Who's Right - Who's Wrong?

There is a whole bunch of chatter in relationship circles about right and wrong; admitting when you are wrong; forgiving someone who is wrong; yadayada. So let's take that on for a second!

I could go way down a tunnel about how what you see is unique to you alone and how perhaps you may never really know the objective truth of any situation, but that is a big can of worms - nightcrawlers, in fact. I suppose if human interactions were seedlings or boards or something, we could objectively measure them and all agree that "the fact is... that it is 3.57mm tall." Whatever! But human interactions are cloudlike exchanges where words have mixed meanings for both the speaker and listener, and where the words themselves are just a loose approximation of what is actually going on inside the heads of those involved. It is really sloppy stuff!

Don't agree? Think of it this way: if you look up the word 'love' in the dictionary it says something like "a warm fuzzy feeling about a person or thing." But that (or any) definition comes nowhere near describing the length, breadth and depth of the feelings you have for your spouse or your children - yet we reduce it all to this little word "love." A few years ago, researchers at Harvard had same-culture pairs of people talk to each other for about 5 minutes and then transcribed those conversations. Leaving out the articles and prepositions, they asked the pairs each to define the words in their conversation. When they compared the definitions the researchers found that people had exact agreement on only 6% of the words - the other 94% they either slightly or greatly disagreed on. Where is the truth in that? Who is right when even the words we smile at and nod our heads to and follow along with mean different things to each of us?

So here is the simple truth: ascribing rightness/wrongness is a losing proposition. Someone has to be wrong (put your head down, admit it and say "I'm sorry.") if another is right. It is important in relationship to recognize that right/wrong has no place in a functional relationship. We need to learn a different set of phrases: You didn't hear what I meant. I had a different assumption about that. I didn't understand your feelings. I was too caught up in my own thing to hear you.

Being right is a child's game you learned when you were three or four, and perhaps it served you well through your school years. But being right is an immature attitude that needs to be outgrown in order to live in a healthy relationship. Get over your need to be right! Or go and be right on your crossword puzzle or in a science lab somewhere, and leave it there. Come back home in the maturity of accepting your spectacular differences (94% of the time!) and the juicy spaces in between. See what you can discover when no one needs to be right anymore.

Male Energy

In a few months I am going to Hawaii for a friend's wedding. And the groom asked that I do some kind of male ritual or initiation in lieu of a traditional bachelor party (we're beyond the point of strip clubs and getting too drunk to see). So I researched the island culture, checked in with a consultant friend who lives there and blended it with some of the traditions I have used in past ceremonies - cool!

But his fiancee wants everything to go just right (why shouldn't she?) and is worried that the men in her family who would come might not like it, might not want to come, might... (what? be typical men??) So I needed to explain some of what I have collected over the years on the nature of male energy and working with men. It goes like this:

Male energy is wild and smelly and chaotic. Period. End of story. Working with men is like riding a bucking bronco - the game is to stay on for the ride, not to look good. In fact anytime you try to control male energy or make it sit down and fold its hands on the desk and be a good little boy, male energy will either leave the room or outright die.

Working with men requires letting it flow from the collective masculine spirit present in the group. Often it doesn't look anything like what you planned - but those are the best sessions, and the best team meetings. Because they are raw and unbridled and totally present in the moment. We men wear our battle armor so much that it is rare for us to ever take it off, and the slightest hint of controlling has men reaching for their helmets and swords!

Oh sure I know where I am going and I will get the men there, but it will be with them and through their spirits and energies that we go - and I will lay money on it being a night to remember. And yes there may be a "man" who would rather sell his seat to be able to spend some cuddly time with a girlfriend than to be where we are (it's okay, I used the term man loosely as I think most likely his testicles are firmly in her grip!). It is one of the real filters in men's work - just the right men will show up and the ones who want to whine are better off not coming, thankfully. God, I love working with men!

