I Met Myself for the First Time Today

Through Coach Michael Taylor's webcast (A New Conversation with Men), I have discovered an interesting new site called Men's Group, created by Brett Churnin and Mike Britton. The site provides a wealth of information on men's groups, including why we might want to join one, how they work (or can work), how to form one, and a whole lot more. It's an excellent resource. Coach Taylor will be speaking with Brett and Mike on Friday, February 17th, so check it out.

Their site also includes a blog, so I thought I'd take a look. The first post I came upon was this one below, I met myself for the first time today, which reads a little like a prose poem. Nice piece.

I met myself for the first time today 

I control and am in control because that is how I am able to protect myself.

The exploration started from that place and why my heart as a way of being is closed and protected.

And how it expresses itself in my life is that I control things and people – because that which I can control can not hurt me.

But he who controls also dominates, imposes, tells, forces, distrusts and manipulates.

All of that without even realising that I was doing it.

My earliest memories of controlling people and situations goes back to Kindergarden. I was really small and being small I was scared of the big kids.

So controlling became a way to survive. I did not have the physical size but I did have the brain. So I became the leader. I had my gang and I told them what to do. Where to play, how to treat the others – and my gang protected me.

Despite being the controller I have still been hurt many times in my life, mainly by woman.

This morning I woke up and I asked God to help me. I recounted all the people who had hurt me, let me down, betrayed me, left me, abandoned me and I forgave each and all of them.

I did it with words and I released them.

I then asked God to open me and open my heart.

Nothing happened.

I asked again, I lay prostrate, my arms open like a crucifix, vulnerable and surrendered.

Nothing happened.

I asked out loud and then my jaw locked, I could not open my mouth.

And I heard or felt a voice saying “you do not believe your word”

And then I grew silent, it grew silent. I asked myself to just be, be in silence, I said to myself – no one is coming into this room, no one knows I am here, my phone is off, no one is going to ring, there is nowhere to go so just be here.

As I lay, things came up, experiences, conversations, and I felt myself loving right into them, almost like acceptance as an active process, A person, a judgement, an experience I just loved deeply into it and it felt peaceful, powerful, liberating.

I felt cleansed, and clean and this time I asked God in silence to come in.

Nothing happened.

And so I lay there quietly for a while until needing a pee became a strong enough reason to get out of bed.

I got up and went to the bathroom. As I walked past the mirror I caught my refection so I went to the mirror and stared at myself.

I could feel that I was confronted by this person in the mirror, separate, even fearful, I could say “hi” to this person like I would a stranger. And then I stopped and looked at him and said ” hi ” again, and we stared at each other and laughed out loud but it was still the laugh of strangers.

I asked the him who was me in the mirror If it was okay for me to go and have a pee and I got the absurdity of the question. I got that I was asking this question to myself like a stranger would ask it as if he in the mirror were someone else.

I went and peed and then returned to the mirror.

This time we looked deeply into each others eyes. At first I was confronted by him, this stranger but his eyes were soft and so I stared and he stared back. We drank each other in and I said hello, lovingly, with deep respect and compassion, and with love. And he answered back in the same loving way.

And we breathed, and we drank each other in more deeply this time, and we softened and then I met myself for the very first time.

We laughed and then we cried and I was no longer afraid of the man in the mirror.

Hi we said to each other again, Hi we said back.

And tears rolled down our cheeks