For a heterosexual man there are two things that can cause great fear and strike blows to the core, they are linked to his ability to function sexually. Those are to question his sexual orientation and the parentage of his children. These things strike deep at something in him, because perceived masculinity is so often linked to sexual performance.
In one sense one’s children are one’s legacy of sexual activity on the physical plane; in a more metaphorical sense when a man is being creative he fertilises the world through his actions hopefully sowing seeds of positive endeavour, his accomplishments.
The challenge for the cuckold to his sense of masculinity is immense particularly so if he discovers this many years down the line. He has in effect and affect been living a lie for most of his adult life. The statistics suggest that as many as one man in ten is unknowingly raising someone else’s child; in these days of multiple divorce and remarriage the raising of another man’s child is overt as well as covert.
In another sense a child can metaphorically re-present a man’s purpose and its nurturing. Eric reckons that a man nurtures with his heart, it is male love and male warmth which gives a child security to grow and to test the boundaries. He says that this is so important and the absence of this is what causes harm, unfortunately though this lack is self-propagating in that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, cold insecure men raise cold insecure boys.
Eric reckons that this phrase has other meanings than the genealogical sense and that it relates to fate and karma. He says that we should be careful about using the concept of fate and karma because these words have been bandied about by so many on the dharma trails from Katmandu to Goa and back again. He does believe that the quotation below from the works of Alice Bailey is a particularly good springboard from which to do a double twisting back somersault into the topic though.
The Cup of Karma
There is a cup held to the lips of those who drink, by four great Lords of Karma. The draught within that cup must all be drained, down to the nethermost drop, e’er it is possible to fill the cup with a purer, sweeter one. The seven Lords of cosmic Love await the hour of filling.
The cup is naught. The draught within distils forth drop by drop. It will not all be drained until the final hour wherein the Pilgrim takes the cup. He lifts it from the hand of those Who, bending, hold it to his lips. Until that day the cup is held, and in inner blind dismay the Pilgrim drinks. After that hour he lifts his head; he sees the light beyond; he takes the cup and, with a radiant joy, drains to the very dregs.
The contents of the cup are changed; the bitter now becomes the sweet; the fiery essence then is lost in cool, life-giving streams. The fire absorbed within has burned and scarred and seared. The draught now taken soothes the burns; it heals the scars and permeates the whole.
The Four bend down and see the work. They release the cup of Karma. The tender Lords of Cosmic Love then mix another draught, and – when the cup is empty seen (emptied by conscious will) – they pour within that which is needed now for broader, larger living. Until the cup has once been used, filled, drained, and seen as naught, it cannot safely hold within that which is later given.
But when to utter emptiness the Pilgrim drains the cup then to the world in torment now he turns. With cup in hand (drained once, filled again, and refused to selfish need) he tends the need of struggling men who tread the way with him. The draught of love, of sacred fire, of cool, health-giving stream he lifts not towards himself but holds it forth to others. Upon the road of weary man he becomes a Lord of Power – power gained through work accomplished, power reached through conscious will. Through the cup of Karma drained he gains the right to serve.
Look on, O Pilgrim, to the goal. See shining far ahead the glory that envelops and the light that naught can dim. Seize on the cup and swiftly drain, delay not for the pain. The empty cup, the steady hand, the firm and strong endeavour, lead to a moment’s agony and thence to radiant life.
Alice Bailey; “The Rays and The Initiations” Page 762, Lucis Publishing Company, New York. ISBN 0-85330-122-0
The vis viva then picks an aspect of awareness to animate, from time to time this awareness incarnates and the power within has the chance to eke out a physical plane existence and face the challenges therein. Because of the deeds and actions in previous incarnations the awareness of the power within has evolved and it chooses a circumstance, a fleeting moment in the evolution of space-time to incarnate such that it can live out the challenges as a fate, within the context of an overall destiny. Eric finds it interesting that the etymology of sin may have a root that is of the verb to be or être, that as a consequence of being in carnation sins result.
He also notes that fate has an air of fatality about it, a sense of death. Sin and Fate are together. They are existence and death, being and not-being and he reminds me that death is both the end of physical plane carnation and more generally transformation through death of the old. Here in the sense of old perceptions and ways of being.
