I feel tremendous gratitude for those that hire me to work with them. To anyone who has ever hired me or worked with me, I offer these words of gratitude…

Thank you.

Thanks for being human  and acknowledging in yourself that something feels “off.”

Thank you for not knowing and having the courage to ask for help.

Thank you for allowing me to come into your life and trusting me with what is most vulnerable and intimate in your life.

Thank you for trusting me to help guide you.

Thank you for letting me bare witness to the truth unfolding and emerging in each moment with you.

Thanks for searching, for longing, for seeking.

Thank you for being willing to look in the mirror and get brutally honest.

When the door shuts, I enter your private world and am asked to be a guide. I step into that role with great humility, respect, and honor.

Human intimacy is what we all long for.  And our relationship is an intimate one. If nothing else, we are practicing the art of intimacy.

I feel close to you only because you hold the key and let me in.

Keep risking. Keep asking for guidance. Keep acknowledging whatever is true in your body, heart, mind, soul.

And I have a request when you are ready…And only when you are ready…

Please begin to risk being all of you out in the world, beyond our time together.

My son and daughter need people like you to be real. They need examples of an actual human being walking through the world, warts and all.

They do not need you to be one way here and another way there unless you own that’s what you do. They do not need to you be polished, put together, nice, or fabricated.

They need you to take off the mask and be as you are. They need your raw, uncensored self. It will give them confidence to not build a big fat mask.

I want them to have you as an example of what a real person is.

The shadow of personal growth work is only a shadow when you and I keep our personal and spiritual growth a secret. It only remains in the darkness because of our unwillingness to talk openly about our FULL range of human experience.

So please. Risk being your FULL selves………everywhere. And when you feel scared to do that, then talk about how scared you are to be yourself and then offer compassion to that part of yourself.

When you risk your being in this way, you blaze the trail for my son and daughter to follow. They then have living examples out in the real world of real people willing to be as they are.

With love,

Jayson

But here goes.

I do not take posting this lightly. I write this with great respect and humility. It is not my intention to sensationalize here. Rather, I want you to hear about my experience and then decide for yourself.

I thought about avoiding it some more, but my heart wants to tell you about what is serving me and my heart wants you to experience this if you are called.

I also consulted one of the shamans and asked about my intention to blog about the medicine. He encouraged me to share openly but avoid sharing who, where, when due to confidentiality and certain illegal properties involved. Made sense to me.

For the past 2 years, I have participated in semi-regular plant medicine ceremonies. Most have been with shamans who carry the sacred grandmother medicine known as ayahuasca.

For three years prior to my first experience of ayahuasca I avoided it and judged those who used it.

A personal account

Over a year ago, I had the hardest night of my life on this medicine. I shat myself, threw up on myself and thought I was going insane.  I was in a room with some friends and mostly strangers. I was crying out for help. I was dying. It felt like a psychotic break to the point where I lost all reference points and “me” totally disappeared.

I experienced deep terror that I don’t wish upon anyone. Fortunately for me, the inferno ended and I felt the deepest shame of my life that night. After many hours of hell, I came out the other side in bliss and ecstasy.

I crossed through a threshold that night that marked the true beginning of my ego death and spiritual emergence that is still going on today.

At this point, you might be wondering why I went back for more. But, for those of you who know me, you know that I am that devoted to uncovering the truth of reality.  And, while I have experienced the dark night, I have also see the other side, of blissed out LOVE.

Should you desire great tranquility, prepare to sweat white beads. —Hakuin

The hero’s journey has always been my quest. I have been drawn toward raw, real, experiences all of my life.  In the past, I have explored “pushing through” and this is requires a whole different approach—receiving and surrendering.

Ayahuasca = love?

In my opinion, ayahuasca is essentially truth serum made up of 100% love.

Not the kind of feel good love you might think of however.

Many of us think that love is synonymous with good feelings. But from where I stand, love = giving me the opportunity to see myself (ego and my essence) and my games clearly.  Being loved in this way is showing me the utter rawness of reality with no filters or apologies.

Ayahuasca is not for everyone. In fact, I don’t recommend it unless you are very, very, very serious about waking up to the total truth of who you are.

If you are incredibly hungry for the truth and want to see the your own mind clearly, then it’s worth exploring under expert guidance.

If you participate more than once and welcome her into your life, she will show you more than you can ever imagine. Worlds beyond worlds. Painful and dark truths about yourself, cosmic love, past lives, your childhood, your future. If you work with her on a regular basis, you will potentially accelerate burning through your psychological blocks and other obstacles.

However, she comes at a very high price. Not monetarily. Your personality will suffer and you will see parts of yourself that literally make you vomit. Once she is in your system, there is no where to run or hide and you can’t get out of the experience until the medicine wears off, often 4-8 hours later.

If you resist her, you may feel nothing at all. Your unconscious might be too wiley and defended. Or she will amplify your resistance 100 times and make you feel how painful that is.

Everything you have ever avoided feeling will have to be faced. Everything you pushed down, stuffed. Everyone you have ever hurt, blamed, judged will be felt throughout your entire body.

If you come humbly with great reverence and ask and pray for deep healing, teaching and surrender, you will get what you ask for and then some.

I have never been so generously given to in all my life. Her love is unwavering and as big as all the cosmos combined.

Ayahuasca is a huge part of my spiritual path now. I am not a seeker looking for some one hit wonder that will take away my pain and show me a good time. Nor am I using this sacred medicine to avoid the day-to-day grind of the householder path I am on.

This is nothing like LSD, mushrooms, X, or even peyote. To compare them is simply inappropriate. To call it a drug is disrespect.

So what is it?

