Chapter 15
An Answer to the Pain
I'm
reminded of the famous words of Stan Laurel, "It's a fine mess
you've got us in, Ollie!" Towards the end of the initiatory process,
all it feels like is a real mess. The young man is looking for
manhood and wisdom and he finds himself more miserable than he has
ever been. He is slowly losing any motivation. In many ways he has
forgotten why he is doing this to begin with. Perhaps the one thing
that keeps him going is the confidence and vision of his elders.
Yet like
everything else in the wilderness, there comes paradox. As the
initiate loses confidence and motivation, he gets closer to his
goal. As he feels most alone, he starts to feel less lonely. As he
feels most humiliated, he starts to feel a new dignity. As things
feel more and more uncertain, he feels a growing comfort with
confusion. As he stands on foreign ground, it starts to feel like
home.
Slowly,
he begins to see things differently. New thoughts enter his head. He
begins to see the world around him with different eyes. Instead of
his mother's eyes or his father's eyes, he starts to see the world
through a man's eyes. In many primitive cultures, especially in the
American Indian tradition, he has a vision, perhaps a kind of holy
hallucination. In other cultures, he has an altered state
experience. Luke, on Degaba, described a feeling "like living in a
dream."
These
visions or experiences tell him that he has come in contact with
another power and another place. Within the experience are many
messages, all vital to his manhood. Now scared starts to become
sacred. The wilderness starts to become home. Pain starts to lead to
purpose.
Neurotic Pain
In
moving through modern initiation and initiatory pain, a man will
start to see that his pain was necessary. He realizes that he
couldn't go through the transformation to manhood without it. As in
a chemical reaction, the heat had to be increased significantly
before the chemical change happened and a new substance was formed.
Pain is the heat. A man will start to see that initiatory pain will
continue to be necessary. It will be a part of the rest of his life,
if he is to continue his growth. Yet he will feel less afraid of the
pain, even befriending it.
An
initiated man will also be able to see the difference between
necessary initiatory pain and the unnecessary neurotic pain of
staying in the village too long. This neurotic pain is the one
accompanying any addiction.. It is the inevitable pain that a man
brings upon himself for not dealing with his inner life. It is
initiatory pain not faced. "Neurosis is a substitute for legitimate
suffering," observed Carl Jung.
The
paradox of life is that we can run from pain or we can run toward
it. But we can never not deal with it. Like death and taxes, inner
pain cannot be avoided. The young, unguided boy instinctively runs
from pain and from his manhood. He runs, unless he finds an elder to
help him stop running and stand his ground. Most modern men's pain
is the pain of running from pain. This is neurotic suffering. It
serves no useful purpose to the man or his loved ones. It is a black
hole of suffering.
Before
the initiatory experience, a man will not understand what I am
talking about. One man I worked with was incredulous when I
mentioned that the goal of life and counseling was not the wise
pursuit of pleasure. He could see no other reason for living. I
understood his feelings, as he was in a lot of neurotic emotional
pain. Pleasure seemed his only release from emotional as well as
physical pain. He did not realize that the emotional and physical
pleasure he sought from his wife would not get him satisfaction. He
did not realize that the rages he would go into toward his wife were
really a very young boy's frustration with his mother object. His
intense frustration was the cause of his pain, not his wife. His
rages dulled the pain, without getting himself one inch closer to
the peace of manhood.
Neurotic
pain is a substitute for initiatory pain. It becomes the pain of
avoidance. It sidesteps the real pain of impending separation and
the initiatory pain of depression. For example, very often I talk to
men who are afraid to be alone. They need to stay busy all the time
or be in someone's company. They do not realize that their actions
are a way of avoiding being with initiatory feelings. They live
their life with an undercurrent of fear of initiatory aloneness, a
fear that no activity or person can take away.
Many
men's health problems are an example of neurotic pain. If a man does
not deal with his emotional pain, he will hurt someone else or hurt
himself. Again, a man who transmits the pain is a dangerous man to
others. A man who holds the pain inside hurts himself. Eventually
the pain held inside goes into the body. Running from initiatory
pain is the cause of the vast majority of chronic health problems
for men. Indigenous people knew intuitively of these psychosomatic
problems. A person who was sick would go to the medicine man, who
was also the priest. If traditional medicines didn't work the priest
would know there was a deeper soul problem. Intractable sickness was
considered a problem in a man's soul. It meant he had lost touch
with the other side. He was not in harmony with his god. It also
meant he had lost touch with his manhood.
