced by her, so careful of all its implications and possibilities, moves you to an awareness expanded well beyond and excluding everything male. Money, power, pride, competition, possessions, reputation, strategies, these have no place here. They are the toys of angry vicious little boys. So foolish. So temporary. Let them fall away from you without trying to figure out how it will work without them. Let yourself trust beyond reason and be drawn forth into a freshness and tenderness so raw that words are almost too rough to be spoken. And continue. Let it in. The beingness of Woman awaits us. She invites into the feminine world, so patiently. Having full knowledge of its value. Not willing or able to lessen its heart-rending impact. Yet also not able to share it without a partner to receive her gifts, to accompany her on the voyage of sensual exploration beyond the limits of normal senses.
A man can be awakened to a level of attention that merely observing subtle gestures of his woman’s wrist sends chills of pleasure down his spine. Unbeknownst to him how this could occur, he still has that capacity, far vaster than he can conceive. It frightens him to the core, a core he dares not acknowledge. Woman can welcome him into an immensity of homecoming that he has never before imagined, a healing so sweet and wholesome that his soul would reveal itself and bask in her radiant warmth, never wanting to leave. He does not know of this because the masculine attention is so unrefined. Yet he has a capacity to learn. And regardless of his skill, Woman waits, hoping he will snap out his cold, rational, defensiveness. She holds the door open, hoping he will come back home, and not just once.
There is a value that is so rare and precious which can only be accessed through honoring the feminine with impeccable attention, that if a man does not have any such comparable experience in his life to use as a reference point, then all this invitation will be lost on him. And that is a pity. So much heaven has been wasted over the millennia of abusing Womanhood, that anything recovered here could make a difference for the reader. Anything that hints at the breathtaking openness and vulnerability inherent in the nature of Woman could perhaps establish a liquid link, a desire in a Man to look at her, to see her with more than respect, more than admiration, to see her as if he were her himself, and could breathe like her, could tilt his head just so to catch the light in her hair, to inhale the warm rich scent inviting him to move just a little bit closer and to adore her. To adore everything of the lake of her. Look where she has placed the vase. Look how it honors him in her room. How can she know how to do this? It was not thought about. It was not figured out. She wants you to appreciate all of her. Not the true part, but the real part. When a Man has purified himself of his impatience and greed, when he no longer cares for logic and reason, then he can allow himself to accept the invitation of Womanliness into a garden filled with ambrosia, more than he deserves, more than he could buy, and she has had this waiting for him for years, years of his refusing. Why? Why would a man refuse so much holiness? There is no answer, only unbelief, only regret, only wonder that she has not yet retreated from his inexcusable inattentions. And still she stays open to him, still she continues while the vast moments slide one into the other. Nothing is happening, yet everything is here with her. Nothing could be missing because the all-ness of her encompassing nature has nothing to hide, nothing to lose. Where would it go? How could it disappear or be lost when this is everything? Is she frightened? Of course. But she is willing to feel it and be with it so it is not stuck in her, not a threat to the world. The fear flows in her, and can vanish with one sparkle in her eye, one curve on her lips. The tinkling brook of her voice sounds so normal here, watering the wandering roots of the masculine mind so it wants to go nowhere else.
Thank you for visiting. We could go on. Once a Man knows of this dimension of Woman he could never disregard her again. He will be willing to make the sacrifice of the masculine to enter her world whenever she invites him, while still protecting it with dignity and power. Nonetheless, there are specific details which when woven together make for a context that permits a woman to drop her worries and have that feminine world also for herself. Then you have a satisfied Woman.
Relationship is an ongoing act of non-linear creation. Yet when the water faucet is dripping, it is the Man’s responsibility to see that it gets promptly repaired. Otherwise the Woman’s attention can go nowhere else but to the pain about the wasted water and the bothersome sound. If there is a spider or mouse in the house, the Man’s job is to get rid of it. If something needs to be taken to the attic or the basement, the Man carries it. If a light bulb needs to be changed, the Man replaces it. The Man earns the money, pays the bills, balances the checkbook, takes out the garbage, makes boundaries with the neighbor about their dog, makes reservations for the vacation, and keeps the automobile safe and in good working mechanical order with brakes, tires, and oil changes. A Man makes the bed each morning with great care to getting the corners and pillows correct as a way of honoring that favorite of all places to be with his Woman. Flowers now and then are not a bad idea either.
