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Chapter 18- Pain And Purpose

A man who moves through ordeal in humility learns to see pain with new eyes, elder eyes. He learns to accept pain, to stand his ground in pain, if it leads toward his own transformation or, as a necessary part of his return, leads to the transformation of his community. He learns one of the most important lessons of male maturity and male spirituality. A man in ordeal learns to endure pain for a higher purpose. He learns that his call often means absorbing the pain that the uninitiated can create in community without returning the pain in kind. He becomes a witness to another way of handling pain, both the existential pain of life's vicissitudes and the unconscious pain that members of his community visit on each other. He becomes a witness to what masculine love means.

Neurotic Pain

In moving through modern initiation and initiatory pain, a man will start to see that his pain was necessary. He realizes that he couldn't go through the transformation to manhood without it. As in a chemical reaction, the heat had to be increased significantly before the chemical change happened and a new substance was formed. Pain is the heat. A man will start to see that initiatory pain will continue to be necessary. It will be a part of the rest of his life, if he is to continue his growth. Yet he will feel less afraid of the pain, even befriending it.

An initiated man will also be able to see the difference between necessary initiatory pain and the unnecessary neurotic pain of staying in the village too long. This neurotic pain is the one accompanying any addiction.. It is the inevitable pain that a man brings upon himself for not dealing with his inner life. It is initiatory pain not faced. "Neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering," observed Carl Jung.

The paradox of life is that we can run from pain or we can run toward it. But we can never ultimately avoid it. Like death and taxes, inner pain cannot be avoided. The young, unguided boy instinctively runs from pain and from his manhood. He runs, unless he finds an elder to help him stop running and stand his ground. Most modern men's pain is the pain of running from pain. This is neurotic suffering. It serves no useful purpose to the man or his loved ones. It is a black hole of suffering.

Before the initiatory experience, a man will not understand what I am talking about. One man I worked with was incredulous when I mentioned that the goal of life and counseling was not the wise pursuit of pleasure. He could see no other reason for living. I understood his feelings, as he was in a lot of neurotic emotional pain. Pleasure seemed his only release from emotional as well as physical pain. He did not realize that the emotional and physical pleasure he sought from his wife would not get him satisfaction. He did not realize that the rages he would go into toward his wife were really a very young boy's frustration with his mother object. His intense frustration was the cause of his pain, not his wife. His rages dulled the pain, without getting himself one inch closer to the peace of manhood.

The medicine man or shaman was also known as a world walker. He could go easily, though in pain, from this reality to the other side. The medicine man would travel to the other side to find out how his patient was in disharmony with his deepest identity. On his return he would know what to do to help the man. If the man cooperated, the returned harmony brought health.

The price of neurotic pain is often the catastrophic price of a heart attack, a stroke, liver disease from the late stages of alcoholism, chronic fatigue. Or the price is the estrangement of family and friends because of rage or withdrawal. All this because a man was not able to pay the initiatory price.

Legitimate Pain

A man in the latter stages of ordeal starts to realize that his manhood and deep inner satisfaction comes from finding purpose, not pleasure. He realizes that manhood does not consist in avoiding pain. He sees that the pleasures that he strived for no longer have meaning. Addictions have lost their allure. He realizes there is no 'right' woman that will make life bearable. There are only fantasies of women. He realizes that manhood does not come from protecting a woman or that initiation does not come from her adoration. He will have grieved these losses and start to leave his neurotic anxiety behind.

This man will also realize that his manhood and deep inner satisfaction comes from purpose, not power. He will see that status and money do not make him feel more like a man on the inside. He will see that the respect of uninitiated men is meaningless. He will see that all the power he has will not allay the anxiety he feels about losing the trappings of manhood. If he does choose to take on power in a corporation, church, or club, he will do this to fulfill a greater purpose, his call, and not to prove his manhood.

The man in the ordeal will start to realize that the measure of a man is not how much pain he can render but how much pain he can endure for a higher purpose. Here we come to the mystery of initiatory pain. The existential pain of initiation, choosing to transform pain rather than transmit it, makes not only a new man, but a new ideal of manhood.

If a man cannot get past his boyhood, he cannot bring his son and his brother's sons to manhood. He cannot find peace. He cannot give peace to those he loves. Yet, the peace of his manhood is paradoxical. This peace includes pain. And the pain is O.K. This paradoxical pain has meaning. It goes somewhere. Unlike neurotic pain it somehow changes the universe instead of being swallowed uselessly into a black hole. This is pain with a purpose. Only the initiated man and woman understands this.