What is Ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca is spirit accessed by a South America sacred plant medicine made by shamans that takes days to prepare. They mix two different plants, a vine and a leaf. Once the two plants are combined, DMT ( N,N-dimethyltryptamine) becomes active which gives the hallucinogenic effects. How shamans first discovered this still debated, but it’s obvious to me they spoke to plants and the plants spoke back.

Many folks use the name “grandmother” for this sacred medicine, thus suggesting it has a feminine essence. Traditionally it is known as yagé.  Some refer to ayahuasca as “the vine of death” because of the dying/rebirth process involved. Ayahuasca is considered a spirit that is called into the space by the actual brew and the shamans (see references and links below).

Ayahuasca is used traditionally as spiritual medicine to heal people, gain insight about the land, hunting information, and to receive guidance from the other side.

Ayahuasca as a brew is illegal in all states but two right now because DMT is a  Schedule 1 drug. Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it is gaining momentum as a legitimate religious practice, specifically in the Santo Daime community.

Why is it becoming more popular now?

Why now?

I have no idea, but here are some guesses.

Ayahuasca is gaining more and more credibility in the medical world as a legitimate treatment for addiction. More on that here. Also, just google “ayahuasca addiction treatment” and see what you find.

It is also gaining ground as a legitimate spiritual path for Westerners.  Perhaps folks are tired of the guru’s human limitations. Perhaps with the growing consciousness movement and 2012 predictions, people are hungry for more immediate results and insights that address today’s challenges.

The clients I work with long for meaning and truths beyond books. People are in pain and have tried everything to relieve it or work through it and don’t see results. People are hungry for experiences that show them first hand what is really going on.

Some important words of caution

Ayahuasca used alone without working with your everyday relative reality has the potential of just being another spiritual bypass.  While I cured my sugar addiction with this medicine, it is not a magic bullet for your pain or problems.

Used in conjunction with ongoing integration work, group work, therapy, bodywork and being in a supportive community can further the development that happens in a medicine ceremony.

If your ego development is highly fragmented or fragile, you may run the risk of getting “blown out” and might have a hard time integrating your experience.

For the serious student, ayahuasca is gaining momentum in the States as a legitimate form of healing. It comes with risks. Do your homework and find the right shaman with legitimate credentials and experience.

If you want to see the nature of reality as it really is, I recommend this experience more than once.

References and links

This Wikipedia link is quite extensive and helpful for a big educational overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca

This post was orginally on the National Geographic website, but is “no longer available.” Interesting. But I found it here:

http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/08/21/excellent-article-on-ayahuasca-in-new-national-geographic/

This is a new movie out in 2010 that looks quite good.

http://www.vineofthesoul.com/

This short vid is worth the watch.

Another interesting video:

And great photo gallery of making the medicine:

http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Ayahuasca

Feel free to share your links and personal accounts below!

I have yet to write specifically about what I’m going through, mostly because I haven’t really known what the hell is going on. Many of my friends and colleagues have been as bewildered as I am.

Then, a friend said, I think it’s a spiritual emergency dude. I looked it up. It fits for now (Labeling my experience is a delicate matter).

Even more precise is the term “spiritual emergence” (longer duration).  So, I’ve been doing my homework. I am googling Spiritual emergency a lot, reading articles, case studies, and other tidbits on the subject.

Ahhhhh, I’m relaxing. I’m not alone.

I finally picked up a book that has been on my shelf for years (that I borrowed from someone else after grad school), “Spiritual Emergency: When personal Transformation becomes a crisis.” Edited by Stan Grof and Christina Grof, both pioneers when it comes to consciousness studies and spiritual emergencies.

Early on, I felt very alone and pretty freaked out, even crazy at times. Now, seeing that this is a common experience among spiritual practitioners and everyday men and women, I am relaxing more.

Perhaps some of you have been through this or are going through something similar right now.

From what I’ve read, a spiritual emergency in Western culture is often seen as a mental illness, which is why no one talks about it while they are going through it. No one wants the label of psychotic or crazy person.

As a former psychotherapist for me to publicly talk about my breakdown would put my license in jeopardy. Yet, for the few of us who see a massive identity breakdown as a step toward wholeness, instead of illness, we can take the view that this is a natural stage toward genuine human health and expanded consciousness.

Why talk about it as it’s happening?

I received an email recently that said “These things are best dealt with in closed circles and privacy.” While that might be true for some, it’s not for me. So given the given risks, why I’m talking about it publicly as it’s happening?

1)   I want to tell the truth about my life openly and

2)   Because I think it will serve. Perhaps it can help you or someone you care deeply about feel less alone. I believe that by showing others my humanness in the moment, as opposed to “after the crisis” when I am all patched up looking good, it will be of more service. So far, the gains outweigh the risks (For example, I feel very supported on the live calls where I get real in the moment about what’s going on).

What is a spiritual emergency?

Stan Grof has a nice description in this video away from medical pathology.

Given what I have read and in my own experience, it is a spiritual opening, or a series of several spiritual openings, wherein a person experiences reality more clearly as it really is, followed by a natural contraction away from the more “pleasant” feelings to more confusion, fear, depression, grief, and uncertainty, because his or her personality is not able to assimilate, or sustain, the new stream of light and energy.

It is an ego deconstruction process where certain identities and beliefs that worked most of my life are no longer working. It is a huge death and re-birth process. I find myself moving from one developmental stage of consciousness to the next, but I don’t even know if I will make it through this transition period.

Roberto Assagioli (founder of psychosynthesis) brilliantly describes my experience in his article on “Self-realization and Psychological Disturbances,”

“The inflow of light and love is rhythmical, as is everything in the universe. After a while it diminishes or ceases, and the flood is followed by the ebb. The personality was infused and transformed, but this transformation is seldom either permanent or complete. More often a large portion of the personality elements involved revert to their earlier state.”