HOLDING SPACE FOR COMMITMENT
For a Man to hold the space for Woman he must learn the intricacies of honoring and respecting that space, like a gardener holding the space for a garden. A Man is the the distinction called the garden wall. Inside the wall is the garden, outside the wall is not. The Man is the trellis, the steppingstones, and keeper of the compost pile. He knows when to bring in fertilizer, when to prune the roses and fruit trees, when to take out the bulbs to protect them from winter frost and when to put them back in the ground. But he is not the garden. Woman is the Garden. Well cared for in these ways by Man, Woman can grow and blossom and fill the space with nature’s abundant and nurturing wonders. She abounds in colors, wild scents, plump juicy fruits, laying forth a bounty of sustenance-giving vegetables and grains. The Man moves carefully through spaces in the Garden, never assuming he knows how it happens to grow, only that it is a miracle, a mystery, and that there may come a time for him to prop up branches, pull weeds, and trim back growth that gets too out of hand.
Specifically what this means is that after shaving or trimming nose hairs the Man washes away every last bit of whisker or hair and wipes off the faucet and mirror, leaving no souvenirs of his having been there. He dries himself off in the shower rather than slogging wet across the bathroom, leaving no drips or puddles, and rinses the tub or shower stall after himself. He folds and puts away his clothes in drawers, or the laundry basket, not leaving them about. Same with reading or writing materials, tools, play things. He learns to be a good guest in the Woman’s space.
Every man has an energetic space within himself for his mate. We could imagine the space floating out in front of his abdomen, a foot away, about eighteen inches tall, a foot wide, a foot thick, flat floor, curved ceiling, white, like an altar chamber. This is the space for his mate. To proceed, ask yourself what is in your relationship space? It can be filled with many things. We must look carefully and ruthlessly to inspect its contents. Things tend to become invisible if they have been there for a long time, but they are still influencing the level of sanctuary that is possible. Like in any sanctuary, even small things can affect the quality of the relationship space. Are you still holding on to old letters from previous lovers? Postcards? Are they still in your address book? Do you have a stash of old photographs of good times with other women? Flirtatious interactions with the secretary at work, or a client, or your mother? Little mementos or gifts tucked away in the back of a drawer or a box in the closet? A tie? A T-shirt? Cufflinks? Old sports equipment in the garage? Dishes? Knick-knacks? Do you have poster pin-ups of movie stars? Singers? Artwork from the artist? Centerfolds? Videos that betray a fantasy life in your mind? Get rid of these things permanently. Cut them off. Terminate them forever. Burn them. Don’t give them away to friends or family. Take them to the dump, or donate them to Goodwill. Burning is best. Have the intention to purify and cleanse your sanctuary. Scrub it clean. Patch the holes, repaint, and lay down new carpet. Prepare it to receive your true beloved.
Because if your sanctuary for your mate is only seventy percent available, the rest being filled with bits of this or that energies from other surrogate mates, then you will find a mate who is satisfied with a relationship under those conditions and who is only willing to commit to you seventy percent. This means that the back door on your relationship will never be closed. Like an alchemical blast furnace, the door will never seal, so the furnace can never get to temperature for meltdown and transformation to take place. You will never truly know what it is like to be in a long-term committed relationship. With your sanctuary contaminated, you will never be able to attract a mate who wants to commit to you at one hundred percent.
Only in a purified and cleansed sanctuary can you commit to your mate at one hundred percent. This commitment seals the door, the pressure can build, the heat can rise, and the true alchemical transformation processes of a long-term committed monogamous relationship can begin. In waves the thermal chaos builds, each new level of intensity igniting a new level of illusion, which bursts into flame and burns cleanly away. If you know that this is the natural evolutionary progression of a mature relationship, then you will not need to be discouraged about the smoke and flame periods. Only by repeatedly entering the fire together will you discover that which cannot burn.
