Larry Pesavento is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, a therapist, an author and the Founder of CHRISTOS - A Center for Men located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"In 1993 Larry Pesavento started CHRISTOS men's center to help initiate a dialogue about how a man in this confusing, elderless world can find a sense of identity, place and pride. He had been counseling men for close to 25 years and learned from their struggles as well as his own. He then decided to write a book about the internal journey that a man must take in order to find a sense of peace and generativity. He felt called to write this book to share what he had learned as part of his own journey and struggle with manhood.

For more info about Larry Pesavento, visit his web-site, http://www
.christoscenter
.com/
E-mail: Larpes@aol.com

MENSIGHT will publish a chapter each month and we would like for you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.

Chapter 19
Last Temptations

As a man gets closer to his goals on his initiatory journey, there are some powerful last temptations. In the middle of ordeal his weakness and confusion may get the better of him. As he starts to feel and understand the goal he is after, he finds it illusory and impermanent. He has not gone far enough in his journey to truly believe his vision. He is tired and spent.

He has left woman as mother, realizing his peace will not come in the numbness and euphoria of addiction or the false tranquility of feminine nurture. He is looking to be more alive and passionate, not sated and passive. He may have started the recontracting of his committed relationship. He may have seen the illusion of patriarchal goals, and had a vision of his work that excites him. He has briefly felt the vitality of his own manhood. Then it is gone, seemingly not to return.

There will always be a regression when a man is close to his goal. The fully initiated man will realize that regressions are often signs that the next step is about to happen, another door is about to open. The man in the last stages of initiation, though he may have been warned, does not realize this yet in his bones. He is tempted to see regression as a defeat. He may even have the illusion that the regressive path is the right one.

Regression

I have talked about regression throughout this book. This is the time to talk about regression in more detail. For regressive pulls get stronger whenever a man is about to separate and just after separation. Regression is the inevitable shadow side of growth. If a man does not understand regression when it occurs, he can become so disheartened he will give in to that force. This is especially true toward the end of the initiatory journey.

Because regression is inevitable, a man must realize that he will be dealing with it the rest of his life. He will learn that the measure of his journey is not how far back he regresses, but how quickly he can regain his footing and resume his path. Regression happens when one of the boys within demands a man's attention because of feeling overwhelmed. Often the regression points to unfinished pain, and loss that has not been fully resolved. Sometimes regression is a warning of imminent loss, as a prelude to another initiatory step.

Regression happens when a man is under stress, and does not have the emotional reserves to stay fully on his initiatory path. The stress of initiatory separations can cause a regression. A life situation that mirrors the trauma of previous loss can do the same. Even the letdown after an initiatory step can trigger regression.

If regression brings a man back to unhealed pain, and to the child who is experiencing that pain, then it does not have to be seen as a defeat. Regression can then be seen as an opportunity for healing. As John Lee says in his excellent book on regression Growing Yourself Back Up, "every time I regress, I am given one more opportunity to heal an old trauma, hurt, slight, grievance, or resentment, or to take care of old unfinished business." He calls this opportunity the grace of regression.

Dealing with the boy's pain allows a man to grow back up and continue his initiatory journey. The problem with regression is that so many men are not taught about its existence or its inevitability. Many men have been disheartened by regression, especially moving toward the end of their initiation, when they can't understand how they are back into feelings and behaviors they thought were way behind them. Giving in to this regression they lose precious time, sometimes for years, in a kind of despair.

If a man regresses after experiencing an initiatory separation, such as leaving a patriarchal job or ending an unhealthy relationship, he is being tested in his choice. The shadow of an initiatory choice is longing for that which is lost, a natural part of the grieving process. Regression is often part of this same grieving process. The test involves the temptation of 'curing' a depression by moving back towards the familiar, or learning to use regression as a confirmation of one's original choice by choosing again.

The stress of the journey is draining. Fearful situations that mirror previous separation trauma are common. Elder energy is hard to come by, elder energy that could make the difference in the next step. Cultural temptations for regressive comforts are widespread. Last temptations seem to have particular allure.

