Directions from A Hero’s Journey – Surviving Male Menopause for Men and Women
I am on a kind of heroic journey. It isn’t one I have chosen to take but one that I find is a life cycle in many men’s lives but that is not spoken about. It is a cycle that more and more men will enter because we are all living longer lives. There are more and more of us entering the second half of life. For both men and women this involves a deep period of transition. It is a period of crisis and a period of opportunity. My intention in writing these spiritual directions for this journey is in order to leave some pointers along the way. This is because, without these signposts along the way some men will not make it through this transition. They will leave in their wake the wreckage of broken relationships and an immense amount of suffering for themselves and others.
Let me say here that I do not feel in any way a hero. I feel lost, I feel frightened and I feel withdrawn. This is not really like me. I am becoming again the abandoned child that I hoped would not return to live within me. I feel afraid to reach out and when I do all I seem to express is anger. I have, however, anchors that keep me from getting totally lost. These anchors are this writing, my dreamwork, my connection to poetry and especially to my love of song lines and also prayer and meditation. These anchors also include the anchor of my long term relationship with my partner, my friends and the animals that grace my life.
When a man goes through the menopause, (but not having been through it as yet), he will very often have thoughts about death. This is common. An aspect of him is dying. This is the crisis aspect but there is also the opportunity called rebirth. I don’t feel reborn as yet but I know at least intellectually speaking that this life/death/rebirth cycle is an eternal cycle. At a deeper level within me there is also the knowing of this eternal cycle of becoming.
I was frightened yesterday by the lines from a song that I have recently found and am drawn too. It is the song called Hurt. The version I listen to is the version of this song sung by the wonderful Johnny Cash. He is the man in black and I suspect that inside him lived the archetype of the Orphan but also the archetype of the Magician. The opening lines from this song are
I hurt myself to see if I still feel.
Yesterday these lines would not go away even though I wanted them to go away. These lines made me thing about all those children and young people who self harm and cut themselves because on a psychological level they need to have evidence that life blood still flows in their veins. This is because they feel lifeless. They mirror back to us the absence of the life of spirit evident in the culture. My experience is not to fight any of the song lines that come into my mind. They are usually coming from a deeper place. Even though I do not know where they come from they often speak to my deeper condition. Song lines have opened up my heart and have guided me through dark woods before. Therefore, I choose not to shut down those lines that frighten me.
Does this mean that I intend to hurt myself in order that I might once again feel what I knew before and to find my life’s blood and passion. It might mean that because the Orphan in me is the kind of wild child within me who is crazy enough to wreck havoc. He will sometimes do things that he regrets. However, there is also the Magician archetype within me who can hold the dynamic of the orphan and he does this by paying attention to the signs along the way. There are always signs along the way and this is so even when the way is dark.
Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost – from Dante’s Inferno
However, it is best that you learn to be a sign maker before you enter the dark wood. Then the wood will not appear as frightening. Then inside the dark wood you will still find clues to the way forward into the clearing and the light. This sign maker process is best begun when you are in your late thirties and forties although it can begin from the age of seventeen and beyond. This is a regular spiritual practice that inspires and nurtures you on a daily basis. When you do this for yourself you are also doing it for the highest good of the collective called humanity. You become in a real sense a pioneer. You go where no man, or woman, has gone before because your going is unique to you. Although unique to you it is not separate from your unity with humanity.
I hurt myself today to see if I still feel.
When you journey into the dark wood of male menopause you will feel hurt, and as a partner of a man going through such a cycle, you are likely to get hurt in some way. You as a man will hurt others because usually a man who feels out of control will strike out in anger. A woman on the other hand tends to turn this anger inward and withdraws. When a man and woman are experiencing this life cycle together it is a kind of dance of the prickly hedgehogs. More often than not they separate further and further into their own world of hurt feelings. I call this moving into the baggage room.
So although I feel frightened at the thoughts conjured up by these lines I have the foundation of years of practice behind me. I have years of technique that allows me to not feel overwhelmed. Although I will say that sometimes I feel close to that state. No one would know, however, because I do not show that face to the outside world. I only show it within the relationship that is central to my life. I show it to you in these words because I can and will. This is because there are lots of men moving through this dark wood who feel frightened and are ashamed of feeling frightened. They feel alone and many feel abandoned. They don’t know how to say what it is I am saying even if they had the courage to say it. I am not saying this out of some kind of arrogance. I am saying it from my experience of men as I know them. Men, in many ways create this experience for themselves but is out off a lack of understanding about what is going on. Primarily they do what most men do. They deny and they project. This keeps the cycle stuck and leads to more suffering for the man and those he loves and is loved by.
I have many life lines. Each is a line from a song, a poem or an inspirational text. Each of these invitations arise from within. It is the core from which all these lifelines connect. I feel lost but I have a kind of Ariadne’s thread. This is the thread that protects the hero when he enters the underworld or to use the metaphor I started with protects the hero when he enters the dark wood. Hero here also includes heroine. This is a golden thread that connects to the Self as represented by Ariadne.
I love song lines. They don’t always bring me happiness but I am more interested in revelation and how the revealed Self can move in this world of time and space. This is the movement that illiviates suffering of so many caught in the dark wood of opposites and opposition within. Sure I feel frightened, alone, abandoned but at least I feel these feelings. I feel hurt but still that is how I feel. I will try not to visit this hurt on others because that simply deepens the sense of abandonment. Although the Orphan in me is very good at creating the very dynamic he fears the most. Why is that? It is because when we feel vulnerable we go back to what we know. I know abandonment. It might not be the happiest of dynamics but it was and is familiar.
During the cycle that is the male menopause a man will return to those deep emotional wounds that are asking to be healed. This is the real opportunity of the second half of life. I invite you to begin to practice a spiritual technique of your choosing so that when the time comes that you as a man or a woman are not lost in the dark. Then you will be able to sense where any particular life cycle is taking you. This cycle of the male menopause for this writer and storyteller is an on going journey. If you know of a man who is between the ages of forty five and sixty who is lost and causing hurt to himself and/or others you could gently share some of this spiritual direction that is here. If any of this writing mans that one man or woman enters the light in the clearing of the dark wood then I have in some little way been a hero. That will be enough of a reward and a boon from the wish fulfilling tree of the heart.
A Silent Wood
O silent wood, I enter thee
With a heart so full of misery
For all the voices from the trees
And the ferns that cling about my knees.In thy darkest shadow let me sit
When the grey owls about thee flit;
There will I ask of thee a boon,
That I may not faint or die or swoon.Gazing through the gloom like one
Whose life and hopes are also done,
Frozen like a thing of stoneI sit in thy shadow – but not alone.
Can God bring back the day when we two stood
Beneath the clinging trees in that dark wood?Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal
I leave you with the song that prompted this reflection. Blessings to the wonderful Johnny Cash and his wonderful wife and to you who have taken the time to read this far.
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