This runs true with my own experience and my guide David Cates’ teaching.  In other words, we expand, then contract, expand, then contract. Such is life–a pulse. For me, the contractions are the challenging part.

Because a spiritual emergency can happen to any of us who have jobs, families, and bills to pay, it can be incredibly disruptive because the ego personality needs to function in order to get basic tasks done. True for me.

According to Assagioli, this conflict is not inherently a problem unless the individual makes it one (which I have at times). This can lead to denial of one’s experience, labeling oneself as crazy, and even a turning away from one’s experience, all of which I have felt.

And, when I try to return to my old way of being because “this spiritual shit is too exhausting,” I can’t. Assagioli reports that the individual “cannot return to his old state; he has seen the vision, and its beauty and power to attract remain with him in spite of his efforts to suppress it.”  Doah!

Just as Assagioli points out, I’m in the process of transmutation wherein I regenerate and transmute the personality. We’ll see about that. J

He says it’s a long process full of changes alternating between light and darkness, joy and suffering. Akin to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly yet with no “safe” cocoon.

Assagioli reports this transition can be challenging for the householder like me. “He must remain where he is in his life and continue to perform his family, professional, and social tasks as well as he can.” Whew. At times, I feel as though I can barely do it, yet as a new Dad, there is no choice. Like it or not, I choose to show up even when I feel shattered.

Finally Assagioli gives many cautions to the person in my shoes, two of which resonate for me 1) that removing myself from my life would be a mistake and that by moving toward introversion, I might move into “self-obsession.” And 2) That I continue to pursue my growth process with fervor but “without becoming identified with it.” Yikes. I have done both at times.

On the one hand, while I’m a spiritual development geek, I want to run from what is currently happening to me. I’ve recently said things like “I’m so over this process, I want it to be done. I’m ready to throw in the towel for good.” On the other hand, I am fascinated by what’s happening to me.  If I’m not careful, it does become a self-obsession and I can get lost in my own “special little world.”  I feel this with my 4-wing to my enneagram 3 personality type.

So, it is with renewed confidence today that I write this. Of course, if my experience is any guide, one hour from now could be another story entirely.

As my guide David Cates reminds me, my job is to be fully present and ride the waves with penetrating awareness.

Thank you to those of you who have supported me through this devastating and heart opening process. I am gaining even more confidence in the unknown.

I have a sense this will deepen the healing and coaching work I do for others.

What caused this whole thing? A combination of events. More on that later….

A prayer for myself? There are many these days, but here is one:

May I continue to be fiercely present and find the strength and courage to surrender and let go completely.

A prayer for you?

May those of us who yearn to merge with the divine or live in the vast space of greater and greater love, die to who we really are.

“Jayson, I appreciate what you are telling me, but “how” you are telling me is kind of harsh.” In other words, I would often laser in with my very accurate bullshit detector, but “how” I called bullshit left people feeling stung and even hurt.

Sometimes, even today, I give people feedback as a way to push them away in order to get some personal space. I also have cut people out of my life because the story was “I can’t stand your neediness.” (more to the story below…)

In fact, I used to unconsciously get in a fight with my wife to get some space from her because I was too afraid to ask for space directly (a classic enmeshed relationship pattern). Do you have some version of this?

The feedback others gave me was the kind of mirroring which was attempting to point me to my blind spots. At first I was defensive. Later I was open to hear it. Now, I begrudgingly give thanks when someone points out a blind spot, otherwise know as my shadow.

The Shadow

Ah yes, the shadow. We all have one. As Carl Jung said, 

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well0meant intentions.”

The shadow is essentially what we are unconscious to within ourselves. The shadow can run our lives if we are not careful. Contrary to popular belief, the shadow is not some dark, bad part of us that we must “get rid of.” The shadow is as valid as any other part of us and it needs our curiousity, love, attention, kindness and acceptance.

Once we finally see our shadow, we can begin to heal it, reclaim it, and become whole again.

As a “healer” it is pretty easy to fall victim to hiding my shadow from my clients and mentees. Most western therapies train the therapist to reveal very little about themselves so the patient or client can project onto them. Then, the therapist works the projection and the person can begin to heal. While this is valid and largely a good technique for certain folks, it is far from what I am doing these days.

I continue to reveal more of who I am not only because this is one aspect of the new masculine paradigm, but because people keep telling me my truth-telling serves them. It gives other men “permission” and inspiration to do the same.

Even still, this one is hard to admit. I don’t like admitting what I admit in this video, but it is crucial to my path. It is paramount that I continue to tell the full truth about myself so as to be fearless and free.

Not surprisingly, after uncovering this shadow last Sunday night and being raw all week, my shadow surfaced three specific times. Three times I lashed out toward others. Ouch.

Watch the video as I take responsibility for my main shadow.

Keep reading below after you watch the video for it to make the most sense.

To review

I was hurt as a kid through energetic, emotional, psychic “invasion” of my boundaries (among a two others: abandonment & rejection). I tried to set boundaries as an infant by screaming, pushing, kicking, or whatever. This was unsuccessful so I eventually gave in and shut down, allowing my parents and others to engulf me and do what they wanted to with me.

As an adult, when I perceive someone is “invading” my space by talking too much, not respecting my time or boundaries, people who tell me how I’m feeling instead of asking, or being needy, I immediately have a reaction. It triggers the old memory of invasion and I habitually respond the same way I always have, by bullying.

When my experience is that someone is being “invasive” through whatever action, I have a choice. Set a boundary or allow them to keep going. It has been very hard for me to set a boundary as I’m afraid I’m going to hurt their feelings. The deeper cut is that I am more afraid of what I’m going to have to feel seeing them hurt or mad. So, my form of protecting myself is to abandon myself and my truth so as to not rock the boat and in order to maintain relationship.

