Life Events and Self-Initiation

From Menletter May 2008

By Tim Baehr

In many "traditional" cultures (what we used to call "primitive"), young men undergo an initiation experience. This consists of removing boys from their mothers' world, teaching them the ways of their people, putting them through an ordeal, and welcoming them into the world of men. The ordeal may include fending for themselves in the wilderness or even a wounding - circumcision, ritual scarring, loss of a tooth, and so on. Sometimes the boys are given new names, new identities, to reflect a spirit animal or to indicate some quality that the elders have seen in them. Ritually, the boys have died to a former life as children and been reborn into adult manhood, with certain privileges and responsibilities.

Obviously, a single paragraph cannot do justice to the ritual and social complexity of a traditional initiation. But the general outline seems to be followed in many cultures. Early proponents of the so-called men's movement have bemoaned the fact that modern Western culture no longer provides for initiation beyond the faint echoes of the bar mitzvah in Judaism or confirmation in some Christian sects. Some men's groups or even church groups provide a one-day or weekend-long experience for young boys that has some elements of traditional initiation.

I wonder how effective a brief modern initiation-like experience is compared to the weeks-long ordeal that boys in traditional cultures undergo. I guess the effectiveness might have to do with follow-up in the community, mentoring of the newly-minted boy-men by elders, and so on.

In the Absence of Initiation

While there may be only anecdotal evidence for it, one upshot of the lack in Western culture of male initiation and its ritually recognized ordeal seems to be that we see far too many males who are chronologically adult but who are still basically overgrown boys. These boy-like men range in behavior from complete irresponsibility (video games or boozing with the guys instead of cultivating a marriage, working around the house, or even gainful employment), to the childish entitlement of the mama's boy (even within marriage), to a fear and mistrust of other men, to just a befuddlement about why life seems to carry them along without a real purpose. There could be causes in addition to lack of initiation - prolonged female-dominated early education; absence of a father or other strong male role model; depiction of men in entertainment and ads as buffoons or superheroes, or criminals; advertising aimed at our younger selves; and more.

When a man hits 45 or so, and perhaps again when he hits 60, things begin to crumble. Many of us go through a midlife or mid-late crisis. Some or all of these questions arise: What is life all about? Why am I working so hard? Why does nobody - wife, boss, kids - take me seriously? Why do I feel so tired and dead inside? Why have the old hurts that I thought I'd put aside - the sports injury, the job loss, the health problem, the divorce - come back to haunt me?

Some of us go into a deep funk and stay there, maybe drinking and drugging to dull the pain, and thereby finding a new kind of wounding. A first or second divorce adds to the pain. Some of us go back to the only familiar persona we know, the boy-man, and get the stereotypical sports car and young girlfriend or engage in extreme sports.

Some of us go looking for answers.

Life's Ordeals

We can, by a certain age that varies from man to man, come up with a list of ordeals we've undergone and wounds we've suffered. They may start in childhood with taunting by bullies, a serious injury or illness, or abuse or neglect by an adult. From there, we can create a grim inventory: physical injury or further illness; social banishment or isolation; a girl gotten pregnant who has an abortion with or without our knowledge; betrayal by a friend, teacher, co-worker, or boss; temporary or chronic poverty; shaming by an overbearing partner or a partner's infidelity; losses of friends, jobs, marriages, even our own children; estrangement from parents or other relatives; everyday grinding, boring work. Many of these kinds of events can make us feel exiled from our community, out in the wilderness without compass or map.

And now what? We've had all this crap in our lives, we're not fully men, and it's too late to do anything about it. Therapy might work, might even be crucial, in helping to resolve issues and find meaning in our past. If we're in enough pain, talk therapy and careful drug therapy may be the only way to break a psychological log-jam.

For the rest of us, what if we could get into a time machine, gather up a bunch of elders, and insist on being initiated? Would that change our history? What an impractical dream! How silly!