He says that he doesn’t like these two words ( fate and karma) much and that challenges are better, because these are much less judgmental and finger pointy, they have less baggage. The power within sets things up for it to experience whilst in the form side of life, it chooses the circumstance of birth, the country of birth and the potential capacities and abilities. As a direct result there will be sin, or being, as the aspiration and intent of the power within seeks to further develop its awareness through the process of life. He says that a Warrior treats his death as an advisor because by keeping death present it encourages one to live in what he calls the eternal now and to act to the best of ones capacity and ability at any given time, he says that this is impeccability. So in this sense death is his fate and it is to transmute, transform and transfigure.
This transmutation then is when the power within recognises that it has gaps in its knowledge and goes about finding this missing knowledge, it sets itself up with challenges in order to learn. In a very simple sense, the first acts of transmutation are to find out what those challenges are and then welcome them, to literally live them bearing in mind that they are gifts and not tortures.
The next stage is transformation, which is changing the shape of a life so that finally the power within has the island of existence in roughly the shape it originally intended so as to live out its fate for a given lifetime. He reckons that most people have forgotten what it is that they are meant to be doing and live in a dream. All one has to do is to wake up in the dream and then get busy.
The Greek word hamartia (ἁμαρτία) is often translated as sin, this means miss the mark. If one is missing the mark in living out a life that is not in accord with fate then that is a sin, or transgression against the purpose of the vis viva and one’s own power within.
The nature of one’s challenges called forth in a given lifetime, are karma, there is no such thing as good karma or bad karma, only karma. There is not a direct and linear cause and effect here, karma is more cyclical than that, though there are sequences and when mixed with others con-sequence. Eric sees karma as much more of a pattern woven together with challenge threads and themes running through a life, the circumstance for which may be set up over a number of lifetimes, there are many twists and turns in this as the vis viva goes about its business of evolving awareness as a whole. It is difficult to account for the hubris of mankind against the backdrop of cosmic Manvantaras and Kalpas outlined in the Vedic scriptures.
If then as an aspirant for self discovery one drains the cup of Karma, one is actively taking part in the act of transformation by conscious will, by grasping the challenges in a life one makes way for a wider living both in a current life and those that follow.
Eric says that his fate must encompass things that challenge his sense of masculinity to the core and that in overcoming these he will be exploring masculinity. He says that by choosing a father who was emotionally distant and later physically distant during a traumatic period of his life; he had no one to learn from. In a very real sense then he was making it up as he went along. The ability to cope with extended periods of bullying has given him a sense of determination and self reliance which he can draw on in times of trouble. It is his opinion that if one looks back at the sort of challenges and themes that appear relatively early on in a life you can get a picture of some of the scope of a fate.
Eric says that I should now talk in first person about the events of my second year in boarding school; I am a little hesitant to provide full details. A boy asked me to do something and I guess it was and is not, that unusual a thing to ask, but we were caught in the act. He had asked me to play with his balls. We were hauled up in front of the housemaster and asked to account for ourselves. The other boy was quite clearly nervous because it was he that had asked. He asked me to cover for him and make something up so that he came out of it looking better. I could see that he was in trouble. So I took the blame for something that wasn’t really all that bad; though at the time it was catastrophe.
The whole school soon knew about it and so, “Ali-homo” was born. Can you imagine how young boys might chant that at each other and how after not very long a time this began to wear a little thin? As it happens I was put up a dorm in my second year and there the taunting continued en masse. So I waited and waited, in the end I ended up setting things up so that I fought with each boy in turn, when I had them on their own. This strategy seemed to work.
Ultimately, I got Morris, alone, and actually messed him up to such an extent that the housemaster warned me about exclusion. How strange to be bullied and then punished for fighting back. Needless to say I did not want to discuss this bullying with my parents, most especially my dad.
“How is school?”
“Just fine. Did you know I might be playing rugby for Colts next year?”
