This past weekend, we had the honor of welcoming a new group of Noble Men into our community. 23 men— the largest group we’ve ever had at Dancing Deer Farm— stepped through the fire of their fears and wounds with the feminine and came out new men.
As Chrissy noted a couple of weeks ago, we need rites of passage more than ever in our world today. And that’s exactly what these men got— a rite of passage into a new way of being with the feminine, themselves, and the world.
With all the suffering in the world, we might ask, “Are these ceremonies really that important? Can’t my time and money be spent in better ways? What about all the REAL suffering in the world?”
My dear friends, after many years in this work, I can say we shouldn’t discount the inner suffering that men and women endure by not stepping fully into who they really are and suppressing their life force. And the world misses out when we don’t own ourselves fully.
Here in the United States, we suffer from what Mother Teresa (a personal hero of mine and Britta’s) called “spiritual poverty.” We don’t know who we truly are or how valuable we are, and so we never actually live and we don’t become the gifts we are meant to be. So we suffer, those around us suffer, and the world suffers. She considered spiritual poverty in some ways more devastating than physical poverty.
Yes, suffering is part of the human condition. But we might even argue that the reason there is so much unnecessary suffering in the world is because the hearts and minds of people haven’t been transformed yet.
When they are transformed for the better, we see clearly, generosity abounds, and as we like to say, love happens. We become more generous— we want to tend to the needs of the world, the physical poverty, the social injustice. We become better partners, better parents, and better business leaders.
At Noble Man, as with all of our Rites of Passage weekends, these men claimed their mature adult selves and all the challenge and opportunity that comes with that. Fully owning that transformation and letting it fully effect our lives is the stuff of ongoing work, which we also provide. We are excited to see where their new journey takes them.
All the best,
Lee
