Gentlemen;

We successfully completed another round of Natural Passages aka Medicine of Men. This completes the 7th program. A robust group of 10 dug deep into the coldness of their soul and managed to avoid snow or cold weather for the entire program. Still wondering if it relates to their in-depth work, global warming, or pure luck. There was some indication of weather sorcery, but I will defer any direct allegations.

I set the dates for the Return weekend...July 15-18, 2010. More details will be forthcoming as I shape the weekend. Like all return weekends, we will do a sweatlodge and alone time in bivys for those interested. Costs will be the same as all other weekends, $600. Some scholarships will be available.

Next year's program dates are March 18-21, 2010, June 24-27, 2010, September 23-26, 2010, and November 11-14, 2010. Returning attendees receive 25% off of the $2,400 price, if paid by February 15, 2010.

Registration and paypal can be used on the website for the program or return weekend.

In this issue, we read a brief article from Bill Plotkin. It is interesting as it is a reprint from a coaching article, suggesting that much of the work we do in Natural Passages aka Medicine of Men, is beginning to permeate mainstream thinking. Beyond the application to the general world, I find the article a wonderful reminder of what it is each of us is trying to do and to be by choosing to live consciously.

Following Plotkins article is a poem written a couple of years ago that reminds us that even in our darkest moments there is life.

I hope you enjoy the newsletter enough to forward it to a few friends.

Choosing to live consciously

Herb Stevenson

The Journey to Soul
(and True Adulthood)

By Bill Plotkin (USA)¹

Contemporary Western society fails us on the journey to adulthood. Too many people reach their physical prime without ever attaining psychological maturity. Put plainly, in today's world, growing up is hard to do.

Even worse, many contemporary Western psychotherapists, educators, and coaches, rather than supporting true maturation, are helping people succeed at business and professional endeavors that are laying waste to our world.

In order to re-create healthy cultures and to overcome our society's impediments to maturation, we must first abandon the idea that true adulthood is achieved in one fell swoop. Between childhood and adulthood lies the challenging adventure of adolescence. And although most all 13-year-olds have turned the corner into adolescence, there's no guarantee that a teenager will ever mature further, no matter how long he or she might live. The majority of Americans, for example, never do.

Adulthood cannot be meaningfully defined as what begins in our twenties or when we fulfill certain responsibilities such as holding down a job, financial independence, or raising a family. Rather, an adult is someone who understands why he is here on Earth, why he was born, and is offering his unique contribution to the more-than-human world.

In my new book, Nature and the Human Soul, I introduce a nature-based and soul-centered model of human development, portraying in detail the qualities of each of the eight healthy stages through which I believe we are designed to progress as humans. Here I want to focus on just two of these life stages-those of psychological adolescence-and briefly describe only one dimension of each of these stages, namely the developmental task.

In the first half of psychological adolescence, the task is to fashion a personality that is both authentic and socially acceptable. This is much easier said than done, especially in contemporary Western societies. But this accomplishment lays the foundation for all later maturation. Becoming authentic means to know who you really are-to know where you stand, what you value, what you desire, what you tolerate and what you don't-and to be able and willing to act accordingly, most of the time, despite the social risks. Under the best circumstances, this takes several years to accomplish. In the contemporary world, many never succeed. But what makes early adolescence even more challenging is the second half of the task in this stage, namely, attaining social acceptability. To be a healthy adolescent, you need to belong to a real community. So the way in which you express your authenticity means everything. You must learn how to be true to yourself in a way that at least some of your peers embrace.

If and when you achieve a personality that is authentic enough and acceptable enough, then the enigma we call by such names as life, the world, spirit, or soul shifts your psychospiritual center of gravity from peer group to the mysteries of nature and psyche. This shift ushers you into the second half of psychological adolescence, which is when you begin to ask the big, existential and spiritual questions of life: Who am I beneath my social persona? What is life about beyond getting a job, earning money, cultivating a primary relationship, or raising a family? What unique, mystical gift do I bring to the more-than human community? What, for me, is the difference between sex and romance, between survival and real living, between a social network and true community, between memorizing facts and true learning, between a job and soul work? What is death, poetry, dreaming, honor, consciousness, the universe, soul, spirit? What does it really mean to be human?

