Men's Work. Tantra Events. Life & Relationship Coaching.

FBO for Men: The training continues

2008-02-14T21:13:00.000-08:00

The four-month pilot program of the Full-Body Orgasm for Men training was a big success. 16 adventurous guys showed up, learned the techniques in the sessions, practiced them at home on their own or with a partner, and really expanded their abilities to feel pleasure. Several of them want to continue with the program, so I've decided to make it into an ongoing, drop-in group. Guys can sign up for a month at a time, for as many months as they want. Details coming soon, but I want to start it up in March, if at all possible. Stay tuned!

Whines about the Deida work

2007-07-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

A few comments about the Deida work. Some of these topics may eventually become full-blown articles.

1. In the Deida workshops, men are trained to stand, breathe and hold themselves in a certain way so that women will see them as trustworthy. (Deida says "trustable", but since the dictionary doesn't call that a word, I'll stick with "trustworthy.") When the men are able to do this, the women applaud, sigh with pleasure, or express their approval in some way. This externally oriented feedback loop is what creates the legions of "Deidabots" in the world. There is no training in how a man might actually learn to trust himself or other men; he just learns the appearance of trustworthiness. This might get him a relationship, but won't help him keep one. It's also training him to appear to be something he's not, based on the feedback of the Feminine. God knows we men have had enough of that in our lives.

2. I don't believe that there is such a thing as a feminine or a masculine essence. There is just essence. When you are looking deeply in the eyes of another and there is that moment when the veil drops and you're in the bingo of true connection, both masculine and feminine are present (or neither are!). That's an experience of essence. Essence is the core of who we are. It's everywhere and unchangable. On top of that is our "twoness", our masculine and feminine -- let's call them natures.

3. The 3 Stages are a great marketing hook but a lousy way to structure your life. For instance, I can't relate to the First Stage caricature of the self-absorbed Asshole/Jerk because I was raised mostly by women in a feminist culture and made decisions to not be like "those guys". Since I've learned how to abandon my own needs and masculine nature as well as "shape-shift" in order to win the approval of women, does that mean I've bypassed Stage 1 and go straight to Stage 2? I get to pass Go and collect $200? I don't think so. It just means that I'm a different kind of fucked-up. I can learn from Cro-Magnon guy how to ask for what I want and hang in there when the going gets tough. He can learn sensitivity and awareness and LVC (Less Violent Communication) from me. With some good mentoring and practice, we can both move toward a more integrated, whole experience in this life. That's a heckuva lot easier than a striving for 3rd Stage when my 1st Stage has more holes than Swiss cheese.

4. If Deida's model of the 3 Stages is your current Holy Grail, I hate to break it to ya, but they didn't originate with Deida. John Welwood's work in Journey of the Heart predates Deida's Intimate Communion by several years. Read Welwood's chapter "In Search of the Genuine, Powerful Male and Female" and then tell me that Deida invented the 3 stages. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for more whining soon!

South Bay men's group

2007-03-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

I'm starting another Awakened Masculine program for men in a couple of weeks, this one in Palo Alto on Thursday nights. The free intro night is on March 29. The intro nights are pretty fun, and I run them pretty much like a regular meeting, to give guys a taste of what I do. Sometimes the intro nights can go fairly deep, depending on the willingness of who shows up. We do a challenging physical process, maybe the Deida chi generation practice, and some silent sitting, and all of a sudden the magic is in the air. Everyone looks around, and in that moment we're all just one taste of the same ineffable dish.

We'll see how it goes next week.

David Deida? Run the other way.

2007-03-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've heard of David Deida. Maybe you've flipped through or bought one of his books, listened to him on a tape or CD, or even seen him at one of his entertaining evening talks. You've been inspired by his model of relationship and want to dive more deeply into his offerings. You're ready to explore the promise of a third-stage life.

My advice? Don't do it.

How come? You're not ready.

I'm not kidding. You're really not.

Unless you're one of the one-in-a-thousand individuals who is enjoying a combination of a lucky birth and conscious upbringing, your heart is open and you're living life from a profound spiritual depth. You'll also need to have handled your security issues and financial affairs, and spent years in therapy healing your major childhood wounds. You should easily be able to individuate and self-soothe during difficult moments in your relationship. In other words, you've really completed all of your first- and second-stage work.

Check that: one in ten-thousand. But then, if you're that person, you probably won't need his message anyway. You're already living it.

The best advice for the rest of us is to take a scissors to David's books and cut out the most powerful, pithy and poignant phrases, put them in a bowl and use them as a kind of oracle, like a rune stone or tarot card or a Rumi poem picked at random.

I know what I'm talking about. I own all of his books and have recommended them in the groups that I lead. I've listened to dozens of his tapes and CDs. I have attended weekend and extended intensives led by David, as well as intensives led by his various apprentices. And for the past six years I've been a participant or a leader of weekly men's groups that used a curriculum based on David's The Way of the Superior Man.

