It is 12 months since I first heard of the ManKind Project, and just over 10 months since I did the Adventure Weekend in England. I did the follow up Primary Integration Training (PIT) in Edinburgh in March 2012 and have participated in the Edinburgh MKP men’s Group every fortnight during 2012 except a couple of occasions when I was overseas. I’ll be returning to live in Melbourne this November with my wife.

What have I got from this process with MKP Scotland:

• Deep peace inside myself, knowing every day that I am a good man.
• Lasting freedom from the weight I used to feel regarding my father’s absence in my life, since his separation from my mother and his relocation to Asia in my teens.
• Unburdened myself from my futile struggle to fix other men including my father. Before, I blamed my father for not completing me and I felt it was my responsibility to fix the pain and problems he caused. Now, I have a feeling of completeness and wholeness, and I am released from blaming another man. My anger was given a sacred space during my Adventure weekend, now I feel peaceful towards my father.
• Experiencing the bliss of being surrounded by honourable, kind, courageous strong men, regularly.
• Being seen and honoured by men who celebrate me.
• Being able to drink deep from this spring of acceptance of me as a man, knowing that it is an infinite source which I can rely on.
• Ability to stop hiding behind modesty and fear and accept my greatness with lightness and enjoyment. I greatly enjoy leading igroups when my turn comes around.
• Experiencing my desire to lead as a gift not a burden.
• Given a series of public talks on a subject I am passionate about and on a mission about, after bursting through my fear at my PIT.
• Crystallising my mission in life. My mission is to create a world of energy and harmony by listening, learning, teaching and enlivening.
• Finding out what my shadow mission is – the part of me which denies, hides and suppresses, and seeks to do the same to others. Realising my shadow actually wants to make the world manifest its dark ways. Being able to name my shadow and to hold it where it is not in control of me.
• Absolute certainty that my new growth into healthy manhood will last the rest of my life, and that with the door open to iGroups for the rest of my life, this gold is mine to keep and enjoy and grow for the rest of my life.
• Before, I used to go to counselling occasionally when things got tough. Since I started participating regularly in an MKP iGroup, I have not felt any need to see a counsellor.
• In my life before my Adventure weekend, I could trust women but men were responsible for the worst things in the world and in my life. I could not trust men as a community, only individual men who were my close friends. Now, I have a whole community of men in my life who I deeply trust and I see men as inherently trustworthy and good.
• I have the opportunity to hold space for men to find their greatest gold, and I am held to find mine. I see that I can make a difference to men’s lives and in the way they live their lives as men.

I depart the UK in November 2012 with great gratitude to all men I have met in MKP in this country. I AM GRATEFUL FOR ALL OF YOU. I go to Australia with an open heart. I am ready to get to meet the Melbourne iGroup and to rock and roll in the Australian MKP community. With the backing of the awesome community of UK men I go to the next stage of my life, proud and happy to be a man amongst men. I WILL MISS YOU. I look forward to visiting the UK community next year and in future years.

D N

Since I did my weekend last summer at the Comb, I have got so much from MKP and from the men I have met through MKP. Through staffing myself for the first time, I wanted to help other men to have this same opportunity.

My mission starts that “I create a more conscious, loving and joyful world…..”. What better way to deliver this that than holding space for 30+ men being initiated into Manhood? From staffing in other organisations that I am involved with, I also knew that I would get some great insight into myself – and that certainly happened!

In the preparation conference call and emails in the run up to the weekend, so many feelings were expressed by other men – excitement, commitment, joy, service, fear and anxiety being a few. While I resonated with some, I felt no fear or anxiety – was there something wrong with me?! My lovely friend Azul often calls me naïve. I used to hate this and see it as a negative; yet I now realise that it’s me, it’s fine, it’s OK and it means I often don’t feel fearful when others do; actually it’s quite a relief!

The staffing had a wider significance for me. I have previously written about The Nobleman Workshop run by Celebration Of Being (search online for more information). It’s a beautifully complementary community and I set out with the dual intention of staffing and getting as many Noblemen involved in the Warrior weekend as I could. In the end four of us staffed and three men were initiated. Great for a first concerted effort in this direction. Working the other way, there were seven warriors involved in the recent Nobleman training, so cross-pollination has really started!

