By Raphael Awen
Mediocre manhood. Those two words don’t really belong in the same sentence. Sadly though, we can’t escape the reality as it exists today…..or can we?
Escaping mediocre manhood will require awareness of how you are showing up as man, what isn’t working for you, the humility to admit it and the choice to seek something more.
How each of us as men have become the man we are has so much to do with the patterns of manhood that we were shown. These patterns were ingrained into us on so much more than a cognitive level going to the very heart of our being.
The word ‘pattern’ is from the same original word for the words; father; pater; papa and patriarch. Our father is literally our pattern, our ‘patron’ Saint, our admission into the ‘patriarchy’. Each of us as men is running a kind of emotional operating system that came to us via our fathers. Our father got it from his father, and so on and on. It may not be our father, or even a man in the role of our father, but all of us as men received intense male patterning and templating for every boy and man around us.
It is only as the contents of this,…let’s call it our EOS (emotional operating system) become conscious and brought up into our awareness, that we can even begin to move out of mediocrity in our manhood.
Here alone is a big step. Most men have a codependent relationship with all men and especially their fathers whereby they agree not to speak any ‘negativity’ towards their fathers. What this really is, is an agreement to keep the patriarchy intact from generation to generation. Only as you refuse to participate in the insanity will you find any ground to leave the insanity. This means you’re going to have get critical about dad and his pattern as it lives in you. I don’t know how else to say it. You don’t need to be a superiorizing asshole about it, but you can’t escape critique. Your critique will need to be vocal enough to exit the insanity. Being critical beyond that is just cycling in an enmeshed relationship men, dads, and male friends.
Unless you are willing to say no to every man, you can’t actually find your deepest version of your truest manhood. You may not need to say no to every man, but you will need to be willing to say no if your goal is your highest expression of your manhood. You don’t owe your dad a thing, and a healthy self realized dad doesn’t expect a thing in return for his role and years as a father. Actually, the greatest gift a dad can receive from their son is their ‘fuck you dad!’ of individuation, which ideally should come around 18 years old. Now, after this healthy completion of the childhood phase, dad and son can go on to forge a totally new relationship with the old one having truly died and been reborn.
Only now, after this death and rebirth, can new patterns be explored and come to be a part of a new EOS. This is the real initiation into manhood that is not only missing in our culture, but so missing from all of the manhood groups I have encountered this far.
Men want more. It’s in them at their very core. No amount of conditioning can erase that. Conditioning can and does try to manage and suppress this wanting of more which is in itself is a testimony to this essence in a man.
Exploring this ‘more’ will be finding and feeling and healing all the aspects of your EOS that no longer serve your most authentic version of yourself arising. The way this is done in SoulFullHeart is through getting to know the parts of you that makeup your ‘you’ stream. You are far from a single personality. This is probably no more evident than in relation to your masculinity. Our parts can and do respond very differently in different situations. You are not insane. You are multi-dimensional. You have more than one you, several more in fact.
Until you come to discover your parts or subpersonalities, some part of you is posing as you, working so much harder than is healthy to keep your ‘you’ show running uncontrollably on the mediocre default patterns that are in the male collective.
More about the SoulFullHeart Subpersonality Healing Process Here:http://www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com/soulfullheart-subpersβ¦
Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.
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