The Better Men Project

We are now working through the conclusion of “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.” The book closes with four practices for integrating archetypal work into our lives. In May we focused on Active Imagination Dialogue, on our June call we will focus on the practice of Invocation.

Invocation is a practice that is very close to my heart.

This week, before we gather on Monday, June 3, I am inviting you to play with the practice invocation in order to “access the masculine archetypes in their fullness as positive energy forms” (see page 151.)

We are finally coming back together on Monday. In preparation for Monday’s call, read pages 143 to 151. Bringing special attention to the section on Active Imagination Dialogue (pp 145 to 151.)

I write because I really thought we were going to close our study of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover with this month’s call. I have two other texts in mind for our ongoing work on becoming better men.

But as I read the conclusion, I have come to understand that it will be of great benefit for us to actually take on each of the outlined practices one at a time. Month by month. For a few more months. Remember, new members are always welcomed!

How do you access the Lover archetype within your masculine self? What do you know about getting in touch with that part of yourself? How will you be able to continue to access the Lover archetype long after we are done with this exploration? How are you expressed in the world when you are aligned with the Lover archetype within you?

I am looking forward to seeing you on Monday. We will be diving into the section of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover that is titled The Shadow Lover: The Addicted and the Impotent Lover (pp 131-139.)

For Monday, give some thought to the way the “shadow lover” shows up in your life. Where does it show up as addiction? And where does it show up as impotence?

The courage to be honest with yourself, and to be honest with each other, will go a long way to bring your fullest, truest, Lover self from the shadows into light.

This next gathering of the Better Men Project, the one on November 13, will be the first men’s call I hold as Tuesday’s husband. We are getting married on November 5!!!! (Your prayers and well wishes are warmly welcomed. Marriage is a communal contract.)

Coincidentally, we are also in the last section of “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.” So we are deepening our understanding of the masculine Lover archetype.

Let’s talk about marriage. About all the things. The married men can share the ups and downs of their journey. Their current struggles and/or their current joys.

What I want to invite you to ask yourself is if you have ever been able to be a lover in your fullness?

Have you loved yourself enough to love with all that you are, all that you have, and all that you know?What do you intimate the fullness of your masculine love is meant to be? How do you imagine it might be when you allow all of yourself to be?

Let’s help each other get there.

The time has come to love and show up.

It will be so good to come together again after our two-month summer break. We are going to dive right into an exploration of the masculine as Lover. 

In preparation for our call, please read the section of “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” that is titled “The Lover in His Fullness,” pages 120-125.

I want to invite us to bring our attention just to that first sentence of the section:

“The Lover is the archetype of play and of “display,” of healthy embodiment, of being in the world of sensuous pleasure and in one’s own body without shame.”

Here I’m sending you a note very much like the one that goes to my whole community. But I want to specifically focus on men for this one.

If enough of you choose to join. Or if you know other men who would benefit, then we can make one of the cohorts a men’s group. There is a lot to the program.

Brothers, please forgive the late notice. I am writing because I will be overseas on vacation this coming Monday. The night of our scheduled call. I will also be unavailable on the first Monday of August. So I’m calling a pause on our coming together this summer. I trust I will see most of you on the evening of Monday, September 4.

I am excited to share “what men can gain from Removing the shackles of sexism and misogyny,” a piece by Lawrence Barriner II, one of my dear friends. It is a beautiful piece on care and intimacy and the importance of growing our ability to experience and express these.

The authors begin the last major section of the book, the section about “the Lover” archetype by talking about the Shiva Lingam. The ancient representation of Mahadev (The Great God) in the form of a phallus. My cosmology is fundamentally “nondual,” I surrender into this nonduality as a deist. And for almost 20 years, my devotion is to Lord Shiva, the Great One, the Benevolent Lord, the embodiment of the sacred masculine. Om Namah Shiva is the mantra that colors my breath. And it is only as Shiva that I have learned to worship, honor and serve Shakti, the Holy Feminine, his sacred consort, the energy that scintillates through every particle of creation. All that is manifest, that moves, that dances and changes as Her.

We come to close our study of the masculine archetype of the Magician with a conversation about how to access the archetype in our own lives.

The authors of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover describe a number of therapeutic methods for working with the archetype in ways that can liberate us from the limitations of past trauma and unlock new possibilities for us, as men.

