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 20
A New Name

If a man does not succumb to a premature return to the village, and has gone this far in stubbornly and heroically abiding in the wilderness, he will gradually realize that he has already found what he has been seeking. He will not know how this happens, just that it happened. He has acted by not reacting to temptation and regression. He has courageously persevered in his terrible and naked confusion, believing in his elders, learning to believe in himself, his new self.

In the midst of confusion, he will suddenly find clarity. In the midst of loneliness, he will find peace. In the midst of questioning, he will find answers. These are not village answers. They come from the other side. They have their own timetable. They have their own wisdom.

As a result of initiation, a man starts his life in the village as a boy, and he returns to the village as a man. His journey has changed who he is and what he does. A man's journey starts in community and ends in community. Yet all his relationships are changed. This new man is given a new name by his elders. His community recognizes him by a new name because he is a new person to them.

The initiated man returns with a boon, often described by his name. The boon is for the renewal of the community, which can atrophy in patriarchal rigidity. His gift, as well as giving his life meaning, is also meant to transform his community. Indigenous societies waited excitedly for the new man and his boon.

If a community is not open to his gift, as happens in an elderless, modern society, his message can bring estrangement, ridicule, even danger and death. Modern societies do not particularly want mature men.

Yet a man who has been to the other side has a certain peace that is untouched by fear of death or its counterparts, scorn and debasement. The mark of an initiated man is his deep peace that could be described as otherworldly. This is the peace that the Bible says passes understanding. There is a detachment that seems like despair. Actually, it is a detachment that comes from a vision that the community does not yet understand. It comes from a vision from another world.

A New Name

In Christian terms, the man being initiated experiences a metanoia. This is a profound inner change that causes a new sense of value and purpose. The word conversion refers to the same idea, as does the idea of being 'born again'. Buddhists talk of satori as this state of seeing the world totally differently. People who have had near death experiences talk of this transformation. Again, the closeness to death and desperation is initiatory. One astronaut experienced this conversion on the moon, having separated from mother earth, faced death and landed in the lunar wilderness.

Indigenous peoples expected this transformation and symbolized it by giving an initiate a new name. His new name was based on the experiential message that he received during initiation. His elders helped him decipher the message and formalized the renaming. The message gave him his new life direction. The new man's identity, symbolized by the name, was then inextricably connected to his calling. His new identity was forever connected to this vocation.

Through the ages a man's identity has been symbolized by his name. Even today our names are given to us by our parents. In a sense, our name symbolizes the dreams our parents and our culture have for us. We are given the names of men our parents and extended family would have us identify with. Our names represent someone else's dream for us.

In most patriarchal cultures of the past, the boy's name always included the name of his father. In Jewish culture the term bar meant son of. In Celtic culture the analogy is mc. The addition of son in a last name portrays this idea most clearly. In these patriarchal cultures, it is clear the father's life was the model for the son's.

To indigenous people the new name symbolized the new life of the man after the death of ordeal. This was a life beyond the dreams of his father. Life direction was not given to him by his father. His name symbolized a calling much greater than his family's or his society's dreams. The new name symbolized a life much bigger than the life of the village.

To a man who has faced his ordeal, the world is different. He behaves like a different person. Old pleasures have little meaning, yet are not scorned. Drinking, sex, partying can be enjoyed, yet are not ends in themselves. Old goals have little pull. The plum job or the house that makes a statement or the beautiful wife diminish to unimportance. In fact, to an initiated man, the consensus reality and consensus opinion seem irrelevant.

What is important, vital, to an initiated is to be daily following the call, to daily live his name. Some would describe this way of life as walking with their God. Don Juan called it 'living on the pulse'. It can be described as enlightenment, or living in the state of grace or living in harmony. Robert Johnson calls it listening to the will of God. There is a Zen saying:

All people have their living road to heaven. Until they walk on this road,
they are like drunkards who cannot tell which way is which.

The living road to heaven is the most valuable journey a man can take. This state of being is what he was looking for when he got high on alcohol or went looking for sex. This is what he wanted when he worked those 60-70 hours a week for promotion after promotion. This is what he was seeking when he yearned for the right woman to come along.

A man who started writing poetry in his therapy described the mature man he could glimpse in his own life:

Nothing is the same anymore. He is quiet now and does not need to drink on Friday evenings or worry about market volatility. Something greater is pulling him now and he realizes he is no longer in controlÉJust a pulsating flow of energy passing through the body from a source that cannot be described.

