Man-ness

So an experiment has it's next chapter. A small group of men quest for power: what does it mean to be powerful, compassionate, sexy, empowering men? And how do you avoid it turning into a crochet circle?

In fact, one of the primary motivations behind this gathering has been that our primary experience of so called 'mens groups' has been the crochet circle phenomena, which appears to come from a desire to emulate what women's groups do, and turns into self indulgent emotional wallowing that doesn't challenge, doesn't push our edge or have a will to change.

And we ask ourselves: what does it mean to be a man in this day and age? The answer we seem to be arriving at is that to be a man means to take full responsibility for our lives, our loves, our demons, our angels, our pain, our bliss, our nurturing... to hunt those things we most fear because they are exactly the food on which our souls thrive, and to bring the spoils back to enrich, feed and empower our community.

Why settle for a life of dull acceptance? We are men, we are hunters of dreams, loves, food, prosperity, security, fear, power, magic, mountains, ocean depths and consciousness. The kind of manhood being sold to us through mass media is either a pale shadow of a man or a hero who serves, ultimately, to highlight our perceived inadequacy by being superman rather than man.

The mind too easily goes to the obsessive culture we so idolise, of the man working himself to death in some corporate high-rise mausoleum, sacrificing family and health to be a success. It is not this i wish to find. We with to find a path, and tools to help others on the path, to be empowered to follow our deepest inspiration and yearnings, to work in a way the nurtures and empowers all those around us - that is true power, the power of we, not I.

I think, therefore i am; i feel, therefore we are; i intuit, therefore everything simply is.