[Part Seven of a Twelve-Part Series: A Roadmap to Freedom]
Spring of 2016 brought some of my most hopeful days since this whole inward journey/dark night of the soul debacle began. Bolstered by the many deepening friendships in my life, and fresh off an inspiring winter spent writing and letting go in California, I had started to turn on my awareness, tune into my wild feelings, and drop out of the chase that had once consumed me. I was getting my first tastes of what felt like freedom.
But then, on an unseasonably cold April afternoon, a bike ride home to my apartment in Brooklyn, and a single letter in the mailbox— from Amy. I opened it, already knowing what it would say. It was the letter I’d been waiting on for all of last year, the letter I’d finally given up hope on ever receiving. She wanted me back.
I arranged to meet with Amy immediately. But as we cozied up together at the bar of a tiny, Sullivan Street bistro with a couple glasses of Gamay, it was clear to me that whatever magic we’d once had was gone. Sure, I still loved her massively. But I didn’t need her to save me anymore. I had moved on, and was building an intentional life of my own: I had Laura. I had my friends. I had my little house on the lake. I felt confident and rooted for maybe the first time ever. So, to my disbelief, I looked into the brown eyes of the same woman whose absence had driven me to the brink of suicide just a year prior and said: “I can’t do this.”
The elation that followed telling Amy ‘No’ left me soaring. I had passed my first doozie on the spiritual path! I was growing—it was obvious now. I remember immediately running back to my new pals to share my triumph, after which I walked around feeling like a Greek God for a week, my chest puffing out over how I was now some temptation-proof saint.
But as the hot New York summer sizzled on, my newfound resolve began to melt. Although my life was steadily improving, there was still much to sort through: my once burgeoning creativity stalled out when the memoir proposal I’d begun putting together in California received no bids from publishers, Laura’s and my romance cooled, and I wasn’t meeting any women I felt a spark with on the apps, or otherwise. Most days, I felt directionless and lonely, nostalgic for the past and unsure of the future. So, in September, when another email from Amy landed in my inbox, I didn’t have the strength to push her away this time. From our first moments back together, I knew I had made the cowardly decision. But I didn’t care anymore.
By Part Seven in any Gatsby man’s individuation journey, we’re getting more comfortable with the uncomfortable. We might have some hard earned wins on the “soul line” to speak of and, while those wins are beautiful and earned, they allow us — if we’re being honest — to get a little cocky.
Bypassing — using spiritual or personal growth jargon to sidestep, or avoid facing emotions, psychological wounds, and unfinished development tasks — abounds in this stage of the journey. We may stand on a soapbox, preaching to all who will listen about how we’re doing “the work”, but our foundation is freshly poured at best and still shaky. We may, as Canadian author and men’s work teacher P.T. Mistlberger writes in Rude Awakening, have a case of “holy man’s disease”. We know the language of personal growth now, we have read the books and taken the workshops, but we’re still only groms in the spiritual lineup. There’s so much surfing left to do, so many waves we haven’t ridden.
Something we can count on as we grow is the universe to test us. Temptations will arise —usually in the form of whatever was most appealing to us in our former lives: the man who has had affairs and promises to his partner to remain squeaky will walk into work one day to find a very attractive new-hire one cubicle over, the gambling junkie will get invited to a super secret high stakes game, the workaholic after swearing to slow down will find more juicy projects than ever in his inbox. And of course the party boy will face Nebuchadnezzar-sized temptations to imbibe: Weddings! Dinners! Holiday parties! How can I stop now?
These temptations are often avoidable for a time, but eventually, even the most determined of us tend to give into them. The path of Sleepytime is, after all, quite attractive. It’s an easier, softer way than walking the path of the conscious, upright man. So, it’s in this stage that we decide to lie down for a nice nap to relieve us of our Herculean labors. Maybe we even wander down to the proverbial crossroads and agree to let the Devil make his case. Your soul in exchange for all your worldly dreams. Deal?!
A relapse after so much stomach twisting responsibility makes sense here. We’ve been living in the discomfort of dropping aspects of our highly fortified shells, shells we were sure we needed for survival. We’re naked. And it’s when we’re naked that we start to meet very vulnerable parts of ourselves—parts that needed attention and love we didn’t get when it mattered. Welcome to inner child work, my Gs. And inner child work is not for the faint of heart. 9.99999 out of 10 guys, when faced with the prospects of further staring down their inner little boys will look for damn near any relief to save them from what they are uncovering.