Holding the space for Woman does not mean understanding her. Even on the spiritual path, the mind of Woman is unfathomable for a Man. That is why women are drawn to this Work quicker. Men see Clarity as Power. And our world is set up so that men achieve success because they attain things. Men acquire Clarity. Women know inherently that Principles activate possibility. So if we are to climb up into the domain of Principles as men, then we must have access to our own Femininity because through Femininity we access Principles. For women that is inherent in their being.
The only time that we normally honor Masculine and Feminine space is when we get together consciously. The only time that we are honoring the Principles held in the Feminine is when we are having a conscious conversation about it. Everything else in our life is Masculinity and rigidity and systems and data and information and technologies and communication orders and methodologies. We take these as operational systems for living. What is being introduced here is the possibility that the operational systems for living in relationship are not Masculine Distinctions and Technology from the domain of Clarity, but rather Feminine Principles from the domain of Power.
During fire and brimstone times in relationship, where sparks are flying, and the fat is spattering and popping like bacon in a hot iron frying pan, there are four powerful distinctions Man can rest in that will allow him to serve his Woman, the relationship, and God all at the same time. Remember, distinction-making takes place in the body, not in the mind, and distinction-making occurs through intention.
The first distinction is how to listen as a space. If Man is nothing, then any identification that he has with what is being projected onto him in any situation is merely illusion. He can come from the illusion, or he can come from the clarity and power of being space. If you choose space, then be space. When listening, this means that you do not need to understand what is being said; you do not need to agree with it; it does not need to be reasonable or logical or even right. You can still hear it. You can be the space into which it is spoken, and not have to do anything with it. Specifically, you do not have to fix it, find a solution, go out and change anything. All that you need to do is listen. Listening as a space is listening for her, not for you. You are being the space into which she can speak anything and work it out. Withing the listening sanctuary that you are providing, her speaking takes it out of her mind and brings it into the world, where she can hear it herself; she can hear it being listened to. Through your being the space of listening she is faced with no resistance, and can create what she is speaking about, or reinvent it as she speaks. You make no comments, no judgements, no criticisms, and most importantly, you ask no questions (even to make it more “clear,” even if you think that the questions are “for her own good”). Now and then you nod your head. Now and then you say, “Hmmmm….”
If there are raging emotions and killer energies mixed in with the communication, you simply make a hole in the floor like a drain in a bathtub, peel the information out of the communication, listen to the information (part of which may be the information “I am mad as hell at you!”) and allow the charged energies to get sucked down the drain into the earth (who eats it as fertilizer). Opening the drain is the second distinction. Using this tool, you no longer have to block any communication because you are afraid that it has too much energy in it. You can hear the information by distinguishing the information from the energy of the communication.
It is well known in communication theory that a communication will persist until it is received. Having increased skills in listening will allow you as a Man to receive communications from your Woman which have probably been delivered to you in one form or another over and over again for years because you have never before been able to hear them. Now that you can receive these high energy communications, their mission is completed. You may then discover that new messages will originate in your mate and your relationship can get unstuck and continue evolving.
Distinguishing the energy from the information in a communication does not mean that when you hear the message you are not affected by it. Quite the opposite is true. No longer having to defend yourself against the onslaught of the emotional charge of a communication means that you are more open to hearing its message. The message gets in. And when the message gets in, it hits home. You feel the pain of it deep in your soul. In hearing the message, you cannot help but die. Your old self, the formulation of who you were previous to receiving the communication, has been forever changed. You have heard the message and you are impinged by it. You die. The problem with this is that your Woman will feel so delighted, acknowledged, and in love with you for now being able to really listen to her that when she is done with delivering the communication, she may well want to take your clothes off and go to bed with you. We all know that you cannot make love with a Woman if you have been killed. Here is where the third distinction comes in handy. You can die, but not be killed. After allowing the message to have its full impact, just show up again as the new you. It takes about three seconds to make the distinction of dying but not being killed.
The fourth distinction is that no matter what you Woman says to you, no matter how childish or misinformed, how evil, how destructive, how unconscious or self-referenced you may think it is, it is not your Woman speaking to you. It is her cramp speaking. The distinction is that your Woman is not her cramp. Your Woman is Woman, God’s beauty, gateway to the feminine world, your personal guide to Paradise. If you cannot be dissuaded in your commitment to experiencing who she really is, then neither can she. You can have it any way you want it.