A man also had his new name to remind himself of his initiatory experience and the road he was called to take. The community called him by his new name when asking for his help. They also called him softly but incessantly by his name if he wandered from his calling.

Ironically I am reminded of Scrooge when talking of transformation. The story seems so silly in some ways, but seen mythically it does have the feel of the kind of uplifting change that takes place during initiation. Scrooge, in his dark night, faces his past narcissism and his future death. Through undergoing this experience with the other side Scrooge sees life so differently that his life has changed. Others see all this and can't believe it, but Scrooge finds new meaning in moving beyond his own ego needs. Money symbolizes Scrooge's ego needs and his identity with the patriarchy. Generosity and freedom and detachment become his marks of true manhood

Soul and Spirit

Carl Jung had a name for that part of a man that contained his identity, as well as the place that opened onto a higher power. He called it the Self. The Self is an archetype of the whole man, consciously using all parts of his personality. To Jung, the Self, by including the depths of the unconscious, connected to a life seemingly beyond himself, certainly beyond his ego. Through contact with the Self, a man found a deeper identity and deeper meaning in his life. He said that the Self had an innate sense of a higher power and deeper wisdom, a religious sense that was not identified with any religion. The Self acted like a soul looking for spirit. The Self had a spiritual sense without defining spirit. As a scientist, Jung would never venture to say that a higher power existed, only that the Self acted like it existed.

A mature man seems to know that a higher power, at least a higher wisdom, exists because he has experienced it. Through initiation he has learned more and more of the topography of his inner life, the terrain of the Self, the wilderness within. This is the place of the soul. He has found that soul yearns for otherworldly answers, as a boy yearns for manhood.

Indigenous people saw the wilderness as the place where their higher power, their Spirit, dwelled. Initiation not only introduced a boy to his soul, the message from his elders was that his soul was intimately connected to Spirit. Elders experienced Spirit, assumed Spirit, taught about Spirit. Part of the initiatory experience was the explanation of how their people existed through the action of Spirit. Elders always taught this spiritual context, the myth of their people.In the elder's eyes, their people were continually upheld by Spirit, as each man's life and life direction would be connected to Spirit through initiation.

I believe that a modern man going through this ordeal of transformation takes a psychospiritual journey that finds both the potential of soul identity and the existence of something sacred beyond the ego's ability to understand. This something is sacred because it has the effect of bestowing a goodness to a man's life.

It is up to every man to go on this journey alone, to find out for himself. Then he can define Spirit for himself. As a psychologist, I can talk of the steps that a man has to take to painstakingly get himself ready for the wilderness. As an elder, I can tell a man he is meant for the wilderness. As a counselor, I have observed that most every man who has struggled with ordeal has emerged with a spiritual sense. As a man, I can attest to the Spirit that dwells there.

This Spirit is not the Spirit that is automatically in a church or in a religion, though this power can also be there. This is a bigger, more powerful, more mysterious Spirit who cannot be contained by one church or one religion. This is a Spirit of paradox. This is a Spirit who seemingly doesn't go by his own rules. This is the Spirit who teaches the mystery of tranformative pain. This is a Spirit of the wilderness, without and within. This is a Spirit only accessed from deep inside every man, from his own soul. This is the Elder of the elder.

The paradox, here, is that a man does not have to be spiritual to complete this journey. He must merely be radically open to the life beyond the ego, beyond the village, beyond his rational understanding. He must be willing to risk everything for a good beyond what he intuits the village can give. Spirit is just a code word for what is found beyond.

A mature man has learned the difference between soul and Spirit. If he doesn't believe in Spirit is some way, he can too easily feel that his small self is the highest good. He can make himself the center of his universe, deifying his own existence, his own ego. He can more easily fall victim to hubris, psychologically suffering from inflation. This is why his humility is so important. His soul life is meant to work in resonance with Spirit, not take its place. At the least, a respect for Spirit can be a cure for narcissism.

I have mentioned that James Hillman would say that there has always been an entity, recognized by different cultures, as having a guiding influence over a person's life. This daemon or genius or nagual or guardian angel existed between physical existence and Spirit, between the two worlds of initiation. This seems also to be the place of the soul, always ready to connect to the wellspring of a higher purpose, ready to hear the messengers of Spirit.

