It is not my intention, in this chapter, to deal with individual differences among men, except in a very general way. The distinctiveness of personal spirituality is dealt with in chapters on Jung, the Enneagram and Models of Spirituality. My aim is much less ambitious. I will be seeking to identify the common features of male spirituality.

Those of us who are men need to explore our uniqueness and to ask what it is that is special about being a man?

The way we have been defined by women, particularly over more recent years, has not been complementary. This is not surprising, as women are doing little more than repaying us in kind for several millennia of descriptive abuse. When women compare us with themselves, they argue that we are more aggressive, more sexually adventurous, more project-oriented and more relationally incompetent. Extreme feminists depict us as violent, rapacious, unfeeling and abusive, epithets that are fuelled by considerable anger.

While we should listen to what women are saying to us, and pay heed to legitimate criticisms, we should not submit meekly to their definitions of our reality. We need to define ourselves. To do this we have to explore who we are.

There are two factors that help structure our maleness. The first is biological and the second cultural.

Biology

Biological elements, including brain-sexing and hormonal distinctives, are significant factors helping to distinguish men from women. These will be dealt with when we come to address the relationship between sexuality and spirituality.

Culture

The second major influence is culture.

Women have not been the only victims of patriarchy. Men have also suffered. Among men, patriarchy has promoted hyper-rationality and has discouraged the owning and processing of feelings. We learn early to project our feelings onto women and to criticise in them this part of ourselves that we cannot control and that gives the lie to the suave image of ourselves that we have cultivated. [144]

Having projected our feelings onto women, we have reduced our capacity for warm, meaningful, communicative relationships between the sexes. We are out of touch with our feelings and angry at women for their differentness from us and because they are carrying our projected feelings. Having cut ourselves off from the principal source of emotional nurture, that would have otherwise afforded us a sense of well-being and self-esteem, we are faced with finding some other source of self esteem. We are forced to scrounge self-esteem from performance. This increases our competitiveness. We become conquistadors.

This preoccupation with competitiveness exaggerates our natural assertiveness. It suggests to us that conflict is resolved by force and it objectifies and genitalizes sex. It exaggerates superficiality in relationships, working against our healthy self-fulfilment. It is this dynamic that has promoted the Western image of the macho-male, who sees his role as scrambling to the top of the pile and remaining there.

When I was in primary school we boys would compete with each other to see who could reach highest in the urinal. This is an apt symbol of the Western male. The same sort of competitiveness is evident, in a more sophisticated mode, in business, academia, the professions, sport and in sexual performance. In The Making and Breaking of the Modern Family, Michael Gilding has argued that one factor fuelling homophobia, at least in Australia, is the fact that, since the Second World War, heterosexuals have defined their sexuality over against what they regard as effete homosexuals.¹

Mothers and Sons

Men are also profoundly influenced by the way they were mothered. The mother-son dynamic in patriarchal society has been explored in depth by Carol Klein in Mothers and Sons.²

Klein argues that mothers feel an enormous sense of responsibility to ensure their sons, who are more valued by society than daughters, are happy and well-adjusted. They sometimes resent their sons for being male or for reminding them of husbands from whom they are alienated. Other mothers passionately devote themselves to their sons and seek to realize their ambitions through them.

Klein also explores the powerful sexual dynamic between mothers and sons, the varied nature of this relationship, the mutual satisfaction and the consequences for the son of this first sexual imprinting. She looks at the effect on a son of a mother's sexual provocation, particularly where the provocation suddenly changes to withdrawal.

The Oedipal phase of the son's development, as it impacts on mother, son and father, also occupies Klein's attention. She explores situations where the son is substituted for the father as the mother's lover, relationally, if not [145] sexually. She focuses on the burden this places on the son and the consequent difficulty the son faces of detaching from his mother and relating to other women. Klein also gives attention to instances where, at the mother's urging, the son becomes the "man of the house." She also looks at feminist mothers, at homosexual sons and lesbian mothers, at not-so-present mothers, at the mothers of troubled sons and at the mothers of successful sons.

