In This Issue Read about all of our workshops, retreats and resources on our website. Audio Interviews |
DECEMBER 2012
Hi folks, In the following pages is a process to evaluate yourself in the various stages of life. For the curious, courageous, and desperate, it offers an opportunity to complete a life review prior to the waning years of life or more importantly prior to the final review that occurs just before the final passing. I suggest taking the time to reflect as you go through the process. Choosing to Live Consciously Life StagesErik Erikson1, Daniel Levinson2, and Gail Sheehy3 conducted research and identified developmental stages through which most people pass in their life's journey. As we pass through these stages some personal values may deepen or fall away while new ones surfaces. These stages are only approximations, as some will go through particular stages early while others may spend little time in one and much time in another. For example Erickson believed we moved through the following stages. I imagine it is easy to find something on the above chart that creates a pang of fear, pain, or wonderment. Rather than dwell on the past, there is a way to review and reframe it through a different set of stages that start with early adult. I like to refer to is as a life review of what worked well, what worked not so well, and what have we learned from it so that we can leave the pangs of fear or pain and create moments of wonderment and joy. Life's Stages4As you read the following pages, pay attention to memories, physical reactions, your trends of thought, moments of angst, moments of joy or ecstacy, and other reactions. As these reactions come to your attention, you may feel like these moments were "deciding or defining". Hold these reactions and express them in the questions that follow each stage of life. If you have not lived through a stage or have not entered a stage, you can choose to read and skip the questions or be playful and guestimate how it will be for you. Do not strain yourself. Trust that what needs to surface will emerge. Stage 1. Autonomy and Tentative Choices (Approximately 18-26)In this stage we are typically developing personal autonomy and leaving the family to establish an independent home, finances etc. We're developing our own sense of personhood as separate from parents and childhood peer groups. We try out new relationships (e.g., romantic interests, professional associates, peer groups and friends). This is typically a period of tentative or provisional commitments. We're comfortable there is plenty of time ahead to change our minds on provisional decisions concerning things like location, occupation, plans to marry or not marry, friends, key life values, etc. Our focus is on defining ourselves as individuals and establishing an initial life structure. During this time of your life, what did you most personally value? Explain What did you personally dislike about this time of your life? List three or four soul choices that were made or life-changing events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact. Stage 2. Young Adult Transition (Approximately 27-31)This is usually a period of significant turmoil - of looking at who we are becoming and asking if we're really journeying in directions we want to go. We question most of our earlier tentative choices. Have we made the right decisions? Are we running out of time for changing our decisions? Are our decisions becoming permanent before we want them to? Do we really want to make this location, career path or romantic relationship permanent? Will we or will we not settle down and have a family? Is time running out? Often with considerable angst similar to the better known mid-life crisis we rethink our provisional decisions and maintain them or change them in the process of making more permanent choices. During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain. What did you personally dislike about this time of your life? List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact. Stage 3. Making Commitments (Approximately 32-42)This is typically a period of relative order and stability where we implement and live the choices made in the young adult transition. We settle down into deeper commitments involving work, family, church, our community ties etc. We focus on accomplishment, becoming our own persons and generating an inner sense of expertise and mastery of our professions. By now we have a better developed and fairly well defined, though not usually final, dream of what we want to achieve in life. We put significant energy into achieving the dream. During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain What did you personally dislike about this time of your life? List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact. Stage 4. Mid-Life Transition (Approximately 42-48)This is the stage of mid-life questioning that's been discussed so much in the popular press. Here we tend to question everything again. If we have not achieved our dreams we wonder why not. Were they really the right dreams? If we have achieved our dreams we look at what values we might have neglected in their pursuit. Was it worth it? Either way we're probably disillusioned. A period of reassessment and realignment usually takes place, including recognition and re-balancing of key polarities, such as: Immortality vs. Mortality - While young people know better intellectually, emotionally they seem to feel they are immortal. In mid-life we start to realize it may be half over and we want to make the best of what remains. This typically requires some revision of priorities and values - perhaps less emphasis on values already achieved and more emphasis on those we have neglected. Constructive vs. Destructive - Up to mid-life, most of us fool ourselves that our behavior has been constructive while we had to deal with others' destructive behavior. In mid-life we get the uncomfortable insight that we have also engaged in our share of destructive as well as constructive behavior. This insight is painful but essential if we want to continue growing intellectually and spiritually. Nurturing vs. Aggressive - Whether we have focused on aggressive (e.g., fast track corporate careers) or nurturing (e.g., teaching, social work, or homemaking) behavior to date, in midlife we often want to re-balance. Some aggressive corporate people want to spend more time nurturing with their families or in socially oriented work, and some who have been in more service-oriented nurturing careers want to pursue something more aggressive or financially rewarding. The experts stress that acknowledging the turmoil, experiencing the pain, and facing and resolving the polarities is essential for continued growth and satisfaction. Refusing to acknowledge or experience mid-life anxieties and questionsor at some unconscious level trying to go back and be twenty againis usually a sure way to get stuck and disgruntled in a way station. If you went through a mid life transition as described, what became the most important discovery? How did it change your life? During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain. What did you personally dislike about this time of your life? List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact. Stage 5. Leaving a Legacy (Approximately 49-65)The period after completion of the mid-life transition can be one of the most productive of all stages. We are usually at the peak of our mature abilities here. If the issues of the mid-life transition have been acknowledged and addressed we can make our greatest