To Live And Work With An Open Heart

Everyman Journal Interview with Kelly Tobey by David Shackleton

David Shackleton: I'm with Kelly Tobey, on June 14, 2001 in Calgary.   Kelly, what is the work that you do, and how did you get into it?

Kelly Tobey: I refer to myself as a transformational facilitator.  Its basis is to support people in removing any blocks that we happen to have that are blocking our gifts or our natural essence.  That's the main thrust of the work. And I find that a lot of the places where we are blocked tends to be tied to emotional energies, and often the emotional body doesn't get addressed that much.  There isn't a lot of encouragement ……

Particularly for men.

Yes.  I find that. I think the mental work and understanding is really valuable, but I find that people often have an understanding about a behavior problem or something that is an issue, but just having a mental understanding does not dissolve the issue for them. So I support people in connecting the link between the mental aspect and how it's been affected from the emotional body - what has set them up to repeat the patterns over and over again, even though it is not serving them. I find that the emotional body has a lot of power in our subconscious mind.  No matter how clear we are at a conscious level, if we still have the huge power of the subconscious mind getting triggered, it will drive a lot of behaviors.  As you say, there has been a lot of training for men to stay away from emotions.  Many of us work in jobs where it's not congruent to be coming out with our emotions, necessarily, ……

Could be a career-ending move!

Yeah!  So rather than being taught to be discerning about when to allow our emotional body to come forward and when to be in the warrior (to use that kind of languaging around it), it's like, “Well, I'll always be in the warrior”.  Then we shut off the emotional body.  So a lot of the work is about bringing out those aspects that we have been disconnected from.

One thing I notice is that a lot of guys, they have a divorce and they're like, "Ah, I know what the problem was, I'm never going to go with a woman like that again.” So they've got this list of things that they're going to avoid. They have got some ideas now about what went wrong and they've got some ideas about how to avoid getting into that same situation again.  And my experience is that when it's just at that idea level, that they go and do it all over again.  They haven't got something that will really allow them to make a difference the next time.

Yeah.  Especially if the list is about what I do not want in the other person.  Because then there is a lack of realizing or being willing to be accountable and own that maybe it has something to do with my own pattern, right!  The general tactic that we are taught, is to stay away from all that is wrong in another person and life will be happy.  Then "Oh, why is this showing up in another form…. in another woman….. with another partner?  Oh, here it is again!”  Eventually, we say, "Well, maybe it has something to do with me!"  (Laughing)

Kelly, how did you get into this kind of work?

In my teenage years I was really fascinated with us humans and what makes us tick, why do we live the way we live.  At that time I was traveling around, hitch hiking and I ended up in different communes and groups of people that were living together.  Typically they would have some spiritual or psychological basis to why they were living in community. I would hang out with the group for a while and learn or take whatever it was that I was interested in integrating that worked for me and left the rest. Then I would wander on and check out what was happening somewhere else down the road.  So I started to build a basis of spirituality and psychology. 

Later, I worked in group-homes, looking after kids where either their parents couldn't handle them or they'd been in trouble with the law. I worked in that environment for some time, and enjoyed it. I put in a lot of energy [but] the results were slow in coming, mostly because the children that were there, felt like they were being put there, so it wasn't like they consciously chose, "Hey, I want to go to a group home and learn and grow."  Eventually I let go of doing that kind of work and was later attracted towards working with adults (and teenagers too, there's often teenagers that come out to the workshops); people that actually had decided that they wanted to grow and change, etc. 

But before I really got into working with adults at a professional level, I went through an incident in my own life. I was mountain climbing with a partner that I was living with at the time and a mutual friend. We had finished the climb.  We had unroped and were walking along the path at the top looking for a place to hook up the ropes and rappel back down.  She was walking along behind me and the other person and all of a sudden I just heard this soft "Oh shit".  I turned around and she was gone, she had fell over the edge.  She had reached up to use a rock to support her to make the best step up, but it was loose and it had come off in her hand and it was just enough for her to lose balance and over she went, over the edge of the cliff. 

The first hope was maybe she just landed on a ledge just below, or …… she did have one of her ropes that she was carrying over her shoulder, and maybe it got hooked in a tree or something like that. I set up the other rope we had and I went down to the next ledge and she wasn't there. I knew from there on down the cliff was actually undercut, so there was nothing else for her to land on, unless it was the trees at the bottom.  We made our journey down and we eventually found her lying at the bottom of the cliff. 