My journey up north started very well with a lovely catch up coffee with my Noble Warrior friend Ed, connecting with Nicolas at the station and then William on the train…. so the four of us had our own little community on the train!

What is truly amazing is that at 5 pm on Thursday, 40+ men, many of whom had never met each other, got together for the first time; and less than 24 hours later, the site was fully set up, everything was planned and we’d formed the most amazing container. This, I feel, was the most amazing part; 40+ men, 40+ egos, 40+ heads full of “my way” – yet, pretty much seamlessly, we worked like a perfectly developed living organism.

Any niggles or tensions were instantly cleared; people who f***ed up (me included) took responsibility, owned up and made amends – without anyone needing to be asked to do so! Yes! It was truly amazing – imagine if every company, government, school and other organisation in the world was run this way? How profound would that be?

And then the men arrived…and the adventure began. Many experienced staffers said they’d never seen a group quite like it. Ready and willing to work, taking responsibility and not being defensive.

I wasn’t in the least bit surprised by this. For me, 2012 is a real turning point; not the “end of the world” as some have prophesised, but a “tipping point” towards a world where more and more people want to be more conscious, are more and more prepared to take responsibility and grow up.

Every group I have seen this year or heard feedback on is the same. It is happening – slowly, person-by-person, we are becoming more conscious as a race. That is certainly worth celebrating!

So what did I learn about myself? I thought I was really reliable, always there; yet I realised that sometimes by shutting down (my childhood protection mechanism), I don’t show up, even when I am physically there. The “how” part of my mission starts with “by being true to myself” and I realised that I am so often not; doing things I don’t want, not stating my needs ….. and then resenting it.

For me such learnings make me so much more aware of myself; from that place, I can be more conscious, more loving, more joyful – and, yes, of course, that’s my mission!

And as well as hard work (which it was!), a great learning experience and a chance to be in service, the weekend was great fun too! My highlight was strumming in an impromptu band till 2 am on Sunday morning in the staff quarters – ending up with that wonderful Bill Withers song “Ain’t no Sunshine”. This is not something I’ve ever really done before; my serious sensible self was telling me to go to bed, and I usually would have listened. Yet my higher, more joyful self saw how much more this would feed me more than a bit more sleep. So thanks Nico, David and Sean for that!

I returned home shattered yet very fed and nourished. For a while, a young 20-year man old I know was curious about this “warrior stuff” I have talked about a lot, yet it was an inactive curiosity. Something in my energy after that weekend shifted him, and he’s signed up for December….. now that is real progress!

For me, every man who joins the ManKind Project community, every man who becomes a Nobleman, every woman who does her work; indeed for every person who says “I will take responsibility” we get closer and closer to how this world could be; more conscious, more caring, more loving….. no, not how the world could be, how the world is becoming…. And for me the circle was completed last night when a newly initiated man attended my iGroup – one of the 30+ men from the weekend who is helping the world become whatever we want it to be.

Andrew T

The Adventure weekend was indeed quite an experience for me, positively challenging in some ways, empowering in others, and generally a place to learn quite a few things about life and others. I don’t know if it was a milestone that will give me the power and courage to take life in my hands and decide and risk and do so many other things that I need to do, but it certainly gave me an insight into men’s struggles in general, and it gave me courage and the sense that I am not alone.

What have I personally gained by participating in the weekend? Overcoming my fear of meeting new people and of being amongst men. A better general understanding of myself, especially regarding the issues that are keeping me from living my life freely and more empowered. Realising that, while I can seek advice and insight from other people, in the end the duty and responsibility of making a choice belongs to me. Acknowledging that I cannot undo the past, my background, but I can own the shadow and use it in a positive and motivating way. Striving to discover a mission, a purpose for my life, and a way to live in integrity regarding it, rather than in denial and evasion.