possible contributions to others and society. Here we can be less driven, less ego-centered, less compelled to compete with and impress others. Instead we can focus on what really matters to us, on developing younger people, on community with others, on leaving some personal legacy that really makes things better for people (whether it's recognized as our personal legacy or not), and on accomplishing values that our maturity and greater spirituality tell us have the most true meaning in the overall scheme of life. During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain. What did you personally dislike about this time of your life? List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact. Stage 6. Spiritual Resolution (Approximately 66 and Beyond)This is the stage of tying things up, of completing the design of what we want to become, of finalizing our growth and assessing/fine-tuning the persons we have made of ourselves. This stage can go on for many years. It can be hopeful or cynical depending on how realistically, humbly, and effectively we have resolved (or now finally resolve) the issues faced in earlier stages. We may move into this stage sooner or later depending on how rapidly we have developed in earlier stages - how much we have moved beyond our narrow selves. Here we come to grips with the ultimate limitations of life, ourselves and mortality. We can look hopefully and unflinchingly at the ultimate meaning of our life and the life of others in the larger context. We do the best we can to pass whatever wisdom we have gained on to others. We accept others for what they are, seeing them as growing like we are and part of humankind's diversity. Our sense of community continually expands as we prepare for survival of the spirit beyond our mortality. During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain. What did you personally dislike about this time of your life? List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact. IntegrationIn reviewing what has come and gone and what is yet to come, what thoughts, feelings, and/or reactions come to you? Are there themes that run through your most personally valued stages? Are there themes of dislike that run through your life stages? In looking back, have your prior choices informed you about your present self or state? or possibly embarrassed you? Explain. After some reflections, are there any choices that you would change? Explain. After writing your thoughts, discuss with your life partner or a close friend. Footnotes1 See: Erik Erikson's, The Life Cycle Completed, Identity and the Life Cycle 1982, and Vital Involvement 2 See: Daniel J. Levinson's, The Season's of a Man's Life, 1986, and The Seasons of Woman's Life, 1997. 3 See: Gail Sheehy's, New Passages: Mapping your Life Across Time, 1996. 4 The Life Stages paragraphs of this exercise were adapted from Your Soul at Work Copyright 2002, Nicholas Weiler Natural Passages ProgramMarch 21-24, 2013 Nature based programs that support men through the doorways of life that aren't clearly marked. We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place -- T. S. Eliot. The TurningI
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Therapy | Male Maturation |
Aims for enhanced coping and social adjustment based on modification of one's behavior to the external authority in one's life...social, cultural, parental, employer, etc. Work is done in and about the middle world of day-to-day life, where emotional wounds, development of personal bonds, the cultivation of physical grace and emotional expression, and the blossoming of empathy, intimacy, and personality authenticity are addressed. It can be focused towards saving marriages, facilitating divorces, cultivating social skills or friendships, enhancing performance or enjoyment in our current careers, raising economic standing, ending depressions, helping us understand or express feelings, gaining insight into our personalities or personal histories, or being happier. Descent into the underworld is often avoided or bypassed by initiating coping or reframing techniques. Discomfort and/or suffering is eased as quickly as possible. The elimination of the symptoms is foremost. Male maturation means assuming socially and culturally defined adult responsibilities such as economic and employment sustain- ability, family and relational stability, and/or personality congruence. |
Aims for initiation and cultural change that can lead to the re-establishment of internal authority as a vessel for how to live one's life. Work is done in the under world, home of the soul, where embodiment of the soul deepens individuality through the discovery of our particular place in the world and the embodiment of our unique form of service, and brought into the middle world, home of day to day life and personalities. The focus is to cultivate a relationship between the ego and the four parts of the soul. It is not focused towards saving marriages, facilitating divorces, cultivating social skills or friendships, enhancing performance or enjoyment in our current careers, raising economic standing, ending depressions, helping us understand or express feelings, gaining insight into our personalities or personal histories, or being happier, even though it might occur as a side effect. The initial descent into the underworld may make life more difficult or lonely or less comfortable, secure, or happy as social stability and psychological composure can be lost while internal authority is restored so that the active, mature adult male of the soul can surface. Male maturation means moving closer to the soul. This can be done by returning to nature and experiencing the elements, exploring the symbols that give meaning to your life, discovering the vision that has been waiting for you to claim. |
Adapted from Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, 2003
We shall not cease from our exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot
The MoMen Return weekend is for those who have completed the year-long program. It is a return to where we started. It is an exploration into the four principles of presence. The focus is to delve deeply into the relational next steps of the four chambered heart, the four phantoms of fear and the resulting shadow behavior. Dynamic exercises will be provided to support an inward journey and then the opportunity to share these private stories with each other.
The intention of the weekend is to take advantage of the wooded area of the Pebble Ledges. Living in tents, we will have the magic of solitude, the comfort of the surrounding forest, and the support of the community of other MoMen. Woven into the fabric of the weekend are experiences that support personal and interpersonal explorations of whom are you as a man in today’s world.
MoMen Return will occur September 19-22, 2013. Start-up is 9:00 AM on Thursday, September 19th with a brief hello and get to know each other before we build our village and homes for the weekend. One or two small villages will be created depending on how many MoMen Return.
The MoMen Return workshop is $600 per person. There is a $100 discount per person, if paid in full by July 1, 2013. Mail checks to: Cleveland Consulting Group, Inc. at 9796 Cedar Road, Novelty, Ohio 44072-9747.
Food and tents are provided for the weekend. However, all sleeping gear, eating utensils, and personal items must be brought to the weekend. In addition, we are asking that each MoMan bring 2-3 gallons of water that will be used for drinking and washing stations.
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