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Chapter 14 - Humility

Last chapter I talked about death, loss and depression. I talked about the other side, outside the village. The place beyond the village boundaries, the wilderness of the ancients, was a mysterious, terrifying place. The boy had to grow up a great deal even in taking those first few steps into the wilderness. He had to have great trust in his elders and great faith in the ultimate benevolence of the universe. He had to go the greatest part alone and with no clear direction. He had to face death, a symbol for risking everything. When he stepped into the world of men he left the childish boy behind.

Hubris

When stepping into the wilderness, there was another form of death that the boy had to face. This death involved suffering humiliation, by voluntarily allowing himself to be humbled. This suffering had to do with the death of pride and the loss of supremacy of one's own will. It had to do with the swagger of the young adolescent and the arrogance of modern man. It had to do with the dark side of the ego.

The Greeks had a name for this pride, they called it hubris. They understood that if a man fell prey to hubris he would start acting like a god, thinking himself perfect and powerful. The man with hubris would start to feel above the rules of mere mortals. He would rise up instead of going down, becoming a legend in his own mind. The man with hubris would feel no responsibility to anyone higher than himself. He would reside in the heights, not the depths, safe from pain and the compassion that pain engenders. He would be cool. He would be a narcissist.

The Greeks also understood that uncontrolled violence and passion could come from hubris. The man with hubris would be an arrogant ronin, charming but often cruel. This man would be a threat to the web of community, including gods and men.

The Greeks believed that any man acting with hubris would eventually draw the jealousy of the real gods, and dire consequences would follow. Nemesis, the goddess of righteous anger, would eventually strike down that man in the name of all the gods, for no mortal had the right to act like a god. The Greeks understood that a man needed to be humble in the presence of gods, instead of trying to usurp their power. They understood that the more a man made himself his own god the more destructive he would be to himself and the community. The man of pride needed aidos, the Greek word for reverence. He also needed humility.

Humility involves losing our pride, our hubris. It involves reverencing and submitting our egos to something greater and more wise. It involves losing adolescent fantasies in favor of manly dreams. Whenever I hear a man talking about being "the best", I am concerned. This is often the adolescent talking, trying to be competitive as a way of bolstering self esteem. His sense of self comes from beating someone rather than being someone. He is full of the pride that the adolescent assumes is manly. He is the adolescent, fallen prey to the Vader voice, who refuses initiation.

Ego

This is a time to talk more about the ego. For this is the time in a man's journey when his relationship to ego needs to transform. Here, again, is the need for change and the loss that change entails. This is the time when the ego wants to go one way while the initiate must go another.

I mentioned ego in previous chapters when I talked of the ego in relation to warrior energy and the father. The time of the father is the time of emerging ego. The wise father both bolsters his son's ego by knowing when to let his son borrow his own ego strength. At this time in a boy's life his self-esteem has its foundation in ego functioning. This is a time when making a mark in the marketplace is good for the man and the community. This is the time of ascent into life, where success is an asset and it is alright for assets to measure success.

I also talked of an ego injury when the ego confronts the unconscious. This is the beginning of the adolescent's initiation and the genesis of the older boy's necessary new stance towards his ego. This is the time of father separation, where the wilderness rather than the marketplace is the teacher. Depression is a consequence of a humbled and wounded ego. Ego injury is then the start of the humiliation that leads to manhood.

But what is this ego that needs to be humbled, that needs to experience a death? In lay vocabulary the ego is often interchangeably used with the word self. The self in 'selfish' or 'self-centered' is often understood to be the same as the ego in 'egotistical' and 'egocentric'. This interchangeability of self and ego in lay vocabulary leads to confusion. For example, is self-love good or bad. Does it relate to self-esteem or selfishness? What is self control? Should we control the self? Why would it need controlling? Is becoming selfless a virtue or psychic suicide? What is a healthy ego? Is it good to have a strong ego? To be egotistical seems bad, but looking out for number one seems good. Is it good to act like one has no ego?

For purposes of this discussion I will use ego to mean our conscious will and conscious motivations. The ego in psychological terms is that part of our psyche that we consciously have control over. It is the 'I' we think of when we make a decision or act on one. The ego really begins to exercise its strength in adolescence. It is the ego that starts to build a unique persona. It is the ego which starts to act more independently, after borrowing strength from the good father. It is the ego that starts to build a history of choices that makes us a distinct personality.