While the burden of mothering on women is great, and they are damned whatever they do, the consequence of this mothering on sons is life-long.

What Does it Mean to be Male?

I have argued that maleness is associated with certain biological givens and that it has been influenced by cultural stereotyping. We are now at the point of asking a question that has not been asked with any seriousness, until very recently. It is this: "What does it mean to be male?"

We need to discover our maleness from older men who have explored and lived their male essence. But where are they?

Absent Fathers

The most appropriate people to introduce young men into what it means to be male are their fathers. However, as Robert Bly argues, we live in a world of absent fathers. Their absence is largely a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, which separated home from workplace.

Most young boys see their fathers for little more than a brief period in the day. He leaves early for work, and, when he returns, he has little energy to give to his children. If he has had a hard day at the office, they will be offered little more than his irascibility, and, if they are young, they will be sent to bed early. Children know very little about their fathers' work. To use a distinction Bly draws, they are forced to endure his temperament but do not receive his teaching. He does not share his vocational or hobby skills with them. His teaching, however, when it is given, is sweet.

I have frequently noticed a difference between theological students who were city born and bred and those who grew up on farms, particularly where the latter took up farming as an occupation themselves. They are more centred and are not as easily influenced by external pressures. They grew up on farms, where their fathers taught them their trade. They learned first-hand from their fathers the male way of being.³

My father was a country boy, who grew up in Bundarra, a small country town in North-West New South Wales. His family shifted to Sydney when he was fifteen. When I was young, he would take me to the city, where his surgery was located, overlooking Hyde Park. I did little tasks for him, [146] including developing X-Rays. At home, he worked most evening and weekends making dentures. A consummate craftsman, he enjoyed a considerable reputation for his mastery of prosthetics. While he worked with plaster, wax and false teeth, my father would talk to me and my two brothers, sharing his philosophy of life.

When I was very young I suffered from polio. Saved from being permanently crippled by my mother, who would massage my legs for several hours, three times a day, I was later taken to gymnasiums by my father. When I began to run competitively, my father would pound the streets with me as I built up my strength. While I have much to thank him for, what I most appreciate about my father was his teaching. I learned from him what it was to be a man. He exhibited that elusive mix of strength and gentleness.

This was not the experience of most of my acquaintances. Nor is it the experience of most young men today. They have not been fathered by their fathers. In fact, the young men of today represent the second generation of neglect. Their fathers were not fathered and don't know how to father their sons.

When young men are not fathered they become angry at their fathers for their absence, their ineffectiveness and their impotence. Rather than feeling loved, they feel betrayed and neglected. They take out their anger on other males in society, particularly males in authority. The police and the government are often the object of their rage. Young men may take on older men in their trade or profession, often those who have established reputations, and attempt to destroy their credibility. Returning Vietnam veterans nursed an anger against the "fathers", members of the executive and of the legislature and the generals, who committed them to what later came to be seen as an unconscionable and unwinnable war.

Non-Existent Initiation Rituals

Not only is our society a society without fathers, it also lacks initiation rituals.

Adolescent boys, hungry for initiation, hang about the streets awaiting initiation. Their risk-taking is a deliberate provocation.

Sam Keen argues that our society does have initiation rituals. These are war, work and sex, which are also activities by which our work is judged. There is a sense in which he is right, but these rituals do not help us discover our maleness, but generally alienate us from it.

In the absence of father-initiators, or older, initiated men, many women try to initiate their sons. But women cannot initiate young boys into the male way of feeling, any more than men can initiate young girls into the female way of feeling. [147]

Often young men attempt to initiate each other into manhood. They race each other in hotted-up cars, symbols of their sexuality, through suburban streets, defying the police, the representatives of male authority. Gangs initiate their members in rituals supervised by the dominant male. The initiatory wounds they give new members are unhealthy, toxaemic wounds, that often emotionally scar them for life. Some young men seek initiation through identifying with a sporting hero. The less centred they are, the more they live through the successes of their idols. If their team loses, they may go on a destructive rampage.