Diane had fallen in some talus and scree and big boulders and stuff.  It looked like a really ugly place to land, and I figured that she would have been full of pain before she died.  But when we got to her she was laying on her back, she had her eyes wide open, a very peaceful look in her face, one hand over her heart, and just looking up at, by now it was the stars, it was dark by now.  It had such a deep effect on me to see the level of peace that was there, because it wasn't what I was expecting at all.  But in that, what happened is that it just cracked my emotional body wide open. I was just weeping and weeping as I sat there beside her with all the grief around that level of immediate loss, right in my face.  And as I went through that grieving process, it opened me up to all the other losses that I'd had in my life that I had just buried and never felt.

As a result of that experience I looked around and was lucky enough to run into some support, some people who actually had some training in facilitating emotional work. I started first to do my own personal healing work and then to study the style, learning how to add that into the psychological and spiritual background that I already had.  It was like a missing link, I mean, it was so valuable to my work.  And I still feel to this day, that in the bigger picture of things, one of the gifts in Diane's death was that it did crack me open. It feels like such important work to support people with their emotional bodies as well as psychologically and spiritually.  Yet I didn't have clue one about the need for emotional work before, because I was doing the traditional “stuffing them down” thing.  So that is what led me into working in the arena that I work now. 

And to go into the idea of working with men in particular, what I used to find was that typically in a mixed workshop there would be women in the workshop that would be able to access their emotional body easier, and so there was be a tendency for them to lead the way. Some of the men would then get to kind of ride on the coattails of the women's sharing and stuff, which I think is great.  What I had also noticed when working with just men, was that typically it would take longer before anybody would open up into the emotional body, but when they did it was just amazing the depth of feeling that a group of men were willing to go to.  My sense is that when inexperienced men are in a mixed group, sometimes they will unconsciously or consciously stop themselves from going quite as deep as what they are actually capable of.  Because there's all those messages about being the strong one, etc., the unconscious competition for women can come in between the men, and if there is an idea that you have to be strong to appeal to women, then it's like, "Well how much am I going to expose here?"  But in environments where there aren’t women present, it's like there is a permission to go even deeper.  That is one of the reasons why I enjoy having just men in groups sometimes.

I want to add that the previous scenario of women leading the emotional opening has changed at many of my workshops because the men who have been attending for a while have become quiet open with their emotions now. It is just as often that it will be a man that takes the lead into the emotional realms.

Actually I think it's really important to have both of the following opportunities.  For men to have time by themselves, and also to have time to integrate and do this work with women, because there is a lot that gets missed when it is just men working with each other.  And over and over again, I have heard from the women in the workshops what a blessing it is for them to see men that are willing to go in and work with this stuff and bear witness to a sense of hope for themselves in their relations to men.  A lot of women haven't seen men willing to be emotionally open, so somewhere in their mind they may have decided that men just were not capable of that, were not going to work in that area, did not have access to their emotions.  So these events spark a new hope.  It is a privilege for we to watch it unfold.

When you talk about men's hidden emotional life, it's a sadness to me.  It's as if women really don't know men.  You know, we've lived together for thousands of years, and we're largely strangers to each other.  At some level we know each other, but at other levels not at all.  And today, with this popular culture that is trivializing and shaming of men, a lot of women have bought into the idea that men can't be authentic, can't get past their macho, something like that.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of men have bought it too.

A lot of men have bought it too, absolutely.

It's amazing the levels of shame that I sometimes run into, shame about being a man because of buying into these ideas that there's something wrong with us as men and these blanket statements about the unworthiness of men.  And it comes from all different sources.  For myself, when I look back at my own shame around being a man, part of it got started really early.  When I was first born, my mother ended up in the hospital, I think it was for about a month or so, and at some level I felt like I was a destroyer of women.  You know, my own mother.  In my little mind somehow I had picked up this idea that I was the one that was responsible for my Mom — which was really a co-creative thing: I was born and through that birth was this hardship.  Now that was also coupled with this secrecy that went on in our family.  I didn't find out until only a few years ago that my mother had been raped when she was just a young teenager or not quite teenager.  And she'd never reached out to get help with that.  There might have not even been any help around at that time if she did try to reach out.  So she was carrying that. My sense best guess is that there was a part of her that feared men and had some unresolved anger and resentment, etc.  And so me being born into the family as a male child set me up to feel their was something wrong with me by the very fact that I was male.