Two aspects have especially touched me over the weekend. First, the courage and determination of so many participants in knowing and also sharing themselves so as to develop themselves to be better men who live in accordance with their expectations and dreams. Second, the dedication of the staff who were facilitating the whole weekend in service for us. They were an inspiration for me through their knowledge of humanity in general, their strength of character and integrity. My sincere thanks and deep appreciation goes towards all the men who have staffed the September weekend! I am truly grateful for their effort and dedication!

Especially, at the end of the Adventure, on Sunday afternoon, there was the good-bye ceremony which involved all the members of staff and weekend participants. As we were doing this, I noticed so much kindness, encouragement and love in men’s eyes, and many of them had tears in their eyes. Their images, their faces, have deeply touched me, and for some reason this saddens me (perhaps realising once again, both the greatness and transience of human beings).

To conclude, there aren’t many environments nowadays in which men are encouraged to communicate and share deep and profound experiences, to be true to themselves, to discover themselves, to show their emotions and to strive to live in integrity. I think ManKind Project’s relevance resides precisely in encouraging this work and offering this space for men.

Best wishes,

Alex M

For all that my personal life could have been better: lurching from woman to woman,  not in touch with my children in the way I wanted to be. I was still looking for something, and I readily accepted the invitation / opportunity / challenge to attend what was then called the New Warrior Training Adventure.

I’m not going to spell out what happened because I know that a key reason why the weekend was so significant for me was because I didn’t know what to expect. That meant I was thrown into the experience in a way that, for instance, therapy can’t do; therapy is talking about an experience, maybe even feeling the experience a bit, but it’s not “experiencing the experience” as it happens in a safe place where you can learn from what’s going on in the moment.

At an MKP weekend you do indeed experience the experience, and it therefore has huge potential for really making a difference, as it did for me, because I faced up to stuff in a way I could avoid in other situations such as a training programme. I also couldn’t drink myself to sleep each evening, or lose myself in the television, or find a woman to flirt with or shag.

I felt lighter after the weekend; I did some growing up. One description of the Adventure (as it’s now called) is that it is an initiation, and that’s an image that works for me because, although I was chronologically and physiologically a man, I had never stepped into manhood. I was a soft male (not least because of the particular effect feminism and some strong women had had on me) and MKP gave me the opportunity to grasp my maleness and be proud of who I was as a man.

The Adventure can shift a lot of stuff, but it isn’t a complete fix and some men who does the Adventure fall by the wayside even though MKP offers the opportunity to continue the journey with other men who have experienced the experience.

There is a follow-up training that offers invaluable tools for being an authentic man; there is further training to learn how to staff an Adventure, training in leadership, and other opportunities to explore our shadows that can sneak up and disarm us. One of mine was a tendency to be really angry at minor matters (I’m an only child and I expect things to be done my way!) and I’d often be getting cross with people who were in the way (ticket clerks or call centre people who were just doing their jobs) or in ways that could put me at some risk (road rage or smart remarks to bigger men in pubs).

I’ve learnt not to do that now, though control remains an issue, and letting things be that need to be is something I’ve had to learn, with help from my current mission statement: “By letting go of attachment and control I embrace acceptance and authenticity with compassion.”

That still needs work, and another opportunity MKP offers is to be part of a group of men who meet maybe once a week (or a fortnight or a month) to support each other. It’s another place where, instead of just talking about stuff (though that can be valuable in a group that listens and responds appropriately) it’s possible to experience the experience and really engage with whatever’s going on. So if a man has an issue with his boss, or his wife or his child then we can get that person in the room (in the form of another member of the group role-playing); then we can help the man have a direct experience with real feelings that can support him when he really deals with the boss, wife or child.

Key to that is something we learn about separating data (what actually happened? get the facts right), judgements (what’s your judgement about what actually happened, not about what you think happened?) and feelings. So to go back to my earlier example about getting angry I know that for me it’s all too easy to get cross because things aren’t going my way, make a judgement from a place a feeling angry (bloody ticket clerk should know better) without getting anywhere near what actually happened (Sir, there is not a train from A to B even if that’s what you want). Turn that round and I have learnt about how to respond from a place of data rather than react from a place of feelings. And that in turn helps me be much more authentic.