Film stars, pop stars or entrepreneurs often fulfil the same role. In Australia, in the 1980's, many identified with entrepreneurs, many of whom consequently spent time in prison.

If we are without fathers, and if there are no initiation rituals, what are we to do?

Contacting Our Fathers

It is important that we make contact with our fathers.

We need to talk to them. We can write or phone. It is certainly preferable if we can sit with them and dialogue about our past and theirs. Many fathers do not know how to talk with their sons. They may be uncomfortable for a time. Some fathers have been so effectively sidelined by their wives, who may have conscripted their children into the conspiracy. Fathers have grown so used to being excluded that intimacy with their children feels uncomfortable. If this has been our experience, we need to recognize and repudiate the collusion into which our mothers drew us.

It is likely that your father has been secretly waiting for you to approach him. He does not want to impose on you. You have to take the initiative. After an initial awkwardness, and if he is willing to talk, the conversation will be healing for both of you.

What if your father has died? There are a number of things you can do. Find out all you can about him and his world, from family, acquaintances, history books. You can also write your father a letter, as if he was alive, telling him how you feel.

Though my father has now been dead for many years, I still occasionally talk to him. I am convinced that behind what we experience as the passage of time is the timeless realm of the eternal present. In quantum time, my father continues to exist. I also occasionally address the internalized father, my experience of my father and that part of my inner self that has been moulded by that experience. If you are comfortable with the notion of [148] existence beyond death, and the presence of a father imago within, why not address either, or both, of these fathers.

If you do not connect with your father in some way, or with a substitute father, you will forever remain a boy, however old you are.

Male Mentors

I would also suggest that you seek out a male mentor, or, what Bly calls a male mother. These spiritual fathers are concerned with the nurture of young men. When such a man, who has reached the stage that Erik Erikson has called generativity, takes an interest in you and is concerned to promote your graduation to true manhood, count yourself fortunate. These men, who themselves have discovered what it is to be a man, have usually progressed beyond mid-life, where your youthfulness is no longer a threat to them.

We need to honour our older men and to provide ritual space where their scars and their wisdom can be celebrated. These older men, these male mothers, are critically important to the sons of single mothers. They also help counter the media image of men as incompetent buffoons.

Male Friendships

It is also important to develop male friendships.

Men often experience an awkwardness in relating to each other at depth. The sorts of relationships that have been common, according to Ballswick, in his Men at the Crossroads, are the companionship of old boy networks, the conviviality of locker-room boys, the hierarchical relationship of top-kicks and side-kicks and the educational relatedness of mentors and novices.⁴ Apart from the latter, in cases where there is some form of significant sharing, these relationships, except those that have a silent depth, are usually superficial and functional.

We need to break through an artificial reserve and establish closer relationships with other men, where we are not afraid of talking about our feelings or of touch. Men do not stop to consider that both are involved in shared excitement over sporting victories, business deals or rescue missions. We need to nurture male friendships.

Men's Groups

Groups where men, who yearn to discover their unique spirituality, can meet to work through the symbolism of their dreams are also important. They allow others into their archetypal space, their shadow territory, and they grow together. [149]

Learning to Grieve

Men also need to be introduced to the male way of feeling. They need to learn to grieve, which, as a brotherhood of the stiff upper lip, they have not been allowed to do. D.H.Lawrence put his finger on this sensitive nerve when he contended that we are not mechanisms, but flesh and blood people, who are deeply wounded emotionally. These wounds can be healed, and we can be freed from competitive mistakes, only by time and long, difficult repentance.⁵

We must face our defeats and losses, losses involving people, relationships, innocence, property, position and employment. As males living in Western society, we are not encouraged to grieve. Bly argued that if Lincoln had been in power following the Vietnam war he would have called on the nation to publicly grieve, to wail its grief until it was exhausted and people were free to take up their lives again without the burden of unexpressed grief. What we have been taught to do is to distract ourselves from our grief and to overlook the need for repentance. We bury our grief, the carcinogenic, radio-active residue of our hurts and mistakes.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem, sweated drops of blood in the olive garden⁶ and entered into the deepest grief of all, the feeling of being utterly deserted by God, as his body hung limp on the cross. In the end his voice rang out loudly, desperately, with the cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!⁷

If we do not grieve we lose passion. Our emotional life is neutered.