The Practice?

1. Honor my space. Tell friends, family, and others that what I am working on. Get their buy-in and support of what my issue is and what I’m doing about it.
2. Love the very hurt little boy that the bully is protecting. Feel him. Breathe love and acceptance into him.
3. Love myself. Do this by setting conscious boundaries from a non-triggered place. Know immediately when I start feeling invaded by someone and speak up by owning “I feel invaded right now, I’m going inward. I feel scared you are not respecting my space” or something similar to this.
4. Once I set the boundary, relax into the space.
5. If I fuck up and lash out with the bully, go back and clean it up by owning what I did and listen to how that impacted them. Acknowledge and validate.
6. Get back in conscious relationship with self and other.
7. Be willing to risk losing the relationship if a person is not able or willing to respect my boundary.

Remember Jung who said, “Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.” This has always been my task and I believe the task of any spiritual man. The more you can discover and then own up to your shadow, the less it will run you.

My challenge to you

Since we all have a shadow, investigate yours. Commit to finding the bottom, the source. Coming to shining the light of LOVE on your shadow so that you can experience more wholeness and connection.

And, if you have felt bullied by me, just let me know. And, my commitment is to let you know when I feel invaded or taken advantage of.

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”

—Carl Jung

1. What is underneath your porn behavior?

2. What would you have to feel and experience if you stopped jerking off to porn or even fantasy?

3. How can you not only stay in touch with your sexuality in a conscious way without porn, but how can you increase your sexual energy and use it for good?

4. What are the ways in which you let your culture dictate what is sexy, attractive, and a “turn on” to you? What are you going to do about that?

Here is Marc:

Men, let’s face it: We ALL have SOME charge with Pornography. I am not one for making grand sweeping statements like that, but I know that I am definitely not the only guy who tries to innocently peek inside the Adult Stores when the door casually swings open, and I am definitely not the only one who flicks back to the previous channel whilst channel surfing if I think I just saw a tit. However big or small, I am prepared to go on record to say that at least 90% of men have a charge with pornography.

For a little over a decade, I suffered from a devastating addiction to pornography. I have to be honest, it was not an every day occurrence. But for over ten years, I would frequent seedy adult sites, on average, every two weeks. I cried many tears over the years because of this. Why? Because the person I was showing to the world was not the person who would be sat up until 2am some nights looking for more and more intense pornography to satisfy my fix. I was, by all accounts, considered a very sweet and sensitive guy. Random strangers who would talk to me would often report back to my mother “Your son Marc is a lovely kid, so polite, and such a pleasure to have around”. Whenever she would feed back these compliments to me, smiling with that proud mother glow, I faked a smile and felt really awful about myself.

Going out into the world made things even worse. My ability to relate to women was strained, at best. I could not let myself get close to any woman in the way I truly wanted because I was too well-trained at objectifying the feminine for my own personal gratification. Women were objects. Worse, they were sex objects whose God-given purpose was to get me off. I knew this was a lie, but that knowledge would not sink in to the point where I could let go of that way of being.

It all came to the crunch one day when I sat down, armed with a pen and paper and wrote down every single fantasy I had ever had, my favorite images and why they turned me on so much (and what I was thinking when I saw them). I got it all down on paper over the space of two hours, with my face contorted in fits of tears. It was the most devastating, and most intensely healing release I had had in years.

Almost two months later, being clean for the longest time in years, I decided I wanted to help other porn addicts take responsibility for their porn addiction and start to get clear on what their feelings meant and what was even possible for them once they had let go of their addiction.

I have been a long-time spiritual seeker (hell, it was the only thing I thought to do when I realized I had to kill this addiction). Telling my friends was a difficult thing to do and yet as I started to share with some how much I had suffered, I remember a few years ago hearing some fans of David Deida’s work say they used pornography as practice to open to what was occurring – An Appreciation Practice! Looking into the spiritual and personal development community over the last few years, I started to see what I can only describe as a lot of spiritual white-washing and a lot of very standard ideas like “Porn is fine, stop beating yourself up about it, just watch and enjoy it” seep into online forum posts by people who wanted to bring it up as a serious discussion. Honestly, I saw this as being the most irresponsible way of brushing the entire issue under the carpet, with an issue as large as pornography.

Over time I gave this more thought. As of a month ago, after an engulfing pit in my stomach after beating off, I decided to stop masturbating altogether. Why? Because I started to wonder: What kind of aliveness am I missing out on if I have to beat the bishop every time an uncomfortable sensation arises? A few days after I decided to stop masturbating, I sat in my car going out of my MIND. Thanks to a daily meditation practice and a long traffic jam that morning, I had time to realize that this had nothing to do with “normal human sexual urges” but was me not being able to integrate something. I have recently started my own coaching program The Clearing via my own site and had been experiencing fear of putting it out there for all to see – and had subsequently sexualized that feeling to give myself a way not to fully experience that fear. As I sat in my car that morning, realizing that I was only trying to escape my own personal aliveness allowed these feelings wash over me like water off a dove’s back. Since that morning, I have had very little desire to choke the monkey.

Our society has been trained to sexualize almost every uncomfortable sensation possible. We are told it is normal to “clean the pipes” before going out on a date so that we can “relax”. We are also told that using pornography can be a healthy part of any relationship. What if those of us who have used pornography are actually missing out on “enjoying and playing with” that nervous sensation we ALL get on a date, and what if instead of substituting intimacy with our partner for pornography (does she REALLY want to watch porn with you, or is she just feeling helpless as to how to resolve the lack of intimacy?) were to allow us to experience a kind of intimacy that would open our hearts beyond what we thought possible.