When thinking of the characteristics of a mature man the word enthusiasm comes to mind. This word comes from two Greek words: en, within, and theos, god. The mature man has found meaning and a higher purpose on the journey within. This changes everything. His soul, resonating with Spirit, striving to be continually in contact with the fruits of his ordeal, has a life that overflows with meaning and enthusiasm.

The mature man is enthusiastic in his approach to life because he has an important, sacred purpose. He has braved the wilderness of the soul and faced his deepest fears. He has gone to the brink of death to find himself. He is now free, because he is fearless. He is no longer driven by his fears of abandonment or engulfment or lack of manly approval. He is no longer driven by his need to control, using money or status. He doesn't need to feel like and act like a god in order to feel safe and comforted. He takes pleasure in life but does not look for a life of pleasure. What he has can't be taken away by anyone else, or given by anyone else.

The mature man lives in paradox because he has his feet in two different worlds. One foot is in the village, the other in the wilderness. One foot is in pain, his pain and the pain of his community. The other is in a peaceful place of wilderness awe and detachment. He lives a two-tiered life. As Robert Johnson's book portrays, he lives between heaven and earth.

The mature man learns to live in many worlds at once. He can be in the wilderness of his own soul, then in the marketplace of his job, then by the hearth with his soul mate. There is a Zen saying: "Chop wood, reach satori, chop wood".

A man's major ordeal immunizes him to the despair of the world. His ordeal lessons keep him from being cynical, or worse, desperate. Desperate men are dangerous men. Instead of despair, a man finds hope because he has faced a most desperate situation in ordeal and has not only survived but found new life. This is not a new life devoid of pain or confusion. It is just that pain and confusion are not the final chapter, for himself or for his community.

Ongoing Ordeal

I have a very close woman friend who told me my book sounds too bleak and painful. She says I need to be more upbeat and hopeful. I agree to the hopeful. Yet I don't want to paint a rosy picture of an intense initiatory experience, with so many ups and downs. There seems to be gender differences here. Men seem to regularly experience an aridity of feeling that women seldom do. The emptiness that comes across at the time of the ordeal, just after separation, is not as bleak for men as women. Again, the symbol of Parsifal's dry years. The bleakness, if eldered, can actually trigger a deep sense of mission. Men are used to shelving their feelings for the higher value of the mission. Men are natural warriors. Bleakness and mission are connected. Men understand emptiness more than women.

A mature man realizes that he will face a significant ordeal every time he faces a major change in his life. The intensity of the ordeal will vary depending on the intensity of that change. A mature man knows that change is inevitable. He realizes that in every change there is loss. In every change there is confusion and disorientation. In every change there is ordeal. Yet, in every ordeal there is promise.

The stress of ordeal will often bring a man back to his original feelings when he faced separation without eldering, without awareness. When we are under the stress of change, or fear of change, we often feel like we are back at the beginning of our original ordeal. Often this is because the adolescent gets frightened, still feeling the part of his wounds that may never be totally healed. He has been healed, but he never forgets. He can feel like heÕs back to square one, facing the ordeal again for the first time. This feeling of past being present signals that a man is on the other side. Back to the wilderness. Back to ordeal.

This feeling can feel like a regression. However, an initiated man, or a man with elder consciousness, will realize that these feelings are the painful but normal ones that signal a deeper calling into the wilderness, another widening of his call. This feeling is not regression, but a movement deeper. It means change is at hand. It means the next ordeal is close.

A mature man recognizes that regular ordeal is normal. He learns to pay strong attention at this time, especially to his elder voice. He learns to move easily back into ordeal, back into mystery and paradox. He learns the wisdom of the elder, Rilke, that "life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved." Continuing ordeal is the paradox of the mature man. Continuing ordeal is peace and suffering. It is bleakness and fullness at the same time. It is alternating confusion and clarity. Continuing ordeal is the life of a mature man. A mature life is moving deeper and deeper into the mystery of one's identity and one's call. Life is never solved.

The Common Good

Another fruit of a man's ordeal is the gift has he gives others. As Robert Moore has said, "You can't be a mature man without a commitment to the public good." Or Fr. Richard Rohr, "Balanced masculinity shows itself in action undertaken for the sake of others". A man who strives for maturity must eventually take responsibility for the good of the larger community. He must put his personal ego needs in their proper place, as the ordeal has taught. This sometime means taking on the pain of the larger community and showing how the pain must be endured and transformed. Sometimes that pain can result in personal death, even while the community is being transformed. Jesus, Gandhi and King provide high examples of such witness. Most often the pain is in being misunderstood and alienated, until the rightness of his vision is recognized. But the mature man has already been in confusion and misunderstanding. He has been immunized by his ordeal.