It felt like there was this subconscious energy from my mom of, well; men are rapists, destroyers, whatever.  It's not like she would consciously be putting that information out, but because of her own wounds that she hadn’t healed, I would just pick that up as a child.  So there was an ingrained part of me that didn't feel OK as a man for a long time. I remember when the women's movement started up, there was part of me that was trying to go, "Yeah, yeah, I'm with you gals," because I wanted to kind of belong there.  But I couldn't really belong because I was in a man's body.  And there was part of me that was pushing away my own maleness because, you know, men are the bad guys, right.  So here I am buying into this whole thing, and of course if there was male bashing I went along with it.  I did some bashing too.  I had my general statements back there about men are this and men are that, which I later saw wasn't the truth at all. This was combined with a part of me that got into a role of trying to rescue women. I did not realize it at the time but I was attempting to make up for the guilt I felt about being a destroyer. This set up an internal dichotomy within my own psychological makeup because how could I help when my maleness made me the problem.  So here I am in a man’s body but not ready to fully embrace it because men are bad. Of course all this that I am describing was unconscious to me at the time. I was in a trap with out realizing it. It took lots of work to become aware of it and to clear it out of my own psyche to the best of my ability,.  So that's been part of my journey.  And I'm probably not unique in it either.  I'm sure there are lots of mothers who have felt wounded by males at one point or another, and if they haven't cleared up that wound themselves, then there's these messages that go down the line to children. I see so much of that thing in single mother families where the children can end up getting demonizing messages about men. The man that left or was a shit or I kicked him out because he was no good, or whatever those messages are. We've got lots to clean up. (laughing)

We do.  How do you think it will unfold, that cleaning up between men and women?  How long do you think it will take and what are the key steps along the way?

Those are good questions.  Boy, I have no idea how long it might take, but I sure see lots of signs of hope. When I first started this work about five to ten percent of the participants in the mixed workshops were men.  But now it's not unusual for me to have a workshop with more men than women in attendance. I do recognize that that's not a general ratio with all process style workshops. I've attended lots of other people’s events without seeing as much of a male female balance.  I realize that it has a lot to do with my own personal work on accepting and honoring my maleness, which creates a space that men are naturally attracted towards. They are going to know intuitively or subconsciously that, "Oh, here's a haven where I'm not going to get bashed." I have been to process therapy style workshops where there are great intentions, yet there are sometimes undercurrents of male bashing and shaming going on, albeit totally unconscious.  And then sometimes we'll hear people say, "Well, why aren't men out at more workshops?"  Well, if they're going to attend and then get crucified, it's not a real strong temptation, you know.  (Laughing)  Pay your money to get shamed.  Great, I'll sign up for that!  And then if you don't go, you get shamed for……….

You don't want to grow.

Yeah.  So anyways, I do see signs of lots of hope and lots of growth.  And the neat thing about the mixed workshops is that both genders get an opportunity to get some windows of insight into each other and to be able to acknowledge the differences as well as the similarities and not make the differences wrong or bad.  Instead honoring each other's styles - it's really neat to see. 

I have a belief system that includes the idea of Spirit or LifeForce or whatever name one wants to call that, and it seems that that energy has an uncanny hand in setting up synchronicity.  In particular I see it in workshop events where there's an intention for growth, healing, and love.  I remember one time I was putting on an evening seminar where both men and women were invited.  It was an evening seminar just before a weekend workshop for men.  We wanted to let the people in the area, the women in particular, know, that because this was a men's workshop, it did not mean we were going off to start women bashing or to take the reigns of power away from women or any of that stuff.  We wanted to be clear about what we were up to. So we invited both genders in for that evening.  And then after the break, for whatever reason, the women all sat on one side of the circle and the men all sat on the other side of the circle.  Nothing planned; it just showed up that way.  It was like this huge message came through, this opportunity for blessings to be sent back and forth across the circle.  So I invited first the women to go into silence and just open to receive.  And each man shared words and feelings about what they appreciated about women in their life.  And oh, it was so moving and the tears were flowing and there was so much touched.  Then we went over to the other side and each one of the women talked about the things that they appreciated about men.  It was just beautiful to see. I find that the power of appreciation is such a beautiful energy, and it opens doors to communication.  Once we know we've been appreciated, loved and cared for, then it’s like “OK, yeah, now I'll take some helpful hints about things that I think I could do better and things I want to clear up and places where I'm acting out or misbehaving.” 