HOLDING SPACE FOR CHILDREN
If you relate to your children as if they are mature, responsible, sensitive, strong, loving, coordinated, beautiful, intelligent, communicative, radiantly happy, team players, passionately involved in fulfilling their Destiny and living a life that really matters to them, then that is who you will be living with for eighteen years.
Some men insist that child raising is more complicated than this. It is not. The reason a father wants it to be more complicated is so that he does not have to experience the painful introspection of taking responsibility for having trained his children to be like they are. The father wants to blame someone or something else and pretend to be an innocent victim in the situation. If he maneuvers to abscond from responsibility, of course, then that is how he teaches his children to raise their own children. Possibility only arises when a father stops pretending he knows how to be a father, and starts asking serious questions.
The following ideas unfold as specific answers to the question, “What conditions give my child optimum opportunity for health and happiness?” Many of the suggestions are for newborn infants, because this is when a child downloads most of their “human software” about who they are, who other people are, and how the world works. If your children are already past this age, look for the attitudes behind the practices, and find ways to incorporate these attitudes into your relationship with your children whatever their age. What appears below is a “child-raising wish list” of best practices. They are fairly unjustified proclamations. Confirming research and study materials abound, so here we present the condensed version. Also, many of the suggestions apply directly to the mother. What the Man can do is support the Woman in her choices both by helping with details and standing certain in the energetics, holding space for her to proceed even in the face of concerned neighbors, overbearing parents, and mass media who has no idea how to promote and in fact is terrified of the simplicity of true human contact and human relationship.
Breastfeed your baby — no matter what anybody says. Your Woman may need to change her familiar self-image for the next few years — but with your support she can do this. She can then look in the mirror and see herself as a breastfeeder and feel good about it! Her body wants to. Breastfeed your baby on demand for two years. Feed them only breast milk for their first six months, gradually adding solid food after that. There is NOTHING that can replace the nurturing, life-supporting experience of skin-to-skin contact between baby and mother during nursing time. We could speak for hours about the virtues of naturally breastfeeding your baby. Fortunately, there are already excellent books and resources available for your reference.
Have your child sleep with you in a big “family bed” until they are ready to sleep in their own bed around the age of six years. Imagine how fear of the dark, fear of lightening and thunder, fear of nightmares, or fear of abandonment could all resolve themselves without residue if there was certainty of a Mother’s or Father’s arm to snuggle into all night long. Families have been sleeping together for tens of thousands of years. Putting a baby “in their own room” is a recent development with serious social and psychological side effects. On the other hand, sexual abuse also has serious social and psychological side effects. If you cannot not do this, skip the family bed idea. And go get help.
Do not put a “pacifier” in your child’s mouth. Putting a piece of rubber in your baby’s mouth delivers a very powerful negative message to them. They realize that what they have to say is not wanted or needed. When a parent disempowers their own child by preventing them from speaking, the child knows this is not as it should be, and begins to view the world as unsafe for them. Instead of providing security for the child, rubber sucking devices instead deliver insecurity.
Begin to look seriously at your family’s use of television, the internet and video games. What purpose are these activities serving? What value are they creating for your family? What else could be happening during the times spent staring at the screen? Some couples simply get rid of their televisions altogether. Other families keep the TV packed away in a closet, and bring it out to watch videos now and then. Moving the TV out allows you to think of something else to do with your precious family time. Play music together, read stories, draw, shuck walnuts, have plays, weave baskets, sew, cook, play cards, or just hang out and relax together as a family. Years later you will look back at these TV-less days as the best of times.
Read to your child every day. Read out loud, be it children’s books, adventure stories, Shakespeare, poetry, spiritual literature, or historical fiction. Do not read the news to them, murder mysteries, or overtly sexual material.
Striking, hitting, shaking, slapping, yanking, spanking, pinching, whipping, beating, or jerking your child — ever, for any reason — is a sign of your own deep pain. When an adult tries to solve their own problem by physically abusing their child, this is time to get some immediate help. Suggestions include figuring out how to have more rest and less stress, calling someone for support, joining a parenting support group, and getting into therapy or a “twelve-step” program. Violence to children is a serious infraction and cannot be dealt with alone. Pay attention to your habits of behavior under stress. Do you terrorize your baby as a way of dominating, controlling or manipulating them? If so, get help.