So I’ve received a lot from my MKP experience. Is it perfect? No. Am I a fully authentic, balanced, whole man? No! But I have made a lot of progress and I now have tools and my group to support me in a way that wasn’t the case before. I have stepped into my manhood.

Oh, and I’m now in a stable married relationship now that works for me with a woman who has female power complementing my powerful man, just as I complement her. I have a better relationship with my children and, while I don’t see enough of them, good relationships with my five (!) grandchildren.

John Quill

Fortunately I decided to join three others going up North by car, as it allowed us to connect during the trip, to talk and to bring out our rich experiences of life and why we wanted to do the Adventure. That sharing established a good, friendly  connection, which  was very helpful during the entire weekend, as it felt like we were already closer brothers before getting there and that made in easier during difficult moments in the Comb – to stay there, anyway!

Arriving there late in the afternoon, it felt quite spooky, as we suddenly got to a place where we didn’t know what was going to happen…. kind of anticipating what was going to happen without knowing, felt weird. I felt very angry at myself for having signed up and just decided to keep a low profile – “survival mode”. I felt disempowered…

The tension eased off when we got started. The rest of the evening was spent with meeting other brothers, learning what the Adventure means and going into some exercises that changed our minds by creating trust and connection. The more the weekend unfolded, the more new connections were created through the exercises and events we experienced. 

Finding My Mission In Life

What a great way to give yourself sense and meaning in your life by formulating a mission statement that helps you actually start walking into that direction in your daily life. TheMissionstatement I found for myself was: “To dance enthusiastically every day through my life and to encourage others to come and dance with me!” 

Being where so many other hundreds of men had been before me, working on their issues of rejection, denial, abandonment, loss – you name it, it was there –  felt frightening at first, but seeing the happy faces after the experiences made it encouraging.

I would never have thought I’d find the courage to work on my issue of abandonment in such a deep way. Very skilled and emotionally intelligent people were leading the work that was going to liberate me into a new, encouraged and happy being, “free to pick up my bed and walk” as a free man. I had connected before with the leader of the weekend Ed,  and was so happy when he  came up to guide me through the process with kindness and care. Nobody else could have done it any better for me because of the trusting relationship we’d established before. Ed carefully lead me through a process of regaining my trust in men and people in general, made me do things I never would have imagined I would dare to do – and that sure felt like a new birth for me.

Going to the MKP Adventure Weekend was linked to my desire to get a real male initiation, something that never happened in my life, yet needed to happen for me to step into manhood in a conscious and responsible way.

I now find myself taking my promises and commitments to myself and others much more seriously, and that feels very manlike.

I’ve taken home:

1 A feeling of deep connectedness with like-minded men who want to change the world for the better, as well as a feeling that I am not alone with my issues: now I know there are men, who have their own issues, but who are willing to look at mine and to help me deal with them.

2 A feeling that the follow-up to this weekend was going to be great, as it turned out to be: continuing the training in other workshops offered regularly aroundLondonas soon as I feel ready to tackle the next step.

3 The possibility of joining an iGroup for a weekly meeting, where I can stand among men, share ritual, cleansing, share how I feel, deal with issues that are on-going or have come up in the week and need to be transformed as they block me from living freely and happily (I have done this in Putney and am quite happy about it).

4 Connecting with my brothers from the weekend as a reminder of what we have been experiencing together and also as a commitment to living a life where I trust myself and trust others to keep my/their word and live up to my/their commitments.

5 A new network of likeminded people that is enriching my life and that stretches far beyond the 80 brothers I met during the Adventure weekend, as the network stretches around the world into many countries.

I have come to heal myself and to find new warriors that would accompany me in this healing process. It only works when you get up and do it – and I know this and yet have to relearn this over and over again. Knowing that there are so many more opportunities to take that as far as I possibly can and am willing to, is a great feeling – like an open plain in front of me, ready to be walked into.  