Well, maybe not. We have, after all, had some experiences on our journey through our past and into the present moment. We may have acquired a certain amount of wisdom. I think it's possible to retrace our path, pick up on one or two events, and recast them as initiations. How can we go about this?

Taking a Second Look

An initiation is a ritual event. One meaning of "ritual" is that the event is supposed to change us in some way. The events in our lives have changed us in some way, and it's easy to imagine how the unfortunate events have changed us for the worse. But we can revisit some of these events to see if there's another way to look at them.

Consider the following steps.

1. Choose an event in your past.

2. Place this event in the context of your life's journey, as if you were on some kind of heroic quest. This is not just a convenient fantasy or cute trick. Our lives are our stories, mostly written by others - our parents, our teachers, the collective society in which we're embedded. The heroes of mythology suffered doubt - and setbacks, and wounds. As the hero of our own story, we can interpret and reinterpret the plot, taking ownership of the events.

3. Acknowledge the harm that has been done to you, the wound to your body, mind, or spirit. Don't dwell on it (you may have done enough of that already) - just acknowledge it. Realize that this event changed you in some way and affected who you are today. But also recognize that the man who endured the trial is a man that exists today only in your memory.

4. Now look at where you are today as a functioning human being. You have, in some minor or major way, weathered this event, survived it. You don't need to sugar-coat the event by saying it was all for the better, that you were a better man as a result. Of course, if that's true, you can acknowledge that fact.

5. You have brought an elder with you: the older man you have become, with years, perhaps decades, of experience in coping with life. Look for ways in which the event has made you wiser - more compassionate - more street-smart. As an elder, you can bless the younger man of your memory, adding your story to his. This is a way to reclaim the past event as an initiation into a process that brought you into the present.

Now repeat this process in a ritual setting. You may find a way to do it in a men's gathering or vision quest. Enter the gathering or quest with an intention: a purpose in the back of your mind to use one or more of the rituals in the event as a framework for the process above. Talk to some of the elders at the gathering, men of any age whose wisdom you value. You may find a suitable ritual in such activities as meditation, a sweat lodge, emotional release work (sometimes called rage work), a medicine walk, trance dance, to mention a few. (See "What Happens at Men's Gatherings" for other ideas - http://tinyurl.com/3vkhav.)

Or you may want to do it on your own. It may be harder than when you have a safe community of men at gathering, but it is doable.

Here's a way to do it solo: Choose a ritual object, like a candle or burning incense, a piece of paper on which you've written about the event, or some other object. This is a ritual opening to the process; spend a few quiet minutes contemplating the object as your companion on the journey. Invite other "elders" on this journey - either men you've known to be wise, or the collection of all your male ancestors. Go through the steps above, regarding the ritual object as something sharing in your process and representing your fellow elders. At the end, do something to close the journey: Blow out the candle, sit quietly as the incense burns out, put the paper into fire or bury it deep in the earth. Sit quietly for a few more minutes to thank the elders who have accompanied you in your imagination and to let this initiation experience sink in.

Any wounds you suffered may have left scars or aching spots in your spirit. These, instead of reminders of past pain and failure, can now be the badges of initiation.

Then go about your life. Don't expect a major shift because of the initiation, but try to notice as the days go by that the past event doesn't have quite as much negative grip on you. You have gone back into a chapter of your life story and rewritten and extended a part of it, reinterpreting it to bring you closer to claiming full manhood. The results may be subtle, but they're worth being on the lookout for.

Younger Men

What about younger men who haven't hit midlife and the realization that life is crumbling? I think, as younger men, we can identify the challenges and wounds we're accumulating and bring them into perspective as initiatory experiences. That doesn't mean that the experiences will be any less damaging or that we can put a happy face on all our woes. The heroes of mythology, after all, didn't consider their ordeals as anything but dangerous and potentially fatal. They didn't see the big picture any more than we can while undergoing a life crisis. But we can remain open to the opportunity for growth, for deepening our souls, for advancing ourselves on the path to manhood. A men's gathering with its activities and rituals can be immensely helpful, especially when it involves contact with older men who have trodden the same path.