Ego strength has a lot to do with warrior energy. It has a lot to do with getting things done and keeping to one's goals. We need ego strength to struggle against regressive addictions, to stop acting on irrational moods of rage and blame, and to fight the tendency to give up because of pain. The ego makes the choice to set boundaries and then sets them.

Just as importantly the ego allows us to separate from the unconscious world of the mother complex in order to make more conscious decisions. The ego has as much to do with the eyes as the will. It needs to see and gather information of the reality beyond the mother's world. Where the dark mother tries to blind, the healthy ego looks to other possibilities.

The ego, like the healthy adolescent, is an important part of us that we will need our entire lives. However, like the unguided adolescent, the ego can make choices that ignore everything but its own regressive needs. Unless it is fathered and eldered well, the ego can be preoccupied only with pleasure or power. This ego can be easily manipulated by the dark patriarchy and become stuck in that darkness. The dark side of the ego then gives birth to a dark pride.

Indigenous peoples, like the Greeks, knew that a man with an unhumbled ego was a dangerous man. He would start acting like an autonomous, renegade god rather than submitting to the harmony of the world and the community. This is why these people submitted their young adolescents to initiation so early. Otherwise there could be chaos and destruction in the village, as the egos of their young men might submit to nothing besides their own desires.

When I talked in the last chapter of the death of the ego I was talking of the movement of the initiate into a space where he is not in control, and his ego is frustrated. During initiation his ego needs for pleasure and his ego needs for status and power are ignored. The adolescent, by moving into the wilderness and away from the marketplace, is forced to assume a very lowly position. He loses any semblance of a strong persona. Lacking the status and power that the marketplace uses to give identity and direction, he is lost and powerless. He has no clothes signifying power or rank. He is a nobody, unnoticed by the rest of the village. The elder has purposely put the boy in a space where he is ritually humiliated. He has done this to teach him humility.

Indigenous peoples saw this humiliating experience as essential to a man's growth. They saw that the ego needs to be put in its rightful place before the man can emerge. Notice that the ego is not meant to be destroyed or seriously wounded. It is only taken out of the center of the personality. The ego is no longer an independent warrior, but is being readied to find a king.

In psychology we call the over-identification with one's ego a form of narcissism. A narcissist is the stuck boy who only worries about his pleasures and his manly image. He is really weak from his father wound. His only answer to the feeling of weakness is to work on a persona of strength. He is obsessed with ego needs only because his ego has all it can do to keep his image together.

When a man feels a blow to his ego, we call this a narcissistic injury. This is a boy injury. An uninitiated man will always feel a narcissistic injury as a dark humiliation. His pride will be hurt. His ego will feel naked and weak as his persona is punctured. Like a wounded animal, this is the time he is most dangerous. For example, a man may not get the promotion he thinks he deserves and has worked for. Or his children do not treat him with respect, not listening to his warnings or advice. His wife or lover might make comments that point to his addictions or weaknesses. His wife or lover may question his job or his career direction or his work addiction. Maybe, like Rodney Dangerfield, he will feel he gets no respect at all from loved ones.

An uninitiated man will see these injuries as humiliation only and as a tragic defeat. He will often react with rage or neurotic depression, his ego out of control. When all a man has is his boy ego protected by a fragile persona, a narcissistic injury feels fatal. The boy ego is still in need of protection, especially by wise fathers. The narcissistic man has unprotected wounds. A narcissistic injury is only another painful reminder of another defeat.

Ritual and Humility

In ancient initiation, a boy is purposely and ritually humiliated. His healthy adolescent boisterousness and cockiness is confronted. He is shown that the world does not revolve around his pleasure needs, as in the maternal world, or his power needs as in the paternal world. He is shown that his true power and identity resides beyond his own ego control and needs. His natural ego development is pushed to the next level.

The humiliation can take many forms. In one form, the boy's clothes are taken away and he is forced to go around naked. His lack of status is emphasized by having nothing to hang stripes and medals and a power tie on. Clothes symbolize our social role. As is said, "clothes make the man." Clothes communicate our persona. By going around naked the boy is forced to be only himself without pretense and without pride and without persona. He is stripped to the essentials. He doesn't have a preconceived role in this land outside the village.

Men in counseling often dream of finding themselves naked in an unusual situation, feeling embarrassed and humiliated. This type of dream can be a form of elder warning, telling a man he needs more humility and less ego. This dream can also tell him he is deeper within an initiatory experience in his life. It is a benevolent warning from the elder within that he is on the threshold of inner transformation and needs to pay attention. He needs to get his ego out of the way.

