Part Twelve: The Return
The prize of a perilous and rewarding journey into the truth of who we are? The ability to share it.
One bright spot of the at-times harrowing inward road I’d been traveling was the content it produced: since 2016, I’d been penning magazine articles and essays about the realizations I was having on the path to becoming a conscious man, and the output continued in a monthly coaching column, The Inside Man, for my old friend Cory Ohlendorf at Valet Magazine. In the Inside Man, I got a chance to explore publicly the many different aspects of the enlightening journey I’d been on: shadow and inner child work, father and mother wounds, and getting in touch with my emotions after years of repression, just to name a few of the biggies.
The response to The Inside Man was wonderful: hundreds of men (and women) reached out with questions, inquiries and to share their own heartfelt stories. This ability to connect with strangers over the internet about deep and vulnerable topics was the true gift of the healing journey for me: I now had something of value I could give back to the world. And it felt great.
Meanwhile, I continued my own journey in earnest. Even with my new, graceful life in Topanga Canyon, the abyss I’d uncovered during quarantine would continue to haunt me in the coming years. I now saw my original losses (and the ways I’d tried to cover them up) so clearly that living my life was often like watching a movie—I almost always knew logically the “correct” or “moral” course of action for the hero (i.e. Me) to take, but again and again, I succumbed to old patterns and ways of being. At times these behaviors seemed innate, and certainly bigger and more powerful than me.
Things would begin to shift more profoundly in 2021 and 2022, though, when my journey began to go beyond the safe confines of the intellect, and deeper into the awareness of my physical body. This integration of learnings that had only been ‘mental’ or ‘spiritual’ concepts up until that point was where the proverbial rubber met the road. And I would become even further aware of my dependence on certain external attachments, and the underlying pain that was there when I removed them.
Nothing was more potent a drug for me than romance. (If you’ll recall back to 2009, in Part Two, desire was what had taken the edge off my most profound loss: my father’s suicide.) And I knew I had to go another layer deeper into the pain stored in my body to release myself from the inability to be alone. Through a serendipitous series of events (read: getting paired up with a stranger at a golf course who by the second hole felt like a lifelong friend, and him introducing me to a Iranian shaman) I found my way into a plant medicine circle that would profoundly change my relationship to myself on a cellular level. But that was only the beginning of the magic that would happen in the coming years that would further strip me down and free me up from the attachments that had once imprisoned me.
Reader, we’ve reached the culmination of our humble series, “A Roadmap to Freedom,” and first off, I just want to thank you for coming along. If you’ve been here for all six months, deep bow, and if you’re just joining us, welcome. Lastly, if you’ve enjoyed or gotten value from this series, I’d appreciate if you’d consider ponying up the $80 to become a yearly member of The Naked Man. That will allow me to continue writing regular content here in 2023.
Okay, so back to business: We’ve reached the final step of the journey home to Self. But to assume that we’ve reached some sort of destination with Part Twelve would be to misunderstand the point, indeed — there is, unfortunately, no destination to this work. And in fact, with our last installment, we’ve reached a step which continues ad infinitum—that is, until we leave this meat suit behind and continue on to wherever we go next.
In twelve step programs, Step Twelve reads: Here we turn outward towards our fellow [men] who are still in distress. And while it’s hard to determine exactly when it happens (Part Nine? Part Eleven?) at some point, this inward journey we’re on as men — to discover the truth of who we truly are — becomes less about us and more about who we might be able to help. That is perhaps when the transition from adolescent boy to man really occurs, when life gives us enough knocks on the head where we can now become the same mentors and guides we sought out in Part Four. For this is what our culture as a whole is lacking: healthy, aware, integrated male energy. Teachers. Kings. Elders. Men who have lived and now turn to their fellow men to offer their experience, not in some preachy way, but as humble servants. This is surely the largest and most rewarding prize of our own awakening — to help another.
Not exactly what we were hoping for was it? (Certainly wasn’t for me.) Especially as Gatsbys, we tend to begin this journey with the ego firmly in the driver’s seat. We believe being more “enlightened” and “in touch with ourselves” is going to get us more money, more sex, more prestige, more friends! Ah! But the universe is a deft and wily comedian. And by Part Twelve, we’ve come so far, and let go of so much, that our ego is no longer in charge. Our heart is leading the way, and the heart cares little for surface pursuits. It wants only to pour out love. So, even though by now, if we’ve done our “work”, we will surely be looking at a much more confident, abundant, and peaceful existence than when we were chasing boy-like thrills, the culmination of our journey has little to do with glory. Like the most noble and fair Kings, we have become servants to a cause greater than ourselves. We have filled our cups up so massively, that they now overflow. We need nothing. While simultaneously wishing only to give our gifts to the world.