Anima

One last temptation with particular allure involves another kind of woman. This is not the woman as mother and nurturer, but a twist on this regression. This is woman as soul mate. This illusory temptation happens when a man confuses his soul with his mate. This also happens when a man confuses his soul with a fantasy mate.

When this confusion arises, the 'right woman' seems to have the key to a man's soul feelings. She makes him feel alive. She makes him feel interesting. She makes living seem so interesting.

Curiously, when she is not around life does not seem so interesting. He feels more deflated than full of life. This is the key to a last temptation. She gives him a soul feeling without finishing his soul journey. He doesn't realize that he is borrowing a feeling he cannot yet give back. He doesn't realize that she is triggering a an archetypal feeling inside that he must ultimately find on his own

For a man, a woman's seeming aliveness mirrors an archetypal feeling of soul that is experienced as feminine. This experience of soul as feminine is a mysterious attribute of the male psyche that seems to be related to the experience of the sacred as loving other. For whatever reason, a man sometimes experiences his own soul as feminine, so can easily feel that his life revolves around the woman who seems to incarnate that soul.

The feminine soul feeling inside a man Jung called the anima. The anima feels like a woman within. The anima is the feminine part of a man that introduces him to his own soul. Anima carries feelings he didnÕt know he had. Anima possesses all those feelings that he was taught not to feel as a man, but had laid dormant inside. Anima represents the feelings that make a man feel more whole and yearn for complete wholeness. This is a hard concept, and one I hesitate to mention because of its seeming complexity. But hang in there with me because this last temptation is a serious one.

Projecting the woman inside onto the woman outside has been an endless detour for men throughout the centuries. This temptation isn't really about the outside woman. Women are not other biblical Eves trying to keep men enslaved in their concupiscence. Women are not evil seductresses ready to mislead young, naive men. The real psychological temptation for a man is to miss the vitality in his own soul and to feel that a vibrant Eve can give him life. This temptation is not Eve's doing, but Adam's.

The capacity for deep feeling, compassion, and caring resides in every man. This capacity resides deep in the wilderness of his soul, hidden from himself until he makes the terrifying move toward initiation. This is anima. These are the so-called 'feminine' traits because not enough men have uncovered these traits to make them also 'masculine'. Being masculine in a patriarchal society means not exhibiting any of the qualities we see as 'feminine'. As Mark Gerzon points out, "Indeed, without clear rites of passage, the only way to be a man is essentially negative: to not be a woman."

So men will tend to get in touch with deep feelings through a woman, often letting her carry and exhibit the emotions that lie unrecognized in himself. These men try to experience their own feelings by being with a woman. She carries the emotion for him. She feels for him. How many times have we seen vital, bubbly women with detached, seemingly cold, men. She becomes his feeling half. He stays the half that remains a boy, a sensitive, rather innocent, boy. In the absence of eldering and initiation many men who have reached the village boundaries take this short-cut to soul feeling. They find it in a woman. They feel empty emotionally without one.

A man who starts to see a woman as a soul projection instead of a mother has taken significant steps toward gaining his own soul. The man who starts seeing a woman more as a companion and less as the mother of his children has moved forward psychologically. He has started to be a healthy adolescent. He is looking less for comfort and more for passionate purpose. A man who starts to see women as something more than sexual objects or live-in assistants has made progress in his journey toward manhood.

For example, a man who has a solitary, surprising affair that results in feeling more alive is often blindly trying to find something deeper. If he feels like his new partner is more of a serious companion than a comforter, he has taken some steps toward maturity. He has gotten to the mid-life crossroads. His adolescent is confused and unguided, but his yearning is healthy. He still needs to realize that dealing with this other 'feminine' side has more to do with getting in touch with the initiatory other side than with embracing a lover. He needs to realize that enduring aliveness is only found in masculine ordeal. Yet the relationship does make him feel much more like a man, and there is the temptation to regression.

