By John R. Stowe
I bought this book when I first moved to Brighton from Newcastle 12 years ago.
I was moving away from the oppressive North to The Gay Mecca and I was going to radically change my life!
I started the workbook and managed to get to chapter 4.
Then life got in the way!
Then things got really tough!
Ultimately I found myself faced up to the consequences of having neglected my spiritual self. For me this manifested as creative exhaustion, emotional paralysis and preoccupation with a fear of aging and ailments.
Then The Edward Carpenter Community came to the rescue.
I attended my first Laurieston Gay Men’s Week in September 2009, returned the following year and then was back again last year. The magic of these weeks gave me the space and sanctuary I needed to properly attend to my spiritual growth. The book seemed to feature fairly prominently in the 2010 September week and I returned to Brighton with a fellow Brightonian ECCer with a joint resolve to work through the book together.
We worked through a few chapters at a time then met up over lunch and glass or two of wine about once a month. We shared with each other our thoughts about each chapter, the progress we’d made with the set tasks and the impact we had felt from having carried out the exercises.
It was interesting for me to compare the experience of having tried to do the book alone in the past with the completely different situation of having a fellow traveller there to spur me on and make sure I didn’t get tempted to skip the awkward and challenging exercises.
The book is in two major parts. The first part helps you to get you in touch with some of the wounds gay folk have had to endure growing up in homophobic families, religions and schools and to register the consequential impact this has had on the ways we relate to ourselves and others, the fear we have of disclosing our true nature and the effect this has on our emotional availability for intimacy.
The second part introduces some Gay Archetypes and helps to develop a personal and healing connection to each of these. We therefore start with the Magic Boy. We all have an inner child who is playful, joyful and creative but is likely also to be sad, hurt and fearful because of a whole range of difficult past experiences. There are exercises designed to help you to contact this aspect of your self and to begin a self-healing, self-nurturing process.
Next chapter is The Sacred Androgyne (we have a greater dose of the feminine in our gay male nature than the average straight bloke). Ancient societies and cultures recognized the special qualities of feminine acting boys and gave them important roles in their sacred rituals. In this chapter there is the chance to acknowledge, honour and own our feminine aspects. A chance to heal some of the hurt inflicted on us by a society, which invalidates any gender expression other than the male/ female of a very strict either/or gender binary.
Next is The Lover. We all can identify with this aspect of ourselves and of others. What an interesting chapter this was for me! It was really eye opening and penny-dropping. If you are intending to work through the book I would hate to spoil the surprise! Suffice it to say there is more insight, healing and inner development in store.
I’ve just finished the chapter on The Elder and I’ve yet to work through The Shaman Healer, The Warrior and The Explorer. And then there’s a final section, which is called Taking Your Place- (I presume as a nicely rounded Gay Spirit Warrior).
Sadly last year my Gay Spirit Warrior partner had to drop out of our process because of family pressures and so inevitably, ever since, the impetus to complete the book has dwindled. Given that I’m reasonably highly motivated to finish this book I do have to ask myself why is it that it is taking me such long time to finish it?
I think it’s something to do with the practicalities of having enough time. This is an activity book that will give returns in proportion to the time and emotional energy invested. You would be wasting your time giving it a quick skim read. Each chapter has 6 or 7 suggested activities each of which could take up to 1or 2 hours each to carry out meaningfully. I’m also dragging my feet because as with anything which threatens to change me-even if it’s likely to be for the better- I find excuses to do it really well-tomorrow or at the weekend when there’s more time and when I’m likely to have more energy to deal with the challenges. But then social life, visitors, parental illness, friends, culture, holidays all seem to push my best intentions aside.
Having worked through just over half of the book now (in just over 12 years!) it’s easy to see that if you have enough time on your hands and if you’re really interested in getting a better understanding of yourself it’s a book which could well change your life by helping you to understand how society’s take on your sexuality may have negatively impacted on your development and, by providing you with a route map for healing and growing into your power as a thriving, nurtured, self respecting, uniquely gifted man.
What I’d really love to do- once I’ve finally worked my way through to the end- is to run a Gay Spirit Warrior Book Group or Heart Circle –maybe on-line which would provide the peer group energy needed to support and stimulate what could otherwise be a pretty tough and solitary practice.
If there’s anyone interested do get in touch gaysocrates@gmail.com and give me that final impetus I need to just get on and finish it!
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