Later that year we were on a family holiday in the Kafue national park, this is a game reserve in Zambia. We were staying in some rondavels that were quite luxurious, close by the Kafue River. The Kafue River at Kwafala camp is very broad with some fast flowing water and many large islands. It was great. I could go fishing. We did various game drives and I got to go fishing in small boat with one of the guides. They liked doing this as, should we be lucky, they had some food for their families too. I can’t even remember his name but he was a small man and my parents have a picture of him somewhere.
We worked our way upstream across the fast flowing part to an area of more gentle flow going along the sides of a large island across an open expanse of water to the big reed bed. There we started fishing with spinners in search of bream and pike. Together we caught four bream and five pike. It was fantastic my best ever days fishing. The bream he caught were good sized around four pounds each and would be great to eat. As we rowed back he pointed to the signs of hippos making progress underwater, small rings of bubbles and said that is best to watch out for them. We got back and showed off our spoils, the other guides were excited as was my sister and the son of other guests at the camp. A trip was planned for the next day.
Then we had bream, fresh from the brai, magic, true magic.
The next day we set off, my sister, this other slightly younger boy, myself and three guides, the short man, Richard and a taller older man. The boat was quite full with all of us, the fishing tackle and the big slab of concrete that acted as anchor. We rowed across the fast flowing section and then to the more open space of water heading towards the fishing fields near the reeds.
As I am remembering all this, I stepped outside our house and a squadron of nine biplanes flew over head, making quite a noise. They are probably from the nearby RAF base and practising for an air show, harkening back to a time of white silk scarves and handlebar moustaches, crying tally-ho and let’s get after the Hun. Quite a contrast the English countryside to the depths of the African bush!
Then it happened, we saw the edges of some of those bubble rings and the edges of one by the side of the boat. Next thing we were all in the water and the boat had overturned. I was a good swimmer then but only eleven years old. The older man was close to me and he tried to get hold of me, I pushed him away. He tried again and I swam away. I saw him drift off in the current. He was drowning. Calling this back to memory is hard, because after the event I was wracked with guilt that perhaps I could have saved him, I had a bronze medallion life saving badge after all!!
I am crying slightly now at the thought of it all. Seeing someone drift away is not easy. We all swam to the boat; there were now five of us. Together we tried to right the boat and got it about halfway, it then bounced back and I was hit on the head. This made me a little dizzy. We tried again but that anchor was now holding the boat in place. I said to the guides that we weren’t really helping and that if we swam to the nearby island we would wait there whilst they tried righting the boat without hindrance. They sort of agreed but it was difficult to know who was in charge. So we swam towards the island. I remember thinking it strange that swimming was a lot harder in my new Clark’s Attackers, but that I might need my shoes later. As we neared the shore my sister and the other boy headed for a different landing point than mine. We got to the shore and hauled ourselves up onto land and into the bush.
We watched as they tried to right the boat a number of times, the sun now lowering across the water. They were getting tired. They gave up and came to join us on the island. Richard was the stronger swimmer of the two and headed towards where my sister had landed. The shorter man followed, my shorter route, splashing quite a lot as he swam. All of a sudden he was pulled under the water, he started thrashing about a little more wildly, surfaced once and then the water was silent. I knew what had happened; there are crocodiles in these parts. He had followed the path that I had taken just a few moments earlier. The four of us stood dumbstruck looking west at the empty river with the upturned boat and the now setting sun.
For an eternity we stood and stared. Richard seemed to be very, very far away. I said that we needed to do something because they could not hear us back at camp from here. We needed to let them know and that we must get moving soon as it would soon be dark. The only way was to make our way between the islands until such time as we were close enough to shout for help. So we began. Some of the islands were separated by shallow water, some were waist deep and others we had to swim a little in between.
So we did it, each entrance into the water tinged by the memory of what had just happened and the fear. I don’t to this day know whether the two other children knew what had happened, they were just glad to be on the move. We got to a small uncovered island about two hundred metres from camp, nearby the fast flowing section. We reckoned that there wouldn’t be hippos or crocs there and shouted across to the camp for help. We told them what had happened and it began; the ululation of an African woman at the loss of her man; such a haunting sound to accompany the swift and velvet fall of an African dusk.