So my question to you is: What is your relationship to pornography? And if you use pornography (however infrequently), if you were to treat these sensations as a point of inquiry, where do you see yourself completely missing the larger point of what the sensation is trying to teach you. As far as I’m concerned, beating off to porn is not a good strategy for living the life we love, and yet we tolerate it more than I think we should.

Marc Quinn is a late-bloomer with a heart that has never steered him wrong. He has engaged in men’s work of various kinds over the last 3-4 years and considers himself “the guy who likes to talk about things people don’t like to bring up”. His web site My Porn Addiction Story was launched a few months ago, for guys and girls who find it difficult to give up pornography, after he saw that most of the advice on Google was “crap”. He is intent on having more conversations about pornography by making them engaging, funny, and down-to-earth whilst providing people with the means to see their addiction as a container for immense personal growth. He often likes to sing “The Power of Love” by Jennifer Rush on full volume while he works.

photo courtesy of creative commons flickr

Most men suck at conflict.

To me, the hallmark of a healthy, solid relationship is the willingness and ability to go into conflict, sit in the fire, and deal.

Here are a few basic points about men and conflict, then onto the process of working through it.

First, admit you are afraid

Most guys claim to be fearless and spend a lot of energy acting fearless about most things. But those same men are often single, unhappy, and terrified of relationship strife with loved ones.  As I wrote in my rage post, men commonly respond to conflict either by blowing up, care-taking, or shutting down.

If you want to learn the art of conflict, first admit that you are scared of it. Go ahead and say it out loud. “I feel scared of upsetting _______.” Then you can learn to have the balls to tell the truth and be more fearless when it comes to conflict.

Commit to learning how to do conflict

If you want profound love, and to be a solid leader or community member, learning the art of relationship, specifically how to work through conflict, must be a central focal point of your development as a man. Go there.

Remember that conflict is hardest with the people closest to us

Because of what is at stake, we are challenged most by family, intimate partners, and very close friends. Conflict can be easy with strangers where there is no personal injury at stake. It’s easy to tell a stranger off. Much harder to tell a loved one a painful truth that may upset them.

Learn how to fight with your intimate partner

I knew nothing about conflict until I met my wife. Thankfully, we learned together. At times it was ugly and dark. I felt so incredibly uncomfortable at times and I often wanted to hit the eject button and run away. Ouch.

Since my parents hid their conflict from us kids, I learned that a “healthy relationship” meant no fighting. That teaching is and was bullshit.

Every single short term relationship I had prior to meeting my wife, I would say “yeah, our relationship is great, we never fight,” thinking how my parents taught me well. Little did I know I was keeping the relationship stuck on superficial grounds with the unwritten rule to “not go there.” Deep down, I was terrified of ruffling feathers in all my relationships so I would withhold the truth, tell white lies, care-take, and do anything in my power to avoid tension. The irony was that I was already feeling a lot of tension inside myself. Bottom line? I was afraid of conflict.

My wife and I have had some pretty intense fights and I imagine there will be more.  I have learned that healthy fighting is good for a relationship. It’s fertilizer. We now burn through conflict and relationship challenges within hours.



Practice conflict by telling the truth in safe places such as your men’s circle

Men’s groups are a great place to flounder your way through conflict.  In my own men’s circle, we fumbled our way through conflict that was so intense one man left the group for a while. It took us many years to arrive where we are today, able to deal with, and resolve, conflict.

Enlist another man to role play the person you are in conflict with. Practice, practice, practice speaking your truth and say yes to whatever the outcome is.

Give yourself permission to fuck it up and trust that with help, you can come back and clean it up

Early on, you will blow it and make mistakes. No problem. You can always clean up your mess later after you think, journal, reflect and get feedback from non-biased friends and mentors.

Conflict ain’t pretty. It often hurts and brings up the most uncomfortable feelings ever. Say yes to those feelings.

At the root of any conflict avoidance is your unwillingness to feel pain

Did I already mention being a YES to feeling your discomfort?

You must be willing to feel your feelings fully to move through it and become okay with it. Sorry. There are no bypass roads when it comes to conflict.

Most people hide behind “I don’t want to upset the other person.” When in fact, you don’t want to deal with what you have to feel if you see the other person upset.

The more you avoid conflict, the bigger the shitpile gets

If you “hold on,” avoid, shut down, sleep on it and never come back to it, or just brush stuff under the carpet, your shitpile will crack. It will build until that day when your damn of resentments explodes. Sadly, this often causes way more pain and harm than had you told the truth from the beginning.

Finally…

Very few of us have been taught how to do conflict or how to resolve conflict successfully. Give yourself permission to learn and go slow. Bite off small chunks at first and start with people who you trust will not disown you even if it comes out sloppy.

The middle way is to stay present to the whole range of emotion that arises within you and to speak your truth with a open (o even shaky) heart.

If you can learn relationship conflict, you are that much more adaptable, flexible, agile as a man. Your relationships will not only last longer, they will deepen and strengthen.

Okay fine, but HOW?

Here is a great, simple tool for working through conflict.

It’s called the couples dialogue and is a common tool used by imago relationship therapists. It is also used by everyday folks as a way to move through little and big tension between two people. This process can even be used to tell someone how much you love or care about them.

Be sure to really read the full approach here.

Follow these basic guidelines:

1. Find a witness to help the two of you move through this process.
2. Create a safe space to work through it that you both agree upon.
3. Review the 3-step process by Hendrix and Hunt–Mirror, Validate, Empathize here.
4. Move through the 3-step process (below) with one of you as the “sender” and the other person as the “receiver.” See process below.
5. Switch.
6. Now make a request if you have one.
7. Always remain open to hiring a professional help you work through conflict. Sometimes it feels too big for us on our own.
8. Commit to going all the way with this. Don’t blow off your needs or the other person’s needs unless you have an explicit boundary and you are clear you will not budge.
9. If the other person refuses, you can still clean things up on your end by working with a coach, therapist or friend that can help you speak your truth and move through your part. Your part is the only part you have control over anyway.