The
medicine man or shaman was also known as a world walker. He could go
easily, though in pain, from this reality to the other side. The
medicine man would travel to the other side to find out how his
patient was in disharmony with his deepest identity. On his return
he would know what to do to help the man. If the man cooperated, the
returned harmony brought health.
I talked
of the fact that men live several years less than women. Most men
don't realize how their neurotic pain is ravaging their bodies. They
don't stop long enough to really think about it. They just die
prematurely.
Anxiety
is another kind of neurotic pain. Anxiety often means a man is
afraid of imminent separation, whether from his wife, his job, his
persona, his dreams. Anxiety attacks are really separation attacks.
The attacks come either because a man fears a separation or he is
experiencing one. An unfathered, uneldered man does not understand
initiatory pain. He has little idea why he is so anxious so often.
He may have some idea that he is anxious about his job or his
marriage or his image or his future. But he would rather not think
about it.
The
anxious man is really fearful of initiatory separations. His fear
would be reasonable if he faced his separation. In facing separation
he would be understandably nervous. However, his neurotic anxiety
shows he is not dealing with his real work as a man. He has not
turned from his anxiety into facing his real fears.
A man's
anxiety often comes out as job stress. As I mentioned, burnout is
caused by being in a no-win situation. Stress is really a code word
for chronic anxiety. The word stress just sounds more manly. Job
stress is most often caused by being the wrong man in the wrong job.
The
wrong man is the pseudo-adult of the persona. A man sends his mask
to work to perform the tasks he needs to do, usually to fulfill his
provider/protector role. It is often not a job he particularly
likes. Yet he is caught in his patriarchal role. He figures his
stress is the price he has to pay for raising a family. But he pays
the price he doesn't need to pay. He suffers from chronic, neurotic
anxiety because he has paid the wrong price. He has been a pained
cardboard character, feeling he has no choice.
The man
may also be in the wrong job. It is not a job that he feels
motivated to do from the inside out. He may have found the right
talents but not the right context. He may have done some initiatory
work in finding his talents. But his job neither recognizes his real
talents or uses his abilities. Yet he stays because he feels he must
play it safe. He feels too many people are depending on him. He
doesn't realize how much he is letting his family down, especially
his sons, by not risking. His family needs an initiated man more
than a financially successful one.
The
price of neurotic pain is often the catastrophic price of a heart
attack, a stroke, liver disease from the late stages of alcoholism,
chronic fatigue. Or the price is the estrangement of family and
friends because of rage or withdrawal. All this because a man was
not able to pay the initiatory price.
Jason
A man
named Jason came to me "because of job stress". He felt fatigued,
depressed in mood, and suffering a great deal of back pain. He
talked of being continually worried because of the unsteadiness of
his work situation. He could be laid off at any time because of the
downsizing of his company. His fatigue and back problems have been
noticeable the last two years. He has felt depressed, on and off,
since childhood.
He was
married for four years and had a 2 year-old daughter. He got along
with his wife, Karen, except that he felt that he did a
disproportionate amount of household work both inside and out. Karen
had just quit her job to be home all day with their child. Jason and
Karen both felt this was best for their daughter.
Karen
had sought a counselor's help for panic attacks and depression after
the birth of their daughter and was still seeing the counselor. She
was getting increasingly more passive and irritable. Jason felt
isolated, pressured and overwhelmed both at work and at home.
Jason's
history revealed that he had a relatively happy childhood until age
6. At that point, his father started to have heart problems and had
to go on disability. The family of seven children then had serious
financial problems. In addition, his father's 'bad temper' got worse
under the strain of his enforced lifestyle. Jason experienced an
angry, depressed, ill father who could offer him little guidance. By
the time Jason was 11 his father had a heart attack and died.
Jason's
mother went into a depression after her husband's death. His
brothers and sisters, except for a younger sister, had left home.
They showed little interest in the family. With no one else to count
on, his mother started to depend on Jason for emotional support and
physical help around the house. His mother was overwhelmed and
unable to keep up. She got more and more depressed, and she counted
on Jason more and more for help.
Jason's
younger sister was mentally retarded. So Jason had to be the primary
caretaker for his younger sister, dressing her and making sure she
got to school. This was in addition to doing much of the work around
the household and supporting his mother emotionally. Jason could not
remember many happy times after the death of his father. Jason was
stuck in the provider/protector role very early in his life.
When
Jason entered into his adult body and the adult world he
instinctively looked for initiation. He felt more manly when he was
a breadwinner and could take care of his wife and daughter. As with
so many men, this was the only initiation he knew that could give
him some sense of maturity. He was attracted to Karen because she
thought him so strong and independent, and she could reinforce his
sense of pseudo-manliness.