There we were, then, cold and wet, in complete darkness on a small island in the middle of a game park, stranded. There was no other boat at the camp. The bush is alive at night. All we had for comfort was each other and the lights of the camp distant across the water and that terrible ululation. We heard that my father was going to drive to one of the other camps in search of a boat and that they would try to get to us, they had heard of a canoe and transporter some distance away.
I think soon after mid-night my father and the other boy’s father got in the canoe and made their way towards our shouts across the water to us with some food and clothing. It wasn’t an easy trip but it was with the current. It would not be wise to go back at night. They landed and we ate. We had a gun now. I remember that dawn very well, the mist rising off the river and that grey, grey stretching your arms and legs, yawning beginning to the day. We saw the canoe and were not quite as reassured as we once were. In the past a hippo had taken a bite out of it. We were ferried across and boy, were we glad. They took the thorn out of my sister’s foot and we were soon to leave. For some reason my mother was no longer keen on game parks. We would have to report the incident to the police and as we would reach the game park borders first, it was down to us to do that.
We got to the gate and went in to explain what had happened to the African policeman there. The dry mud brick hut was both gate house for the game park and police station. I had to give a statement. As I began to talk it was noticeable that the man could not really write. So I gave my first statement to the police in my scruffy handwriting all the while thinking that they might lock me up for not saving that man and thinking that it was weird that here I was writing, what were the grown ups doing why weren’t they doing all this? It was down to me I had to do it. Like a good public school boy I owned up. Nothing happened to me.
When we got back to Kabwe the story quickly did the rounds of the expat community and filtered down to the children. For a while we were quite famous locally, the grown ups though all had a shudder when they thought of it.
Eric says that it was my fate to be in that place at that time and to see that males who are the masculine expression of the vis viva cannot always be relied on and that I as a proto male would have to take charge from time to time. This was a part of my karma which left me with a great fear of swimming in open water and the sense that something unseen and terrible was lurking there. He reminds me that I nearly had a heart attack when that small fish followed me in Italy and that it took nearly twenty years before I could swim out of my depth in tropical waters.
He says that the burden of guilt for letting that man drown stayed with me for many years, unspoken, leaving me with a sense that I could have and should have, done more to save him.
Soon it was time to go back to school and I was dropped back into my original dorm. It was much better here and there was less bullying and conflict.
Tag: Vis Viva – A Journey to Sirius
Eric says we should go back to Jason Bourne today and how that willingness to step forward for the programme got him into all sorts of trouble. He says that manipulation is at the root of this and that his willingness to look only on the bright side of life is both a blessing and a curse; that most people take three steps back unless they can see some advantage in things for them. His Nan had a word for it. “Some people are very cute;” she used to say.
Eric reminds me that in my willingness to help other people, I have actually been very dis-empowering to them, and that my take charge mentality, because nothing appears to be happening, has very bad consequences; it establishes a dependency and is not liberating. The weird thing is that people nearly always want to take shortcuts and they always, always want others to take the risk for them. In effect it is manipulation. Eric says that he is now a little sick of this.
He says that people have always apparently recognised in him some sort of a potential, then tried to use him. He is not quite sure what that potential is, but reckons a part of it is remaining calm and objective in moments of crisis, some of which are of his own making. It does take a crisis though for people to actually want to listen to him. He says that the three steps back mentality, is risk averse, often controlling and already looking for a scapegoat even before things begin. On the one hand people so badly want heroes, yet they are often so willing to cast them quickly as the villain of piece.
A long time ago and apparently whilst on the Warrior’s path he was foolish enough to allow himself to be set up as a leader for a group of people. Well somebody had to do it didn’t they? There they built him up as a leader of men, they told him he was the alpha male and set him up for people to compete against and very occasionally with him. They told him all sorts of stuff and let him believe that his fate was to lead this group of people and learn what it meant to learn to lead.
Eric still thinks it funny how that all came about.
In his vanity and naïveté he had let his life get away from him and into this fantasy world. In retrospect how many people could hold together an academic position at a top university, a directorship at an evolving spin out company and an imagined position as leader of a group of people working with the Warrior’s path?
It was imagined then. He was never really the leader.
Afterwards it did all seem rather empty. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted.