This is a condensed version in blue that my friend Jeremy (who has trained with the founders) put together for our men’s group.

SENDER

I would like to dialogue about . . .

Is this a good time?

Then, if the receiver says yes, proceed  If not get a commitment for a specific time and place to do the dialogue.

I feel . . .

When you did this, I felt …

RECEIVER

1.  Mirroring

So, if I got that right, you feel …

Did I get that right?

2. Validation

That makes sense.

Is there more?

Then, after a few rounds, offer a “summary” mirror:

Let me see if I got all that.  If I got all that right, when I did ____, you felt ____.

Did I get all that right?

If the sender says yes, then move to step 3.

3. Empathy

I imagine that must feel really bad, or painful, or scary, or ____.

NEW AGREEMENT

After the process is complete, if desired, the sender can ask for an agreement for the future, to create more safety and trust and deepen the relationship.  The receiver does not have to agree to the sender’s request, but must offer a counterproposal.  If needed, the two can agree to work out a final, new agreement at a specific time in the future.  This ensures that something concrete and specific emerges from the dialogue.

Despite what folks think, you don’t have to take your resentments to your grave. You can do conflict and you can learn to successfully navigate your part in the conflict. And, the more you do this, the greater mastery you will have in all or your relationships.

Photo by F. Montino (creative commons)

When you think of you and rage, what comes to mind? Do you picture yourself smashing cars with a baseball bat like I do? Or do you immediately think “I don’t get angry or enraged, that’s just not me.”

Have you personally ever felt rage? Homicidal rage? Rage at a lover? The world? The “system?” or whatever?

And, when you add the two elements of rage + men, what comes to mind? It is common to think the worst. Criminals, rapists, murderers, war, and extreme forms of violence. Rage often kills, destroys, and damages people and things.

I think that we can agree that most forms of rage are hurtful and beyond hurtful.

However, I want to introduce another slant on rage.  This is the rage-reframe that you and the world needs. I need and want your rage.

What is Rage?

First, what is rage exactly and where does it come from?

Without jumping into a thesis on rage and the human brain, here are a few basic aspects of rage. Think of rage as a geyser. Let’s say anger is near the surface, maybe it’s the steam, the boiling water, the heat. Rage on the other hand, comes from deep down within the geyser. Rage is “superheated” and can cause a great deal of damage.

Rage is commonly brought on by fear–a threat to some part of yourself. When you are threatened, your brain instantly reacts with a fight, flight, or freeze response. Rage can also be a reaction to protect deep, deep shame. (Read more about the biochemistry of rage here).

Why is my rage wanted/needed?

As I said before, I need and want your rage. You might be thinking WTF? Rage equals violence, no way. Rage only hurts.

While it is true that rage has caused much of the devastation around the globe since the invention of agriculture, and we can safely assume, largely at the hands of men, a new kind of rage is needed. Call it “conscious rage” or as my friend Christiane Pelmas calls it “rage-in-service-of-life.”

Christiane writes in her ReWilding blog:

Men are responsible for egregious violence against life. It has been this way for at least four millennia. Yet in order for something different to arise men must cultivate a functional relationship with the very emotion responsible for so much of the violence. They must be reacquainted with their rage, allowing it to come out of the shadows and take its place alongside the (only slightly) more accepted emotions of love and grief.

A man’s rage is a powerful portal back to the deepest heart connection he has with the world and with himself. We need masculine rage-in-service-of-life as desperately as we need rain forests, clean oceans, mountaintops, and wild-flowing unobstructed rivers.

I could not agree more. We men must own our rage and use it for the greater good. Otherwise, your stuffed rage, or your buddy’s sloppy rage will cause harm, period. Moreover, if you have not dealt with your own rage, chances are you won’t be that helpful with anyone else’s.

From my experience as a former wilderness therapy counselor and psychotherapist with very enraged teenagers and men, and struggling with my own rage, I learned a few things about this volatile emotion.

The current approach to rage

Because men have little to no training in regards to expression of anger and rage, and because most men are scared of their emotional world, they typically respond to rage in one of two ways:

1.  The Nice Guy—This is usually the first tactic men use. Don’t go there. Just bottle it up. You might hurt someone or get hurt. Fake a smile and act like everything’s fine.

2.  The Spaz—Once a man realizes he’s tired of being nice, or he can no longer contain such a strong emotion, it bleeds out. Scream, yell, fight, attack, and defend. Largely, because these men have no training, they act like a hurt infant and throw a tantrum.

Both of these approaches have one thing in common–FEAR. Fear is the foundation of unconscious, dissociated rage. So long as fear is on board, you will likely cause harm. See diagram below.

Likewise, the culture responds in one of two ways: 1) by egging rage on, (screaming fans at a fight) or 2) shutting it down with anger management. Conventional anger management essentially means you receive tools to help you further suppress your rage and anger.

To feel rage is to be human. All of us have felt rage at some point from infancy onward. It is human to feel shame, to feel threatened, and to want to defend yourself. The animal part of our brain acts like an animal for a reason–so we can survive.  But the pre-frontal cortex, or front part of our brain, comes in with some form of social conditioning such as “it’s not okay to express rage.” Thus rage becomes compounded and pressurized.

We all know that if feeling rage means you are human, it does not give you the right to uncork it and explode on a stranger, a co-worker, or a lover.

Remember, when you stuff your anger and rage over and over and you then add the stress of a failing marriage, a long day at the office, money issues, and you lack the tools to deal, a mundane event such as a person cutting you off on the highway or driving too slow in “your” lane, can trigger a massive outburst which can lead to real harm.