Another form of initiatory humiliation involved the boy being forced to submit to a painful ritual. This rite taught the boy humility, as well as the proper place of pain in his life. Even today, in one tribe, the boy is told to look up while the elder takes a hammer and chisel and suddenly knocks out a tooth. Later whenever a man feels the hole in that part of his mouth he is reminded of his new role and the humility he needs to fulfill it.

In many tribes, the boy is subjected to ritual circumcision. We all, I'm sure, can identify with that pain! The elders' circumcision of the boy symbolizes the submission of the boy's ego needs and sacred life force to a higher power. It also communicates to the boy the new sacredness of his sexuality beyond the pleasure principle.

(I do not mean to advocate circumcision today by using this example. Our circumcision, outside of a religious context, is really a dark, senseless form of genital mutilation. It has little medical or social rationale behind it. The ritual circumcision of the Jewish faith, if seen in its symbolic aspects, certainly has its merit when done as a conscious form of initiation into their faith. However, even some Jewish leaders question how thorough a circumcision needs to be done to satisfy the ritual.)

Submission to the elders by accepting these indignities brought a boy to the threshold of the new experiences and new learning that will make him a man. Submission precedes mission, as Michael Meade reminds us. Here the adolescent submits to the elder. Here the ego submits to the wisdom of the soul. Humility teaches us to submit.

Dark Humiliation

The problem with the egotistical older boy, and the narcissistic man, is that he has not been ritually humiliated by an elder. In other words, he has not consciously been taught the meaning and importance of submitting to humiliation. He has not learned the power in his humility. He has not learned that humility is a most important part of his journey toward manhood. He has been let down by the older men in his culture.

We all have an archetypal need to be humbled by a wise elder. The archetypal need endures whether it is satisfied or not. Men constantly, yet unconsciously, look to satisfy this need. In the wrong hands this need can be a form of humiliation. It can become an inhuman, demeaning experience that creates a man who demeans and humiliates others. The modern patriarchy is based on this type of dark, negative humiliation. This patriarchy can only function by replicating itself through humiliation and its subsequent shame. Shit flows downhill.

We are mostly a culture of dark elders who have come up through the ranks, believing in the inherent motivation of shame. This cultural system is able to function only through the work of humiliated drones out to prove themselves as men by humiliating others. Our culture is based on winners and losers, on dark competition, on domination and dark humiliation. From being 'a dying cockroach' in boot camps, to being demeaned as the low man on the corporate totem pole, the idea is taught that the only good place is to be on top, while 'nice guys finish last'. The place of pride is always to be first. Even a man or a team that is a close second is a sorry loser, witness the Buffalo Bills. The system works on the motivation not to lose, not to suffer another humiliation.

The need to be humbled by an older man is hardwired in every man. If a boy's father is weak or absent he will unconsciously look for someone else to submit to. If there are no genuine elders around, he will look to any man who takes an interest and promises him manhood. This could take the form of the military, a gang, a political party, a corporation, a religion or cult. It always amazes me how strongly some men can feel bonded to an institution like the army or a corporation. Because of hardwired need and dark eldering there is a short distance between corporation and cult. The cult is just a starker example of manipulated loyalty through dark humiliation.

In today's marketplace, the corporation can quickly become corpocentric and lose its sense of the common good. The bottom line is measured in dollars and cents, not in the sense of the community. Most patriarchal institutions will use a man's need for ritual humiliation to force his loyalty. If I can humiliate I am in control. If I am in control, the ego rules.

Consider the humiliation that medical students go through in residency. There are long hours, little pay, harassment by older doctors, all in the name of professionalism. No wonder doctors are then seen as arrogant toward others, and rarely admit to mistakes. Witness the hazing in many fraternities, the empty ritual of humiliation that creates the leaders of tomorrow. Witness the humiliation of boot camp, often an empty initiation into the art of humiliating and intimidating others.

When a boy is initiated by an uninitiated man, he is humiliated for no higher purpose. He then unconsciously takes on the negative values of his initiator. I have often talked to men who come to an embarrassing conclusion that they tend to act under stress just like the father that humiliated them.