So yes I see lots of changes going on………. and thank you for the part you play in creating change.  How long do I think it will take?  I don't know.  I do know that I often ask myself to receive patience and trust in the process and trust in the unfolding.  Because I know that if I get impatient about how fast we're moving as a culture, and as a society, in the collective consciousness - if I start pushing - it actually slows the process down, because then people tend to defend against my non-acceptance of who and what we are right now. I have removed that foundation of love for us to work from.

I'm not sure if I answered both of your questions……..

The second part of what I asked was what are the steps along the way [to men and women understanding each other.]

Well I guess a key step is what we are just talking about.  If there is an acceptance for the essence of the other person. And I do not mean we have to accept the behaviors, because there are some behaviors that don't deserve to be accepted, they're very inappropriate.  But if there is a place where we can find an acceptance of the essence of the other person, their inherent innocence or the beauty or……

Or their good intention.

Or their good intention, yeah.  Then, once the person is aware of that, then there is that foundation of love again.

I cannot speak for everybody, but I know for myself, until I know that there is some caring involved, I don't really care what people have to say.  But once I know that they care for me I can shift to, "OK, what do you have to say?" because now I know it's coming from a place of love.  On the other hand when somebody comes towards me with a critical put-down - with this idea that I should be different, then there's a tendency, unless I'm really centered, to want to go into my defenses.  Usually a criticism is coming at a time when I've just done something that I also see as inappropriate in my own mind so I may be feeling small already. So when somebody is coming up and sort of wagging their finger in my face, there's even more contraction leaving me with less energy available to actually make a change.  But instead if somebody comes in and lets me know I'm loved, it's like, "Oh, now I can hook up to that wellspring of energy that comes from acceptance and love," and then when I hear what it is that I can change or shift, it's like, "Oh yeah, I've got energy to do it now."  Because now I'm in a more expanded state. 

Again, I think it's important that what I'm referring to is acceptance of who the person is at their core, not acceptance of inappropriate behaviors. Many behaviors need to be met with an appropriate boundary. If acceptance just means, "Oh yeah, I'll just accept your rape," or whatever it is, that isn't going to support anybody.  I can't speak for other people but I know that when I am doing some behavior that isn't appropriate, it hurts me as well.  And it builds up a backlog of guilt.  So to have somebody simply call me on my misbehavior and make a boundary is actually a blessing for me too.  Because it's like, "Yeah, please, somebody stop me.  Right now I'm triggered, I'm in my wounds, and I don't know how to stop myself.”  I don't want those behaviors to be accepted, but I do appreciate when the core of who I am is accepted.

What you are talking about is the way people are with each other, and whether they're coming from love.  You are one man doing workshops and retreats.  Is there a way that we can envision where we could move into mainstream structures?  Can we imagine doing some appreciations of men?  How would the media run it, I don’t really know.  I’m kind of searching here for, how do we move it from the one man show kind of thing that I see people doing around the country, into something that’s got more momentum, more feeding off each other, supporting each other, more synergy?  Do you have any sense of that?

The only thing that comes to mind when you’re saying that, is that it feels like, in the time that I’ve been observing growth work stuff, that it has gone from – I have no idea what the numbers are but let’s say even if it was as small a number as ten one man shows around – I’m sure it’s multiplied at least ten times, if not much more.  So I think that there is an expansion going on, and I would imagine as it keeps growing out, there is going to be one point where it will be a big enough theme for the mass media to pick up on.  But you know this lovey-dovey stuff doesn’t necessarily have the glamour or the glitz or the excitement that the media tends to thrive on to keep people on the edge of their seat.  So I think it will take a lot more people being involved and embracing this level of growth and support between the genders before the media is necessarily going to come on board in a big way.

On the way to come and talk with you here today, I was listening to an interview with Warren Redman on a local radio station, and I noticed the interviewer wanted to keep coming back to questions of adversary between men and women. Warren was talking about an upcoming fatherhood conference where the intention of the conference, as far as I can discern, is about celebrating and connecting with fatherhood and how we’ve all had fathers, men and women alike. But the media wanted to go for, “Well, what can we stir up here, let’s talk about the places where there are gender wars going on, rather than the healing of that.”  Not that it’s not useful to be conscious about the things that aren’t working, but to stay focused on “Let’s just talk about that,” without going for the solutions – it is just a whole different approach.  I’m not sure about that, what do you think?  Do you have any sense of……..

