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It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what
you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s
longing.
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I gathered with all the men for the morning exercise. We started with a run around the ballroom, and there was something inexplicably cool about watching all of us run in silence, while completely relaxed and focused. Next we lined up face to face, adjusted each other's posture, then tried to break his concentration by sensing his weakness and throwing it back at him. Finally, we locked arms like wrestlers, pushing against each other in full force, without losing eye contact. Completely invigorating.
The instructors pointed out that as men, we love having something to push against, a challenge. And if we're fully engaged with it, we feel completely alive. It's when we avoid it, numb out, walk away – that's when we die. It was great to have such a visceral reminder that the challenges I have in my life are for my own benefit (side note: I was watching VH1's "Celebrities Gone Good." Stories of philanthropic stars. It was so boring! It made me realize that purely good news, or pure comfort, is not what we're built for. We're built for the challenge, the mission, the growth, the transformation). The "Sex" Exercise (this is finally the promised "Sex without Touching" though honestly, I think the whole event could be summed up with that phrase). We covered Love in part 5. Now the exercise would be "polarity" – The charge between the masculine and feminine sexual energies. Again, I went with my paradox of choice principle and chose the first person I saw. She was a psychic healer I had spoken with earlier. These exercises feel much easier when you have never even spoken to the person. That we had a previously established rapport suddenly made me feel embarrassed for what was to come. We began again with breathing while staring into the other's eyes, a foot away. After awhile David asked the women to rate how present we were on a scale from 0 to 10 (5 being the presence of a good friend, 10 being the most present man they've ever encountered). At the count of three he asked the women to say a number. "8" she said (Yes!). When it was my turn I just didn't feel her that closely. Her eyes were there, but she wasn't with me. So I said, "4." And I felt awful when I saw her face turn to shock and disappointment. We then did a few exercises to tune up our presence. What happened next… Granted, we never even touched each other, but David then had us say the most provocative sexual statements one can pronounce, and then the other person would assess whether or not they believed the emotion was real. Here I was, less than a foot in front of a woman I wasn't even feeling attracted to, and yet saying the most intimate things one can say. Again…intense. But all preparation for our real relationships, when we're in that place where romance is fading, but we still want to keep the spark. It became clear to me just how much choice we have about the love and sexuality we create. The final feedbackUncategorized
The most important tool in self-help is not only free, it's a pre-req for living. Our breath is the most underutilized tool we have. Its rhythm shapes our moment to moment experience (and really, what else is there?).
The Power of BreathingUncategorized
On the morning of Day 2 all the men were separated from the women. We learned how to breathe very deeply, and after two hours of that we were in a completely different state by the afternoon. One woman commented that as we walked back into the room she went from feeling afraid of the men the night before, to feeling like she could ask any one of us for anything she needed. It was that big of a shift.
Men are presence.Uncategorized
In just a few days, I had bought my ticket, booked my flight, found a roommate and a ride to the event. I was in the perfect state of mind, which I define as having very low expectations while simultaneously holding very high hopes (this creates the most open space possible… think about it).
As 300 of us sat patiently in the ballroom of the beautiful Rancho Bernardo Inn, David came on stage and simply looked out at all of us for 30 seconds before he spoke (by the way, if you ever speak in public, this is a wonderful tactic. It centers you, gets you in alignment with the energy of your audience, while increasing the curiosity and attention of the crowd). He began with a history of consciousness that led to a profound conclusion – consciousness moves from time into space. For example, as humans we can look at a yard stick and see that it is three feet long. But an ant, who has limited spatial consciousness cannot. The ant can walk across the yard stick, and thus experience it as 15 minutes long. It experiences that dimension in time. Make sense? So for humans, emotions are currently experienced in time. We say, "I was angry for fifteen minutes." But as we become more conscious, we will experience anger in space. Some of us have already done it, as we realize that we store our emotions in our body (tight shoulders anyone?). Our own emotions exist in space, and have a huge impact on everyone around us. You've probably already noticed that if you're in a bad mood, or stressed out, you can easily stress out the people around you. And if you're truly happy (as opposed to simply excited), then you can lift the people around you. This became painfully clear as David had us do an exercise (you can try this right now)… Imagine yourself in the most beautiful room you can fathom (I chose a huge open living room, with a wall of windows and french doors opening up to a long pool with cabanas around it). Then imagine the partner of your dreams comes into the room, sits and curls up next to you and kisses you. Feel that for a moment. Now here's the punch line… Whenever we are in a state in which we feel less than this relaxed, we are actually causing suffering to everyone around us. It suddenly hit me how much suffering I had caused. It made such an impact I could have gone home at that moment with a realization that was worth the full tuition. But we had not even hit 5 mph yet. Next: Sex without TouchingUncategorized
If you're a man, and you haven't read Way of the Superior Man, pick it up immediately. It will either save your current relationship or your next one. (If you're a woman, do not tell a man to read it. Simply leave it around somewhere for him to check out on his own). I first read the book about 4 years ago.
The book is about the tragic loss of masculinity within our culture, and the triumphant rise of men who dare to claim it back. If I can share one story, it would be a simple parable of a man coming home on the day he won his million dollar contract. He's so happy and overjoyed, but when he gets home, his woman smiles briefly and quickly asks, "Did you remember to bring the milk?"… So how does the man react? The man is severely disappointed. He just accomplished a major goal, and all his woman can think of is the milk (which he did forget). Now I could identify with this man. How could this woman be so insensitive? I would have felt thoroughly deflated in this situation… Little did I know, I was identifying with the weaker man. David re-tells the story, only this time the man hears the question and instead picks her up his arms, kisses her and says, "Baby, I'll buy you all the milk you could ever want!" And she melts in his arms. What's the major difference here? In the second story, the man is unperturbed. He doesn't need her validation. He's so secure in who he is and his own purpose, that any question or complaint from his woman can't shake his resolve. Wow. I had totally missed the boat. Cut to 4 years later, and I'm sitting in a room with the superior man himself, and 300 men and women, in the hills of San Diego. Each person clearly committed to their own growth, to their partner, or their future partner. Next… Part II – The Source of All Pain