One of the greatest obstacles to a man seeking help from an elder, including counselor elders, is the feeling that he will go through another dark humiliation and be shamed. Coupled with this fear is the lack of respect for an elder who has relatively little social status. This situation is one of the most vivid tragedies of an elderless culture. The doorway to manhood is seen as a dead-end. The older man, like Yoda, is first seen as irrelevant and powerless. A man is taught to submit only to those who have more power in the patriarchy. He is used to this type of humiliation. He is willing to go through the shame only because he is promised patriarchal power. Submitting to a man with little patriarchal power is seen as ludicrous. The counselor, or other wise elder, is considered the janitor in the basement, while a man looks for manhood in the executive suites.

Stilling the Warrior

An uninitiated man will usually react to a narcissistic injury, a humbling experience, with rage. As in depression, rage then becomes an obstacle to the initiatory humiliation that makes a man. If it takes humility to cross the threshold of initiation, pride scoffs at the whole process. Fr. Richard Rohr talks about one measure of a mature man being the few times he takes offense. In the face of a humbling situation, an uninitiated man will rage, thinking he is righteous and manly. Rage becomes the anesthetic that takes away the pain of perceived humiliation.

If a man can learn to contain his anger and use it, he is well on his way to maturity. Rage is like a nuclear bomb, uncontrolled and extremely destructive. Contained anger is like a nuclear power plant, focused and powerful. Anger, as opposed to rage, is a natural, self-defensive reaction. It is most often the fuel that energizes boundaries. Anger can be looked on as a sign the warrior is around, and may be needed. Anger sets boundaries. Rage gets even.

The warrior will arise whenever a man is confronted with his ego failings. The warrior has spent the first part of a man's life protecting his ego, allowing it to strengthen and grow. The warrior has identified with the ego, almost fathering it. The warrior has given his energy to protect a boy from any attack that would seriously injure his ego, and his self-esteem. This relationship is very similar to the boy's need for father protection and support as he grows up and strengthens.

The warrior has been around a lot longer that we realize. He has protected us, or tried to protect us, from perceived dangers since we were born. His energy has created our psychological defenses, protecting us from being emotionally crippled by abusive people or overwhelming life circumstance. I talked of the mother protecting the infant from overwhelming pain as a crucial growth issue. The warrior has provided a similar defense from the inside. He has been like a safety net when our outside guardians couldn't do that job. Like a fuse in an electrical system, he has kept us from being burnt out by our emotional reactions to perceived or real emotional or physical dangers.

When we were younger boys, we lived in an ideal world where we couldn't yet handle adult situations. We needed to feel loved and protected and guided. We needed to feel safe. We also needed to feel good about ourselves in order to have hope and motivation. Mothers and fathers, extended families and tribes in the past, were there to give us that feeling of goodness and motivation and confidence. If we were put into unprotected situations, when young and lacking ego strength, our ego felt deflated. Too much deflation too early, as in parent neglect, can lead to serious depression. This depression is not initiatory but destructive because the ego is not ready for the complexity or the intensity. This depression can have long-term, damaging effects. On one level or another, a boy could just give up trying.

One of the effects of being overwhelmed and depressed is the feeling of worthlessness that is called shame. Shame is the feeling of having done something wrong because one is defective at the core. It is the feeling of not being good enough to be accepted by anybody who counts. Shame is the feeling of the boy who is humiliated before he is ready. It is probably the most insidious feeling a man can have.

This is where the warrior in all of us steps in. The warrior tries heroically to protect our egos from these devastating feelings of worthlessness and shame and emptiness. When we are young the warrior does this by telling us we are better than others and that we are right most of the time. He tries to prop up our egos to make us feel good about ourselves. Internally he does the job of trying to keep us from not giving up. In the absence of good fathering, his is the only energy that keeps us from giving up totally. He is the only one to keep us from destructive, sometimes deadly, depression. We all owe a great debt to our internal warriors for this protective work over the years, work done when we were not aware enough or strong enough to adequately protect ourselves.

In a sense this warrior has saved our lives by doing what he does best. The problem is that this warrior, on automatic pilot, will continue to protect us even when we no longer need protection. If he stays in an unconscious place he will only keep a man in a narcissistic state, not letting the ego have time to react more wisely. He will come across as prideful in the process of protecting us. All injuries will be treated as lethal, leaving no room for initiatory wounds. A man will take offense often. The warrior, not under conscious control can be emotionally destructive and defensive for no adult reason.

The warrior will need to realize that his role has changed. He no longer needs to protect the ego, the prince so to speak, in the same way. With the conscious, wise help of the elder, he now must learn to protect the mature man, the king, in a different way. The mature energy of the king brings the warrior under conscious control, instead of his being a loyal, but amoral, ronin samurai.