During this time, I've also seen widespread misuse of his material. You may as well hand a blowtorch to a five-year old. I've seen dozens of men (myself included) adopt Deida's third-stage practices to get first-stage satisfaction, while vigorously denying it the whole time. One example might be: "I have trained myself to fuck you open to God as a way of proving my masculinity to myself, but I'll claim to be serving you and the world. I also won't make myself available to help you sort through the shards of your psyche that have been created as a result of my actions. Pick up the pieces on your own or with your women friends. I'm a third-stage man. I'm going back to my cave."

The joke in our community is that nearly all men who try to live this work go through a "Deidabot" phase, adopting the postures and the demeanor of what it means to be "masculine", before eventually relaxing back again to who they are. Some men don't make it back, and just add this idea of the masculine as another personality "shell"--exactly the kind of shells that Deida is attempting to dissolve with his work.

The female Deida practitioners are not immune to the kind of stage-poaching mentioned above. One all-too common example: "How wonderful that I now have permission, as a third-stage woman, to express myself through my body! I'll use it as an opportunity to dump my unconscious, unexamined first-stage rage on my partner, rather than do the necessary second-stage step of self-reflection and ownership of this energy. It's much easier and more dramatic! Besides, he's told me he's a third-stage practitioner. He can handle it." When the man is faced with her onslaught, he will either run the other way, stand there and take it like a good Deidabot (while inwardly cringing, going numb or raging), or possibly dump back on her.

This isn't intimacy, by the way. It's abuse.

I believe the root of the misinterpretation is this: Although Deida occasionally reminds us that we each have a masculine and a feminine aspect, because of the limitations of language (and possibly his own annoyance at the 50-50, second-stage folks), there is an unspoken encouragement for men to disown their feminine nature and for women to ignore their own masculine nature. In the Deida model, we're taught that if we want to create dynamic polarity in our sex lives and enter the third stage, men need to drop their feminine, flow-boy "shell" and women need to let go of their masculine, ball-busting shell. Unfortunately, most of the time these "shells" are in fact important aspects of ourselves that have been cultivated for a reason and are serving us in some profound way.

For example: The practice of "feeling into" that Deida encourages in men as a masculine practice is actually easier for men who have highly developed feminine natures. Isn't that something worth keeping? I would offer this: that the degree to which Deida practitioners (or anyone, for that matter) reject their opposite aspect is the degree to which they will stunt their growth in their "native" aspect. Real, sustained personal evolution occurs when all aspects of the self are embraced and welcomed.

50 years from now, people will be looking at the Deida material and saying "Nanu Nanu. This guy was really ahead of his time." Exactly. That means he is ahead of your time, my time and the time of just about everyone you know.

Only the top surfers are skilled enough to ride the giant waves. The threat of being crushed and washed up lifeless on the shore is a strong deterrent for all but a select few. Too bad there's no such deterrent for all of us third-stage wannabes. If there were, the world would be better off.

Post TantraQuest

2007-02-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

TantraQuest was a divine experience. Leading with Julia was effortless, and Lori of Ecstatic Productions did a great job of handling the people and the logistics. The participants were brilliant! No resistance. Even the ones who said that they had "no tantra experience" were looking like pros right away. The room dropped into sacred space soon after we started on each day. Our assistants — Jane, Norm and Lindy — helped deepen the room as well. Each of them a powerful tantrika in their own worlds. I came home from the weekend feeling deeply satisfied, having fully given my gift.

While I would love to be leading a workshop like this every month or two, I don't have any available energy to make it happen. I'm very focused right now on coaching, men's groups, and my men's group curriculum. Any promoters out there who want to take this work to the next level?

TantraQuest this weekend

2007-02-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

I'm prepping for the TantraQuest weekend that I'm co-leading with Julia Tindall in South San Francisco. I also have the usual pre-event nervousness, although you'd think by now that I'd be used to doing these kinds of events. Maybe it's because this is a brand-new creation of ours. We've created a new structure using the gifts from both of our toolboxes, and what we've learned about helping people experience more bliss by releasing their past sexual wounding. There's a certain edginess to presenting our combined new material; at the same time, we're both like good jazz musicians who know the standards, yet can improvise in the moment.

I'm experiencing a lot of gratitude in this moment for Margot Anand and all that I learned from teaching with her. She was unwavering in dedication to helping people transform their love lives and always created an amazingly sacred space so that could happen. Since Julia also has Skydancing roots — we took Margot's Teacher's Training years ago — Margot's presence will certainly be felt this weekend.

My Marin men's group

2007-02-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

If you're a guy and you're not already in a deep, ongoing men's group, you're missing out! Especially if you get most of your reflections from the women in your life. There's nothing that can replace the feedback and challenge you get from a group of no-bullshit guys.