If one really, really believes in fate and that in any given lifetime one’s job is to fulfil fate, then, can you imagine the impact of being led to believe that one’s fate was to lead a group of people across three continents on some great quest to unite the heart centres of the planet and then, to have that crushed and taken away over a few short weeks?
What then is one supposed to do with what appear to be the remnants of a life? What then? Eric says he truly believed that he had forfeited his fate. And that sort of thing can make one a little reckless, he comments. If the forfeit is still true then what does that leave? Who knows what lies ahead and what does it matter if the fundamental purpose of one’s existence has been swept aside and demolished?
Eric comments that these events led him to search a great many avenues and paths. He took great care to explore each one of them, as soon as a doorway appeared he would follow the path along the corridor of enquiry for a while, letting his intuition guide him.
He could not however unlearn all that he had learned.
This whole affair left him with a deep longing for a path lost and a fate abandoned. There pendant in the web of life were ghosts and visions still hanging. Eric took his time to re-run and re-perceive his life, and each interaction. How different it all looks now.
He says that because we are re-visiting that space in time we have activated some form of intent and that through the inter-connectedness of the web of life that perception is being shared some thousands of miles away. The dreamers of mankind are group conscious he reminds us. Best not to dwell too long on those thought patterns then.
He is reminded that as he was preparing to leave that group he bought himself a TV. He would need something to do instead of answering all those messages and being at the beck and call of others.
Six years later on it all seems so very, very far away and lost, forgotten in the ephemera of time.
Is that still it then? A fate abandoned and a life of decay. There was some talk back then of Eric making a “bid for power”, the theory says that a bid for power comes only once in a lifetime and that should one fail then one is either destroyed or taken back to a point somewhere in the stream of life before one found the Warrior’s path; there to wonder wistfully about what it might have been like to be a Warrior.
Perhaps this then is it. As we sit here typing away in this lovely cottage, no job, no spin out company, no great spiritual quest; a quiet life of beauty and perhaps mediocrity, with no personal power, one where I gradually fade away. Eric doesn’t believe in fat ladies and he hasn’t heard one sing for quite a while now.
Like Jason Bourne we are looking back for Treadstone. If fate really is fate, then there is nothing that can be done about it, sooner or later one has to go there and live it. There seems to be very few threads left and precious little on that island from before.
Eric says that inherent in the possession of knowledge and in positional power is a danger. It can bring out the very worst in one. He is pretty sure that he doesn’t want power any more; he does still want to learn. It seems though there aren’t that many people around that he can learn from. He says that he still has two very big questions though and that we should devise a strategy to unpick one of them first because that has massive implications for many people and for the second one. We should go one step at a time though, for here is such a tightrope. The answer to this first question has implications that are truly earth shattering in dimension.
Today though he is reading a play called Le Roi Pêcheur by Julien Gracq, one of many books that have “jumped out” at him during his life. This book in a subdued cover caught his eye in a tourist information office in Brittany. The office was closed so he had to hunt it down later. When it arrived the pages were not yet properly cut and he had to separate them with his Sabatier. It took quite a while and there was a great sense of satisfaction when he had done this.
“No more heroes, any more,
No more heroes, any more.
Whatever happened to all those heroes…?”
sang the Stranglers many decades ago now, perhaps as a sign of the times with emerging punk rock and that sense of rebellion then. Only to be followed by “Thatcher, Thatcher, the milk snatcher.”
Now we live in times where the majority of politicians are grey and boring or unable to string together a coherent sentence to drawl. There are few heroes. Eric says that you just have to look at the cars they make these days; by and large they are all pretty much the same despite the ardent claims of the manufacturers.
Who then are the male heroes of today?
He reckons that there has been so much spin that substance is hard to find. Irrespective of the vis viva having imbued the material form with life. There is no substance to the words of these politicians, despite the sound of them issuing out causing the matter of the air to vibrate. The words are not matched by deeds and nor by character.
Eric has been paying a lot of attention to spiders lately. He says that at one level they are quite remarkable creatures, they have evolved this capacity to spin the most delicate of webs and then they just wait. They wait for some food to arrive. They are predators. He reckons that many people are like this. Rather than do the hard work of being creative themselves they wait for other people to come along and then live off them and their successes. They feed. They are vampires. They suck the life force out of others.