We need to face our losses and defeats, instead of remaining forever captive to feelings of failure and powerlessness that are trapped deep within us. We need to wrestle with the angel of death, even though we are likely to be wounded in the thigh. It will give us a new power, a new centredness. This journey into our inner territory, where we wrestle with the demon, is mirrored in ancient mythologies and Western hero myths.

The Inner Journey

This inner journey, as Jung argued, is appropriate as we enter mid-life. If we don't venture within we will forever remain adolescent. On this inner journey we will encounter the shadow. However, we should not be intimated by the fierce characters that lurk in the darkness. We need to befriend and incorporate the shadow, otherwise wholeness will elude us.

Representations of the Pilgrimage

There are numerous ways in which the maturational journey of the male has been depicted. [150]

Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness

Robert Johnson has argued that there are three stages in the development of our manhood. The first is epitomised by the adventures of Don Quixote. Quixote was a guileless idealist who kept falling over himself. Life was an adventure, but he lacked an accurate fix on reality. He galloped at windmills, confusing them with knights. The second stage of masculine consciousness is reflected in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet's knowledge of the complexities of life disempowered and paralysed him. He was unable to act decisively. His inaction was an action by default. The third level of masculine consciousness Johnson saw reflected in Goethe's Faust. Faust made a pact with Mephistopheles in which he bartered his soul for knowledge. Payment was to be made to the devil when Faust died. However, over time, Faust and Mephistopheles came increasingly to resemble each other. Faust had picked up and integrated his shadow.⁸

Paying Attention to the Anima

It is also important for men to contact and follow the guidance of their feminine side, or, as Robert Johnson prefers to call it, their souls. This Anima is our guide to the unconscious.

Those who have begun the inner journey, who have made contact with their Animas and who have befriended their shadows and begun to integrate them, are more centred in themselves. Their wisdom is not learned from books. It comes from an in-touch-ness with the total body/self. Theologically, their wisdom can be described as the spontaneous gift of the Grace that has enabled them to integrate the shadow.

In exploring my inner being I have gained insight and been transformed through dream interpretation, active imagination and through listening to my body. I have also been sustained and nurtured by the love of those close to me. The prime motivation for this exploration has been my pain, which I have discovered to be the place where any wisdom I may have has been sourced.

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

As men--and in this we are no different than women--we live out of our deeply buried archetypal symbols.

Stephen Moore and Douglas Gillette argue that Western men are governed by boy psychology, rather than by mature male psychology. They have developed a typology in which the four mature male archetypes are developed from four immature boy archetypes. Each of the archetypes, both the boy archetypes and the mature male archetypes, have a shadow side that has both positive and negative poles. [151]

The first of the boy archetypes is the divine child. The positive pole of the shadow of the divine child archetype is the high-chair tyrant and the negative pole is the weakling prince. The divine child archetype underlies the mature king archetype, the firm but benevolent ruler. The positive pole of the shadow of the king archetype is the tyrant and the negative pole is the weakling.

The second of the boy archetypes is the hero. The positive pole of the hero archetype's shadow is the grandstander bully and the negative pole is the coward. The mature warrior archetype is developed from this hero archetype. This archetype does not only do battle, but demonstrates persistence in tasks and is willing to stand up for others and for causes. The positive pole of the shadow of the warrior archetype is the sadist, the negative pole being the masochist.