The men's group that I particpate in (as opposed to the ones that I am paid to lead) has been meeting weekly since 2001. We've added and subtracted members over the years; the current group of 8 guys (7 of us are pictured here, overlooking San Francisco Bay) has been meeting for about 3 years. 4 of us have played the role of leader over the years, and we're currently a "leader-full" group (different from a "leader-less" group), because at any moment, any one of us has license to lead. We started the group using a David Deida-based curriculum, and have since been shaped by the wisdom of Deida's teacher Mykonos, as well as Ken Wilbur and his Integral model and The Diamond Approach.

Each of the men in this group is a leader in his own realm (healing, integral coaching, men's workshops, etc.) and a true spiritual heavyweight. The collective wisdom and power of this group is a wonder to behold. I've often walked out at the end of our meetings shaking my head in disbelief. I've never experienced anything like it.

The experiences that I've had with this group — as well as the dozen or so Awakened Masculine groups that I've led over the past 3 years — has been a big part of my inspiration to create a men's curriculum. My vision is that men all over the world would have the means to create a deep, powerful group in their area, and hopefully enjoy some of the benefits of being with men. And not just to talk, or "process" their difficulties, but an opportunity to come alive with and challenge each other.

So I've taken the first step. One of my Awakened Masculine grads has asked me to "beta test" my very rough curriculum with a group of men that he's leading. So now I have regular deadlines — clearly something I need for this project! — and I just sent him a somewhat polished installment for Week 1. Soon I'll have a completed Core Curriculum that men everywhere can download from my website. Very exciting. Wish me well!

Coaching and Healing

2007-02-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

I coached 4 clients today, and when I hung up the phone with my last client, I shouted "I love what I do!" several times. I love it that I have more energy at the end of the work day than when I started. I love that I have the gift of this form called "coaching" that lets me effortlessly draw from a lifetime of personal, relationship, business, and spiritual wisdom.

Years ago when I had an energy healing practice, I couldn't see more than 2 or 3 clients a day. I frequently needed to clear my energy field of the client's "stuff". I couldn't imagine seeing 4 healing clients a day. Perhaps it was because I didn't ground myself fully before each session; perhaps it was because I was working up-close with negative energies, entities, funky astral beings, and so on; or perhaps it was that the meetings were all in-person and not on the phone. For whatever reason, coaching fits me a lot better than straight healing work.

Not that coaching isn't healing in its own way, and not that I don't use my healing skills in my coaching sessions. In fact, it might be illuminating to examine the skills of a healer that would translate nicely to the coaching environment.

Intuition
Intuition is one of the greatest skills that the healer can bring to the coaching relationship. Among other things, intuition includes a) hearing what the client isn't saying, and b) an openness to receiving psychic impressions from the client (e.g., pictures, words, bodily sensations). In my healing days, I was often slow to reveal my intuitions, preferring to let the client's process evolve before adding my input. Sometimes I would wait until after the session, and occasionally I sensed it was best to keep my impressions to myself. As a coach, however, "blurting" intuitions as soon as they appear is a practice that seems universally encouraged. I actually prefer this way of working with intuition; it meshes well with my spontaneous, improvisational coaching style.

Client-driven
As a healer, it's beneficial to remember that the client is responsible for healing themselves, and that you're aiding them in that process. Same goes for coaching. At the Coaches Training Institute, the mantra is that the client is "naturally creative, resourceful, and whole." When you can trust that your clients are fully responsible for their lives and that they're doing their best to grow and change, it makes your coaching job a lot easier!

Transparency
When both healers and coaches let go of their ego and agenda and let the Divine do the work, then the relationship with the client becomes an exquisite dance. As a healer or a coach, there is nothing that compares to being used by Source to serve the well-being of another. The goal, then, is to have this happen as often as possible. And the question to ask, as either healer or coach, is "What needs to happen for me to become as transparent as possible?"

Unconditional Love
One of the important pieces that I learned in my healing practice was that loving people exactly where they were was one of the greatest gifts that I could give them. Sure, it was great that I could help heal their past lives, or remove psychic sludge from their bellies, but at the deepest level, healing is about seeing someone's essence, loving that, and allowing that loving be reflected to them. A great coach does the same. I currently have two coaches, and both of them see me this way so clearly that it's a little overwhelming at times. But I'm learning, slowly but surely, to see myself as they see me.

I'm sure there are other healer-to-coach crossover skills that I've overlooked. Anyone care to comment?

The Blog begins....

2007-01-26T20:04:00.000-08:00

Greetings, net denizens!

My intention in creating this blog is to bring traffic to my websites, jimbenson.net and awakenedmasculine.com. I also want to create a forum for my writerly side, and let folks know what I'm up to. I love what I do and I want to tell the world! So welcome to my blog. Now, if I can just find the time to write regularly....