A lot of people are like this, they are scared that they themselves cannot be creative so they act as if they are friends and bask in the glory of association. I have done this myself. I am sure you have all met the “name dropper” who has so many rich and famous friends and acquaintances; at first glance one can become captivated by the reflected glory and the glamour. The apparent connectivity and the illusion of creativity can quite quickly become jaded when the true colours begin to show.
Some people live their whole lives like this, running so very, very quickly so as not to be caught up by their own half truths and lies. I agree with him for I have seen people steal others ideas and then become quite famous passing those ideas off as their own. Eric tells me that this is how the world works. He also says that such people live lives of fear. Ultimately though, things do catch up.
He reminds me that a Warrior is always advised to look beyond the face value of a situation and see what lies beyond.
People often present a situation in a way that is perhaps most beneficial to them, whilst keeping their true motives as well hidden as possible. Eric reckons that by looking out for what isn’t said, how that isn’t said and the extent to which it isn’t said one can get a glimpse of the fear which is driving the not saying. This then, acts as a portal towards a truth other than that which is being presented.
He reckons that as we are all a mystery unto our selves we cannot easily see our own behaviours, this is sometimes called a blind spot; the best way to see ourselves is to look at those around us and ask ourselves what is it that they are reflecting for me? If we can see a behaviour in others then it must be within the realms of our own personal experience, either we have {or are} exhibited {-ing} that behaviour or someone has done that to us before. It is really handy, though not always comfortable, to be as honest as possible here.
He says that such mirrors can be past, present or future. I agree with him here. I have found that when someone comes into my life and I get a gut feel about them, whether pleasant or unpleasant, then they are going to show me something about myself and perhaps between the two of us there is some learning to be done.
It is very interesting to hear other people talk about their friends and colleagues and even about one-self. I can remember asking someone to describe how I influence others and what they saw. I know myself pretty damn well. This lady said that she saw me as someone who manipulated power behind the scenes. I listened to the face value of what she had said, balanced it against what I know about myself and made a mental note. She has seen this in me therefore it is within the scope of her experience and because it was the very first thing she recognised, to watch out, she is probably doing this right here and now.
Eric says that people do all sorts of things to hide the truth perhaps the most common of these is smoke screening; that is talking about everything but the matter at hand, he says that there is an interesting change in tone of voice when people do this. The next léger de main , is by way of telling a partial truth to cover for a much bigger mistruth, in a sense offering up something unpleasant as a cover, this appeases the other person’s sense or intuition that all is not well yet doesn’t come clean. I too have noticed this on a number of occasions and then let it run.
The thing is that lies then need supporting lies, and I use the word lie also in the sense of lying by omission. This omission creates a non sequitur in the flow or pattern of a cloth that intuitive people pick up on. They may not act on what they perceive yet that pattern of “something missing” is stored in the pattern recognition centre. From time to time then the weaver has to darn the fabric of a lie, to tend to it so that it does not all unravel.
Sometimes complete silence is the best way to encourage this darning for the weaver is always a little anxious. And a lie told often enough becomes a truth and if told by enough people the truth. These truths then, can act as submarines in the fabric of life, waiting to appear at unexpected moments, like the Lehman brothers.
Eric says that taking those three steps back is very hard for him to do, but it is unconditional. He does this more often now. This brings us both back to fate. Eric says for many years now he has wondered about what fate is and more specifically what the general look and feel of his fate are? What are the themes? Part of it is to do with this potential that others see in him. Somehow they seem to want him to materialise something that they want, a vision or direction that they want him to go in.
It goes back to bullying in a number of ways and he remembers a time where all “advised” him on how they would like him to behave. In a very real sense creating an expectation that he felt he should fulfil and a method that they wanted him to follow. He says that one of the biggest challenges for him is summarised in a single word, no. That is, he has never really said it enough.
Bullying has been a theme all his life; as has being manipulated to do the wants of others. One of his psychiatrists was always teasing him that he was a push-over; together they discussed the irony of this in that he has plenty of personal power but never really chooses to exercise it. He says that somehow he just doesn’t fit in with the world and that he is not worldly wise; he is not cute.