David was an artist disguised as an accountant. He was sensitive to the inner life of beauty and harmony. He was married for 20 years to a woman who seemed to change over the years from his friend to the mother of his children. His wifeÕs friendship seemed to have been lost along the years. David sank into a dull depression, a kind of coma of the soul.

David, with much guilt, started an affair with a woman in his office who had his same love of beauty and his same passion for exploration. She represented a whole different life for David. She was the artist's life he never led. She was the life that had gone out of his marriage. She seemed to draw him in like a compulsion he could not resist. She seemed to have the life he had always looked for, the life he had found then lost.

David knew something big was missing from his life. Like many artists he was more sensitive to the life of the soul than other men. He felt the emptiness more acutely. He knew the promise of soul more deeply, because he had experienced it before. He understood, after much anguish, when I told him he was projecting his own soul on the woman of his affair. He realized that he was expecting her to introduce him to his deepest needs. He was expecting her to do the work of his own soul.

Because David had done a good deal of his initiatory work, he accepted my eldering message and stopped the affair. I didn't advise him to stop. I just told him what initiation was about, and that he had been on that path. I told him that the peace he was looking for did not exist in the direction he was going. His elder within intuited the rightness of what I was saying. He knew neither his wife nor his lover had the answers.

David then started into his ordeal with the right questions. He still faced much loneliness and depression. Women were taken from him. Fantasies were dying. He had found it much easier to fantasize about a woman than to risk a new life. He did not leave his wife. He decided to be alone together with her, and she with him. And he stayed with the question of his calling.

He endured the questions that would give him the answers to the soul life he yearned for. He had found this life sporadically in his art. He experienced some of his soul through another woman. He now wanted it all. David courageously went on, past his depression and loss. He found there what he was looking for.

Many men who have gone through a significant part of the initiatory journey never get past this stage. Men who see women as the answer haven't come close enough to the right question. The gift of a loving woman as spiritual and emotional companion can be an opportunity for a man to experience the depth and beauty of his own soul feeling. If he recognizes this experience as a gift of this woman's love, he will not confuse the gift with the woman.

A woman who will not collude with the boy inside by being mother can help the young adolescent inside prepare for initiation. She can introduce him to the feeling of wholeness and aliveness that initiation can bring. She can inspire him to move on with his quest in the best chivalric tradition of the inspirational maiden. However, in the midst of the fearful emptiness of the ordeal, the uninitiated woman can become a willing last temptation to fill his emptiness with her soul, while losing his own.

Ulysses

There are many myths where a man is helped by a woman to come to his goal and find the boon. There are also many myths where a man is seduced or destroyed by a beautiful woman and never finds his goal. The former is a symbol of initiated woman as inspiration. This is the true damsel of the knightly era. This is the woman who is a reflection of a man's soul. An initiated woman will not let a man just settle for her.

The latter woman, as seductress, is a man's short-cut to soul, a woman who keeps a man stuck in her orbit. This short-cut never gives a man peace, though there is a momentary feeling of manliness. Of course, it is more the man's fault than the woman's. However, the immature man will always blame the woman for his 'seduction' and inadequacies.

Ulysses had many dark women he was tempted by, on his way back to his community and his faithful wife, Penelope. These women symbolized his temptations to let a woman give him the final feeling of soul manliness. Whereas Penelope symbolized woman as healthy partner and inspiration.

Ulysses was called wily and wise. As with all maturing men, his wisdom would be his most important virtue, not his physical strength or his fighting prowess. Returning to his community to serve as king was his motivation. Returning to partner with Penelope was his inspiration. The odyssey was his ordeal.

He had gone to fight in the Trojan wars for ten years. It was his wisdom that conceived of the Trojan horse that finally ended the war. His odyssey and final ordeal was his trip back to Ithaca, his home. He had come a way in terms of his manhood. Penelope was not a mother symbol. He had found worldly success and had not used it to revel in material luxury. He had not used victory as a status symbol.