Yet
Jason was overwhelmed with the responsibility of keeping a household
together with a depressed woman and a helpless child. He also lived
in constant fear of losing his job, just like his father. His
adolescent felt like he never left home. And he hadn't. He was stuck
in the same pattern of his adolescence, not separating from being
the protector of his mother object or the manly provider of his
family. As with most uninitiated men and most neurotic pain, Jason
unconsciously recreated his past in a revolving door of time. And
the mother complex he was dependent on continued to keep him
unconscious and revolving.
Jason
never had a chance to be fathered and eldered. So he was robbed of
the guidance he needed to find true initiation. Just as he started
into the age of the father, his father got sick. Jason felt stuck in
his job because he was stuck in the persona of adolescent manliness.
He was terrified of losing it. He was also terrified of not
protecting a 'helpless' wife, as he had been so afraid of letting
down his mother. His anxiety was moving into his body. His anger was
increasing significantly but he was afraid to be like his father, so
he stuffed it. Instead he was withdrawing from his wife in anger
because "she was not doing her share." He felt alone, again, with
patriarchal responsibility he couldn't handle. His adolescent didn't
yet know how to handle his pain or his situation.
Jason
needed a father and elder to guide his adolescent. The
responsibility of his situation was serious, but it would be
manageable to an initiated man. An initiated man would set
boundaries in his relationship with his wife and not enable her
helplessness by obsessively protecting her. He would separate
emotionally from a helpless mother object, while at the same time
showing appropriate compassion for his wife. He would be able to
deal with his wife's depression without taking on responsibility for
her pain. The next chapter deals with these issues of couples
supporting and not thwarting each other's initiation.
Jason
would also realize that being out of work is not being out of
manhood. An elder would encourage him to risk leaving an
unfulfilling job in order to find the right work for himself. If
this would not be possible at the moment, the elder would help a man
separate from his persona, and patriarchal expectations, by showing
him the difference between his job and his life work. He would
encourage a man to face the real pain of moving past the patriarchal
persona of protector and provider.
Jason
would ultimately lose his old identity if he faced his initiatory
pain, but he would have his soul and his health.
Jason
was probably on his way to a heart attack, just like his father. His
neurotic pain was already moving up his back, and robbing him of
'heart'. Yet, all the pain he was feeling would not be any lesser
than the initiatory pain he had to face to find the peace he sought.
I just had to help him understand that. I am reminded of
ShakespeareÕs quote, "Cowards die a thousand deaths, brave men die
but once." Anxious, depressed men are not cowards as much as
unguided adolescents without a true mission. Yet these men die a
thousand useless, anxious deaths instead of the one death of
initiation..
Legitimate Pain
A man in
the latter stages of ordeal starts to realize that his manhood and
deep inner satisfaction comes from finding purpose, not pleasure. He
realizes that manhood does not consist in avoiding pain. He sees
that the pleasures that he strived for no longer have meaning.
Addictions have lost their allure. He realizes there is no 'right'
woman that will make life bearable. There are only fantasies of
women. He realizes that manhood does not come from protecting a
woman or that initiation does not come from her adoration. He will
have grieved these losses and start to leave his neurotic anxiety
behind.
This man
will also realize that his manhood and deep inner satisfaction comes
from purpose, not power. He will see that status and money do not
make him feel more like a man on the inside. He will see that the
respect of uninitiated men is meaningless. He will see that all the
power he has will not allay the anxiety he feels about losing the
trappings of manhood. If he does choose to take on power in a
corporation, church, or club, he will do this to fulfill a greater
purpose and not to prove his manhood.
The man
in the ordeal will start to realize that the measure of a man is not
how much pain he can render but how much pain he can endure for a
higher purpose. Here we come to the mystery of initiatory pain. The
existential pain of initiation, choosing to transform pain rather
than transmit it, makes not only a new man, but a new ideal of
manhood. Pain triggers the transformation to manhood.
If a man
cannot get past his boyhood, he cannot bring his son and his
brother's sons to manhood. He cannot find peace. He cannot give
peace to those he loves. Yet, the peace of his manhood is
paradoxical. This peace includes pain. And the pain is O.K. This
paradoxical pain has meaning. It goes somewhere. Unlike neurotic
pain it somehow changes the universe instead of being swallowed
uselessly into a black hole. This is pain with a purpose. Only the
initiated man and woman understands this.