I’m a big fan of Sebastian Junger’s work. And I am often moved by his thoughts on masculinity. Two of his books, Tribes and Freedom, have been deeply influential in my own work on how to rescue masculinity.

Here I am sharing: Why Men Seek Danger an interview between Junger and Bari Weiss, on her Honestly podcast. I’m not ready to give a full endorsement of what Junger shares here. But I do think it merits our attention. And it will make for great conversation in our next call, rescheduled for this Monday, April 10 at 8:30 PM East.

Next Monday, the first of the month, I will be flying back from work in California. I will therefore be unable to host our call. Rather than canceling it, I invite us to meet on Monday, April 10 at 8:30PM East. We will send an updated calendar invite.

While I have your attention, I want to share a clip with you. Here, Dr. Peter Attia, in a rich conversation with Andrew Huberman about “Vitality, Emotional & Physical Health & Lifespan” (timestamped link) does an excellent job of speaking honestly about his trauma, emotional health, and what it takes to get better.

The author of the blog “Kloncke,” imagines a conversation among a group of men who are very different from each other. The conversation is cool. I appreciate what the author is doing. These hypotheticals are brilliant ways to engage an idea. But what took me by surprise was when he added me(!!!) along with Thich Nhat Han, to the list of luminaries participating in this hypothetical conversation.

It has to be ok to recognize that men are in trouble without it feeling like we are not acknowledging the sins of patriarchy. We can understand that men are in a bad way without denying the ongoing dangers of toxic masculinity.

Men are in trouble. This is why we are working so intently on discovering and embodying the ways of conscious masculinity. We live in a world that badly needs it.

This month we briefly pause our slow study of “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” to spend some time contemplating a piece titled: Broken Men in a Broken World: The Last of Us, God of War and The Banshees of Inisherin by Alex Benier.

We are exploring the shadow side of the magician archetype.

How do you try to manipulate and control others? 

How do you keep others from knowing what you know?

How do you play innocent when in fact you are playing an underhanded game of control?

I often say that if I was to start a church it would be called the “Church of Co-Evolution Through Friendship.”

One of the most important findings in the research that I did before launching the Better Men Project is that most men don’t have a healthy number of authentic friendships with other men. These findings have been confirmed over and over again. The absence of authentic relationships with men is literally killing men. Men are dying deaths of loneliness and despair.

This loneliness can also cause many men to live in such nihilistic resentment that they cause devastating suffering in the world around them.

Do you like to fight?

Here I’m thinking more of the sport and thrill of it. Not just violence for its own sake. It seems some of us do and some of us don’t. My 11 year old son has been all about it for the longest time, and he is the kindest, wisest kid I know.

“The true warrior is not the one who is willing to kill. That doesn’t make a warrior. The true warrior is the one who is willing, if need be, to die. Courage and not violence defines him. The fight, then, is a special case, appropriate in special circumstances, of the willingness to put everything on the line, to offer even one’s own body and all the ego holds precious, in service to life.” ~Charles Eisenstein

What are you like when you express your magic in its fullness?

How does the world respond?

What is the impact of your presence?

What happens to your relationships?

We have to sift through this chapter a bit. It seems to me that even these brilliant Jungian authors are still seeing the world through a mechanistic lens. They are a product of their time. They are enthralled by the baffling magic of technology.

But they are still able to point us in the right direction.

Writing to remind you that I get to interview adrienne maree brown this Wednesday, November 16, at 7PM EST.

You can register with this link at the bottom of the Odyssey Bookstore event page.

It’s pretty amazing that I get to talk to adrienne about fables and spells at the same time that we are exploring the masculine archetype of “The Magician.”

In the magic that is synchronicity, it turns out that I am preparing for our men’s call on magic at the same time that I am preparing to interview adrienne maree brown on her new book: Fables and Spells.

Those of you who have been with us know that the very launch of the Better Men Project was inspired by her essay: relinquishing the patriarchy. It was the first text we worked through together.

Let’s get back to magic. You are a meant to be a Warrior. You are meant to be a King. You are meant to be a Lover.

AND you are meant to be a Magician.

But what could that possibly mean in this post-modern age. Thes days when Marvel movies are the closest we can come to touch myth?

I was recently “called-in” by a very dear friend who identifies as a queer woman. Her question was “where are the men?”

The Better Men Project is built to be an alternative to the perils of virtue signaling and “performative wokeness.” Many of us have become wise enough to turn away from the madness of cancel culture. We don’t believe in exile. We believe in the possibility of restoration and transformation.