He was forced into ordeal because of giving in to the temptation of pride, thinking himself like a god for having found a way to defeat Troy. He was tempted by the regressive feeling of adolescent omnipotence rather than the humble acceptance of his call. He failed the initiatory test of humility. He fell victim to the illusion of control, that he could pull his own strings. He felt wiser than the gods. He felt he could control his own destiny. The god Poseidon, god of the sea, was outraged by his hubris. As Ulysses found out, It is not good for a sailor to have hubris about life, or the sea. Ulysses expected to sail home in a matter of weeks. It took him ten years, a major regression.

The Sirens were creatures who were top half beautiful woman, bottom half raptor bird with claws that tore menÕs flesh. They had the most beautiful voices and faces, especially voices that would stir men's souls profoundly. Sailors would be lured to their island, entranced with their song, their promises, and their alluring femininity. Once ashore sailors would be attacked and killed by women who lived off men.

Ulysses, on his sail home, was warned of the women. Yet he was also on a soul journey and had a passion for life. He wanted to experience the soul feeling. He had his men stop up their ears as they approached the island. He then had his men tie him to the mast. Ulysses heard the mesmerizing sounds. He was stirred deeply by the melody and the words. The voices promised ripe wisdom and the 'quickening of the spirit'. They also promised him knowledge of the future.

Ulysses reluctantly sailed on, starting to learn the lessons of humility, starting to understand the lessons of ordeal and his own soul. In a sense he used women to give him inspiration. Yet he didn't use a woman to permanently borrow illusory manhood. He found more life for having heard the beauty. He found more wisdom for having resisted temptation.

Ulysses was also shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a stunningly beautiful quasi-goddess, Calypso. She fell in love with Ulysses. She was good intentioned. She showered every kindness on him. She shared all that she had with him, and it was considerable.

Ulysses was captivated, at first, by her beauty and love and generosity. He was also seduced by a woman who devoted her life to him. This is every adolescentÕs finest fantasy. She made him feel like a god, which divine beings tend to do. Again he was tempted to feel and live like a god.

But Ulysses was a man and hero. Though she was a divine nymph, and a stunningly beautiful and intelligent one, Ulysses felt bored and stifled. This is the inevitable result of this regression, after the hormones and fantasies play themselves out. He found that she could not substitute for the passion of his own soul journey, even though she seemed the right woman. He did not succumb to continuing hubris and let himself be tempted by the false manliness of a woman's adoration. He chose to endure more pain and risk death rather than stay in Calypso's voluptuous arms.

Unfortunately Calypso wouldn't let him leave, as an uninitiated woman is wont to do. He finally escaped the island through perseverance and guile. This was his affair. Because of his wisdom and humility he was not destroyed by it.

Even a good relationship is not a substitute for initiation and identity. It is hard to tell whether Ulysses felt infatuation or a true love for Calypso. Infatuation can feel like a substitute for the vitality of manhood, and is most often the sign of soul projection. Companionship and mutual affection is a good thing, if both man and woman also have their own life. Timing is crucial. Ulysses was called someplace else. If they had met earlier, the situation may have been different, though only a very mature man can live with a goddess. Ulysses had to find out that his journey to his kingdom took precedence. He had to find out that Calypso, or any woman, was not the goal of his journey. He was called to be king, not consort.

Ulysses had a female ally, the goddess Athena. She protected him and gave him the wisdom he needed to resist temptation and continue his journey. Wisdom is usually portrayed as feminine because it does not involve masculine strength and patriarchal power but the 'feminine' qualities of intuition and misdirection. Remember it was Ulysses who thought of the Trojan Horse as the only way to defeat Troy. Athena represents the anima inside, not projected on to other women, but owned as part of a man's own soul.