Once a man has moved to the gateway to initiation he must learn a new way to deal with his warrior within. Moving toward the wilderness means moving away from the world of the ego. If the warrior has done his job well, the ego is strong and vibrant, no longer in need of constant protection. At this point a man must learn to temper the warrior's need to protect ego integrity. He must learn to still the warrior, when the warrior intuits an attack on the ego. Stilling the warrior means allowing a humbling situation or remark to filter into the psyche without getting automatically defensive. Stilling the warrior means containing the anger instead of blindly striking out. It means not automatically seeing every negative comment as an attack. Stilling the warrior quiets him, allowing for truthful self-reflection and wise action. Stilling the warrior frees him to set healthy boundaries, while restraining him from just getting even. Stilling the warrior allows the king/elder to asses the situation from a wiser place.

When I feel angry, brought on by a feeling of powerlessness or humiliation, I try to still the warrior, and reassure him that I no longer need him to protect me from those feelings. I tell him I'll be fine for now, but be ready. I especially know he is trying to protect me when I get feelings of competitiveness. These times come about when I find myself comparing myself to others to find ways I am better. Or when I find myself feeling oddly good about other people's misfortune. When I feel defensive, moving towards arrogance, I try to stop both him and me. I honor him for all the times in the present and the past he has warned me of ego danger. I then tell him I no longer need that kind of protection. I no longer need to feel better than or more powerful than other men. I try not to berate myself for having these competitive feelings. For in berating myself I berate my warrior who is just doing his job.

I also still the warrior when I start to feel angry. The anger is my warrior's way of saying that boundaries have probably been violated. Someone is possibly trying to take advantage of me or those I love. Stilling the warrior means stopping. It means asking myself from a position of strength from an elder's viewpoint why I am angry. Is the anger justified, or is the warrior protecting me from a humbling time I must go through? Is there truth in what the other is saying? Is there justice in how the other is treating me? Is this a dark humiliation or an initiatory humbling? The warrior will always feel anger in protecting the ego. The anger is part of the adrenaline rush of battle position. But anger is not always a sign of the need for protection.

Stilling the warrior as a habit gives one the time to measure the seeming boundary violation. Then the warrior can be used in a measured response. I have found that stilling the warrior, while honoring his natural inclination to protect the ego, is part of turning humiliation to humility. Stilling the warrior, while honoring him at the same time, is a necessary discipline to bring a man to the edge of the wilderness, to the place beyond his ego, beyond his narcissism. There, instead of taking offense, he will be on the offense, moving with a measured confidence towards the truth beyond his ego.

Humility And Counsel

When a man comes in for counseling I realize that this is one of the hardest things he has ever done. Often a man will make a remark to that effect. I tell him I recognize his courage which I genuinely honor. I then try to elder him by talking of how this first step of humility is the key to the answers he is seeking. And I tell him honestly, as in all initiations, that he is not submitting to me. He is submitting to something bigger than both of us.

In counseling I try to show men that feeling powerless is a normal part of growing. The object of growing is not winning or being perfect or being in control. Embracing error and humiliation is on the road to something much more satisfying. I also try to show him that the shame he feels is needless. There need be no shame attached to admitting confusion or making a mistake or feeling powerless. Shame is the result of a dark humiliation, the work of the dark father. Accepting powerlessness in the realm of the soul is a sign of wisdom.

In counseling I talk of healthy examples of submission and ritual humiliation. One of the most powerful examples is in the 12-step process. This process started through Alcoholics Anonymous. The AA movement has a lot of similarities to the initiatory process and is one of the healthiest and most vibrant parts of our culture. Scott Peck says, only half jokingly, that the most important function of most churches is to have AA meetings in their basements.

The first four steps of the 12-step process involve ritual submission to a higher power. Jung called this submission part of a spiritual cure. The alcoholic admits he is powerless in dealing with alcohol and vows to rely on a higher power to combat his disease. He forsakes his egocentrism, his prideful reply of being able to quit on his own at any time. He then humbly goes about the next steps, rigorously finding and admitting to previous errors and trying to make amends for them. He doesn't promise not to make mistakes again. He makes a good faith commitment to stick to the process of submission and humility. These are hard but very courageous steps.

Christianity, and the Abrahamic tradition, stresses ritual humiliation and the power of redeeming pain. Christ "emptied himself and took the form of a slave", not relying on a powerful persona to convert or intimidate. He "did not grasp at equality with God" as a form of narcissism and ego inflation. He talked of the "humbled being exalted", walking that talk. He suffered the overwhelming humiliation of the crucifixion. He accepted death as the gateway to transformation. He said "not my will but thine be done", humbling himself before the God of the wilderness. He pointed to the spiritual answers to our problems and asked all people to follow him in that humble spiritual journey.