An initiated man is then able to experience a further mystery of initiatory pain. He has become someone who can transform the neurotic pain in the world. Instead of retransmitting the neurotic pain directed at him, he has learned to transform his community by absorbing this pain. He is like a carbon rod in a nuclear reactor, absorbing neutrons of negative energy that cause critical explosive masses of anger and emotional destructiveness in his community. He has learned to absorb pain, both his own and the neurotic pain around him, for a higher purpose of transforming it into compassion. By doing this he creates compassion in the world.

It is interesting that the word compassion means to suffer with. An initiated man will voluntarily suffer emotional pain as he realizes that joining in the suffering around him, rather than transmitting or internalizing it, can be as healing to the community as it was for himself. He will become a transmitter of the lessons of pain, while walking his talk.

A man, toward the latter stages of initiation, starts to find how his pain has started to make him a different person, a person he likes much more. He also starts to realize that he couldn't be that different person without the lessons from that pain. Pain becomes another elder, teaching him important lessons about how a man moves in the world. Through enduring pain for a higher purpose a man transforms pain into the highest good, both for himself and for the community he is a part of. He goes from a hellion to a healer. Upon his manhood rests the good of his community, especially the generations that will come after him.

The transformation to manhood brings a man to a willingness to suffer pain for the next generation. It is purely voluntary. The motivation is not shame or ego or status or respect. It is a man's need to fulfill what he has learned and what he has become in his ordeal.

Groundhog Day

I am thinking of the classic movie Groundhog Day, one of my favorites. This movie's writer and director, Harold Ramis, has called it a very spiritual movie. It is also quite entertaining. This movie is about neurotic pain, the other side, initiatory pain, and transformation.

A very narcissistic television weatherman, played by Bill Murray, comes to the town of Punxutawney to report on the Groundhog Day celebration there. In the process of living Groundhog day he exhibits a lot of negative boy behavior. He is selfish, ego absorbed, and addictive. He tends to use people for his own ends and to satisfy his own needs. And he is stuck.

His stuckness in neurosis is soon made clear when he wakes up the next morning to find out he is starting a painful Groundhog day all over again. He repeats his neurotic behavior and gets the same painful results Groundhog day after Groundhog day. His anxiety increases. He continues hurting others and himself. His only answer is to continue to live the same day over. Most men stuck in their neurosis recreate, daily, their pain and their painful situations.

Most men who are stuck will then blame the world for their problems. Their frustration is not their fault. They feel that the world is out to get them. They are unable or unwilling to look inside.

Actually, the world is out to get him. The universe is trying to initiate him. This man, Phil, is separated from all that orients him. He is in a strange town, in a strange time. Nothing makes sense. There seems no way out. The wilderness, right there in Punxutawney. The ordeal, without notice, comes unbidden. Actually the other side has found him, like elders in the middle of the night.

This movie shows a fine representation of the other side, the timeless side, the eternal present. This is the mythic, psychological time I have talked about. This is the surreal time that men feel in the middle of ordeal. The movies depicts, paradoxically, both neurotic time and initiatory time.

Phil is forced to deal with his inner life or be stuck forever. This is the place every man will come to in his life, usually right in his own home town. The questions arise. Will he step in the same street puddle every day, or will he become aware of his destructive habits and lifestyle? Will he accept the pain of change and separation, or will he forever rail at the unfair world? Will he deal with this inner world or be stuck in the outer world?

Eventually, Phil becomes seriously depressed. He has tried a number of adolescent ways to feel good, and he only feels worse. He decides to face death. Unfortunately the death involves the death of his body, not initiatory death. He tries a number of ways of committing suicide. He goes down, but only trying to fall to his death. He stays stuck because he will not face his initiatory depression.

Eventually, Phil starts to deal with his internal pain and frustration. He accepts his separation. He gives up his former striving for pleasure and status. He allows the ordeal to start to transform him. He eventually learns that he cannot change the day, but he can change the way he relates to the day. He realizes that he does not have to be stuck in his old narcissistic ways. He doesn't have to step in the same street puddle every day. His consciousness dawns slowly.

For most men the transformation takes a long time. Ordeal takes many months, sometimes many years. Yet the peace I talked about also grows apace. So the ordeal takes on the quality of painful peace as it progresses. There is this sense in the movie. During the day, Phil is continually faced with the narcissistic behaviors that lead to his unhappiness. These repeats finally sink in. He is changed through his aloneness, confusion, frustration and depression. He starts to be aware of other's needs. He finds strength. He finds peace. He starts to realize the gifts that he can bring to the small town community he is now a part of. He voluntarily starts to give of himself with no ulterior motives. He seems oblivious to the respect he receives. He has found the peace that passes understanding. He has found it through ordeal and return. There is no other way.