Johannes G

I quickly learnt how things work behind the scenes. A kind of ordered chaos, everyone sort of knew what they needed to do, and those that didn’t quickly found out. The camaraderie was incredible, I felt fully alive, acknowledged, and renewed an enormous awe and respect for the work, the structures and the way the staff listened for each other’s greatness. I experienced teamwork, laughter, a shedding of the straightjacket of perfection. 80 men danced together to create magic.

Somehow the gods shined on us – we had time for a staff sweat lodge the first evening, and I returned to the comfort of the infinite darkness that I had experienced on my own initiation several months before.

I had emerged then as a viewer of my own life, sat at the very back of a cinema 50,000 light years deep, staring at a screen the size of the cosmos, disconnected from the emotional churn I had spent the previous 33 years of my life wading through, responding to, being had by. In its place was an eerie silence.

I was no longer afraid of being alive, as if some great noisy survival machine had switched off, and now the stillness was deafening, unnatural, almost terrifying. I remember ringing my staff support man and asking him if this was normal, is this right? He said – it sounds pretty good to me!

And with that I realised that even then, I was so used to the context of there being something wrong, something to fix, something to avoid, and protect against, that when it was no longer there, and just peace in its place, my internal dialogue had nothing to grind against, and my guts nothing to wrestle with. I so wanted this for every man and woman. True internal freedom and peace.

Over time, the doubts crept in, the inner voice found fault and judgement and conspired against this peace. Staffing was my way to revisit, renew this profound peak experience, and to support other men in the way I had been supported, unconditionally loved, forgiven and acknowledged. No small order for little me!

So it was an easy choice to say “yes” and staff. I found extraordinary joy in being of service. I wept during the visualisation on the Sunday. I connected to the innate humility, love and joy of men released from fear and their deep wounds. And it touched part of me that I now am not afraid to hide. Aho!

Benjamin D

At the final circle where the staff face the initiates I could not help be touched by each man that came by. I have never, ever felt that much love. I found myself smiling, even grinning, when certain men came by and I noticed that the connection was deeper with those I had personally made emotional contact with. That was an amazing sequence of seconds, perhaps a minute or two. Really, time flexed then.

I bless the men who staff these trainings. It moves me so much to now imagine your faces again. I feel the strength of the container and the power of individuals. I see the outpouring of love energy toward us, the trainees. And I see us turn into initiates. And the experience of the staff to understand what seem like mysterious processes to the unpractised. To be able to locate blocks and dislodge them. To be offered the chance you’ve been waiting for but were never ready to accept the challenge until now. And somehow many pieces of the puzzle suddenly come together and much of the dross leaves. And the path seems now confirmed when before the question was still being asked “what is my purpose?”

And for me the path is made up of strands. One strand has to do with teaching/mentoring. Another has to do with making. Another is a photographer. Suddenly I understand many things anew. Life seems more airy, lighter. The dark cloud is gone. There is a young energy inhabiting my body. I feel a huge responsibility to be, well, a necessity really. There isn’t much to the idea of Being.

It simply means showing up and knowing you’re showing up, and then allowing the heart to lead the body and the head. There is an intelligence in the heart. In one past paradigm it was called the “king of hearts”. It is the potential of noble emotional intelligence. It is the wild man.

I bless the staff.

James K

One of the reasons I decided that the time was right, was that I’d just become a father for the second time and I was all too aware of the issues I have carried for many years, which I desperately didn’t want my children to inherit.

The biggest thing I wanted to take from the weekend was not so much a cognitive, tangible shift, but a deeper and less conscious one, a shift that would help me to change the patterns of behaviour which no longer served me.

That truly happened for me. I have often sought validation and acceptance from the people around me, due to a lack of self confidence and self belief. MKP has given me the ability to take action, believe in myself and grow as man. My own work was just a part of the experience. Being witness to the bravery and camaraderie of the other men gave me a new insight and a greater belief in the brotherhood that exists between men.

The journey has only just begun for me as I have found myself armed with a new drive. I’ve already joined a fantastic iGroup and have completed my PIT. The next stage is to staff a weekend. I am looking forward to seeing it from the other side and supporting the brave and wonderful men that sign up for ManKind Project’s Adventure Training.