What is feminist sex? Have you even considered the question?

I’m not even pretending to have an answer. But I know that there is a rich conversation (argument? debate?) about it in the feminist world.

I think it merits our attention.

I am excited that both Bruce and Chris decided to step up and hold our men’s gathering tonight!

This is the first time the Better Men Project gathers without my holding the space. I am looking forward to hearing about it.

Bruce and Chris have been consistent participants of our Monday gathering, and I am sure you will bring your best, most honest selves to this time together.

Please do show up, and let’s see what we learn from this experiment.

Greetings from the Sundance Resort in Provo, Utah, where I am facilitating the Creative Change Retreat, a curated intersection of artists and activists.

Last month’s call on men and abortion was quite potent. Thank you for continuing to show up.

I write because I will not be able to host our scheduled monthly gathering in either August or September.

Slavery would not have been abolished without a movement of white abolitionists.

Bodies cannot be dominated by the state.

It is a woman’s right to have full and complete say over her body.

The right to abortion is often presented as a woman’s issue.

We, as men who are striving to be better, must therefore get clear about our role at a time when these rights have been taken away.

The Supreme Court’s decision to take away a woman’s right over her body cannot be seen as a woman’s issue.

We cannot be the Better Men Project without addressing the issue.

This month we will pause our study of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover and take a dive into what this ruling means for the men’s movement.

What do you know about Terry Crews? I can’t say I’ve followed his career closely. But I’ve been impressed by the way he talks about his journey and his growth.

Tim Ferriss has interviewed him a couple of times. And here I’m sharing an episode where he talks about his journey to true power.

Terry does a good job of moving us through his journey from being an utterly angry and selfish man to being a man who can finally acknowledge his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

I am appreciative of the way we are in community. You sent me links to inspiring articles about men stepping up:

• She’s Not Your Rehab: Barbershop Movement Urges Abusive Men to Tackle Traumatic Pasts

• Men in Iran are wearing hijabs in solidarity with their wives who are forced to cover their hair

We are part of something so much larger than ourselves. Men are stepping up. I am looking forward to our having more conversations about creative ways to do this. I want us to follow adrienne’s invitation:

practice taking action together. go to marches to protect women’s rights, volunteer to hold the line at abortion clinics, intervene on observed acts of misogyny and patriarchy in private and public!

Any time I speak of the way patriarchy hurts men, I find it important to first stress that we are also its beneficiaries. And that it is up to us to find ways to relinquish it.

I recently watched Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us on Netflix. It’s a documentary about the Central Park Five. The five men who were exonerated in 2002 after their erroneous conviction for the brutal rape of a jogger in 1989.

It is a harrowing documentation of racism and the miscarriage of justice. And it directly implicates the current occupant of the Oval Office.

I bring it up today because it is important for us to consider the way men of color are perceived to be sexually dangerous. There is a terrible racist twist to the way patriarchy is experienced by men of color.

I’ve been holding on this quote for a while. Lawrence Barriner, who is part of the Better Men Project (and will soon be co-hosting 2020 Vision), shared it in his newsletter.

Something odd happens when you Google “man comforting a woman.” Many of the top hits are about women comforting men. (Try it.) The suggested search terms, too: “How to comfort a guy, how to comfort a man when he’s stressed, how to comfort a guy when he’s upset.” Apparently, lots and lots of people on planet earth are Googling how to comfort men… and fewer are Googling how to comfort women. Strange, isn’t it, since this culture views women as “the emotional ones” and men as the strong ones. Perhaps something is a bit backwards here. — Nora Samaran

Patriarchy stunts our emotional development. And our solution is to offload our emotional labor to the women in our lives.

I have heard adrienne make an important distinction between restorative justice and transformative justice. Restorative justice aims to restore the relationship and community to the way it was before the harm was caused. Transformative justice aims for the relationship and community to become better than it was before the harm was caused.

It is such a beautiful perspective. Such a powerful way to engage this churning process of growth and evolution.

Let’s practice honesty tonight. We’ve been doing a good job of it so far. I want to share more of my story. I want to be more explicit about the worst ways in which I have fallen into patriarchy. And I want to tell you about what I have learned.

I want you to have an opportunity to do the same.

I am a fan of the Circle of Trust work that Parker Palmer has held at the Center for Courage and Renewal. The work is held together by a set of touchstones that I have now posted on the website. It will be good for you to read these before our calls.