Well, it’s kind of what’s up for me to be thinking about right now.  And I’m not really sure.  The way I model society on this issue is that I have an addiction model, you know, that at some level we need what is wrong.  We keep going back to dysfunctional patterns because we need to re-experience that in order to bring up the stuff that we need to work on.  And so I speculate then that we will need to keep shaming others, blaming them for the ills of the world in order to project out our guilt or whatever.  You know, in some kind of dysfunctional way, it’s functional; it’s doing something for us.  And we won’t be ready to really embrace more healthy modes until we have done enough of that work out in society.  Recently, I have been thinking about that because it suggests different ways to work.  When I started this work with Everyman, for instance, I thought the job was public education.  I thought that it was lack of understanding, lack of information, lack of emotional maturity.  I thought that fundamentally public education about these issues was the important thing.  Now, I think that fundamentally what I am doing with the magazine is helping to grow a bunch of people who will, when society becomes ready, be there with the stuff that’s needed.  They will have done their own work, and will know what to do.  So it’s helping to grow some heroes and champions, being a small part of that.  So recently I’ve been thinking about, well, I feel the magazine is going well, the annual gatherings are going well, so what’s next?  I guess that’s why these questions are up for me.  And I don’t really know what the next steps are.

When you talk about this addictive model, are you referring to the idea of, where sometimes say an alcoholic isn’t going to get ready to heal or move forward until they hit the bottom?

That’s one model, but that’s not the only way they can turn around.  They can also turn around through a personal conversion, or through an intervention from people who love them, you know, it doesn’t have to be a kind of skid row crash.  But certainly the addiction piece which is a) I’ve got some needs which I address through certain behaviors, such as drinking, and b) I have some denial about my actions, I have a cover story to explain my behavior in a way that is less threatening to me than the truth.  Those are the two essential components of the addictive model.  And I think that’s how we’ve been around gender.  I think that men and women have needed things from each other.  We’re familiar with the things women have needed: they’ve needed economic providing, physical protection, and political representation.  Men have traditionally done those things for women.  And in order to get those things from men, they have offered things to men, that men have needed from women.  We’ve needed emotional support, moral validation, and sex.  So there’s been this kind of exchange between men and women.  The problem is that it hasn’t been a conscious exchange; it’s been a codependent exchange.  And so there’s been a cover story to explain it.  And I think we’re largely still in that place as a society, where we are addicted to each other, and we have a cover story to explain our gender relationship.  One of the cover stories right now is that men have exploited women, and there are a bunch of ways in which that serves where we are at right now.  And hearing that while there is some ways in which it is true, but there is another whole side to the story, doesn’t serve where people are at right now.  So that’s why I’m saying that I haven’t got much energy for that public education piece.  I’ve got energy to work with people who are consciously working on themselves – which is not simple but it is straightforward work, because you can be straight with people.  And I’ve got energy that feels like it wants to discover some intervention techniques for working with people who are not saying, “Hey, I want to work on myself.”  Which is working with the dark energies of denial and addiction, which is different.

How do you do that?

Well, if you look at history, that's what Jesus was doing. That's what his parables were about.  He found ways to say things that cut through the conventional defense mechanisms.  Like when they brought the woman taken in adultery to him.  They said, "The Bible tells us that she should be stoned."  And he said, "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone."  He framed it in ways they had never thought of before.  It's that incisive, a) the understanding of where people are really at, and b) the creative ability to work with that and intervene in powerful ways.  That's what I'm searching for.

You know, one of the things in my perception of Jesus that underpins all that, is that he was very heart-centered, very loving.  So if the stories are true about that level of love that he had I can see how he reached so many people. I find that it's amazing how direct I can be with some people in workshop settings in calling them on their shadow stuff.  And I attribute it to the underlying level of love I have for people.  And I think that is why Jesus, in a much bigger way, was able to reach so many people, because of that love and care.  It melts defenses, because defenses are typically in place because we're afraid of not being loved, of being attacked or shamed.  I mean, it amazes me sometimes, just watching how people in the workshops will receive some laser-like truth about something that is going on that isn't working for them, yet in other situations they won't look at it, because of levels of defense around their own shame.  It's really sweet to see.