Holy Teachers

The greatest model of manhood in western civilization, according to Carl Jung and many others, is Jesus Christ. No matter if a person feels Jesus was divine or not, his life has profoundly influenced western civilization. And his message profoundly shows an answer to pain, mostly to those who have started to learn the lessons of initiation. Christ, though he arguably had the power of the universe at his disposal, chose to suffer pain rather than inflict it. Why would a man with all this power choose to suffer so horribly? As St. Paul said, this crucifixion was a 'scandal' to the world, meaning the patriarchy of his day. In the words of the gospel, Christ suffered that others might live. Living meant living from the inside out, from finding the 'kingdom within'. Living meant absorbing pain for the good of others.

Christ refused to listen to the patriarchal voice of power. Both in the desert and on the cross he refused to listen to the voices that said, "if you are so strong and godlike do something powerful and show us." Just as today the patriarchal voice will always say to us, "do something powerful to show them you're a man, or else you're a wimp." Christ modeled the manly life we are talking about. He was called rabbi which means teacher. He came to teach us about pain. He, who could have had all the pleasure and power he wanted, suffered instead. The cross is a symbol of voluntary suffering. He suffered for the higher good of the community and to show the gateway to the life of the soul. He suffered to teach that there is purpose in life, and in pain.

As I have mentioned, the Buddhist tradition has a similar model in the Boddhisatva. This person would choose to go back into the suffering world after finding enlightenment and peace. The Bodhisattva paid his dues. He has done the work of separating and detaching from the hearth and village. He has detached himself from the illusions of worldly satisfaction and gone through the pain of that separation. He has also separated from the karmic cycle of causing pain and yearning for pleasure. Yet he chooses to stay in this world as a model and guide for the human community, until all have reached the same enlightenment.

The history of conscious nonviolence, some say starting with Jesus, shows us teachers who have shown the redeeming nature of conscious suffering of pain. From Mohandas Gandhi to Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela, these and many others teachers have taught about the transformative power of suffering for justice sake, for the sake of the whole community. They have witnessed to my view of mature manhood: the ability to suffer pain for a higher purpose.

Luke And Pain

An answer to pain and the freedom of manhood is also depicted wonderfully in another man. In the Star War myths, Luke learns the secret of the Jedi, the secret of a mature man. He finds it in his final ordeal. In his final struggle with his father, in the presence of the Emperor, after being tempted to destroy his father violently, through hatred and anger, Luke puts down his weapon. The Emperor has tempted Luke to violence and hatred because of a 'good cause'. The Emperor tries to lure Luke back into the patriarchal violence of outer control instead of the inner struggle of transformation. He tries to lure Luke away from Yoda's message that "a Jedi uses force for knowledge and defense-never attack." He tempts Luke to create patriarchal pain for the good of his community.

Instead of defending himself in righteous struggle, Luke tells the Emperor that he refuses to fight. Luke tells the Emperor he will have to kill him first. Luke refuses to save himself by causing others pain. This is madness. It is also the mystery and strength of initiatory pain. The Emperor starts to destroy Luke in front of his father. Luke endures a great deal of pain, and is at the brink of physical death. His father seems unmoved because of his loyalty to the Emperor. Even when his own son pleads for help, he does not respond. Right in front of Darth Vader is pure witness to the powers of both light and dark. Luke is witnessing to the mystery of inner power and the humble acceptance of initiatory pain. The Emperor is witness to the prideful illusion of exterior control, and the destruction it causes. One is causing death, the other is humbly accepting death. Both face their fate on the Death Star.

Somehow Darth's heart is moved. He suddenly picks up the Emperor and throws him into an abyss. Darth then turns back into Aneken, his original Jedi name. He tells Luke, while dying, that Luke has already saved him by his witness. He has seen the power and rightness of Luke's witness, and he could die as a man again, not an unemotional machine. Darth remembers the forgotten truths of the Jedi warrior. He takes off his helmet, which symbolizes the artificial life of his narcissism, to see his son with human eyes. He is again a Jedi. Then he dies.

Luke has not only saved his integrity through his voluntary suffering, he has saved someone he loves very deeply. Soul has spoken to soul. Transformation has led to transformation. Compassion has led to healing. That is the mystery of initiatory pain.

The Wounded Healer

Initiatory pain can turn into compassionate pain. Initiatory pain has other lessons to teach. One of the most powerful and instructive archetypes in the human psyche is the wounded healer. The message of the wounded healer is that the power and wisdom to heal another resides in the conscious experience of the healer's wound. There are many lessons to learn in willfully enduring existential pain, which includes the pain of initiation. Often out of this woundedness comes the call. Compassion can connect a man in a meaningful way to all other men suffering from the same feelings of abandonment or engulfment or isolation or the ever present depression. This connection is what happens in group when men share their pain and feel the relief of feeling understood. Often out of a man's particular pain comes an intuition that as the pain heals the passion to help others with the same pain seems to well up. It may be no coincidence that the word passion means both suffering and intense desire.