Dan

I want to take a moment here to honour these two men and many more like them who give up their time regularly to keep the NWTA-wheels rolling. It’s a great gift you give.

Also along for the ride was a man I hadn’t met before, with whom I had an inspiring conversation around the subject of family. Looking back now, I realise that the empathy with which this man spoke somehow planted the idea in my head for the first time that I was going to a place where I could be held, held safe. Previously, that seemed impossible. In my iGroup I always say “You and all the energies you bring are welcome in this circle of men tonight” – and I mostly believe it, but not then, at The Comb. At that time, I just didn’t feel welcome.

As a first time staffer, I’d never seen how a man can fully let go of his grief without running the risk of somehow disrupting the process with the initiates, and so my dark thoughts were that if I let go, I’d be swamped. The initiates must come first and there would be no time for me. And while other people felt welcome, people who could stay cheerful and positive for the greater good of the task we were gathering for, even if they were in mourning, that wouldn’t be true for me.

Because I was in mourning. It took me the whole journey to accept that – and the OK-ness of it.

In June last year I flew out to Cape Townfor three weeks to be with my Mom and brother. She died about half way through that time, which was great in a sense because I was able to stay on for the Celebration of her life. I’ll never forget it: there were lots of people, many with outlandish anecdotes about how she’d touched their lives. As a member of the Black Sash, she’d actively demonstrated against Apartheid in the bad old years.

Later she was member of a whole string of volunteer groups, some of which I’d known nothing about. She became something of an eco-warrior, a peace activist, a writer, a teacher, a Quaker. Eccentric and iron-willed, she had very clear ideas about right and wrong, and if something was wrong she was all about finding a way to change it. One story typifies this quality: I guess she was in her mid-sixties when she noticed that her favourite outdoor clothing shop, Cape Union Mart, had an advertising campaign that was unduly biased towards the young and hip; I think of pouty nubile models who normally wouldn’t be seen dead within a mile of a camping site. She duly marched into her local branch to discuss her “constructive criticism” with the management. The result?

We found a clipping from the Cape Times, an advertisement for this same shop featuring a black and white photo of a raggedy-assed pensioner with an unruly shock of grey hair sitting bow-legged on a park bench, looking for all the world like a hobo, except she has this smuggest of grins on her face. It says: Name: June H. Occupation: Peace worker. Favourite restaurant: so-and-so. Favourite clothing shop:CapeUnionMart. And then just: “Real clothing for real people.”

Much of this felt new to me. To my deepest regret, I realised that my Mom had been the realest person I’d known. It was almost as though it was only through death that I’d finally managed to connect with her warrior spirit or somehow even realise that she had one. How did I miss that? At 23, she’d hitchhiked alone right through South Africaand Botswana. She was 50 when she got stabbed while demonstrating for People Need Water, Not Weapons. Later — I think she was 69 – she suddenly announced to us that she was off on a backpacking trip toIndia. And at 75, she came to England to take a job looking after the elderly, rounding it off by taking herself off to the Edinburgh Festival for some culture.

Even on a shoestring budget, she always knew the things she wanted to get done and wouldn’t rest till she’d found a way.

I stood in awe of her integrity and single-mindedness and decided to dedicate my life to becoming a son worthy of such a role model. But in Cape Town I was on compassionate leave and the clock was ticking. Two days later, back home and standing outside my workplace, steeling myself to go in, I slammed the door on all that had happened and moved on.

Fast forward 10 months to MKP and my staffing at The Comb and I was still trying to get fully into the idea that the grief I’d shut out, the grief I could feel welling up again, had any place in what we were doing.

I was in conflict: on one side, it was dawning on me that I had both the right and the need to grieve. On the other: what was I thinking, bringing this weight in with me, when there was men’s work to be done? As a first time staffer, I guess I just hadn’t seen it modelled and didn’t get how grief this deep could be turned into a gift. And then a man pulled me aside and pointed out that there would be men coming who were experiencing a similar grief and, whether they knew it or not, were looking for someone to model a way of expressing it. The penny dropped, the light went ON!