One difference I can point to here, correct me it I'm not seeing it the way you're meaning it, is that the people who brought this woman, this adulterer, to Jesus, were not people in a workshop, were not people working on themselves.  They were not there for that.  Even so, he was able to go past their defenses.

Right, yeah. So that kind of brings into place - how willing are we to develop our capacity to be in those kind of loving spaces in our every day walk around life?  To me it means that I need to keep clearing up all of my places where I get triggered and I go into judgments about people or myself.  For workshops, I do a lot of preparation for awareness and centeredness, asking for my own ego stuff to be set aside.  In that there is a lot of conscious intention to hold a container of that loving space and accepting space.  But in my every day walk around life, sometimes I'm not in that centered place.  I've got my own shadow stuff that I still haven't cleaned up, so maybe if a mob came up to me who had somebody they wanted to stone or whatever, the question would be, have I woken up enough to be able to stay in a loving space.  And if I had, then there would be that capacity to love the mob and give a message that they may receive.  I think in the story that the people didn't stone the woman……..

No, they just sort of snuck away.

Yeah.  So the jury is still out on how much they received about it or not.

They received enough……

That they put down the stones.

That they put down the stones. And they didn't know how to proceed further with their plan.  And that's a powerful thing.  You know, I used to find it frustrating when I would get into a conversation with somebody.  You know, they would write in to the magazine about men's issues, and they'd be telling me maybe the feminist line.  And we'd go back and forward a couple of times, and then I'd feel, OK, I've really answered all their questions, it’s very clear, I can't imagine how they can answer what I've said.  And then they wouldn't come back.  And I would be incensed!  They were full of how they were after the truth.  And finally they meet a question that they can't really answer, and they run away.  I was so angry.

They can't answer it in a way that justifies their belief.

Yeah.  But, you know, I no longer feel that way.  After a while, I stopped being frustrated.  I started seeing that as a victory.  Because……

They've put down the stones.

They've put down the stones.  And at some level they know that they couldn't answer those questions: if they could have, they would have done so.  So I'm seeing things a little differently now.  I'm seeing that progress doesn't always have to look like, "Eureka!"  People saying, "I got it."  It can take lots of different forms.  It took me a long time to realize when thinking about Jesus.  When he said nothing…… when the high priests tried him before his crucifixion, and he answered not at all.  I spent a lot of time thinking that he could have done something more powerful.  But then I realized that to not participate at all in what they were doing was the most powerful thing he could do.  Because any participation he made would have validated what they were doing, to say, "Yeah, we're in a trial here, and you're going through the process of determining whether I am guilty or not."  But that wasn't true, it was a set up.  They knew what was going to happen.  So the most powerful thing he could do was to keep silent.

So how would you overlay that on your practical, everyday walking around life?

I don't have a specific answer, but my general answer is to remember that speaking is not always the best thing.  And so I have another tool: the tool of silence.  Not judgmental silence, but silence as a powerful choice.  Taking power in less visible ways.  I see it as part of my work at this time to get comfortable with that, with the notion that things don't have to happen in the conventional way, and that I don't have to be the visible author or agent of change, the one 'making it happen', so to speak.  There are other ways to lead, to influence, to catalyze change.

I've been watching Warren Farrell speaking at his lectures across Canada.  He is very articulate and very professional, with well thought out ideas.  But I have the sense that there's something else needed, to reach people where they are, some deeper wholeness, something like what Jesus did when he changed the rules on those priests, so that they put down their stones.  An integration, a balance, I don't know, I'm not making much sense now, just expressing a hunger, something I feel called to seek and find and manifest.   So, you don't have any answers, do you?

Not for you!  [laughing]  But I appreciate your sense that there's something that wants to come in, another form that wants to be created or utilized, and your awareness to explore and find out what it is.  And also a sense of knowing that that is that person's flavor and that is right on for them, but that doesn't quite fit with what I'm being called to do.  And I think that that is where I see some of the levels of adversary in the men's movement, whatever that is called, arguing over styles, etc. I think with some people that it's actually a distraction to be criticizing or complaining or saying that this way or that way isn't the right way, it's actually a distraction from the person’s own calling, of recognizing that, oh, it is not that that other person’s way is the wrong way, necessarily, it is just that it is not my way.  And I've noticed especially when people are being called into their next level of leadership that there is often a time that they will get really critical of other people who are out there doing the work.  And they want those people to change and do it in the way that they themselves would do, because they want those people to do their calling. It is because of their fears about stepping out into their own leadership. And actually, instead of trying to tell other people how to do it, it could go - OK, if that is the way you think it should be done, maybe that is because it is your calling to do it that way.  And then there's room for these people that are in leadership to be supporting each other, rather than competing with or criticizing each other.