An
initiated man is then able to experience a further mystery of
initiatory pain. He has become someone who can transform the
neurotic pain in the world. Instead of retransmitting the neurotic
pain directed at him, he has learned to transform his community by
absorbing this pain. He is like a carbon rod in a nuclear reactor,
absorbing neutrons of negative energy that cause critical explosive
masses of anger and emotional destructiveness in his community. He
has learned to absorb pain, both his own and the neurotic pain
around him, for a higher purpose of transforming it into compassion.
By doing this he creates compassion in the world.
It is
interesting that the word compassion means to suffer with. An
initiated man will voluntarily suffer emotional pain as he realizes
that joining in the suffering around him, rather than transmitting
or internalizing it, can be as healing to the community as it was
for himself. He will become a transmitter of the lessons of pain,
while walking his talk.
A man,
toward the latter stages of initiation, starts to find how his pain
has started to make him a different person, a person he likes much
more. He also starts to realize that he couldn't be that different
person without the lessons from that pain. Pain becomes another
elder, teaching him important lessons about how a man moves in the
world. Through enduring pain for a higher purpose a man transforms
pain into the highest good, both for himself and for the community
he is a part of. He goes from a hellion to a healer. Upon his
manhood rests the good of his community, especially the generations
that will come after him. More about this later.
The
transformation to manhood brings a man to a willingness to suffer
pain for the next generation. It is purely voluntary. The motivation
is not shame or ego or status or respect. It is a man's need to
fulfill what he has learned and what he has become in his ordeal.
Groundhog Day
I am
thinking of the classic movie Groundhog Day, one of my favorites.
This movie's writer and director, Harold Ramis, has called it a very
spiritual movie. It is also quite entertaining. This movie is about
neurotic pain, the other side, initiatory pain, and transformation.
A very
narcissistic television weatherman, played by Bill Murray, comes to
the town of Punxutawney to report on the Groundhog Day celebration
there. In the process of living Groundhog day he exhibits a lot of
negative boy behavior. He is selfish, ego absorbed, and addictive.
He tends to use people for his own ends and to satisfy his own
needs. And he is stuck.
His
stuckness in neurosis is soon made clear when he wakes up the next
morning to find out he is starting a painful Groundhog day all over
again. He repeats his neurotic behavior and gets the same painful
results Groundhog day after Groundhog day. His anxiety increases. He
continues hurting others and himself. His only answer is to continue
to live the same day over. Most men stuck in their neurosis
recreate, daily, their pain and their painful situations.
Most men
who are stuck will then blame the world for their problems. Their
frustration is not their fault. They feel that the world is out to
get them. They are unable or unwilling to look inside.
Actually, the world is out to get him. The universe is trying to
initiate him. This man, Phil, is separated from all that orients
him. He is in a strange town, in a strange time. Nothing makes
sense. There seems no way out. The wilderness, right there in
Punxutawney. The ordeal, without notice, comes unbidden. Actually
the other side has found him, like elders in the middle of the
night.
This
movie shows a fine representation of the other side, the timeless
side, the eternal present. This is the mythic, psychological time I
have talked about. This is the surreal time that men feel in the
middle of ordeal. The movies depicts, paradoxically, both neurotic
time and initiatory time.
Phil is
forced to deal with his inner life or be stuck forever. This is the
place every man will come to in his life, usually right in his own
home town. The questions arise. Will he step in the same street
puddle every day, or will he become aware of his destructive habits
and lifestyle? Will he accept the pain of change and separation, or
will he forever rail at the unfair world? Will he deal with this
inner world or be stuck in the outer world?
Eventually, Phil becomes seriously depressed. He has tried a number
of adolescent ways to feel good, and he only feels worse. He decides
to face death. Unfortunately the death involves the death of his
body, not initiatory death. He tries a number of ways of committing
suicide. He goes down, but only trying to fall to his death. He
stays stuck because he will not face his initiatory depression.
Eventually, Phil starts to deal with his internal pain and
frustration. He accepts his separation. He gives up his former
striving for pleasure and status. He allows the ordeal to start to
transform him. He eventually learns that he cannot change the day,
but he can change the way he relates to the day. He realizes that he
does not have to be stuck in his old narcissistic ways. He doesn't
have to step in the same street puddle every day. His consciousness
dawns slowly.
For most
men the transformation takes a long time. Ordeal takes many months,
sometimes many years. Yet the peace I talked about also grows apace.