No fixing, saving, advising or correcting each other.

Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions.

When the going gets rough, turn to wonder.

I like to say that one day I will start a church. And that I’m going to call it “The Church of Co-Evolution Through Friendship.” Friendship is sacred to me. It is a life defining practice. I am blessed to have deep, intimate relationships with other men.

When I was doing interviews for the Better Men Project, I was surprised to learn that many men have a hard time being friends with other men. They have a hard time going to deep and accountable places together.

adrienne has been such an important guide on our journey. I want to invite us to say a prayer for her and wish her a happy birthday. She wrote a beautiful post about it.

Her words in that post resonate with a reflection I want to invite you into this week:

i wouldn’t wish my trauma on anyone.
healing from trauma, feeling peace and even joy in my life, is the greatest achievement of my life

I think we are right to focus our attention on the harm that we have caused. On the ways in which toxic masculinity has made us dangerous in the world. Our work here is to take full responsibility. So that we can become better men.

I was absolutely fascinated by Devin Gordon’s take on Joe Rogan in The Atlantic. One of the things that I have wrestled with since the launch of the Better Men Project is that the men who are called to participate are men who are linked to my network. And most of these men are already “woke.” 

We have PLENTY of work to do. And doing this work on ourselves is doing work that makes a difference well beyond just us.

But who is getting to all the men out there who don’t know what to do after coming face to face with #metoo? Many of them we’ll never reach. They are defensive. And reactionary. And they are just doubling down on the same toxic masculinity that keeps rape culture alive.

I am still moved by our last call. It got real. Men talked about being perpetrators. About the harm we have caused. I am grateful for the courage to speak truths that render us so vulnerable. And I am grateful for our group’s capacity to receive. And to hold each other in confidence.*

In Pleasure as Praxis, Corinne Manning interviews adrienne maree brown for BitchMedia. I was struck by the clarity and wisdom of this exchange on transformative justice:

oday I’m thinking about fathers. A dear friend visited this weekend. We are both fathers to young boys. And we were talking about all the stuff that we blame on our parents when we get to therapy. They probably deserve some of that blame. Some of us had parents that truly and thoroughly failed.

But we also talked about the things that they simply could not have known. About the fact that our consciousness is shaped and warped by our cultural moment.

I am a Latino man. The shooting in El Paso was perpetrated against my community. My heart is broken. And I stand in prayer with those most impacted.

But there is a thread to these shootings that runs much deeper than hatred towards people of color. And that is the thread of hatred towards women.

Today we gather again. A group of men committed to the lifelong process of relinquishing patriarchy.

adrienne reminds us to:

recognize that as a man, you are a part of patriarchy. even if you have made some effort to break out of it, the system/insanity of patriarchy is still there for you to fall back into under pressure or duress.

Patriarchy does not happen by osmosis. It is not something that is simply in the water. Patriarchy is transmitted. We are educated into it. Words are spoken. Often by our elders. Certainly by our peers. And always through the culture. Booming through the media.

Feelings and drama are not the same thing. Too many of us don’t even know how to be with our own feelings. So we lack the capacity to be with the feelings of the women in our lives. adrienne names it:

You aren’t encouraged to feel your feelings. in fact, the opposite is the case. you are told it isn’t manly to cry, to need comfort, to feel longing. you are ridiculed for emotions that aren’t weaponized, for gentleness, for what is categorized as feminine behavior.

What is it that comes up for you when you contend with someone’s feelings? What happens to you when a woman expresses her feelings around you or to you? 

his week I have been involved in ceremony work with men. I am deeply moved by the love and tenderness that is opening up among us. It is certainly exceptional. It is quite rare for men to express care and affection for each other in the ways that I have witnessed in these spaces. It is deep personal work that truly matters.

We need to work on the way patriarchy shapes our inner lives, our emotional lives, our capacity to be with each other in authentic and vulnerable ways.

We had a powerful first call. I was moved by the quality of conversation. And by our willingness to lean into this effort to relinquish patriarchy. By looking deeply at ourselves. By turning to one another. And by staying curious about an emergent process.

This is an experiment. Here, to be emergent means to focus on “the most elegant next step.” And right now what we want to do is to come together again. You are invited to join us on Monday, August 5 at 8:30PM East. So that we can deepen our conversation.