Although people want to take short cuts, the facts are that if you do help them, when they don’t really need it, they start to see you as a “sucker” and in time they loose respect for you, they start to take more advantage of you. They even feel sorry for you. This feeling sorry for someone or pitying them is perhaps the most disempowering thing that anyone can do to another.
It neglects the inclusion of a person’s fate in life and goes quite a long way towards robbing them of the possibility of change. It is kind of ironic to be told on the one hand that you are an alpha male and on the other to have people bullying you and trying to take advantage of you. Somehow and in someway this doesn’t fit. It is a puzzle that Eric and I have lived with for much of our lives.
Now and in retrospect Eric wonders whether this whole business about learning to lead wasn’t a complete red herring. Even so he has made quite a study of leadership and what it feels like. So it all was of some use after all. He never liked the wolf pack as an analogy, there is something in that whole approach which doesn’t suit him and it has a great deal to do with Darwinian thinking, survival of the fittest and all that; the hunter and the hunted. Eric says that perhaps it is his pomposity that finds such things distasteful. Why should he have to compete? His needs are very simple he does not need status, he does not need physical plane wealth, he does not need to shag loads of birds.
Eric says he can appear a little strange to people, in that many of them look to him for some form of direction, he does not know why. He has had it explained to him that people sense this potential in him, that he has power. Then, when he tries to point out a direction or way of being, they appear to fight him tooth and claw. It is a mystery. He wonders what the pay off in all this is. What is the purpose behind it all?
This lack of cuteness has gotten him into all sorts of scrapes; particularly with women. Until quite recently it had never really occurred to him that he was attractive or desirable to the opposite sex and this links across to another project l’homme méhaignié, because one of the challenges in this life for him has been that of masculinity. Being bullied at school for being a homo, did nothing for his self confidence. He even wondered whether they were right and that he was a homo after all. He knows he is not, now. Later to be harassed about what sort of a man he was didn’t really help. It made matters worse. Some of the perhaps best intentioned comments, rather than causing him to have the desire to fight, just made him think the other people were oh so stupid and that perhaps they were right, that he was no man after all.
Eric has a different view of masculinity to most, he says that true masculinity is about not being afraid of emotions and feelings, that vulnerability is a lead that he is happy to provide, whereas bravado, back slapping and jock-strap-ery is not masculine. This behaviour is almost as bad as “boys don’t cry”. From his perspective there is nothing more beautiful than to see a man let out tears of poignancy. This warmth and caring is the essence of true masculinity, and when true masculine warmth is expressed it does something quite magical. A friend of his once did it quite naturally to a young woman on a course; she burst into tears, never having experienced it before.
True masculine warmth is a precious substance and it can make the world go round. Being warm, sensitive and caring are all taboo, in the common view of the world and what better place to suppress them than an English boarding school, where you get teased for being a homo. Eric knows he has it and that sooner or later other men will find it too. He hides it for now though, most of the time. Most men use something like this warmth for seduction and it is easily misread as a come on. Eric laughs at the number of times he has been his charming self only to find a woman to immediately point out her relationship status to him. People’s perceptions are quite the funniest things he says.
Eric says that this warmth is closely related to compassion and arises out of being as thoroughly inclusive as one can. He says that because he is not nor has he ever been, an angel he finds it very hard to be judgemental. He knows that he is far from perfect, whatever that may mean, and that he has done many things he is not proud of. He doesn’t like to throw stones at others and laughs at glasshouses.
He reckons that at least he is honest about his own hypocrisy and that is a good place to start; aspirations, he says, are generally a good thing, though it is easy to kid oneself that aspirations have become practice and fact. Intention to change is all that is required, because sooner or later if that intention is real the actions of a being change and the beginning of transmutation takes place; some times though because of the hubris of man this can feel like Sisyphus getting up each morning for another day at the office; three steps forward and three steps back.
Eric reckons then this is the key to leadership, knowing when to step forward and when to step back, stepping forward is what he calls an intervention. Every intervention and action has impact on the flow of life and by and large it is best to do this only sparingly for by being too eager we rob others of their challenges; in effect tying them up with our own apron strings when they are already ready and able to leave the nest.
Traou an Dour 