It is very hard for a man to think about the public good, and see the world through an elder's eyes, if he still yearns for pleasure and power. The temptation will get too much for him, as he gets the attention of women and the adulation brought on by power. He will not have been immunized through initiation to the corrupting influence of power, including sexual power. Our own American politics is a testament to many immature men unable to handle the responsibility of power. The whole issue of sexual harassment is a symbol of men who use power to get pleasure. Corruption in government or corporations results from men putting their boy needs above the good of the community.

The uninitiated man finds it too hard to discharge his responsibilities well. Often his unguided adolescent will sabotage his career, either publicly or privately. His adolescent, hidden by his polished persona, will take over periodically. The power of sexual excitement or the sexual excitement of power will overcome his persona. There will be no healthy Self to restrain the adolescent. The community suffers instead of being saved.

The mature man takes on the pain of the community instead of indulging his own pleasure. This is the time the mature man can use his anger, the anger of his warrior. This is the time he turns his rage at injustice into just anger. I am often asked by men what they are to do with their anger. I first talk to them about using their anger to set boundaries and let anger give them the energy to endure ordeal. However another use of anger is in work for those who have been unjustly treated. This is the anger of the Seven Samurai, the anger of Jesus in the Temple.

This work for justice is part of a mature man's mission. Anger at injustice is his motivation. The warrior in him, when under the control of his kingly self, becomes fierce in defense of the undefended. But the answer is not violence that destroys, although it may involve measured physical force. More often the real answer is the confrontation of injustice even in the face of personal pain. As Aaron Kipnis says, "in the vision of masculinity we are moving toward, a man expresses his rage through empowered and compassionate action." He talks of anger at the "general global condition of distress." This is the anger of the good warrior, the anger of the warrior practicing bushido.

The mature man is a true public servant, though sometimes an unpopular one. He is usually neither elected nor paid. He is an elder trying to make this an elder society. If he is elected or paid, he uses his power for the good of others. He uses his power to empower others, not to prove his personal power over others.

Fr. Richard Rohr talks about a mature masculinity in India, as I have mentioned earlier in talking of elders. He talks of a stage after a man has finished his householder stage, usually after the birth of his first grandchild. Usually his sons are working and providing an income, thus freeing him to go on to the next stage. This is the stage of life of the seeker. The seeker is sometimes referred to as a forest dweller. Not that all seekers go to live in the woods, but they often do go off to be alone. They seem to live a life of a monk, though they join no order nor live in a monastery. They read their scriptures, they meditate and they talk with gurus, seeking to understand the meaning of life. This is their structured ordeal. When Western men are retiring, these Eastern men are just starting a serious spiritual journey. When Western men stop at the householdership growth stage, the Indian man goes to a whole other stage.

Out of this stage, and ordeal, emerges a mature man. Then comes an even further stage. The final stage of a man's spiritual development is that of the wise man. Having sought spiritual truths and the truths of his own soul, he has found important truths. He is then in a position to be a guru who is open to be sought after for wise counsel. He makes no money from his counsel. He is not a paid consultant. He gives freely of his time and accumulated experience to anyone who seeks his wisdom. I would call this man an elder serving his community. Richard Rohr calls him a godfather to the next generations.

There is a model of masculine maturity in the Russian countryside that comes out of their Orthodox Christian tradition. Catherine de Hueck Doherty, an expatriate Russian baroness, writes about it in her book Poustinia. The process starts with a man experiencing a call, similar to the call experienced in ordeal. He could be any age, but usually in his 30's or 40's (women who were called were usually much older). His call would be to go to an isolated, secluded place, usually in the forest. The word poustinia means desert in Russian. The word also has come to mean any desert-like place, similar to the isolated places that the desert fathers went to in the 4th century AD.

A poustinik could be anyone, a peasant, a duke, a member of the middle class, learned or unlearned, or anyone in between. The poustinik would leave his earthly possessions behind, wearing the normal dress of a pilgrim, a linen shift with an ordinary cord tied around his middle. He took along a linen bag, a loaf of bread, some salt, a gourd of water. The poustinik would go to the outskirts of the village. He would pray in the forest until he would be led to the place he would dwell. There he would build his poustinia, a small, simple hut. Here he would pray and enter into 'the great silence of God.' He would take on the pain of the world, voluntarily, especially the pain of the poor. Out of his pain and prayer he would find the wisdom of God.