Also out of woundedness and healing comes an understanding of the healing process for that wound. In other words, the talent for the healing comes through the pain of healing. This sense of diagnosis and treatment so to speak is also the lesson of the healed wound.

With passion and talent often comes the fated opportunity to use that healing power. Purpose follows from the pain. Mission evolves from misery. This is the wonder of the wounded healer. Pain can make us or break us. We can transform it as a wounded healer, hold it in a neurotic embrace, or just pass the pain on to someone else. Only the first choice liberates both a man and his community.

Tim

Tim came to counseling because of work as well as relationship problems. He also had a nervous condition called obsessive compulsive disorder, that caused him a great deal of discomfort. As explained by Tim, this condition was somewhat controlled by medication, but still gave him chronic anxiety and a great deal of pain when in the midst of a compulsion.

Tim came to my men's group for a number of years to struggle with the initiatory work that he needed to do to find peace in his life as well as in his marriage. One of the first things Tim had to do was deal with his father wound which caused much of his work and relationship problems. Tim's father was alcoholic and abusive, but very successful. Jim felt he never measured up to an abusive father's demands.

As happens more often than not, Tim was assigned to a boss who was demanding and abusive. Paradoxically, Tim was in personnel work, and he had his own personnel problem he could go to nobody about. The universe was forcing initiation on Tim through dealing with his father wound. He struggled for a year with the anxiety of trying to please his boss, while keeping the peace and his job. He alternated between depression at feeling powerless and anger at his treatment. The boy in Tim felt like he was back home with a critical, unsupportive, punitive father. The boy felt just as powerless in his job as he felt 30 years before.

OCD often leads to a great deal of obsessive guilt. Tim had a powerful, arguably genetic, anxiety disease on top of his Vader voice. He would often feel powerless in the periodic grip of obsessive guilt about not being an obedient son or not working good enough and deserving such abusive treatment.

Tim had to start being a second father to the boy inside. He also had to let the other men in the group father him. Eventually Tim started to take more and more risks by setting boundaries, risking anger and separation. He started to confront his own negative father voice and the negative voice in his boss. He was also able to develop a second father voice inside, one that was supportive and motivating. The group supported him in helping to discern what were healthy, effective boundaries. As he set boundaries he got stronger, which enabled him to confront his boss more and more in appropriate ways.

Finally the boundary-setting got him fired. Tim knew this was a possibility. He had been willing to face his anxiety in setting boundaries, and he knew the possible consequences. As I've said, immature people do not understand healthy boundaries and often take them as threats to relationship or power. Tim's boss was immature and narcissistic. To his boss, Tim was a threat.

Tim was out of work. He was anxious. His OCD symptoms increased. His wife Beatrice was frantic. She was alternately depressed and angry. He suddenly found himself in the middle of his ordeal. He had just been expelled from the patriarchy. He was alone, without a job to give him safety and identity. He was alone, though together, in his marriage. He still had the incessant pain of his anxiety problem.

This is where many men turn back. The whole thing gets too confusing and unbearably lonely. There seems no rest or solace, or hope of it. He was tempted to find another patriarchal job, where he could find a decent salary for himself and security for Beatrice. He would also have a place again in the patriarchy. However he was determined, in spite of his nervous condition, to not regress. He had done a lot of separation work in group already. He also had the group support.

Tim was able to hold out for a year, even though he had to risk again by borrowing on his future security. He used some of his assets to get him through the year. Beatrice could not understand.

One day, as his patience and resources were running very thin, he saw an advertisement for a director of a small consumer group that served people with mental illness. This wasa group that was totally staffed by people with mental illness. Jim knew that this was something he not only could do, but desired to do. There was no status, in fact rather negative status. The money was barely adequate.

Yet Tim felt a real connection to this work. He had a background in administration and personnel work. But more importantly, he had a lifetime of struggle with his own anxiety problem and his own shame about it. He understood this work from the inside out. His own pain was his teacher. His talents and experience were uniquely suited to the job. If he had not gone through his ordeal he would have been in a dead-end job, serving the patriarchy that abused him. Instead, his pain led him to his calling.

Tim is now in a job that gives him a great deal of satisfaction and peace. He also is doing a fine service to both his fellow mental health consumers and the larger community. He still suffers from anxiety. But it is surrounded by a deeper peace.

All chapters of Toward Manhood are archived.

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