I was still dazed, rushing round the kitchen like a headless chicken or losing my focus, but from that moment on I let go and started to enjoy myself. The patience, humour and support I felt from my team-mates in the kitchen and from every man, though not always spoken, was palpable. And … well, humbling.

And I’ve since remembered that being strong-willed has a shadow side. Not so, Ma? Actually, she’d be the first to admit it, bless her.

These are simple truths, I see that now. But what was it the fella once said about the journey from the head to the heart? It takes a little longer sometimes and that’s not always a bad thing.

Ben H

My first contact with the Mankind Project after signing up for the New Warrior Training Adventure last year was several pages of legal talk. I was asked to sign a consent form which looked to me like it freed all staff of any responsibility. This seemed to me to contradict the value of accountability emphasised on the organization’s webpage. However, I managed to dismiss this as a result ofUKliability law being out of control. With only the sparse information on the webpage and a comforting five minute talk with the enrolment coordinator, I paid my money and ventured into the unknown.

Why did I to this? What spoke to me was not the suggestion on the main web page that I may be alienated or confused, having “some vital part missing”. After the fact, I can see how this did apply to me to some extent. What I went for, however, was the idea of finding a personal mission so as to live a more wholesome and purposeful life. I was facing some important career decisions and questioned the ultimate purpose of my career. I also wanted more male comradeship of the deep emotional talk variety.

The way to Northumberland national park was a long one. Deep in the wild, on a cold December evening, I encountered a group of very grave staff men. “Not accountable, not caring – so what are these guys about?” I found myself thinking. But there I was. Then there was a door, and I was asked to step in only if I was prepared to be challenged. I said my only worry was not to be challenged enough. I still had the worry that this was mostly for people seriously astray and that it would mostly involve things I had already tried in other places.

I was challenged enough. Not the way I expected. Not physically so much, or socially, though there was that too, but challenged to take a deep look at myself. But not just to look, not just to see my hurts, my patterns, my shadows, but to find the strength to accept them and so to overcome them. This all happened through the weekend-long process the exact nature of which is a well-guarded secret, and so it should be.

The way my own adventure developed was probably rather typical. I started out rather judgmental, finding faults with the process and thinking how it could be improved. When I was first challenged to speak of my life, feelings around social isolation came out, perhaps since I recently moved and my social life was rather poor around this time. This was surface stuff, though, and the process soon led me deeper into profound feelings of unworthiness. With the gracious help of the many warm and forthright staff men, and through the excellent techniques they had mastered, I found a new and richer understanding of these deep and potentially disastrous feelings and, more importantly, ways to let them go, or at least push them out of my core self-identity.

The Adventure is partly supposed to be an initiation into manhood. Though I had thought about the lack of such male rites of passage in our culture, I did not think I needed one for myself. I had felt rather at peace with being a man, having gone through the usual dissatisfaction with my actual father and various other father figures. I had come to terms with the fact that I had to be the man I had wanted them to be. I may even have thought of myself as a warrior of sorts. Also, I was sceptical of the strong gendering that comes with thinking of adult life as “Manhood”.

I still have some of that scepticism, but I recognize that I am a man, whether by biology or culture, and that I share many strengths and weaknesses with other men in particular. I now feel stronger and more grounded. I very much appreciate the symbolic aspects of this initiation into modern manhood. And being welcomed into the ranks of the fine staff men, as one of them, felt very good.

There was a lot of connection that weekend. With deep parts of myself. With other men and their deep parts, their problems and potentials. With nature. With my ancestors. With the world we live in quite generally.

I have attended an iGroup a few times after the training. The group is rather small and has its struggles: as we all struggle to keep our hearts open and our minds focused in this precarious modern society. These struggles are easier for me now that I am a New Warrior, a champion for good, a humble, accountable and caring man who accepts myself as I am, not conditional on performance.

Acceptance, I realized during the weekend, is my key to being able to create a world where people can play safe and free, by inviting them to play with me. This is the mission that I found. Every time I say it, it feels so simple, almost silly, but that is just what I personally need to inspire me to be the man, and the person, that I want to be.

In gratitude, KG