The third of the boy archetypes is the precocious child. The know-it-all trickster represents the positive pole of the shadow of this archetype, while the negative pole is epitomized by the dummy. The mature male archetype, developed from this basis, is the magician. The magician is the knower and maker of technology, the observing ego, the individual known for his clarity of thinking and the initiator of the young. The positive pole of the shadow of this archetype is the detached manipulator, while the negative pole is represented by the sort of person who will deny that they have knowledge or skill to alter circumstances, that is, the individual who pleads innocent and remains uninvolved.

The fourth of the boy archetypes is the oedipal child. The positive pole of the shadow of this archetype is Mumma's boy, while the negative pole is the dreamer. The mature male archetype, corresponding to this boy archetype, is the lover. The positive pole of the shadow of the lover is the addictive lover, while the negative pole is the impotent lover.⁹

It is interesting to reflect on the way in which Jesus reflected the strength manifest in the four mature male archetypes. His centredness and unflurried inner control at his trial and crucifixion epitomised the essence of the king archetype. His concern for the vulnerable and those who were suffering, together with his challenging of the self-deceptions of the Jewish leaders, embodied the warrior archetype. His perceptiveness, his insight, his wisdom and his ability to use it to teach and to turn the tables on his detractors, witnessed to the magician archetype. Love was so evidently present in his demeanour and his actions that the lover archetype was patently obvious.

Additional Images

Sam Keen, in Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, has also drawn attention to powerful images of the masculine. His list is chronological and includes man as hunter, man as planter, man as warrior, man as homo sapiens, [152] Dionysian man, prophetic man, man as image of God, man as power, scientific, technological man, self-made man, psychological man and post-modern man. Heroic virtues discovered in these archetypes are wonder, empathy, a heartful mind, the capacity for moral outrage, right livelihood, enjoyment, friendship, communion, husbanding and wildness.

Keen also contended that men and women are very different from each other and that their coming together involves a dance with three movements. The first movement is self definition, which we each need to discover who we are, either on our own or with others of our sex. In the second movement we come together in loving combat. The third movement he describes as becoming together.¹⁰

Iron John

One of the most fascinating books to emerge from the men's movement is Robert Bly's Iron John, Bly has used a tale of the Grimm brothers to highlight progressive stages on the way towards mature manhood.

Iron John, who is covered in long, matted rustic hair, lives at the bottom of a pond. After being discovered, he is imprisoned in the castle of the local king. He escapes by convincing the king's son to procure the key to the cage in which he is imprisoned. The young boy steals it from under his mother's pillow. It is exchanged for a golden ball that had rolled into the cage.

The boy, who doesn't want to face his parents anger for his disobedience, is taken by Iron John into the woods, where he is put to the test. He is told to let nothing fall into a pond. On the first occasion he dips his wounded finger into it inadvertently and it turns to gold. On the second day one of his hairs falls into the pond and it also turns to gold. On the third day, leaning down to see his reflected image, his hair falls into the water and it turns to gold.

Having failed the tests the boy is taken to a far country, where he finds employment in the kitchen of a foreign king. The fact that he cannot take the covering from his hair, which camouflages the fact that it is golden, in order to carry food to the king, leads to his being dismissed and exchanged for the gardener's boy.

While working in the garden he removes the taboosh and a princess, in an upper story of the castle, spies his golden hair. She invites him to her room by asking him to bring her flowers. On the first occasion, she grabs and removes the hair-covering. On the second occasion he avoids her grasp.

Next, with the help of Iron John, whom he calls from the edge of the forest, and who provides him with a war horse and foot-soldiers, he rides out to defeat the king's enemies. [153]

By this time the princess is suspicious and she and her father organize a tournament to which all the young knights of the land are invited. On three occasions, and on three different horses provided by Iron John, the young prince catches the golden ball thrown by the princess. On the first two occasions he manages to ride off without detection. On the third occasion, the king suggests to other of the knights that they ride after him. This they do and one wounds him in the thigh with his sword.

