Men as Mentors - Richard Rohr and Sergio Milandri - Part 5

Start with three minutes of silence.

Part 5. Men’s and Women’s Liberation.

We are all captives. We are captive externally to our social systems and games and captive internally to our own wounded thinking and feeling in response to these systems. As long as the system is our reference point and is telling us what to be and how to be in order to be acceptable, we cannot escape it. If we depend for our individuality on the very system that needs us to relinquish it in order to fit in, we are indeed bound. The very things the system offers us are what it controls and takes from us, leaving us confused and unfulfilled. In fact most of us are not even aware of the system and its power, such is its pervasive subtlety.

Rohr puts it this way. “The addictive system offers the illusion of power and freedom while holding back any real decision-making power. This is also why it must offer illusions of success - promotions, paychecks, and other symbols of prestige - to men who subconsciously know that moving to another niche in the maze is no escape from the totally controlling game they are forced to play.” (p. 28). We easily get sucked into the system because the people we trust and who should know better have also bought into it fully instead of exposing it for what it is. Some of us have avoided compliance to the system by becoming reactive to it, but while this might seem free, we are still referring to it nonetheless. As long as the external system is our reference point and not seen for what it is, we will always be bound by it and forever dancing to its tune.

Rohr says, “Men’s liberation is even more difficult than women’s liberation. Women know that they are oppressed, and that in itself is the beginning of liberation. Women know the games men play, whereas we men do not even recognise the system as a set of games. Even when we do recognise it, we believe that’s simply the way the world is, the way life has to be.” (p. 29) He continues, “That’s not the way life has to be. There is a way out. You just stop believing it! Look elsewhere for your payoffs and energy. In biblical language it is called salvation: being saved from the world and its false promises, being saved from ourselves - much more than being saved from ‘hell.’ Of course, you will never have the ability or courage to stop believing the illusion - until you have something more and better to take its place. That’s where a truly loving God comes in. God gives the healthy soul an utterly new frame of reference outside this system.” God calls us to a different allegiance, to a relationship of affirmation and love. God has no expectations of us other than to become ourselves. We do not need to conform or comply.

For liberation we need to develop an inner life where our reference is our life with God. Here we are enabled to forge patterns of being our unique selves. There are no preconditions for acceptance - here we are not fighting for survival or acceptance but are able to take the risk of becoming whole. God’s presence with us is not another system, it is an inner reality which is experienced and its effects are enfleshed.

Reflection and Journal (10 minutes in silence)
Reflect on your external system and your patterns of compliance with it. Walk through it and feel all the feelings that are there in it for you.

- How aware are you of the games you are trapped in?
- What have they given you as reward for conformity?
- What does this feel like?
- What do you really want as a reference point for your life?

Connecting with each other in the group.
Share around the circle something of what you are experiencing and feeling.

This week. Reflect on your patterns of compliance in your daily life.Read chapter 6 of Richard Rohr’s “From Wild Man to Wise Man”

Mentoring Notes.

In mentoring we need to move deeper into knowing the other and being known by the other and that involves connecting on an emotional level, feeling the other’s feelings and letting them engage our feelings. This is the beginning and journey of real intimacy.

In your groups you will have noticed a tendency to think about the questions rather than to feel their reality as an experience.
It is easier to ask a person questions about what they have said to try to understand them in our mind rather than to feel the effect of what they are saying on us. Yet what will connect us to them is the feeling, not the idea.
Relationships, especially transformative relationships only happen on a felt level.

Changing Gear: Do not ask any questions.

In this session we are going to change gear and go deeper. When you share, speak only on the level of what you are experiencing now as you have been reflecting on these issues. Speak only on the level of experiential feelings.

If you are listening, do not ask any questions. Just listen with care and let the comments stand as they are spoken, unquestioned, unclarified, shrouded in the mystery of this person who has uttered them.

If questions come up for you, hold on to them and let them lead you to your own mystery. We tend to ask questions in areas where we are stuck and want the other to find the way through.
But the answers for them cannot be the answers for us.

Leave the comment unquestioned except in your own mind. The questioning needs to become wonder if it is to be transformative and linked to mystery. I wonder ...
Learn to live the question, don’t seek to answer it.
Experience the feeling.