There is something about the word freedom that appeals to the warrior archetype that lives within us. Many men can be moved to deep emotion by scenes from movies like Bravehart, or a serious contemplation of the slave rebellion that led to Haiti’s independence.

There is something that appeals to us. Something that moves us. This is the same something that can be used to manipulate boys into signing up for wars of Empire. But it is also something that can be made conscious. It is an energy that can move us as we aim for a truer freedom.

Our call is to become righteous. It is not to become self-righteous.

Let’s start where adrienne begins. Here is the simplest definition of patriarchy:

the system of society/government in which men hold the power and women are excluded from it.

She tells us what it is. She asserts that it is collapsing. And she admonishes us to give it up and get ourselves out. 

She reminds us that it won’t be easy. But conscious masculinity is not about the easy path. It is about rising to the challenge. Specially when we hear a call to freedom.

People are gathering around adrienne maree brown’s books Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism. I’m inviting men to gather around her recent blog post Relinquishing the Patriarchy. Let’s take a deeper dive into the conversation.

Let’s have a zoom video conference call together. Join me and other men on Monday, July 8, 2019 at 8:30PM East Coast Time. Let’s take time with this clear text. Let’s allow it to impact us and how we show up as men.

It is too easy for the work of dismantling patriarchy to become an arena of “competitive wokeness.” A well developed analysis can actually shut down curiosity. We tend to hold it as a fundamental truth. And the work becomes about grandstanding. Everyone wants to get it right. To let others know they have it right.  And to enforce what is right. I call it movement fundamentalism.

I have nothing against what is right. But I do have a problem with spaces that make us afraid to get anything wrong. The fundamentalism that underlies “competitive wokeness” can paralyze us with fear. No one wants to get it wrong. No one wants to be exiled from the tribe. A primal fear hijacks our thinking. And fear is how possibility erodes.

One of the key findings from my first round of interviews is that men don’t have enough intimacy with other men. Those who are in a relationship may tend to burden their partner with emotional labor. Or they may opt to shut down instead.

But bringing men together in ways that facilitate vulnerability and intimacy opens the door for the sort of healing that is all about taking responsibility. It is the most fundamental work. The work we have to do is to turn inwards and love ourselves. It is by making this choice that we are able to choose our own healing. It is by becoming responsible for our own healing, it is by becoming whole, that we can find our way to conscious masculinity.

Interviews for the Better Men Project confirm that many of us want to do better. It is also clear that we do not always know how to. We know how to be better than Weinstein or Cosby. Some of us have learned tough lessons about the impact of our own behavior.

But being a good man has to mean more than "don't be bad."

George Yancy invites an #IamSexist movement. He refuses to let any of us off the hook. It is not enough to not be bad. What matters is that we are men in a culture that holds ideas of masculinity that are dangerous and toxic. He quotes bell hooks:

Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term ‘masculinity’) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.

After too long a stretch on the road, I am finally back to interviewing for the Better Men Project. I am riveted by the pattern of pain and responsibility that keeps showing up in these talks with men.

I did manage to make time for a heart-centered overnight ceremony with a cohort of men. These were lawyers, accountants, and big time financiers. Men who live and work outside of the “woke” discourse. The men that I’m trying to reach. The work works, the heart opening is real, and it gives men access to parts of themselves that have been shut out by patriarchy and its conditioning.

Who better to speak to the redeeming aspects of masculinity than people who have had both experiences, the experience of being assigned female at birth and the experience of transitioning to life as a man. I write with Felix’s permission and with his eyes on these words.

Felix spoke to the challenge of finding ways to be in solidarity with this #MeToo moment. Felix was assigned the female gender at birth, he can certainly point to painful experiences in his past that would allow him to use the hashtag. But today he walks in the world as a man, with all the privileges that entails. Felix speaks eloquently about double consciousness, and about the trans experience of being Man2.0, a man with the somatic memory of walking the world perceived as a woman, a man with an intimate understanding of the feminine experience.

The Better Men Project is a way to take responsibility, a way to step up. We are in the midst of an important purge, a purge that must continue as truth and the implications of toxic masculinity are brought into light.

I come into this work in full acknowledgment that patriarchy is part of my constitution. And that I am part of the problem. I have been conducting interviews for the Better Men Project and I am made hopeful by what I’m finding.

Men are reflecting on our shortcomings, our blindspots and mistakes, and what it means to show up as a man in this culture. Some of us are ready for accountability, the restoration of justice and the responsibility of working with each other to build a culture that is safe for women.