ManKind Project and Masculinity

Fifteen years ago a friend introduced me to The ManKind Project (MKP). He and I had experienced a number of bad-ass-men's-initiation models in the USA, but when he found MKP, it was like discovering The Grail. He begged me to go on the Weekend. I said "No". In my mind it cost too much, and it was just the same old stuff repackaged with a little more whiff of Native American juju. For two years I said "no".... But then, in his earnestness, he hit my most vulnerable button. He offered to pay for my New Warrior Training Adventure experience. I could not resist... That's why I went to The ManKind Project!

When the ManKind Project Adventure weekend was over I was walking on air. He said to me, "Now we can talk." I didn't understand. "But we've always been able to talk," I responded weakly. "No, you'll see. Now we can talk with our hearts!" He was so right. It changed both of us to be fearless men - unafraid to touch and connect with our vulnerability. I began to see that I have immense power to be real and genuine. I was 50, and I was changing the way I was in the world, with my family, my work and my wishes.

On that MKP Adventure Weekend I accepted the call to go on my Hero's Journey through my familiar wilderness of fear. I'd always felt fatally flawed and insecure – i.e. not good enough. These were the two marks that kept me scared and terrified in the world. And after the weekend I still felt flawed and insecure... only now I'd learned something that made it all OK. I'd learned that I could simply love myself, whether I was flawed, insecure or not-good-enough... I'd learned that I could just put a drop of love on my body and let that love permeate my whole Being to do its magic.

I also learned that loving myself is the key to everything. It was bigger than anything I had ever known. And 15 years later, I am still experiencing more love, more joy, more peace, more service and more abundance than I could have ever imagined.

My wife and I have moved from the USA to the south of France, and everyday I celebrate the life I love before it's time to leave this lovely planet. I celebrate, too, the way MKP offers other men the chance to come face to face with whatever is holding them back from spiritual vibrancy and aliveness.

So thank you my friend, Rick, for putting up the cash and helping me go on the Adventure weekend. And the best thing? Simply this: I like it that when we talk, we speak with our hearts.

Ken P

Experience The Experience

I did my MKP weekend in September 2000. I was nearly 50 years old and about to become Chief Executive of a not insignificant charity. So I knew a bit about leadership, and I knew myself reasonably well after a lot of personal work and therapy. For all that my personal life could have been better: lurching from woman to woman,  not in touch with my children in the way I wanted to be. I was still looking for something, and I readily accepted the invitation / opportunity / challenge to attend what was then called the New Warrior Training Adventure.

I'm not going to spell out what happened because I know that a key reason why the weekend was so significant for me was because I didn't know what to expect. That meant I was thrown into the experience in a way that, for instance, therapy can't do; therapy is talking about an experience, maybe even feeling the experience a bit, but it's not "experiencing the experience" as it happens in a safe place where you can learn from what's going on in the moment.

At an MKP weekend you do indeed experience the experience, and it therefore has huge potential for really making a difference, as it did for me, because I faced up to stuff in a way I could avoid in other situations such as a training programme. I also couldn't drink myself to sleep each evening, or lose myself in the television, or find a woman to flirt with or shag.

I felt lighter after the weekend; I did some growing up. One description of the Adventure (as it's now called) is that it is an initiation, and that's an image that works for me because, although I was chronologically and physiologically a man, I had never stepped into manhood. I was a soft male (not least because of the particular effect feminism and some strong women had had on me) and MKP gave me the opportunity to grasp my maleness and be proud of who I was as a man.

The Adventure can shift a lot of stuff, but it isn't a complete fix and some men who does the Adventure fall by the wayside even though MKP offers the opportunity to continue the journey with other men who have experienced the experience.

There is a follow-up training that offers invaluable tools for being an authentic man; there is further training to learn how to staff an Adventure, training in leadership, and other opportunities to explore our shadows that can sneak up and disarm us. One of mine was a tendency to be really angry at minor matters (I'm an only child and I expect things to be done my way!) and I'd often be getting cross with people who were in the way (ticket clerks or call centre people who were just doing their jobs) or in ways that could put me at some risk (road rage or smart remarks to bigger men in pubs).

I've learnt not to do that now, though control remains an issue, and letting things be that need to be is something I've had to learn, with help from my current mission statement: "By letting go of attachment and control I embrace acceptance and authenticity with compassion."

That still needs work, and another opportunity MKP offers is to be part of a group of men who meet maybe once a week (or a fortnight or a month) to support each other. It's another place where, instead of just talking about stuff (though that can be valuable in a group that listens and responds appropriately) it's possible to experience the experience and really engage with whatever's going on. So if a man has an issue with his boss, or his wife or his child then we can get that person in the room (in the form of another member of the group role-playing); then we can help the man have a direct experience with real feelings that can support him when he really deals with the boss, wife or child.

Key to that is something we learn about separating data (what actually happened? get the facts right), judgements (what's your judgement about what actually happened, not about what you think happened?) and feelings. So to go back to my earlier example about getting angry I know that for me it's all too easy to get cross because things aren't going my way, make a judgement from a place a feeling angry (bloody ticket clerk should know better) without getting anywhere near what actually happened (Sir, there is not a train from A to B even if that's what you want). Turn that round and I have learnt about how to respond from a place of data rather than react from a place of feelings. And that in turn helps me be much more authentic.

