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Larry Pesavento is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, a therapist, an author and the Founder of CHRISTOS - A Center for Men located in Covington, KY.
"In 1993 I started a men's center to help initiate a dialogue about how a man in this confusing, elderless world can find a sense of identity, place and pride. I had been counseling men for close to 25 years and learned a lot from their struggles as well as my own. I then decided to write a book about the internal journey that a man must take in order to find a sense of peace and generativity. I felt called to write a book to share what I learned as part of my own journey and struggle with manhood. I will be publishing chapters from this book monthly, along with thoughts that pop up during the month. Thoughts may come from my practice, from the chapter of the book highlighted that month, from my own life, or maybe from the lives of readers that e-mail me."
For more info about Larry Pesavento, visit his web-site, http://www
.christoscenter
.com/
E-mail:
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Men and Peace
by
Copyright © 2003
Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is not just a cold war or a nonviolent cold shoulder. Peace is not a passive thing. Peace demands the activity and acumen of the warrior, who is practiced in strategy and focused on outcome. The peace warrior is not soft hearted, but realizes peace is also a hard reality, demanding as much sacrifice and pain as goes into any war. This warrior realizes that ends and means cannot be separated. So he sets boundaries most often with his body and life rather than his sword or rifle. He is willing to give his life like any brave soldier.
But he is willing to give his life with his eyes on the prize. The prize is peace that creates active harmony, not a Darwinian balance of interests. The ends reflect a view of humanity that gives every person an important place in the community. Nobody is expendable because he is less fit. The prize recognizes that everybody fits. The ends reflect a synergy of life and lives.
How does a man go about creating this world? How does he use his warrior energy to create peace? The answer is that he starts with himself. Every man is asked to find his calling, the unique role he is to play in the community he lives in. Mystics of all religions and indigenous peoples knew this by experience. They found this by years of meditation, or months of initiation. They found this through comparing their own experience to the words of their elders. They found this truth in finding themselves.
The mystical, indigenous view of humanity sees peace as a harmony of lives that complement instead of compete. There are no winners and losers because the prize is different for each man and woman. Every person is a unique shape in the mosaic of community. For men, the prize also includes an internal sense of peace, which then led to peace in the community. In most indigenous cultures, to be a man and full human being meant being a man of peace.
If a man has never experienced a peace inside, he will likely never experience or create the vision of peace in his community. If a man never goes inside, doing his inner work first, he will play out his inner chaos and confusion by creating a drama of disharmony in the world. The Navajo Native Americans understand crimes and other antisocial acts as the result of an inner disharmony or disordering that creates chaos in the world.
A man who has no inner peace will assume a world where other men are not peaceful. His fear will cause him to move into a survival mode, where other men compete with him, trying to make him a loser. He will see a world peopled with narcissistic, depressed, aggressive men like himself. An unconscious man will project his inner demons onto the world, destroying parts of the world and its people in an effort to destroy what is really part of himself. He will rationalize that destruction by declaring the destroyed unfit, unable to feel his own sense of unfitness.
The inner journey for a man starts with confronting his own fears directly and consciously. That is why the inner journey takes such courage. Why would a man go to war rather than be seen by his buddies and superiors as unmanly? Why would a man rather face a hostile crowd than an angry wife? Why does a man feel so broken when he is broke? Facing inner fear means facing the questions of identity, alone, with its doubts and uncertainty. It means finding one's own manly identity instead of borrowing society's. If the truth be known, most men are scared to death of not appearing manly.
Unconscious men will do most anything to protect the persona of manhood, which comes down to money and power. These men will do most anything to keep from facing the fear of who they are without these things. As I have said often, unconscious men are dangerous men. I believe most wars are actually fought to preserve each country's esteem in the world and each man's esteem of his own manhood. Most wars are fought because most men need an artificial sense of their own manliness. Most wars are fought over the persona of manhood, including the rationalization of protecting women and children.
There are never enough goods or accolades to make a man feel manly. Wars are a natural consequence of the competition for external signs of manliness. Competition leads to the need for dominance. Dominance brings the euphoria of worldly manliness like any other addiction. Dominance has no respect for the dominated. Dominance is the dark side of competition. Dominance, as hegemony, is the addiction of hollow men.
Sure, I have written about some benefits of competition, if done in the spirit of two winners. But the idea that creating losers creates peace is ludicrous. Harmony does not come from a symphony of winners. As I have mentioned numerous times, eventually we're all losers in the patriarchy, in this zero sum game. Both Winners and losers think only of themselves, just for different reasons. The man lacking inner awareness will always see too many people chasing too few goods. He will also see the only good in goods.
Peace can come when enough men find peace inside. This means that enough men have to make the perilous journey inside (see http://www.christoscenter.com/toward.html ), which takes more warrior courage than mindlessly pulling a trigger to create peace by violence. The journey inside introduces a man to the possibility that he has a uniqueness that begs to be realized. He has talents that give him a unique market niche, to use modern parlance, that will never be challenged. It is then he realizes in his gut that every person has a similar unique place.
The irony is that he will go through as much pain, actually more internal pain, than the soldier in training or in war. His is the painful terror of finding manhood alone, in what seems at first sight to be an unending wasteland, a desert of a soul. His pain is the facing of death in the form of loss of all he believed manhood was about. His pain is facing the death of loss of control and dominance, facing a sacred vulnerability. His pain is facing the death of loss of respect of a culture that glorifies power over, instead of empowerment. His pain is facing, like any warrior, the possibility of physical death rather than giving up his values and vision. The mark of a mature man is one who endures pain rather than creating it.
When a man faces his fears he starts to find he has nothing to fear. As he finds his place he finds his peace. What he has found cannot be taken away. What has been taken away he found he doesn't need. As his fear leaves, that feeling is replaced by a kind of peace, a peace that passes understanding. He has something no man can take away. He has something to give that other men envy, yet he has no need to profit from that advantage.
Of course, he will face a disordered world, but that world does not resonate in him, creating larger fear curves in his inner world. Of course, he will still be threatened by some men who will try to control him, to exploit his inner power or his outer belongings. This is why a man never gives up his inner warrior. He will protect himself and those he loves from imminent, personal danger. He just finds that he loves a hell of a lot more people than he previously knew. The vacuum of fear is filled with love. Projections of inevitable competitors are withdrawn causing him to see the world very differently. The love starts spreading beyond family, beyond political party, beyond religion, beyond country to something more. More and more men are seen as brothers instead of belligerent others.
I challenge men to go inside, into the depths of their own values and vexations, to at least try to find the peace I talk about. Go inside before acting outside. Act instead of react. Experience is the only teacher. It doesn't matter if the motivation is for peace in the world. If a man wants peace inside he has to go inside anyway. This psychospiritual journey is not optional.
There are no sure things. Peace cannot be controlled, or programmed. Again, control is the illusion of the patriarchy. But if enough men are willing to suffer the loss of approval and popularity, and find a deeper wisdom and motivation, the chances for peace rise significantly. When a man then completes this journey, he finds himself called to serve his community with the peace he has found. This is where the personal becomes political. This is when peace becomes more of a probability. And manhood and peace start becoming synonymous.
Larry Pesavento ©2003
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