After many years of living these questions, after many expeditions of wandering through the terrible and majestic mysteries of nature and psyche, you, at long last, receive a glimpse or overhear a whisper of the greater, truer story of your individual life or of "the truth at the center of the image you were born with," as poet David Whyte says. In many traditional cultures and spiritual paths, such a glimpse is called a vision, a soul calling, or the intuition of destiny-which never arrives in cultural terms, such as a decision to enter a certain career or social role, but rather is a profound self-understanding embodied in mysterious, usually nature-based symbols, themes, or patterns. Then, if and when you make the unequivocal commitment to embody that \pard soft line vision in your world for the benefit of all beings, then and only then do you traverse through the passage I call Soul Initiation and into true adulthood.

As much as anything, the world today needs mature initiators and mentors to support people to grow into visionary artisans of cultural transformation, the new leaders who will guide humanity through the many changes that the greater Earth community now wholly depends upon.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and the founder and president of Colorado's Animas Valley Institute. He is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche and Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World. Visit him online at Natureandthehumansoul.com and Animas.org.

Footnotes

1Top-rated speakers who presented at the 2008 Annual International ICF Conference in Montréal have been invited to submit articles to include in the Coaching World newsletter. Each article will be on the same topic that presenters focused on at the 2008 conference. This article is based on the popular education session The Journey to Soul (and True Adulthood).

Dread

With an archaic regard,
I stand before you
curious and with great awe.
All around and deep within
feels like the touch of darkness
at the bottom of a naked well,
where, life has drug me
to this place of utter despair,
where, waves of desperation
roll over and over and over,
where, the coldness
makes even my soul shiver.

"I have been here before"
filters through my mind
less comforting
than a memory and
more matter of fact
than a thought.

"I wonder" crosses my lips
more like a plea than
a curiosity and floats away
like a leaf dancing in the air
as it falls from the tree on
its only journey,
returning to the earth.

Twirl, float, twirl, twirl,
float, twirl, float, float,
the words know
where they are going
and yet dance
with total disregard
like a ballerina lost
in the flow of life.

"I wonder" begins to simmer
like a black-hole of the soul
wherein nothing matters
but this moment,
this moment
where all that has been
vanishes into dense
darkness.

"Get Real"
startles even the gods
as the thunderous
voice of the naked darkness
reminds me
that I am not
a guest nor even
an innocent bystander.

Terrified,
fear explodes from my pores
like cold sweat burning from a fever until
I drop into the eternal depths
and forthrightly bow
surrendering to the starkness,
yielding to what is,
knowing that in this single act
I acknowledge that which has always been
and take my place within the darkness.

©Herb Stevenson, 2007

Upcoming Programs

Natural Passages

One-Year Initiation Program for Men
Starting in Spring, March 18, 2010
4 Seasons, 4 Weekends:

March 18-21
June 24-27
Sept 23-26
Nov 11-14

Natural Passages one-year program is a 4-session male initiation. It is a program that enables the core integrity of the man to surface. It is designed to awaken, develop, and nurture the essence and fullness of being a man in today's world. Our focus is developmental. We seek to invoke the unfoldment of mature masculine energies. Our goal is specific. We seek to assist each man to find his place in the world. Our hope is honorable. We seek to fill the void of mature men that can stay within the center of whom they are regardless of circumstances. Our dream is selfish. In helping you to find your place in the world, we envision your helping others to do the same. Therein, we can build community and make a difference in the world.

Find out more...

Download the PDF brochure

MoMen Return

July 15-18, 2010

The MoMen Return weekend is a return to where we started. It is an exploration into the four principles of presence. The focus is to delve deeply into the relational next steps of the four chambered heart, the four phantoms of fear and the resulting shadow behavior. Dynamic exercises will be provided to support an inward journey and then the opportunity to share these private stories with each other.

The intention of the weekend is to take advantage of the wooded area of the Pebble Ledges. Living in tents, we will have the magic of solitude, the comfort of the surrounding forest, and the support of the community of other MoMen. Woven into the fabric of the weekend are experiences that support personal and interpersonal explorations of whom are you as a man in today’s world.