What are your gifts, you might be wondering? I remember working with a client years ago who was starting his own coaching practice. He was concerned about what programs he could do, what books he could read, etc. and I told him, like a coach had told me years before, “You’re a life coach. Your life is your gift.” And I offer the same nugget now to any man willing to go earnestly on the journey we’ve outlined over the past six months: Your life will be your gift.
Much is spoken in “men’s work” about purpose, and the lack of purpose in modern life. And I say we are so collectively clueless about purpose, because we spend our lives seeking it outwardly: Is this job my purpose? Is this creative project my purpose? Is this person my purpose? Meanwhile, our true purpose lies undiscovered in the one place we haven’t looked: Inside our own psyches.
FACT: If you courageously go all-in on this path inward, you WILL collide with your purpose for being here. This encounter with the innate and priceless gifts you’re meant to share with others is inevitable. Famed Jungian Robert Johnson used to say that the most profound gold is found in the deepest shadows, and on my journey I have found the same thing: the deeper I am willing to go into myself, the more I am able to help others. It is soul math: One cannot truly take another man where he has not been himself. Yet as far as any man has gone, he will be able to take another with him.
If you’ve made it to Part Twelve then you, my friend, are one of these rare men. You are prepared to live the concepts you’ve gleaned on the inward road as embodied (literally: of the body), which means that the key component here is action. Worldly action.
This shift into purposeful action will be a change for the healing man. Healing and emotional processing (Part Five) takes massive amounts of energy, so often the majority of Parts Five Through Eleven will see us slip away from the ordinary world we know, into a sort of cave where we can focus much of our energy and attention on ourselves, and our healing process. In the safe spaces we find - men’s groups, twelve step meetings, therapy rooms, healing circles, spiritual groups, etc. we can test out the true, naked selves that exist behind the protective armor, or shell we created in Part One to avoid further hurt. We can take risks, and practice and play with new ways of being, assured we can fuck up and still be loved, still be held and encouraged by our fellow travelers.
These healing spaces serve as rehearsals. But by Part Twelve, our set list in hand, our timing honed, chords memorized, it is time — as a friend of mine says — to tour the album. We’re ready to re-enter the ordinary world we left in Part Two, and in earnest, in Part Five as changed men. In Joseph Campbell’s vernacular, this step is where we return to our communities with the “elixir,” the medicine for the world that we were brought here — and encouraged through the transformational fires of our own joy and suffering — to create.
This is a celebratory moment, surely, but also a profound call to service. Which means that, really, our “Roadmap to Freedom” begins again here: armed with our wisdom, we march once again into the world to take our place and vocation, and that means the wheel begins to spin again. Once again, we’ll be in Step One, a changed man in an ordinary world. Once again, we’ll be ready for a new round of challenges and opportunities that will surely lead us on new adventures. The snake eats its tail. The story begins again. To infinity and beyond…
Questions to consider at Part Twelve include:
How can I use what I’ve learned in Parts One to Eleven to Help Others in similar situations?
What struggles have I been through that I can share/make known to my community or the world at large?
What gifts have I received from this journey?
What actions can I take next in my life to embody all I’ve learned?
What do I love to do?
How can I do more of it?
Where does the world need my talents?
Is there anything I’m holding back from sharing for fear of how I’ll look to others?
What fears keep me from being my full self?
What truly excites me?
What do I want to create?
What feels extra juicy or risky to me right now?
What do I want my legacy to be when I die?
How do I want to be remembered?
What habits can I put in place that will ensure I am working towards my goals?
What support can I give to others?
2022 was a year of profound embodiment for me. In fact, all year, it felt like I was being encouraged into really living the lessons I’d been kicking the tires on the previous 6-7 years.
No lesson was more potent than self respect: honoring myself above all else. And plant medicine — especially the “heart openers” Kanna, Sassafras, White Lily, and many others — were some of my greatest teachers last year. All in, I sat for nearly a dozen journeys (including a beautiful three-day intensive in Kauai in September), and as I moved through previously unexplored areas of my heart, I discovered a gentleness, receptivity, and kindness (towards myself and others) that had alluded me up to this point in my life.
This healing of my feminine (or mother) wound continued through my work with a profound intimacy coach named Allana Pratt. Since July, Allana has served as a secure, maternal figure for me as I dive into, release and integrate some of my earliest cellular-level trauma. And our time together has helped me let go of many of those “barriers to love” that Sufi poet Rumi wrote of, with more to come. Not to mention, Allana is one of the coolest people I’ve met on this inward path. Zero bullshit. All powerful love and directness.
