Well, well, well. Here we are again. At the end of another frenetic summer. Released from the seclusions of COVID (or taking a risk that if we contract the virus we’ll survive), we have made up for lost time – seeing family; attending weddings, graduations, college reunions, christenings, memorial services; reconnecting with friends near and far; traveling to foreign parts (or the nearest rehab or wellness clinic) – all impossible destinations that we dreamed about during the pandemic.
It’s been great fun being a party animal again, but now we must return home and face the problems that we’ve spent the entire summer trying to avoid. Ironically, chief among them is a “global crisis of connection,” as NYU psychologist Niobe Way observes, and the mental health issues that have skyrocketed among us from the lack thereof. It is perhaps for this reason that retreat centers have been packed all summer. The further irony is, of course, that men, the humanoids that would most benefit from being there, aren’t.
You might argue that we men recharge doing other things: playing golf, tennis (fill in the sport); or fishing, hunting, hiking, kayaking, paddleboarding (insert other solitary and self-referential activities in pursuit of our bliss). While these activities have many positive impacts on our mental health and productivity, they can also become distractions or ways to escape the larger issues that we do not want to face. Conditioned to work until we drop so that we can be the providers that society and our sense of self-respect demand (even when we are stay-at-home-dads), we do not give ourselves permission to rest or retreat. Indeed, we do not know how to be still. Yet every wisdom tradition in the world maintains that contemplation has enormous benefits, which increasingly neuroscientists confirm.
Being still is not the same as deploying mindfulness apps that are all the rage for stress management. Being still requires going off the grid for some period of time whose duration disrupts your daily routines, and actually sitting still, unplugged, so that you can free your mind to let something new and entirely different emerge.
I understand that many of us who are searching for meaning and purpose feel (for a range of reasons) that we must look beyond organized religion for solutions. I would submit, however, that the contemplative practices of these ancient wisdom traditions (freed from their ritual and dogma) are definitely worth an investment of time. It has been my experience that they cultivate habits of mind that go well beyond anything an app can deliver, because these practices gather a community of like-minded individuals as a mutual support system.
There are also many new approaches for emptying the mind worth investigating. In his book In Praise of Walking, neuroscientist Shane O’Mara makes a compelling argument for the “mind-wandering” that occurs while engaged in the rhythmic movement that defines us as the only bi-pedal, fully upright animal on the planet. It turns out that every biological-neurological system in our body is hard-wired to walking, and if we do nothing but daily simulate the vast migrations of the past millennia, without stressing out about an outcome, we can expect to live long, healthy lives – physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.
Kabbalist and holder of the Saphire Jewish mystical tradition, Catherine Shainberg encourages us to open our dreams in similar fashion, listening to the solutions that our subconscious is trying to surface without trying to force an outcome, only allowing what is already there to naturally emerge. Her new book Kabbalah of Light provides a timely message for a world dominated by the false belief that our reality is determined by our busy, industrious, analytical, conscious minds. And, of course, we need to learn to how to better integrate our meditation practices – ancient and contemporary – into our daily lives, into a set of routines that slow us down to a point where true connection – internally to our Self and externally to Others – can occur. The Benedictines’ adaptation of their Rule of Life for secular life is a good example of how this can be done. Their goal is not stress reduction or output/performance improvement, though that’s a great secondary benefit of the practice. The objective of contemplation is to create the internal space where the essence of our being and our related meaning and purpose can take shape and flourish, and the recalibration of our lives can begin.
This is not the hero journey that has been the focus of many men’s groups for over thirty years. It’s an entirely different quest, one that can free us from the treadmill that we’re on and equip us to meet the challenges of our postmodern world. In addition to learning how to be open and vulnerable “warriors”, men need to develop a much healthier relationship to their bodies, including releasing some of the shame that we attach to them. We need to open our hearts and learn to communicate what is in them. We need to develop new definitions of well-being and success to replace the current models that are driving us over a cliff. And we need to rediscover and value the sacred feminine that is within us all, men and women.
So as our family winds down its summer commitments, I have signed up for a series of workshops and retreats this Fall, and I’m encouraging the guys in my orbit to do the same. It’s an act of self-care that is atypical for our gender but essential for us to survive and thrive during these transformative times.
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Architectural Drawings for Men (Part 2)
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Parlez-Vous Masculin?
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Mark Grayson
https://www.nakedmancollective.com/
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