On the other hand, be real with your child. Create relational reality. For example, if a child hits you, notice what their intention is. A baby may grab your hair or nose and try to bite it, and this may hurt or be annoying, but that is different from hitting with the intention to hurt. If they are just exploring, gently unpeel their fingers from your nose and give them something else to explore that does not cause you pain. But if the child hits with the intention to hurt, then even though you are a fully grown adult Man, and, of course, the hit does not really hurt you, act as if it did. Say, ‘Ouch!’ seriously, loudly, as if the child’s intentions had been fulfilled. (Important note: Do not make a game out of this!) When the child sees that they have hurt their father, and the father says angrily, “No! Don’t do that! Stop it! That hurts!” just like one adult would say to another, then clear communication is happening, and relational reality has been established.
Put away the clock and be on your baby’s schedule. These first few years are precious and go by very quickly. Babies don’t care what time it is. They have an internal clock of their own. When they are hungry they want to eat. When they are tired they want to sleep. Why fight them when you can join them? Rather than rushing around trying to get all of your unfinished chores done when the baby naps, you can nap too. And if the middle of the night turns out to be play time for awhile, relax. One thing to always remember about the stages of a child’s development is that, no matter what it is, sooner or later it will pass.
Wear your baby! Strap your baby onto your body. You can obtain a few different kinds of front or back baby carriers — many are available these days — and learn how to use them. When you wake up in the morning and get dressed, you can put on your baby like you put on your shirt. This gives you two hands free to go about your daily business. Let your child see what it means to be a human being by watching you live your life. Wash the dishes, hang out the laundry, mow the lawn, rake the leaves, sweep the floor, go shopping. (Talking on the phone and doing desk work is generally not active or interesting enough for the baby, so try to minimize these activities.) The baby is used to the mother’s natural rhythm and movement from being in the womb, and will sleep for hours in a back or front carrier, often with one finger somehow touching your skin. Let your baby touch you; let your baby have physical skin-to-skin contact. When your baby is ready to get down it will tell you. Many cultures never leave their babies alone for six months. Westerners often leave their babies alone every chance they get — as if carrying a baby were a nuisance rather than an honor! — and they wait a long while to pick a baby up again, even when it is crying. Why do you think the baby is crying? Why would you be crying if you were the baby? When a baby is left alone the experience is life threatening for them. Pick them up immediately and listen to them.
A commonly held idea is that babies are stupid. Such an attitude is shockingly false. Babies are learning at a tremendous rate. And in terms of what the baby is experiencing, recall some of your first memories. Can you remember how you first regarded yourself as “me”? Did you experience that “me,” then, any differently from how you experience this “me,” now? Most people do not. Regard your child with infinite respect as a being.
Talk to your children, and listen to them as if they were fully cognizant individuals deserving of your complete attention. You are training them to communicate. Every sound the child makes is an effort to communicate. If you ignore your child’s vocally expressed communications to you by thinking that it is meaningless baby prattle, then so it will remain for a long time. And vice versa; every sound you make to your child is something the child wants to understand. If you speak to your child in meaningless “baby talk,” then your child’s efforts to learn verbal communications through imitating you will long be frustrated, because they are imitating nonsense. Listen to your child and understand what they are saying to you, even if it is not proper language. Whenever they ask for it, give your child your full one-hundred percent attention. Respond to them in clear, complete sentences. In this way your baby learns that the world makes sense, and that they can communicate. Out of communication grows trustworthy relationships.
What do you say to your child? Keep pointing out and repeating the names of things: wall, chair, potato. Sing to them; describe experiences; recite poetry; make up stories. Don’t just talk to make noise, but rather talk to share the wonders of life. Every night while brushing their teeth, I would count from one to ten in as many different languages as I could, one language for each section of their teeth. Now the children both speak two languages fluently, and want to learn others because they experience it as fun and interesting. Vocabulary, knowing the name of a thing, is a life-long gift that you can give to your children.