As I put more brushstrokes on my work around the mother wound, I also dove back into the masculine (father) wound in 2022 with a yearlong men’s group called Elevate with two coaches named Bryan Reeves and Tait Arend. It was in Bryan and Tait’s container (and specifically on a weeklong retreat in the North Carolina mountains in June) that I realized that I’d at-last received the “initiation” into manhood I’d sought through my many years of men’s work dating back to that first group with Stephen Johnson in 2017. Thanks to Bryan and Tait, the journey around integrating my masculine wound was, for now, in a good place. Finally feeling like a whole man, I could step beyond the confines of the cave I’d inhabited the previous several years and stand confidently in the world doing my thing.
As I write to you on a gray, Topanga Canyon morning in January of 2023, life is good. And in writing that, I can’t help but think back to Part Two—to that gray New York winter 13 years ago, and those long nights on the fire escape, when life felt hopeless. In one of my recent sessions with Allana, I told her: “I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be alive.” This realization was followed by a massive upswell of grief as I realized that I had never truly felt like being here for the majority of my 39 years on the planet. Life had not been fun. Life had not been good or easy. Which made me even more grateful and honoring of the road that had led me here.
It was a humbling moment. And this ‘Road Home to Self’ is humbling work. It is profound and deep and beautiful and changes everything. And one of my greatest joys is watching my clients transform as they walk their own versions of the freedom path I’ve outlined here: from lost, confused, numb, and stressed to buoyant, purposeful, peaceful, and alive. To hear men share words like confident, grounded, solid, resilient, and excited when I ask them how they’re feeling is more rewarding than any byline I had in any magazine, or any worldly success or achievement I ever garnered back in those earliest days of chasing Gatsby fame and glory in New York.
One thing that has surprised me on the inward path is that as we change, our dreams change, too. And it serves us well to mourn the death of the old fantasies of how our lives might play out. I began this inward journey hoping — like any Gatsby — that there would be fame and fortune in it: a brilliant, best-selling memoir perhaps, or world domination - but to this point, there hasn’t been. My life is a quiet life. It’s a fun life. It’s a life of just a few things, but all things that mean a lot to me: I write. I coach. I surf. I spend time outdoors and in intimate conversation with my closest friends. I listen to music. I laugh. I honor myself and take care of my body, mind and spirit. At age 39, I’ve never felt healthier or younger.
I share all of this because I started this journey 14 years ago just wanting the pain to go away. I wanted out of the anxiety, stress and addictions. I wanted to feel freer, happier, and more alive. And all of this has happened. But becoming a conscious, adult man is not some fluffy business, either. I’ve learned that it sometimes means being willing to do the hard thing, and have the hard conversation. It means letting people and situations go that no longer serve you and your growth. It means forgoing the hedonism and glamour when life calls you to duty, and being willing to explore beyond our adolescent infatuation with living in comfort and avoiding pain.
Life is, by nature, painful. We lose stuff and people. Things atrophy and die. We stumble. And we suffer so much as men when we try to avoid pain. Remember the original invitation to descend in Part Two? That’s the pain. And we must be initiated into the pain to understand that the pain is just as important as the pleasure. That life is about feeling all of it and living gracefully amidst it.
A couple weeks ago, during the holidays, I watched “Call Me By Your Name,” surely one of the best films about men of the last decade. And in the movie, the incredible ending scene where father tells son: But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything…what a waste!
For me, this line encapsulates the male journey perfectly: We go numb as boys to avoid pain, but in avoiding our pain, we die to the fullness of life. So this journey, gentlemen, is a journey back into feeling, back into aliveness. No, you won’t avoid pain by becoming “enlightened.” In fact, you’ll feel it more deeply. Just as you will joy. And the willingness to feel all of it — to be fully awake and alive — is worth every single step. It is the greatest feeling to fall asleep at night knowing that you’ve felt everything you could. And it’s a feeling I wish for you.
So good luck, weary traveler, should you choose to accept the mission. And for those heroes already seeking, already walking this path: should you feel lost and doubtful—as we all inevitably will somewhere along the way—I’ll leave you with a few words from the immortal Tom Petty:
It's time to move on, it's time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
See you out there on the road, gentlemen-
-Sean
Thank you for this. I remember reading your articles back in your GQ days and got into what you are doing now through your Valet column. Reading these and listening to a bit of your podcast was really what I needed these past months as a simple rejection from an potential partner recently sent me into crying multiple times a day. Your journey has pushed me to finding the support I need in hopes to build up my self-esteem and work through my insecurities. Thank you for years of excellent writing, Sean.
Thanks so much for these, Sean. Great to see the brush clearing and the path appearing before you. As Hemingway noted: “The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.”