Any more thoughts that you have for Everyman readers or the men's movement.

If there are readers out there that are just readers, I really support them in getting together in groups and doing some experiential work rather than just staying with reading and theories.  I just find that it is so much more supportive for the whole of our being.  I've seen many times with men that they'll do some good work on their own, reading books and publications around what they're working on.  But sometimes they get into a pattern of just reading without even realizing the value and the acceleration that happens when they start to bounce their experiences off of other people.  Even though books can help to point out some of our blind spots or places to shift or grow, relationships with other men or other people can accelerate that process.

The theme of the next issue of Everyman is leadership.  I don't know if this interview will go into the next issue, but do you have any thoughts about leadership?  What it is,………

My take on leadership is, one, that I think it is very valuable for me to honor the leader in everyone.  And knowing that if I choose to follow somebody else's leadership, it is the leader in me that makes that choice, if I am conscious.  If I'm following a behavior pattern to try and get some of my needs met and if I'm not making a clear, conscious choice, then I have disconnected from my own leadership. From that place there is likely going to be less value in what I'm doing, in the action that I'm taking or whatever it is that I'm getting involved in.  My take on things is that I am being invited to follow a call to be in leadership in every moment in my life — not that I need to lead anybody else, but that I need to honor my own life.  Also, I've done lots of work with letting go of my preconceived ideas of what leadership is, because that has often blocked my leadership.  If I think it means being smarter than somebody else, then it blocks me from the leadership step of questioning and asking and opening to learn more.   If I think that leadership is about being strong, and perhaps I've got an idea that emotions aren't strong, or vulnerability isn't strong, then I won't lead with my emotions.  You were talking earlier about the men's gathering that you had last month, and how there were some people who shared what was going on for them emotionally, and how it led everybody else into their emotional body, so many of the people there shared their tears. This is an example of leadership. Just fully expressing our personal experience from a heartfelt place can be an act of leadership. So broadening our idea of what leadership is about is key.

So what is leadership, then?  If it's not associated with any of those characteristics like strength or vulnerability, what is it?

I would say at the basis, for myself, it's about being true to what my essence is asking from me, following my connection to life force or spirit.  It can be all of those things: strength or vulnerability, stepping forward, stepping back when they are appropriate.  So I wouldn't say that these are the defining traits of leadership. The typical way that leadership is looked at, I think, has pulled a lot of people away from a true level of leadership.  I mean, we get some people in positions like politicians or clergy people or therapists that are sort of in a leadership role, but they have these ideas of what the role means and oftentimes they will forfeit some of the things that would actually be way more helpful and way more honest if they would expand their idea of leadership to see that part of it is being human and being real and showing all of who we are.

When I left Nortel.  I was a manager there, this was 1992.  When I knew I was leaving, there was a question of who was going to replace me; we could promote someone from the group.  And there were two people who were very vocal about becoming the leader, and I didn't think that either of them would be the best choice.  Without really thinking too hard, I just stopped leading, stopped making decisions.  And it was very interesting.  The people who wanted to be leaders just bitched at me like crazy. After a while, two or three weeks, people in the group really got it that I wasn't going to solve the problems that were growing all around us, and some other people stepped forward and started doing what needed to be done.  And what happened was that the group recognized them, that these other people were people who really had the ability.  And it was funny, I had no idea when I started doing this, I didn't have it worked out in my mind that this was the way to flush out the real leaders, but it just felt right.  And it was weird because it was a very scary thing to do, really.  So that was an interesting time.  In hindsight, I look back and say that I was very strong as a leader there, by not leading.

Yeah, not leading in a traditional way.

That's right.