So I've received a lot from my MKP experience. Is it perfect? No. Am I a fully authentic, balanced, whole man? No! But I have made a lot of progress and I now have tools and my group to support me in a way that wasn't the case before. I have stepped into my manhood.

Oh, and I'm now in a stable married relationship now that works for me with a woman who has female power complementing my powerful man, just as I complement her. I have a better relationship with my children and, while I don't see enough of them, good relationships with my five (!) grandchildren.

John Quill

The Journey Begins

I first heard about MKP through my wife who took the women’s version "Woman Within". It took me 7 years to pluck up the courage to take the great leap into the abyss --- and what a leap it was. One of the reasons I decided that the time was right, was that I’d just become a father for the second time and I was all too aware of the issues I have carried for many years, which I desperately didn’t want my children to inherit.

The biggest thing I wanted to take from the weekend was not so much a cognitive, tangible shift, but a deeper and less conscious one, a shift that would help me to change the patterns of behaviour which no longer served me.

That truly happened for me. I have often sought validation and acceptance from the people around me, due to a lack of self confidence and self belief. MKP has given me the ability to take action, believe in myself and grow as man. My own work was just a part of the experience. Being witness to the bravery and camaraderie of the other men gave me a new insight and a greater belief in the brotherhood that exists between men.

The journey has only just begun for me as I have found myself armed with a new drive. I’ve already joined a fantastic iGroup and have completed my PIT. The next stage is to staff a weekend. I am looking forward to seeing it from the other side and supporting the brave and wonderful men that sign up for ManKind Project's Adventure Training.

Dan

Finding My Mission

I have been initiated into manhood. I have been welcomed into a vast network of honest and caring men prepared to help me see and master my shadows. This is how it happened and what it means to me. My first contact with the Mankind Project after signing up for the New Warrior Training Adventure last year was several pages of legal talk. I was asked to sign a consent form which looked to me like it freed all staff of any responsibility. This seemed to me to contradict the value of accountability emphasised on the organization’s webpage. However, I managed to dismiss this as a result ofUKliability law being out of control. With only the sparse information on the webpage and a comforting five minute talk with the enrolment coordinator, I paid my money and ventured into the unknown.

Why did I to this? What spoke to me was not the suggestion on the main web page that I may be alienated or confused, having “some vital part missing”. After the fact, I can see how this did apply to me to some extent. What I went for, however, was the idea of finding a personal mission so as to live a more wholesome and purposeful life. I was facing some important career decisions and questioned the ultimate purpose of my career. I also wanted more male comradeship of the deep emotional talk variety.

The way to Northumberland national park was a long one. Deep in the wild, on a cold December evening, I encountered a group of very grave staff men. “Not accountable, not caring – so what are these guys about?” I found myself thinking. But there I was. Then there was a door, and I was asked to step in only if I was prepared to be challenged. I said my only worry was not to be challenged enough. I still had the worry that this was mostly for people seriously astray and that it would mostly involve things I had already tried in other places.

I was challenged enough. Not the way I expected. Not physically so much, or socially, though there was that too, but challenged to take a deep look at myself. But not just to look, not just to see my hurts, my patterns, my shadows, but to find the strength to accept them and so to overcome them. This all happened through the weekend-long process the exact nature of which is a well-guarded secret, and so it should be.

The way my own adventure developed was probably rather typical. I started out rather judgmental, finding faults with the process and thinking how it could be improved. When I was first challenged to speak of my life, feelings around social isolation came out, perhaps since I recently moved and my social life was rather poor around this time. This was surface stuff, though, and the process soon led me deeper into profound feelings of unworthiness. With the gracious help of the many warm and forthright staff men, and through the excellent techniques they had mastered, I found a new and richer understanding of these deep and potentially disastrous feelings and, more importantly, ways to let them go, or at least push them out of my core self-identity.

The Adventure is partly supposed to be an initiation into manhood. Though I had thought about the lack of such male rites of passage in our culture, I did not think I needed one for myself. I had felt rather at peace with being a man, having gone through the usual dissatisfaction with my actual father and various other father figures. I had come to terms with the fact that I had to be the man I had wanted them to be. I may even have thought of myself as a warrior of sorts. Also, I was sceptical of the strong gendering that comes with thinking of adult life as “Manhood”.

I still have some of that scepticism, but I recognize that I am a man, whether by biology or culture, and that I share many strengths and weaknesses with other men in particular. I now feel stronger and more grounded. I very much appreciate the symbolic aspects of this initiation into modern manhood. And being welcomed into the ranks of the fine staff men, as one of them, felt very good.

There was a lot of connection that weekend. With deep parts of myself. With other men and their deep parts, their problems and potentials. With nature. With my ancestors. With the world we live in quite generally.

I have attended an iGroup a few times after the training. The group is rather small and has its struggles: as we all struggle to keep our hearts open and our minds focused in this precarious modern society. These struggles are easier for me now that I am a New Warrior, a champion for good, a humble, accountable and caring man who accepts myself as I am, not conditional on performance.

Acceptance, I realized during the weekend, is my key to being able to create a world where people can play safe and free, by inviting them to play with me. This is the mission that I found. Every time I say it, it feels so simple, almost silly, but that is just what I personally need to inspire me to be the man, and the person, that I want to be.

In gratitude, KG