The prophets before the time of Christ were continually called by God to humble the kings of the Jews, many of whom suffered periodically from hubris. They did this at considerable risk to themselves. To most, the risk was so considerable that, like Jonah, they ran the other way. Yahweh had to humble them first before they learned to humble kings.

Vader and Humiliation

In the Star Wars myth, Darth Vader tries to initiate Luke to the dark side by humiliating him. Luke's ritual wound, the cutting off of his right hand, came after he would not submit to the dark power. Darth desperately wanted Luke to become angry and cynical through this wounding. He wanted him to rage. He also wanted to trigger Luke's hardwired need to submit to an older, stronger man.

Back to the promontory, the heart of Luke's test of father separation: Darth tells Luke he is his father. Luke is devastated. He had idolized his father. His father was the motivation for his life. Luke suddenly suffers a life shattering betrayal. It would be so easy to submit to the man who has humiliated him, the man who seems so crucial to his initiation. He still loves and honors his father. And his father is asking him to join him in ruling the galaxy as father and son. Luke could do much good as ruler if he submitted to his patriarchal father. As Darth says, "Your destiny lies with me."

Luke is in the grips of a strong temptation to egocentrism and power and misguided loyalty. Darth tells Luke he can "end the destructive conflict and restore order." This seems certainly a good end, even though the means are questionable. He need only submit to his father's lead, to the dark humiliation, for stability to return, especially the stability of the marketplace. How many cultures have sold their soul for the sake of supposed safety and stability and marketplace gain. There is such a parallel here to Christ's temptations in the desert. Power and pleasure would be given in return for loyalty to a dark force. And the power could be used for supposedly good ends.

Obi Wan had previously warned Luke that this high road of dark submission and uncontrolled anger was the road of hate "that leads to the dark side." Yet Luke was hurt and angry. He was angry at Obi Wan for not telling him about his father. He was angry at Vader for his devastating humiliation. He was angry and miserable and ready to take his anger out on someone. Vader had him where he wanted him. The combination of filial loyalty and humiliation seemed to be working. Anger was turning Luke. Separation from father meant only death. Submission meant survival for both Luke and his friends.

How many men, in Luke's position, have felt their only choice was to submit to a system or a boss that they couldn't believe in? Maybe they thought they could right the wrongs later, when they achieved more power. Maybe they felt they had no choice because of their need to provide for and protect their families. In any case, they felt it best to submit to the dark patriarchy, feeling they "couldn't fight the system." How many then took their anger out on subordinates in frustration and self-contempt? How many more men succumbed to a numbing, devastating depression? In many ways this dark submission is at the heart of most male depression.

It is not good or appropriate to judge these men, for they are us. We are all struggling with these depressing choices. We have all made choices we are ashamed of, or had to live with choices that depress us. Like Luke, we have been confronted with great pressure to submit to a dark patriarchy that we may not believe in. Our egos have been sorely tempted. The up side seems so ego satisfying, the down side too intimidating or too humbling.

Luke does courageously separate. By patriarchal standards he becomes a fool. He gives up everything that is important in the father's world. By the standards of the Jedi warrior, he has started the final stages of his initiation. He has contained his anger. He has submitted to the death that Obi Wan and Yoda had taught him about. He plummets down in to the abyss, out of control and out of answers. He moves to certain death. He risks everything for a higher purpose that he has only heard about from his elders.

Beyond the Ego

The power of initiation is to submit to something beyond the ego and the patriarchy. In the initiatory process the egocentric man dies and is replaced by the humble, self aware man. This emerging man is humbled before new realizations and a wisdom beyond his ego. He doesn't need to pretend anymore that he is important and manly. He doesn't need the respect of the marketplace or marketplace success. He finds that making mistakes is part of the lessons of manhood. This man has taught his adolescent to have reverence for powers beyond himself and his friends. He is humble enough, now, to learn and take up a different kind of power. He is ready for the heart of his ordeal.

I am reminded of a poem by Kodo, a Zen monk:

Serving the Shogun in the capital
stained by worldly dust, I found no peace.
Now, straw hat pulled down, I follow the river:
how fresh the sight of gulls across the sand!

All chapters of Toward Manhood are archived.

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