Another thing around leadership that I have found, certainly in my own journey and I've noticed it in other people as well, is that one of the blocks to stepping into a leadership form that might put me in front of other people or out there where I can be seen, is the level of attack thoughts and criticisms that I've had through my life on public figures, politicians, and people in traditional leadership roles.  When it came to a point in my life where I was being called to step into leadership, well a big fear was coming up.  It's like, “Oh, yeah, I'm going to get all those attack thoughts and more coming back at me.  The more that I step out and be seen, the more I am going to be getting people's projections, people's complaints, people's criticisms, etc.  Before I became conscious of that underlying fear, I'd have all these excuses about why to not step out, let myself shine or let myself be seen.  But then once I understood what was going on, I had work to do on calling back some of those attacks and projections I had put out.  I also had work to do on understanding that people are going to have their projections on me and that people aren't necessarily going to see me clearly.  Or they may see me clearly and want to attack my mistakes or things that I do wrong. As well they may want to attack things that I think are totally appropriate. And that's part of what comes with the territory.

That's part of the job.

Yeah.  And so often in the process of working, my own approval addiction and my temptations to betray what I'm called to do and what is really true for me to do……

In order to gain their approval.

Yes, exactly.  If I do that, then……..

They won't like me.

Yeah, if I do that they'll like me, and if I do the other, my calling, I might not be liked.  But of course, when I don't follow my calling, then I don't approve of myself.  So it doesn't work anyway.  So the only thing that really makes sense is to do my best to follow my intuitive sense of what's true for me, and then let the people judge or not judge, approve or not approve.  But it's tricky work, especially if I'm in a place of feeling unworthy or needy because then the temptation is there to sell out.  I've been in workshop space before where most of the participants are saying, "Oh yeah, this is great stuff, I'm really enjoying the work."  And then there will be one person who doesn't approve and thinks it sucks.  And until I got clearer about this approval addiction thing, I would find myself focusing all this energy on this one person who didn't approve and actually, unconsciously but still doing it, turning my back on all the people that had been happy with the work. The question was – “Why are you wasting your time with this person that's not interested?  Just let the person have their judgments and get on with listening to what needs to come forward to serve the whole group."  [laughing]  It's been interesting just to watch my own growth and understanding around these leadership roles and the approval addiction thing.

Where do you see your work going next?

I feel like I'll be continuing to do the same style of work that I am doing right now.  Unlike yourself, I am not feeling like some new form wants to come into place.  With the way that I do my work now, there is still a capacity for it to grow.  For instance, the workshops could handle many more people and still be touching the people who are involved now.  Also as I run into people who can sponsor my work in different population centers, it opens it up to more people as well. 

I love this work so much and particularly I like being in retreat settings.  I do an annual ten-day retreat. I would be happy to stay in that environment for a few months.  There was a point when because of my own love of doing this work, rather than using practical business sense, I decided to go for a longer retreat and I gave an option for people to come for the first half, or to come for the whole thing.  Lots of people came for the first half but there were very few who came for the whole thing.  So I realized that people's level of desire or commitment was different than my own.  So right now the ten-day retreats seem to fit comfortably.  If the desire shifts again I'm certainly willing to extend them in the future.

I'm also aware that as I cultivate more patience and more acceptance and more heart connection that the work gets smoother and it happens faster and it happens at deeper levels.  I've seen over and over again, whenever I get impatient or try to push somebody into their process or get that sense of anxiety going, instead of speeding things up it slows it down.  That has been my experience, so my style is built around the idea of invitation and encouragement rather than confrontation and "Come on, get to it", or "There's something wrong with you if you don't get to it”. I don't know that my style is necessarily appropriate for everybody.  I mean some people like the get in your face, push the ego to breaking point kind of styles that came out of some of the encounter groups from the sixties.  Some people are attracted to that, but it's not my style.  I find that encouragement seems to work way better for me in getting groups of people to come forward and shift and change.

Another thing that just came to mind, David, is that what I've found with some veterans of personal, spiritual and emotional growth is that they can become so focused on their vision of expanding even more that they will disconnect from taking the time to stop and appreciate what they have already accomplished. The perfectionist and the driver in a person can make personal and spiritual growth as much of a project as anything else.  So it's very important and useful to stop and take the time to appreciate, it's like, "Oh, this is great, what I've done and what's going on right now." Taking time to drink in the fruits of what we have already accomplished. That appreciation helps build the energy for when it is time to take the next step.  I've been noticing that, and in my work I try to encourage the appreciation of each step along the way. 

I really appreciate getting to kick around these ideas with you and explore these themes.  I appreciate you making the space in the magazine and also the invitation that you create for all these ideas to come out.

Comments about the Everyman Journal

This Interview was first published in the Everyman Journal. 

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