I personally stuffed my anger and rage for so long that when I would drink too much in college and someone rubbed me the wrong way, I would blow a gasket and go ape shit. My stuffed rage would explode out of me resulting in fights, verbal assaults, and other behavior that had me feeling a great deal of shame the following days and weeks.

But isn’t anger okay for men to express?

On the other hand, men in this culture seem to be “somewhat allowed” to express anger, and even rage. Especially if it’s finger pointing, blame, and fighting. Watch sports, TV reality shows, far-right or far-left politics. Men are often encouraged to “fight it out.” And if you don’t fight, you can be seen as too feminine, or gay.

And if no one ever taught you how to work with your anger/rage, you will likely respond as you did as a young infant boy; kick, scream, throw a tantrum, or shut down. (Sadly, if a woman gets enraged and shows it consciously or unconsciously, she’s labeled a psycho bitch).

Bottom line for men?  You are left with a contradictory message. Stuff it and play nice or intimidate and bully by throwing a tantrum. So even while men have more “permission” to show anger/rage, the contradictory message promotes suppression, confusion, and perhaps eventually violence.

What is the alternative?

Since these two choices suck, I suggest a third.

When you step back from most unconscious rage experiences and think with your heart, from a place of compassion, there is another way.

Conscious Rage–Rage coming from your heart.

Rage sitting on top of love will simply have a different impact.

As Christiane invites, what if your rage was a powerful portal back to your heart connection with yourself and the world? What if you could use your rage as a lightning rod for transformation, peace, justice, and “right-action?” What if you felt safe enough to really go there and express your rage in a conscious way?

I am suggesting we acknowledge that we have anger and/or rage and that we can use that energy for the greater good. In other words, begin to form a conscious relationship to your rage.  While you are at it, do this with all of your emotions.

Try it on that it is actually possible to feel your rage fully and not cause any harm to yourself or anyone else.  How? By tapping into the fact that you give a shit. You care, deeply about certain things. Feel your care, your passion and get pissed and the injunctions in the world. 

So, hopefully your brain is confused by now and you are open to doing rage and anger differently.

And, if you are one of those guys who claims, “I just don’t get angry.” Try it on that you are not connected to your own anger or rage and in turn, you are lacking life force. Anger and rage can be a gateway back to your personal power, passion, and the life force that can inspire you and others to make a difference.

Here are several pointers to get started.

1.  Acknowledge how destructive unconscious, man-rage can be.

2.  Acknowledge your rage and own it. Clean up your “old rage” that is still in you from old hurts and wounds. If you are scared of this aspect of yourself, find a good therapist or practitioner to help you sort it out.

3. Welcome this new view on rage and consider that your personal rage (coming from love) is needed.

4. Know the difference between your unconscious rage and your conscious rage. What is the difference for you? What does it feel like? See if you can find a form of rage in you that would come from love.

5. Take a course in non-violent communication. Become emotionally literate so your emotions don’t own you.

6. Practice working with your rage using the exercise below.

7. Join a men’s group and ask the men to support you in fumbling through this one by practicing expressing rage with other men in a safe way.

Finally, remember that rage in and of itself is NOT the issue. A man’s relationship to rage is the issue.

Working with rage– practice

Do this practice in a safe place, sitting or lying down with your eyes closed.

Visualize the thing you love the most in the world. Feel your heart, your love and your connection to this thing/person. Where in your body do you feel this? What is it like?

Now visualize that thing/person being taken from you.

Notice what happens next inside your body and what thoughts come online.

Take off the label of rage and feel the rage as energy in your body. Notice body sensations (tingling, heat, cold, vibrations, shaky, etc.) Pay special attention to your pelvis and jaw, common places we hold rage. Find the center of it. What is it like?

Find the “NO WAY CAN I LET THIS HAPPEN” in you that would protect that thing you love the most at all costs. Find the strength by identifying a resource somewhere in your body that could rise up to meet the situation.

Track your fear versus love. Tease out how a fear response might be different than a love response. Is fear above the rage or underneath it?

Stay with this energy until it dissipates. The only way over your rage is through it. You must feel it fully.

Notice that anger or even rage when coming from LOVE feels different than when your rage/anger is coming from FEAR.

At the core of your rage is either love or fear and sometimes both are involved. Commit to responding from love as opposed to fear.

If you could do anything with this energy what would you do? Would you hit stuff? Break things? Or would you just embrace the wild energy in your body and ride its wave?

Photo by Josh Levin

This is going to seem like a no brainer, but it’s amazing to me how many guys out there have no idea what they want. What about you?

If someone asks you “What do you really want?” What is your response?

In the first session I always ask the men I coach “What do you want?”  Typically they think they know. After they describe it to me, I reflect back this fuzzy, vague picture back to them. They are often unclear whether it’s their short term vision or long term vision.

I ask, “Is that really your ideal?” Wow, is that all you want, seriously?

I have mentioned this in a few prior posts about finding your purpose and a recent post about lasting change.

So here is a simple technique to help you get very, very clear (I go into more detail in coaching someone).

The basic flow is this…

Step 1. Identify where you are. Hard to know what is next when you don’t even know who you are or where you are. Get your “self-knowledge” on.

Step 2. Get clear. The key here is to get very, very clear. The universe likes clarity. The more crystal clear you are, the more you are in touch with what you want and the more likely it is to happen.

I like to suggest a short term want list and a long term want list. In one year, I want…

In 15 years, I want…

I also suggest to do this process from a place that would have you very fulfilled and at peace internally. Don’t list “stuff” that makes your ego happy.