Poustinikki are different from hermits. Hermits would be shut off from the world. Poustinikki opened themselves to whoever came to them. They would always offer the meager, material hospitality they had, usually tea and bread. Many times they were sought after for their counsel, in matters both spiritual and social. Other times they were sought after for physical help, like getting in a late crop that could be destroyed by weather. The poustinik was there to pray and to serve. He lived off of whatever was given to him freely. He consoled, he understood, he loved-- and he asked nothing for himself. As of 1967, the forests of Russia were still peopled with many poustinikki.

I am not espousing men to leave their families to become a guru or a hermit. I donÕt believe that we have to give our IRAs away to become mature. But I do feel that a mature man must go the painful route of separating from the values of the patriarchal world. I do espouse that a man listen seriously for a call in the poustinia of his own soul. I do espouse that a man, once having faced his ordeal, will find the fullness of his call and his life by authentically serving his community.

I encourage men to live continually in both worlds, the village and the forest, realizing his marketplace mentality must be secondary to the values he learned in the wilderness. I know that a man who finds that call and uses his gifts will naturally want to serve his community. He will not have to be reminded. And he will do it with an enthusiasm and peace that only he and his initiated brothers will understand.

Commitment

To an initiated man, commitment takes on a whole new meaning. Commitment is essentially connected to his initiatory path. Men are natural committers. Loyalty is deeply hardwired. Problems appear when men find themselves committed to causes other than their soul's calling. When a man realizes that his primary commitment is to his initiatory journey, the rest of his life will fall into place. All his other commitments will radiate from the commitment he finds on that journey.

An initiated man is called. He finds others who have a similar call. He then calls his community. His first commitment is to himself. Too often commitment is measured by adherence to the status quo. Commitment is measured by the old community values, loyalty to the patriarchy. Unless a man is committed to his initiatory journey, he has nothing left but be loyal to someone else's values. Commitment then becomes neurotic dependence.

A man's compass, amidst the many choices to be made in his life, needs to be the lessons and perspectives he learned on his initiatory journey. His commitments need to be based on his new name. It's not that most men are not committed. Most men are committed to the wrong things.

Commitment involves resonating with other souls who are called to the same work, to serve the same community.This is also true of the commitment between a man and a woman. The durability of healthy commitment will depend on how much both people have discerned each of their personal journeys and how those journeys connect together. In a healthy committed relationship there is always a higher purpose to be discerned and lived out.

As I have mentioned, commitment needs to be measured in depth, not length. Couples stay together long term for two reasons. Either they are seriously, neurotically connected or they have found the common initiatory call of their relationship. The former is based on fear, the latter on initiatory love. Scott Peck has a similar idea about this initiatory love when he defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

Depth means two people are connected not only at the level of physical attraction, mutual interest, similar values, even a common history, but also at the level of a common sense of soul and call. Couples need to be connected at the soul level for commitment to be authentic and effective. Sometimes this sense can only come later in the relationship, after each has gone through a personal initiation. Cultural commitments need to be ultimately transformed into spiritual commitments, or they often devolve into neurotic ones.

Star Peace?

The Star Wars myth at this point is incomplete. This was intended and appropriate. There were originally supposed to be seven parts to the series. We have seen parts IV, V and VI. The prequels are now being shown. We still haven't seen part VII, just as we haven't seen what an elder modern society would look like. We don't know whether Luke assumes public power or uses his king energy in other ways. We don't know if Luke finds a life partner and what that relationship would look like. We don't know of Luke's ongoing struggles in the world, and his struggles with his personal regressions.

We don't know if Luke goes into politics in his adult life, possibly to work to restore the republic. Does he then run for public office? Does he win or is he reviled by a populace needing more authority than autonomy?

We don't know if Luke becomes an elder, like Yoda, to work behind the scenes to prepare young men for their call. Or does Luke become a public elder, helping to create an elder society. Luke does not yet have a new name. Is that still to come? Does he still need more eldering to help him find his adult identity? What has he really learned from his ordeal?

Interestingly, the myth leaves us at the same place most modern movies leave us. The boy has just passed ordeal. He now has his adult life ahead, the longest part of his life. Few movies talk of that adulthood. Maybe because few of us know what modern adulthood really looks like. Maybe because modern healthy adulthood is yet to be defined..

Larry Pesavento ©2005