From FaceBook The Mens School group
Jan Darwin Hutchins
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INITIATION: "There is, as Carl Jung writes, a clear pattern, a fourfold cycle, within the rites of initiation across the world: First there is a separation from the mother, then a trial is undertaken, then a metaphorical death and lastly, there is atonement with the father.
The father, or the symbolic father, the tribe of manhood, as Joseph Campbell writes, is the priest of initiation, and when a boy outgrows the embrace of the mother, it is the duty of the father, no matter his status in wider society, to encourage the boy’s spiritual passing from the sphere of the mother, of dependency and nurture, to the sphere of the masculine.
In our time, there are no systems that bring a boy away from the mother and onwards to the undertaking of the ‘quest for the father’; our fathers and our old men no longer provide a spiritual way for boys to separate from the mother. And so it is a common experience now for a grown man to feel that he is not a man at all, that nothing significant has changed since the beginning of his adolescence.
For men intuitively know that manhood can only be achieved through trial, sacrifice, and effort — mature masculinity does not happen of its own accord; a man must become a man. And if there is no intervention by older men to encourage boys into adulthood, then boys, sensing that manhood awaits them, will try to initiate themselves, often through rebellious, immature and irrational behavior directed at people of authority, particularly the mother.
So what is happening nowadays is that boys are being initiated, dishonestly, by other boys — and older men have vanished from the maturation process.
The breakthrough between the two worlds — from the world of the mother and to the father — is necessary if we wish to have real men and real leaders in our society, and not merely boys who plead and pander to the majority.
As I have mentioned above, this passing of the spirit was once facilitated by all the men in the tribe or community — fathers, uncles, grandfathers. But our culture is oblivious to the necessity of this exchange, and so we have a generation of men who are still stuck in the maternal world and who spend their lives moving from one form of dependency to another, forever having to ask for permission and approval, and always apologizing for their true nature.
Possibly there is an appetite today for a rite of passage, for men of all ages to come together and celebrate and share — but we are not going to achieve this in our lifetime, because the desired rituals and symbols, if they are to have true and honest meaning, take time to come about and mature naturally. However, the principles and archetypes behind the ancient rite of passage remain true.
In our age, on the cusp between the old world and the new, men must learn to lift themselves onto the higher ground and leave the walls of the grand palace, the walls that have so far imprisoned men from the true experience of life.
Life is initiating us at every moment, and it is our duty to accept this initiation, to find joy in self-conquest, to play with the burdens of existence, to feel privileged in hardship. Once we have taken up responsibility and declared ourselves accountable for ourselves, the childish ego will collapse under the weight of our own pressure, and once this happens, we will be on our way to reconciliation with the father."
CliveMichael Justice
writes
Still true and more relevant than ever if community is to manage itself wisely, sustainable and in harmony with chaos and transformation. Language is evolving with consciousness and my choice is to embrace empathic and compassionate relationship with my local relations.
Domination has brought us to the cusp of opportunity while holding us to the edge of destruction.
Then
On Initiation
Initiations of the past emerged and evolved out of groupmind, social commitment and serendipity. Magic, Spirit, Sacred, Divine however it gets defined remains a player in relationship in the reality that I believe is a necessary element in the sustainability of human species.
Domination has brought us to the cusp of opportunity while holding us to the edge of destruction.
What that means for me is an engagement with the place I Iive, in the weather, geography and the people. What relationships have been created with the rivers and forests, the land itself. Who stewards the fish, the birds the growing of food and the education of children? If not all of us then where is the community cohesion? Where is the essence at the core of spirit? Without an experience of that belonging, that unity or affinity, I’m not grounded. Cast adrift in a maelstrom of distracting influence, opportunities and myriad possibilities.
As an adolescent when my testosterone was stimulated I had the capacity for great destruction, emotion driven powerful energy and unguided creativity. This is one of the pinch points of society. Initiation certainly can be an indoctrination, a manipulation of hormonal expression towards a common goal of submission, compliance and embraced engagement. Welcome to the tribe. Here is a marker of your journey. Now you truly belong, we have you, we have your back and this is how you live your life, according to our (you did agree to this, right?) standards and values. Our expectations and obligations, reciprocal arrangements that benefit us all….right?
Not necessarily as was experienced, not necessarily as was arranged or delivered. Not necessarily received or embedded or allowed.
We humans have great propensity for ignoring the past( insert appropriate quote) and to generalize, exaggerate, make assumptions and look for confirmation bias. Part of our need to belong, embrace the reality, be comfortable and anonymous. And out there; flamboyant, outrageous or celebrity as a means to access resources, status and power. How far out on the extreme will we go? It was safer in the middle, without definition, struggling, however it best manifests, to maintain a hold on whatever solidity appears. Whether it be education, career, furniture, or a house to put it in we all need land to stand on and that land has to be providing us with something more tangible than wood for our fires, stone for our buildings or sustenance from its fertility. I have not felt truly connected to the spirit of these places. I have relationship cultured over time with stories and events of significance that describe a history subjectively focused mostly on the structures created, not the actual energy and experience of each location.How is that I am disconnected and misguided? what is preventing this great wave of belief and engagement I’m unable to access? Why all this resistance to the basic essence, the primal note and harmony that resonates through our beings that I’m somehow isolated from and pushed aside? There is a great imbalance and a huge potential for disharmony stress and trauma. Mental illness, homelessness, addiction and entropy on a scale beyond comprehension. We are compelled to comply, in complicated procedures that impitomize force and submission rather than embracing and landing something welcome and appreciated. Becoming part of and integral to any ongoing success as an entity. The free choice ‘discussion’ rears its’ philosophical neurolgical head here and I say that I believe we are deeply embedded in a possible opportunity to manifest a greater harmony through participating on existing wavelengths of sound, magnetic resonance and likely unnamed and defined waves emerging into particles if we want to create that possibility. Everything we do is the result of an almost endless laying down of behaviour, response to stimulae and adaptation to our environments. Our need to make sense of it all provided incentive to intitiate, to improve, to explore possibilities.
But not all possibilities are either possible or useful.
This moment in time like all others has the capacity for transformation. Depending on what choices we make what patterns we hold and what we are willing to let go of, we can create something new and old, something vulnerable and fierce, something humble and resilient.
