Live Meetings

1) Introduction to Men’s Work

An opening session that lays out the ground and terms of our enquiry, while exploring paradoxes and possibilities.

o  The Paradox of Masculinity – Provider/Defender or Caring/Sharing Lover
o  The Numbing of the Male Heart – The Cultures We Live In
o  The Human Shadow – and Negative Potential.
o  Male Naïvety & Denial – Avoidance and Escape
o  Accessing Male Emotions – Soul work and the Feeling Body

2) Men and Feelings

Exploring our relationship to fear, grief, anger, joy and shame

• Understanding feelings in the world of men, beyond ‘positive’ and ‘negative’

• Which feelings are blocked in me, in my family, in my culture?

• Finding the precise language for our feelings.

• Discerning the difference between thought and feeling

• Grief and Fear as the keys to male healing

3) Facing our Fathers

Every man needs to review, renegotiate, outgrow or heal his relationship  with his father.​

• How the hurts of fathers are passed on to sons

• Competition, emulation and expectation

• The shadow of our fathers – failure and humiliation

• The absent father – the hole in a man’s heart

• Initiation and the need for blessing

  

4) The Darker Side of Feeling

While asserting that no feeling is ‘negative’, in and of itself, we look at how our present culture can toxify and poison our feeling-lives, and that of others.

• Stressors and triggers that hold and provoke male anger

• Distinguishing between anger, rage and violence

• Emotional Fusion – my feelings or yours?

• From Socialisation to Toxicity – Shame and the Roots of Addiction and Violence

• Blocks and Binds – the feeling behind the feeling

 5) Lineage

Who am I and where do I come from?

• Understanding our intellectual, emotional, spiritual and cultural inheritance

• The ground of Belonging, the experience of Exile

• Where do these feelings come from – personal background, ancestry or collective?

• Trauma and deep ancestral healing

• Discovering the ‘golden thread’ of lineage

  

6) Power

In a world where men are expected to be ‘powerful’, but are often held down within masculine hierarchies, how do we develop a healthy relationship with power?

• Winners and losers in male pecking orders

• Power with vs power over, and the experience of powerlessness

• Personal and cultural abuses of power

• Smoke and mirrors – the illusions of power

• Sourcing and recovering – the healthy expression of power

  

• The grounds and the consequences of ‘otherising’

• Tribes, gangs and outsiders – where are we ‘in’, and where are we ‘out’?

• Race, class, caste and sexual orientation

• Self-destruction – internalizing the hatred and oppression of others

• Money and poverty – the single biggest separator between men

8) Sex, Relationship and Intimacy

The patterns, habits and misconceptions that can inform, inhibit and distort male sexuality

• The difference between ejaculation and orgasm

• The ‘perfect body’ – male self-image and body shame

• Male touch deprivation – rediscovering our responsive body

• The tainted looking glass – pornography, distraction and impotence

• Sacred sex

• Intimacy – gateway to love, caritas and compassion

9) The Holy Grail – Generativity, Creativity and Spirituality

In the end, we explore how ‘doing our work’ can bring us to a fuller, richer more satisfying state of being​

• The Waste Land and The Holy Wound – Regaining Male Generativity

• The Gift of the Soul – Giving ourselves to the world anyway

• Handprints in the Cave – What we pass on and what we leave behind

• Connecting to the Other – into Great Silence – Re-Finding Nature

• Returning Home – Compassion and the Healing of the Wound

PROGRAMME FORMAT

Nine 2.5 hour live meetings

with the user-friendly Zoom video platform

Each meeting will include:​

• Input from Nicholas and William

• Guided reflective exercises

• Sharing in small groups

• Sharing in the large group

• Suggestions for takeaway reflection topics

Meeting dates:

​Sundays

November 8th, November 22nd, December 6th, December 20th 2020

January 10th, January 24th, February 7th, February 21st, March 7th 2021

at 2.00pm UK, 3.00pm CET, 6.00am PT, 9.00am EC, 9.00pm HK

Each meeting will be recorded, audio and video, and posted on the private programme website

We hope that by the time we meet, the worst of Covid-19 will be behind us, leaving us to deal with the aftermath and any changes it may have triggered. On that basis we reserve the right to alter dates and timings for the benefit of the group as a whole.

In the hopefully unlikely event of changes we will of course refund you if requested.

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Cost of programme: $695 + VAT for UK/EU residents

                           To register: send an email to sambaker.pa@gmail.com

Please include your name, age, nationality, location and what draws you to the programme

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