Forgiveness - Tell Us Your Story

While many would say that love is the most powerful emotion and/or action available to any human, I personally think that the ultimate power is forgiveness. It requires coming from unconditional love - so in truth, it may just be the first cousin of loving. But let's toss it out there and discuss forgiving. So your wife did something that totally dissed you. You feel left out, dismissed, let down, yadayada. Maybe she did the horizontal bop - the ultimate no-no - with your best friend! What do you do?

• You could sue for breach of contract - cool: you are right; she is wrong - GAME OVER.


• You could be hurt, crawl under your rock and give her the cold shoulder and really punish her. Maybe you withhold caring, or touch or even sex from her - that'll show her. Interestingly though you now have two problems, hers and yours. Even harder to dig out from than the original grave you dug.


• You could lash out in rage, dress her down and run the risk of losing it totally and hitting her (or at the last moment missing her and putting your fist through the wall - same result). Now she is afraid of you, feels unsafe and rightfully wants to run and hide. Hmmm - that worked - NOT!

Or you could go talk to your men and get the strength you need to get back in there and do something incredibly transformative - you could forgive. How strong are you? Hey any weakling can cop an attitude and get pissed off but it takes a truckload of strength to be able to forgive. (Gandhi said that forgiveness is the attribute of the strong - that the weak can never forgive.) Forgiveness is transformative - it changes everything. Maybe that's why all the great teachers - Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr - and so many like them, all said it was the greatest gift. Forgiving is hitting the reset button in your brain - and resetting back to how things were before this ever happened. Forgiveness is not simply tolerating her "despite" whatever she did. Forgiveness is giving her back that state of adoration and love you once afforded her before. It takes real guts to stand in there and welcome her back. Nice words, guys! Right? We would love to hear your stories of forgiveness. Real men only - wimps need not apply!

Male Spirituality

I have been wondering lately - especially as I read more and more of Richard Rohr's writing on the subject (http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/) - if the time has come to call for a new form of spirituality that appeals to men. I am not talking God talk here, but rather am referring to an understanding of the sacredness of life and a reverence for the world at large. Clearly these have suffered at the hands of man (and I do mean men, not humanity). There is less respect for life - wars, murder and genocide continue at horrifying levels - and the biosphere we call our planet is endangered - stripped of the life-giving rain forests, and polluted in every aspect, the air, the water and the soil that sustain us. Yes it is clear that we humans - we men - are in dire need of a new spirituality.

Religious movements, it seems, have coopted the term (and the practice) of spiritual reverence. Churches dressed it up in linen and lace and perfumed it into pettiness and pomp. In other circles, we are told that we have to meditate a certain way or do yoga a certain way or chant in some weird dialect of Sanskrit - there is always a right way to do it! But men don't seem to relate to formulaic spirituality, at least that how it seems to me. We men relate to the physical, the tangible and the experiential. I understand that when the astronauts first saw earth from outer space, they were moved to begin a whole movement of conservation and one of them even founded what is now called the Institute of Noetic Sciences because it opened him up to an "inner knowing" of the connection of all things. He experienced it and suddenly had a spiritual reverence for things.

But not all of us can get into outer space and pictures just don't do the same thing. What we need is more time to walk in the woods (what's left of them), time to do a vision quest, or perhaps just a couple days or a week with a struggling family helping them build a small place of their own to live in. We have to get out and into the real world in order to be touched by its spirit. Enough with the lives of the rich and famous - enough! If I hear another money-grubbing rich dude story I just may go off the deep end, after I throw up. Enough with Dancing with the Stars; Enough with TV 'reality" shows - that is not reality. Reality is the human struggle for meaning and brotherhood. Reality is touching another person.

Men, our world is out of balance and going downhill pretty rapidly; the preponderance of the wealth of the world is held by less than a half percent of the population while those living in abject poverty are closing in on 50%. Who will right this ship, if not us? What can or will you do? If you get a chance, see the documentary "I Am" (http://iamthedoc.com/). It won't tell you what to do, but it just might resonate with something inside you and get you into action. Maybe if one of us tells another, and he tells another after that, maybe we can start a movement. I has to start somewhere. Why not here and now?