A child needs a Dad who protects them, sets boundaries, asks for what he needs, tells them how it is, listens to them, leads them into practical relationship with a magical wondrous world, and demonstrates integrity, impeccability, and possibility. A child also needs a Dad who is a total “Yes!” for them. So much of the world is already a “No!,” expressed as laws, procedures, rules, schedules, grades, expectations, limits, and so on. Our parents were often a No for us. Without knowing it, many of us are an automatic No for our children.
There is a way that you can be, in general, such that who you are for the child is in support of their existence. They can get that you are voting Yes for them. Being Yes for your child does not mean being a doormat. Being Yes for your child means to commit to your child’s commitment, whatever it is.
When a child starts climbing on the furniture, instead of shouting “No! Get down from there! You are going to break your neck!,” notice what the child is committed to in their actions. Is it the physical challenge? Is it to get attention? Is it because they are angry? If it is the physical challenge, consider squatting down next to your child and saying something like, “You really like climbing around, don’t you?” By doing this you have acknowledged their commitment to expand their physical limits. Then commit to that so they experience your commitment as authentic. “Let’s go outside and I can help you climb that tree.” Or, “Maybe you would like to take a gymnastics class with a trampoline?” If their commitment is to express their anger, consider squatting down next to them and saying, “It seems like you are feeling something big. Are you angry?” If they say yes, then you can listen to them be fully angry until they feel heard about their anger. Listening to them does not mean that you have to fix anything, or change anything, or defend anything, or explain anything. Their anger is not your problem. You just listen, and repeat back that you hear they are angry. They experience themselves as being heard, and that you were the Yes to their anger.
Do not tickle your child, and do not let other people tickle them. Tickling is a form of physical abuse. Most times, when someone is tickling a child they are trespassing into the child’s “space” without the child’s permission. Since the child is defenseless, the world becomes dangerous if they are tickled. Many people tickle children to try to change their mood or to control them. Tickling is often hidden aggressiveness. It is not for the child’s pleasure but rather to manipulate the child for our own selfish satisfaction of having the child smile or laugh for us and give us their attention.
Keep your promises. Do not make promises you do not keep. This is one of the most powerful relationship tools you can own. If you tell your child that you are going to leave for the park at two o’clock, and at one fifty-nine the phone rings and it is your mother who likes to talk for fifteen minutes, just say, “I’m sorry, Mom, but I cannot talk right now. We are going to the park at two o’clock. Can you please call me back tonight?” (Notice that the Dad takes full responsibility for making and keeping the promise and does not play victim to the child by saying, “I cannot talk now because Johnny will get mad if I do not take him to the park.”) If you tell your child that they cannot have a lollipop because it is too close to dinner, do not give in and give them a lollipop because they get angry with you or because they start whining. If it is bath time, it is bath time. There is no need for the father to be forceful, angry or aggressive about it. The father can have infinite patience, be creative and inviting, be consistent and gently firm, because he is already certain of the outcome through holding the space for their child having a bath.
Children run out of energy when they are tired, hungry, not feeling well, too cold, or too hot. You can easily learn to recognize the indicator signs when your child is about to run out of energy. We call it “going over the edge.” Just before going over the edge, the child may get silly, their tone of voice may shift, their attention span may shorten, timing in their speech patterns may speed up, they may become short tempered or demanding, or lose their sense of humor. Learn to notice and recognize these indicators, and train yourself to redirect the focus of activities to take care of your child before they go over the edge. Without making a big deal out of it, just feed them, just bring them in for a nap, just adjust their clothing, or give them quieter activities so they can rest, whatever is needed and wanted. Do not have a debate about it. You can even be talking about something else entirely. Just handle their needs. Many fathers never learn to read these signs, and over and over again continue their selfish agendas rather than shifting plans mid-step to take care of their children. Then everybody has a hard time. Here is another great idea: Create a bedtime procedure, and go through it every night with your children. Transition to bedtime is a wonderful time to be together and to connect while changing into bedclothes, washing the face, flossing and brushing the teeth, and reading a chapter in a favorite book.