So the ordeal takes on the quality of painful peace as it
progresses. There is this sense in the movie. During the day, Phil
is continually faced with the narcissistic behaviors that lead to
his unhappiness. These repeats finally sink in. He is changed
through his aloneness, confusion, frustration and depression. He
starts to be aware of other's needs. He finds strength. He finds
peace. He starts to realize the gifts that he can bring to the small
town community he is now a part of. He voluntarily starts to give of
himself with no ulterior motives. He seems oblivious to the respect
he receives. He has found the peace that passes understanding. He
has found it through ordeal. There is no other way.
Holy
Teachers
The
greatest model of manhood in western civilization, according to Carl
Jung and many others, is Jesus Christ. No matter if a person feels
Jesus was divine or not, his life has profoundly influenced western
civilization. And his message profoundly shows an answer to pain.
Christ, though he arguably had the power of the universe at his
disposal, chose to suffer pain rather than inflict it. Why would a
man with all this power choose to suffer so horribly? As St. Paul
said, this crucifixion was a 'scandal' to the world, meaning the
patriarchy of his day. In the words of the gospel, Christ suffered
that others might live. Living meant living from the inside out,
from finding the 'kingdom within'. Living meant absorbing pain for
the good of others.
Christ
refused to listen to the patriarchal voice of power. Both in the
desert and on the cross he refused to listen to the voices that
said, "if you are so strong and godlike do something powerful and
show us." Just as today the patriarchal voice will always say to us,
"do something powerful to show them youÕre a man, or else you're a
wimp." Christ modeled the manly life we are talking about. He was
called rabbi which means teacher. He came to teach us about pain.
He, who could have had all the pleasure and power he wanted,
suffered instead. The cross is a symbol of voluntary suffering. He
suffered for the higher good of the community and to show the
gateway to the life of the soul. He suffered to teach that there is
purpose in life, and in pain.
As I
have mentioned, the Buddhist tradition has a similar model in the
Boddhisatva. This person would choose to go back into the suffering
world after finding enlightenment and peace. The Bodhisattva paid
his dues. He has done the work of separating and detaching from the
hearth and village. He has detached himself from the illusions of
worldly satisfaction and gone through the pain of that separation.
He has also separated from the karmic cycle of causing pain and
yearning for pleasure. Yet he chooses to stay in this world as a
model and guide for the human community, until all have reached the
same enlightenment.
Luke
And Pain
An
answer to pain and the freedom of manhood is also depicted
wonderfully in another man. In the Star War myths, Luke learns the
secret of the Jedi, the secret of a mature man. He finds it in his
final ordeal. In his final struggle with his father, in the presence
of the Emperor, after being tempted to destroy his father violently,
through hatred and anger, Luke puts down his weapon. The Emperor has
tempted Luke to violence and hatred because of a 'good cause'. The
Emperor tries to lure Luke back into the patriarchal violence of
outer control instead of the inner struggle of transformation. He
tries to lure Luke away from Yoda's message that "a Jedi uses force
for knowledge and defense-never attack." He tempts Luke to create
patriarchal pain for the good of his community.
Instead
of defending himself in righteous struggle, Luke tells the Emperor
that he refuses to fight. Luke tells the Emperor he will have to
kill him first. Luke refuses to save himself by causing others pain.
This is madness. It is also the mystery and strength of initiatory
pain. The Emperor starts to destroy Luke in front of his father.
Luke endures a great deal of pain, and is at the brink of physical
death. His father seems unmoved because of his loyalty to the
Emperor. Even when his own son pleads for help, he does not respond.
Right in front of Darth Vader is pure witness to the powers of both
light and dark. Luke is witnessing to the mystery of inner power and
the humble acceptance of initiatory pain. The Emperor is witness to
the prideful illusion of exterior control, and the destruction it
causes. One is causing death, the other is humbly accepting death.
Both face their fate on the Death Star.
Somehow
Darth's heart is moved. He suddenly picks up the Emperor and throws
him into an abyss. Darth then turns back into Aneken, his original
Jedi name. He tells Luke, while dying, that Luke has already saved
him by his witness. He has seen the power and rightness of Luke's
witness, and he could die as a man again, not an unemotional
machine. Darth remembers the forgotten truths of the Jedi warrior.
He takes off his helmet, which symbolizes the artificial life of his
narcissism, to see his son with human eyes. He is again a Jedi. Then
he dies.
Luke has
not only saved his integrity through his voluntary suffering, he has
saved someone he loves very deeply. Soul has spoken to soul.
Transformation has led to transformation. Compassion has led to
healing. That is the mystery of initiatory pain.
Larry Pesavento ©2005