The story is not ultimately about the love affair of Penelope and Ulysses. The story is not about a Hollywood happy ending of lovers reuniting, though their reunion speaks to the healthy love of a mature man and woman. It is a story of a man finding his true place in his community, using his wisdom and talents for the common good. It is the story of a man finding the king inside, so he can be a good king outside. It is the story of ordeal, temptation, regression, manhood, and return.

Infatuation

Our society has an adolescent fixation on woman as soul projection. Most Hollywood movies end with a man finding a love interest who provides the fairy tale 'happily ever after'. These movies routinely end at the real beginning, the beginning of a man's ordeal. They begin and end in adolescence. They begin and end with infatuation.

Infatuation is this cultures primary kind of soul projection. Romantic love keep more men stuck at the crossroads than any other phenomenon. In our culture infatuation is a kind of litmus test of love. It becomes a substitute for love, also a substitute for initiation.

Movies are often about projections, onto a screen and onto our lives. Infatuation mimics the vitality of manhood. The aliveness of infatuation is actually a kind of preview of coming attractions, like the SirenÕs song. There is beauty there, but it doesn't last.

What usually happens is that a man who is infatuated soon loses his vital feelings, either after marriage or after the birth of the first child. His wife often becomes a mother to him and his children. He feels he has lost the woman he married. He spends the rest of his life trying to find the aliveness in other women or other things in the village.

Many men get stuck in a revolving door of infatuation. When his projection on one woman dissipates, he figures this is not the right one. So a man will look for another woman who will permanently give him his soul. The biological correlate of Infatuation usually lasts from 12 to 24 months. Hormones rage, just like in adolescence. A chemical high ensues. The body seems to be able to attain this chemically altered state for a set period of time. Then comes withdrawal and disillusionment.

Infatuation has little to do with the woman outside and a lot to do with the woman inside. Infatuation has little to do with love. It has more to do with quickening the initiatory yearning. Elders realize this, which is why marriage is reserved for an initiated man. Tomme was immediately sent to initiation when it was clear he was infatuated. After initiation Tomme had the clarity to find love after infatuation.

Chemical Soul

Sometimes a man substitutes a substance for the aliveness of a woman. The soul can also be projected onto a substance that makes a man feel alive. This is a different kind of addiction from substance as mother object. I have counseled many men, many of whom are artists, who have used substances because they felt more 'creative' when they were high. They didn't use substances to curb anxiety, or to mellow out. They used it to get the feeling of fleetingly contacting the inner life.

There are a number of specialists in the field of addictions who believe that much addiction is the misguided yearning for a true spirituality. In other words, certain addictions are a detour on the initiatory journey. As opposed to addictions that keep a man in the mother's hut, never even starting the journey, certain addictions can offer a man a certain sense of the aliveness of manhood, without the ordeal. They do offer an ersatz spirituality and a pseudo-peace. However, like infatuation, the feeling ends with no lasting transformation. Like infatuation, it gives a taste but no meal.

The man who uses drugs in this way usually uses the substance as a way to treat his initiatory depression, instead of experiencing it. He has not learned that he must go through emptiness before he feels truly alive. He reaches only for the aliveness that he can control and find easily. This man often experiences depression as boredom. Nothing grabs his interest. Nothing comes from inside that speaks of his deeper self. He is tormented by the emptiness of his inner creative life. He is like Ulysses on the shores of his island, bored with his life with Calypso, yet bereft of another answer.

Often he does not even recognize the power of his own creativity because he is not yet humble enough to accept the vision that he is called to. He still wants some control over his destiny, like the Sirens promised. He wants his own version of his creativity. He is too proud or scared to accept a work as a calling that he cannot control. Often he is too frightened to let go.

I often work with men in their twenties or early thirties who are not yet ready for ordeal, yet have great talent and a passion for the inner creative process. Scooter was a young man in his early twenties who had a passion for telling stories through images and words. He always wanted to be a movie director. He found himself attracted to cameras, both movie and still-life. After college he made his own videos, took countless photographs, and started to write his own play.