Step 3. Feel it and envision it. Think about waking up tomorrow morning and everything you wanted suddenly appeared. Everything. What would your day look like? What would you be doing? Where would you be working? Who else is in the picture? Wife? Kids? Close friends? A team? Or is it just you in solitude? Are you self-employed? Do you work in a community? Get as detailed as possible. Close your eyes, envision it, and feel it. Imagine having it. What does that feel like in your body? What emotional quality is there?

Step 4. Get it out. I suggest making a list of everything you want in great detail. Paint it, draw it, sing it, and even use a vision board.

Step 5. Share it. The more you “put it out there” the more likely it is to happen. Share it with close friends, your partner, or your men’s group. Get some honest feedback.

Step 6. Look at what is in the way. Not the potential road blocks that your mind creates about how impossible it will be, but the more subtle ways you will likely sabotage getting it. See diagram below…

Step 7. Get help. I don’t care who you are, you will not be able to do this part alone so get some accountability and support. Blocks and Blind spots can only be uncovered through feedback from a therapist, a coach, a shaman, a psychic, or a men’s group.

Step 8. Choose. Once you are clear and once you see the map in front of you, make a decision to go for it or not. Choice = power. Otherwise, you end up like most unhappy people who let life sort of happen to them. Passive = No power.

if you do decide to go for it, make a commitment to do “whatever it takes at whatever the cost” to get there!

Make a commitment to not be a bystander to your own life. Seriously.

Rock it. It’s your life and you have only one (as far as you can tell, right?).

After we do some coaching together, we uncover that they believe they are fundamentally bad, wrong, or unlovable.

How did this happen I wonder? Where in the hell did they get this kind of message? For the lucky few that had great parents and teachers, who planted this seed?

One answer—original sin and “the church.”

Reginald A. Ray, the former head of the Religious Studies program at Naropa University and long-time Buddhist teacher told me once that in his 45 years experience teaching thousands of Western students meditation, he believed that original sin is responsible for why so many people have a negative view of themselves.

Of course it’s not the only reason.

When we are little kids, we pretty much believe what the big people tell us. Hence, racisim, sexism, and various forms of fundamentalism and extremism. Parents, coaches, teachers, and organizations have a HUGE power and influence over what kids learn and digest.

Brainwashing a child is pretty easy. Any form of fundamentalism starts by brainwashing children.

If you are a parent, how is it possible to look at your new baby and think that he or she is bad, guilty, wrong, or sinful? As one of my Catholic clients recently said about his son after birth, “he was perfect!”

As a father, I couldn’t agree more. Looking at my own son I was simply blown away at how pure he looked, felt and acted. His pure innocence and splendor. His eyes, face, little toes and hands were simply perfect. I felt deep love.

But if you yourself believe that you are fundamentally worthless, bad, or wrong at your core, it is no surprise that you will pass down that teaching to your children and children you work with.

Even still, how does any smart adult take the teaching of original sin seriously? If you test this and any spiritual or religious teaching against your own experience, what conclusions do you come to?

For example, if as a child you are taught that Hispanic (or fill in the blank) people are bad or less than you, you will simply take the adults word for it as truth. Even if your own experience suggests otherwise. As you get older however, in order to confirm your narrow belief system, you select only those experiences that match what you believe, thus concretizing your view and lodging racism into your psyche even further.

Are you really willing to come to your own conclusions or will you instead trust something even though it is in conflict with your direct experience?

The Good News

I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of people over the years and there is always the same theme. Once we begin to genuinely work on ourselves through coaching, men’s work, psychotherapy, and spiritual practice, and we stick with it, we always uncover the truth in more or less two stages.

Stage 1. We discover that we have a whole series of limiting beliefs and insecurities that we have pushed down and kept hidden. We finally admit that we have some issues (welcome to being human) and we begin the “thawing out” process.

Stage 2. Realizing that our discovery in stage 1 is just a bunch of “old tapes” and messages that someone else gave us, we begin to see underneath these lies to a deeper truth—that we are fundamentally good and worthy of love. That’s right, once we “do the work” we start to see and experience the truth of who we are. This is a big turning point in a person’s life. Once you taste the raw freedom and magic of who you are, there’s no turning back and you just want more.

So, try it on that you were not only born perfect but that you still are fundamentally good and perfect at your core. Beneath the mask you wear, the ego trips, and BS messages from “the big people,” is a beautiful human being—trust me.

Tibetan Buddhist master Trungpa Rinpoche coined the term “basic goodness” to describe who we are at our essence. That beneath our ‘cocoon’ we are fundamentally good. To me this is true, no matter who you are.

Why? I have worked with criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, drug addicts and severely mentally ill people who, when they let down their walls and defenses, are absolutely perfect and as just as worthy of love as anyone else.

Next Steps?

1. Test every teaching anyone gives you against your own experience.

2. Get to know yourself and see if it’s really true

3. Burn the old tape that you are fundamentally bad or wrong at your core. Light that crap on fire and start challenging systems and people (including yourself) that keep that nonsense going.

4. Stop feeding the negative voice, and starting giving the quieter, more distant voice some food.

5. Remember your inner authority

6. Trust that you are basically good and perfect beneath the mask you wear. If you still don’t believe it, ask people you love to tell you what they see.

7. If you continue to be unwilling to see the truth underneath the lies, hire someone to help you recover the deep love that you are.

Once you begin to believe that you are “good” and worthy of love and respect, you can re-orient toward the truth that is buried beneath the nonsense.

If someone you know and love actually believes the bullshit about original sin, challenge him or her by loving them and seeing their greatness.

When you are judging another person, is it coming from fear? What about when you think you are better than someone else? And how can you really know when you are afraid and what is it like to own up to that fact?

Leave a comment about what you find…

“ There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ”

–John Lennon