The young man eventually reveals himself, acknowledging that it was he who defeated the king's enemies and caught the golden ball thrown by the princess. He also revealed his royal lineage. The king promises to grant him whatever he wishes. He asks for the hand of the princess, which the king is only too happy to grant and which has been the secret desire of the princess ever since she began to piece together the early clues.

As the guests are enjoying the wedding banquet, the large doors swing open and in rides an imposing baronial king, resplendent on his horse. He announces that he is Iron John. He had been placed under a curse, which was lifted by the action of the young prince, to whom he consequently bequeathed his wealth.

Bly uses this story to highlight stages on the road to the discovery of male identity. He emphasises the need for young men to steal the key from under their mothers' pillow. If they ask her for it, they will remain under her power. The theft, and disobedience, results in his leaving his father's house and setting out on his own journey. The turning of the young boys hair to gold, as the gazes into the water, represents the dawning realization of his potential. This phase is followed by difficult servitude among the ashes of a kitchen. An initial relationship with the young women, an unreal, spiritual relationship with his Anima, follows. He next develops his warrior self, and, in time, he receives a wound, that becomes a sort of male womb, from which much that is of value is born. The warrior then marries his maiden, integrating his Anima. As a consequence of his journey he comes to enjoy great wealth.¹¹

Parsifal and the Holy Grail

Where Bly took the story of Iron John, others, like Robert Johnson and Joseph Campbell, use the Arthurian legend of Parsifal and the Holy Grail to highlight the male journey.

Parsifal's father had been a great knight, but this fact is kept from the lad by his mother, who tells him not to ask questions. However, one day he encounters a knight, and thereafter, wants to be a knight himself. He eventually ventures out and challenges and kills the fearsome Red Knight. While he is discovering what it is to be a knight, he learns of the illness of the Fisher King. The king's illness affects the health of his kingdom. The young knight makes his way to the palace of the Fisher King. However, still [154] under the influence of his mother, who has told him that he shouldn't ask questions, he fails to ask the critical question, "Whom does the grail serve?", which would have healed the king. He returns to his adventures and learns the art of love. Romantic love brings him into contact with his Anima. Along the way, he is guided both by an old man, an archetype of the wise old man, and by a shrew, an Anima figure who is also the archetype of the wise crone. He returns to the castle of the Fisher King, asks the appropriate question, thereby healing the king and restoring his kingdom. The archetypal king is restored to power.¹²

The Greek Pantheon

I indicated, at the beginning of the chapter, that I was not going to deal, other than in a general way, with differences among men. If you are interested in exploring different masculine archetypal patterns, you will enjoy Jean Shinoda Bolen's God's in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men's Lives and Loves.

Bolen deals first with the early Greek Gods, Uranus and Cronos, both of whom were atrocious fathers, who were suspicious of their children and tried to do away with them. She next explores the archetypal dimensions of Zeus, the supreme God, Poseidon, the god of the sea and Hades the god of the underworld. She argues that these represent current archetypes, with Zeus the controlling paterfamilias, Poseidon the god who is subject to the surge of strong emotional tides and Hades the god who is familiar with the darkness of a threatening underworld. She then deals with Apollo, the sun God, Zeus' favourite, the logical, civilised, get-ahead archetype. She next treats Hermes, the messenger and trickster archetype, with his ready flow of conversation. The next god to be considered is Ares, the god of war, with his violent, easily aroused temper. Another of these deities is Hephaestus, the god of the forge, the lame god who works underground creating beautiful things and the god who was continually cuckolded by his unfaithful with Aphrodite. She deals finally with Dionysus, whom Zeus carried in his thigh, the god of wine, of merriment and of pleasure. It is a fascinating treatment of archetypal diversity among men.¹³

An Invitation

The intention of this chapter was to open up the question of men's spirituality. I hope that it has done this and, at the same time, excited your interest sufficiently to invite further exploration. [155]

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