Trust your child’s judgement of character, even if it is inconvenient. One time we were at a friend’s wedding with our first daughter who was less than two years old. She disappeared for awhile and we had to look around to find her. To our surprise, she was seated on a bench next to some old man we neither knew nor recognized. He was smoking a big cigar and apparently philosophizing to her about everything that was going on. We resisted and did not interrupt their communion. It went on for over an hour, she being totally enraptured with this stranger. When she was finished, she came back to us. We noticed a shift in her self-confidence after that. Another time we had arranged a rare date for us to go out together as a couple, and when the baby sitter arrived the children were not wanting to stay with her. Rather than rushing out the door anyway, we stopped and changed our plans, paid the baby sitter, sent her home, and spent the evening together with the kids. Our lost date was a smaller wound than would have occurred if we abandoned our children to a stranger they were uncomfortable with.
We have watched seemingly intelligent fathers observe their child fall down, scratching their knees, come to their parent in tears looking for comfort and understanding, only to hear the father say, “Nothing happened. There is nothing to cry about.” What a horror! Here is the child, who is in real and undeniable physical pain, coming to their father who is like a god to them — all knowing, all powerful. When the child receives the communication from the father that “Nothing happened,” it is in such total contradiction to the child’s experience, that the father’s message can cause a split in the child’s psychology. Such a message is psychologically abusive, and can contribute to conditions known as “borderline,” “schizophrenic,” or “psychotic.” It causes them to mistrust their assessment of reality, and it also causes them to mistrust you. All that the child needs is to be heard. When the child approaches the father, the father can ask, “What happened?” In recounting the incident to a listening father, the child can safely experience and express their big feelings, and heal themselves of the shock of the incident, all in a matter of moments with no scars, and then run back and keep playing. No “make wrong,” no “warning,” no “did you learn your lesson?,” nothing else from the father is required. Just listen, acknowledge that something did happen, and confirm the child’s experience without dramatizing the situation into something bigger than it is.
One of the most important things our children learn from us is how to raise children. We learned our child raising practices without knowing it largely from experiencing how our own parents raised us. Our parents learned child raising from their parents, who carried on the child raising traditions given to them by their parents, and so on. The chain has been unbroken, handed down from generation to generation. Without knowing it, we are using child raising technology developed hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years ago in the past. This is “old software.”
Through seriously questioning our own actions and motivations and choosing what purposes we serve when being with our children, we can create the possibility of shifting our behavior and our attitudes. We can declare that, “the chain breaks here!” and we can try something different. This is important work. By making the effort to improve our parenting, and by being consistent, we can make a real difference in the quality of our child’s life. Not only that, but by blessing our children with kindness, generosity, and respect, we are influencing the ways children will be raised for many generations into the future.
HOLDING SPACE FOR COMMUNITY
There is no top end to holding space. The context of space holding expands and matures as the Man. After holding space for our “self,” then expanding to hold space for other Men, then expanding to hold space for Woman, then expanding to hold space for children and family, the next space holding expansion is into the domain of community. A Man’s space holding abilities expand at the same rate as his matrix, and when matrix expands into the level of community, Man experiences himself as becoming one with the body of the community. His priorities naturally and automatically shift, his considerations have a new intention behind them. Not only is he attentive to his own practice, his relationship, and the wellbeing of his children, he now experiences the practice of other men, the quality of other relationships, the wellbeing of other children in the community, and the wellbeing of the community at large with equal responsibility. Not because he thinks that he should, but rather as a manifestation of expanded awareness. This will result in new and different gestures on his part.
Rather than not noticing that a particular man has been out of relationship with the other men in the community and may be in pain, a spaceholder of community will reach out and make contact and see what is going on with that man, no differently from reaching out to examine an ache on the side of his own foot. Rather than leaving the cars parked in haphazard congestion around the driveway entrance, a spaceholder for community will bring the issue to a meeting, propose signs and a parking system, and organize a work-weekend to layout new parking spots the way a Man would comb his own hair or neaten up the contents of his closet. Rather than being numb to or a victim of general tensions about the community in the nearby public indicating imminent danger of certain actions being generated unconsciously by a member of the community through their gossiping, drama making, or jockeying for power and position in their place of work, the spaceholder for community will connect with that community member and have a conversation that brings to their attention the dire consequences of continuing their actions for the whole community and the immediate necessity for changing their behavior or arranging to lose face so as to become more invisible.
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