So we say Yup to what our soul knows is a Nope. And the result is an agonizing bout of inner friction. Fear and anxiety about taking the next steps in our lives bubble up. We may be haunted by the past. We may have vivid dreams of old lovers, distant friends, and our families. Often, we pull back from our therapists, coaches, psychics, or the bros in our men’s groups, afraid of the truth their faces might reflect. Instead, we sit stewing in the frantic dialogue between our heart and ego:
Heart: Let’s leave this job and go do something we love!
Ego: But what about all this money? You know you’re gonna die without money, right?
Heart: Money can’t buy fulfillment. I want to be happy!
Ego: Happy is for suckers. I’m saving our ass.
Inner friction makes life almost unbearable. And we have to try twice as hard to Heisman Trophy the truth away like an approaching lineman. So we double down on the numbing agents: we hit PornHub, or fill our carts full of gadgets we’ll never use on Amazon, we start drinking “just a few beers”, or go on yet another retreat looking for answers.
But our answer lies in the action we aren’t taking. The usually obvious action that feels so paralyzing that we bail on it. Then we promptly beat ourselves up for it. But this self-flagellation is a waste of time. Because although our falters and lack of discipline will lead us to believe we’re blowing it, we’re not. Far from it. In fact, without these tests and lapses in judgment and character, we’d never be able to keep feeling through to the deeper material that is trying to come forth. Without this soul shaking era of our lives, stuck between the past we know doesn’t work and the life that is waiting for us, there’d be no drama in the blockbuster movie that is our life. We NEED this friction. It lets the audience know how big a deal this quest is for our hero. It lets them know the stakes of the game that is being played. The stakes quite often feel like life or death. Even if that death is just our egos.
Questions may come to us now:
Have my habits changed since I began this journey?
Am I slipping out of discipline, or going back to old ways of self soothing?
What are my priorities?
Am I on track with them?
What temptations are popping up in my life currently?
Am I indulging in them, or learning to live with the inevitable feeling of wanting/craving?
What’s something I’m currently doing in my life that I wouldn’t want anyone else to know about?
Am I rationalizing?
Am I feeling connected to myself and my feelings, or lost in thought loops?
Am I avoiding taking the next steps in my journey out of a fear of what comes next?
Is my ego writing checks my body can’t cash?
All are good questions. All bring us back to the truth, back to the body, back to a firm bedrock where we can evaluate once again if we can move forward on our journey, or resign to a life of “ifs” and “could haves”, recounting our Glory Days to a bunch of half cocked Springsteen fans at a country club bar. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, in their fantastic book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover write that in therapy, whenever the analyst is approaching some very “hot” material, it’s almost inevitable that the client will disassociate. This is the stage we’re in now. We’re approaching the hottest material we have, and so our defenses will be at their highest. Do NOT believe the voices that say to turn back. As the granddaddy Joseph Campbell said: The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Keep going, intrepid wanderer. Keep going.
Any bliss I felt about being back together with Amy faded quickly. Linda’s message kept ringing in my head like an alarm clock: Your father’s death was the beginning of a death inside you, as well. And I knew that letting go of Amy, and of the past was the key to that freedom. But now that I had her back, how could I let go again? My new self was still too fragile.
I knew I couldn’t talk to my friends about leaving Amy. Their faces would only reflect the truth I was trying to avoid. So I tried other venues: I remember sitting with my fancy literary agent, Tucker, in his office in Midtown. He had his cowboy boots on the desk, and was chewing on a toothpick. “You watched your father die when he lost all his worldly accomplishments” he said. “You’re afraid of ending up like him. That’s why you can’t move on. Plus she’s hot.”
Even Tucker could see the push-pull of the friction that was playing out inside me. And I walked around living with that inner friction every day, watching the slow, intentional life I’d started building crumble in favor of indulgent nights out partying with Amy’s clan of hipster friends I was always trying to impress. An old self — a self I hadn’t seen in a while — started to remerge: I drank more, and did more cocaine, anything to numb the feelings of disgust and self loathing that were coming to the surface. Eventually, even Amy’s and my lovemaking — the one place we had always shined — began to lack life. “I feel like I’m losing myself,” I’d tell her angrily over and over, which only confused her and made her upset. It was hell. A hell that would rage on for months and require a cross country move to Los Angeles before it finally broke me.
If anything, this stubborn part of the journey reminds us that - as men - we don’t change for fun. Usually, we’re so bullheaded we won’t quit until the old way is so painful, so despicable that the highly uncomfortable step into the unknown starts to look pretty sexy. So hey, let’s pause to pay our respects to Hades before we take The Big Leap, shall we? Break out the drugs and the bad decisions and let’s party like it’s 2099…
…at least until Part Eight cracks us wide open.
(Part Eight will be published on October 24th.)