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February, 2009

Dark Voids and Black Holes

The initiatory journey inevitably leads to the Void. Emotional and spiritual growth and transformation always leads to the Void. The Void is the deepest part of the ordeal of initiation (See Toward Manhood), when loss and separation are acknowledged and consciously grieved, and there is little left of a man's former life culture. This is the time when all that has been held dear is questioned. This is the time when all the sign posts that have provided direction have been obliterated. This is the time when one's intuitive compass just spins round and round (and not on the North Pole).

There is no getting around the Void on a man's psychospiritual path. The darkness will surround, as surely as night falls every 24 hours. To the unguided man, unfamiliar with elders and their teaching, the Void is a terrible discomfort to flee or a sign of ultimate defeat for his ego. Either way he loses his path, the only path to his manhood. Either way he gives up.

To the eldered man there is still terror. Voids tend to do that even to the most courageous. For the Void demands a complete loss of control. The Void forces a man to give up predictability in his life. The Void tests the same faith it has deeply undermined. The Void confronts with paradox and cajoles with mystery. An elder helps a man contain his terror as a spiritual warrior, just as a soldier/warrior contains his terror as he goes into war.

A man needs warrior energy to enter the Void. Once in the Void he must respectfully put the warrior aside to wait and listen. Inside he will feel more alone than in any other part of his life. He will experience more loneliness than he can remember. He will feel powerless in the world's definition of power. He can't pull any strings because there are no strings to pull. He would run in a nanosecond if the elder in his life, either the elder within or more often the elder in this world, did not warn and support him. He would run if the elder did not say this whole ordeal was necessary.

The elder knows that the Void is really a dark tunnel. As the eyes get accustomed to the darkness there comes a faint glimmer of light out there, a glimmer that seems to come and go. Sometimes this feels just like imagination or, even worse, hallucination. Yet moving toward the light seems the only way...

This scenario is the ideal, though exhausting, way of psychospiritual initiation. As President Obama said, it is putting aside childish things to become a man.

However, in our culture there is often a big glitch that can seriously undermine this process. That glitch is a result of trauma. Emotional trauma is caused by feeling overwhelmed by a stressful or even dangerous situation without the psychological resources to handle that situation. This lack of emotional resources happens most often in childhood; but also in adult life in physical disaster, and in war. Trauma does not have to be one big incident. Trauma can build from many less stressful but regularly occurring incidents of fear and lack of safety. For example, the father wound talked about in the men's movement can be a traumatic wound. Continued feelings, especially of an older boy, of being lost in the marketplace of school or the street with no father to show the ropes can be quite traumatic. Continual criticism by a present but angry father can do the same. Beatings by an alcoholic father can cause more obvious trauma. A boy takes on the projected feelings of his father in these situations with little inner resources to combat the absorption of such negativity.

This is where black holes come in. Post traumatic feelings and the resultant depression or anger mimic the Void. There is the terror. There is a profound sense of loneliness and powerlessness. The world also spins. No direction is clear. A profound numbness often seems the only refuge. The warrior is exhausted and doesn't know how to protect the boy.

If a man has experienced post traumatic emotional reactions, coming close to the Void feels too much like the Black Hole of trauma he has avoided his whole life. And trauma is a Black Hole. It sucks energy without giving anything back. It is darkness that only leads to more darkness. No wonder traumatized men, and we are mostly all traumatized by this culture, do not trust the goodness of the Void no matter what an elder says.

I believe there is good news and bad news here. The bad news is that the Black Hole needs to be entered and felt and healed with the help of an elder. The good news is that the Void is part of that healing. The Black Hole does not turn into the Void. But moving from the Black Hole with renewed warrior strength and deeper understanding of trauma makes entering the Void merely greatly fearful instead of unbearably terrifying!

Next month I will talk about Black Holes and how healing takes place.

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