Scooter was talented yet frustrated. He spent many years in counseling doing the hard work of separation from mother objects and father voices. He had first felt the village boundaries as a wall that he didn't know how to get around. The wall happened to be the patriarchal wall of expectation and recognition that many men experience. He went through a number of voluntary initiatory experiences. He attempted to face squarely his initiatory depression. He was a courageous young man who was closer to initiation than many men twice his age.

He also found himself a very bored young man. He was caught at the village boundaries. He still needed some patriarchal recognition for his talent, the recognition which was not forthcoming. He didn't realize that the patriarchy rarely recognizes art that cannot immediately make money. He didn't realize that the patriarchy is not interested in the souls of young men. Yet he had ventured into the wilderness and found it exciting, even in the midst of pain. The excitement was in the intermittent creativity he found there. There was the sense of soul that had him excited. He had gotten a vision of his manhood.

Like all artists, he found he could not get into that state of creativity at will. He found that he could not control his creativity. When he was not creative he was bored. He was haunted by this boredom. He could not believe, during periods of boredom, that his vision would ever come back. So he smoked marijuana. He could relax with it. But that wasn't his motivation. He also found that he felt more 'creative' on it. The drug seemed a short-cut to the other side.

At this point Scooter chose control over humility. He found it too hard to trust in a higher power or life force that would give him the vision he needed. He could not wait long enough in ordeal to get that deeper sense of peace and hope. Drugs gave relief and a feeling of control. He was not quite strong enough to see the emptiness through. He was not quite strong enough to break through to the other side.

Scooter struggled with the last steps in his father separation and the crucial stage of humility and hope in his ordeal experiences. He continues to struggle with a growing realization that his dope is not the answer. But he is asking the right questions. He is facing ordeal in shorter intervals and then regressing. Like other men I have counseled, if he continues on his initiatory journey, in spite of regressions, he will one day find his emptiness filled with a creativity that he can trust. He will stop and never look back. He will have faith in the authenticity of his call and his own creativity.

In the 60's some drugs, hallucinogens like marijuana, acid, mescaline, psilocybin, were seen as ways to access the other side, the inner life, for purposes of exploration. For many people the experience introduced them to a world that actually triggered their initiatory needs. The drug experience gave them an experience of soul and soul excitement that was thrilling. The experience also introduced them to another side, beyond village culture, that seemed an answer to the staleness and shallowness of that patriarchal culture. Their experience was like infatuation. Those who used their infatuation as a stepping stone to their initiatory journey often found a motivation to do the harder psychospiritual work. Baba Ram Dass, the fellow LSD explorer with Timothy Leary, is a good example of a man who used this experience as inspiration to seriously seek an answer on a psychospiritual journey.

Today, hallucinogenic drugs are looked on more as recreation, if they are looked on at all. Yet there are some, like Scooter, who use them to find some soul feeling, and then struggle understand why the experience is ultimately so deadening. They have fallen to a last temptation. Unlike Scooter, most have not found an elder to show them the real path, past the crossroads, to the wilderness.

Other drugs, such as cocaine, crack, heroin, ecstasy, pain killers are just that: pain killers. They are the handcuffs to the mother object. They introduce men only to a dead-end. They bring a man right back to the beginning, to the mother's hut.

Paradox

As in every ordeal, there is paradox. Just as I mention being so close to conclusion of ordeal, to a resolution of struggle, I talk of regression. Just as I talk of getting stronger, I talk of giving in to temptation. Infatuation is both a doorway and a dead-end. There is a woman inside who looks like a woman outside. Shortly, just as I will talk of endings, I will talk of beginnings.

The psychospiritual path of initiation does not have a worldly logic. The other side has rules of its own. Here, temptation is also opportunity. Here, regression is part of the healing process. Here, stepping backwards is also part of the journey. Here, the immediate reward for hard won forward steps can be the feeling of being back near the beginning.

A man who has read this far has the strength to contain paradoxes such as these without being blown apart. A man who has read this far is ready for a new name.

Larry Pesavento ©2005