You’re Not That Important (And Other Truths That Will Set You Free)

I want to talk about something that might be more germane to men who have already gone through the Men’s Rites of Passage (MROP), though I suspect that there might be some in this that could be helpful to anyone.

When Richard Rohr formed the MROP, he drew on five hard (not negative) truths he observed being used in a wide variety of Indigenous traditions and their initiation rites of young boys. They are universal, resting above and beneath any creed or faith tradition. When he crafted his book Adam’s Return, Richard connected the five hard truths to one of the creation myths in Genesis, and spoke of them from his particular tradition of Christianity.

These five truths were meant to help crack the ego open, so that he would be more ready to take in the gift of initiation, and they were tempered by five positive counterparts, which we have come to call the “common wonderful.” These are held in tension with the five hard truths. Together, they form five tensions or paradoxes. In the crucible that holds both the hard truths and their corresponding common wonderfuls, that is where we can grow.

Over the years, we’ve continued to refine and learn. For example the “hard truths” might be hard for men who have had a privileged position and ascent in their first half of life, but for marginalized or oppressed men who have not had the context in which to ascend, they are likely very familiar and will not dislodge the ego in the same way. For these men, the common wonderful might be “harder” to swallow than the hard truths which go down perhaps too easily.  Ultimately, both sides of a paradox are needed, of course.

As the MROP grew, it moved from being a Catholic program to a Christian one. Today, it is an offering that includes and honors the wisdom of all the major spiritual traditions. In the last thirteen years, we’ve examined the language around these universal hard truths and the “common wonderfuls,” and have experimented with making them universal once again. Thus as part of this process, I wanted to share some reflections shared with the men at the Minnesota and Oregon MROPs this spring on both the hard truths and the common wonderfuls.  

Life is hard and grace abounds. Not only is the latter an antidote for the former, but from the seat of wisdom we can see that often the hardness of life is often a grace unto itself. Men especially seem to thrive most when faced with difficulty, as iron sharpens iron. Thus, the hardness of life is not against us but can be for us. In fact, the beauty and diversity of the natural world can be tied in part to the hardness of life in all its many forms. To refuse the hardness of life is to be naive, to deny the grace that extends even further is to nurture despair and darkness, but to accept the paradox is the seat where one might cultivate wisdom. 

You're going to die and life goes on. Death is not the opposite of life, it is the opposite of birth—and both belong to life. The death of our small lives is not a flaw of creation, but an attribute that is generative. The forest floor reveals how death feeds into and creates life. Your individual death isn't the end of the greater story of life. Your own death is only another bend in the river as you journey towards union with the Ocean. Remember: "No great loss to die, so that a greater life might flourish."

You're not that important and you are invaluable beyond measure. Jesus said that the very hairs on your head are numbered, or as Rumi puts it: "You are not a drop in the Ocean, you are the entire Ocean in a drop." You are not that important and yet we greet each other with Namaste: the divine in me sees and honors the divine in you. It is the very greeting that honors the sacred divinity in which we all breathe, move, dance, work, and play. As Meister Eckhart put it, "We are not God, but we are not other than God." 

You're not in control (what a relief) and everything belongs. Control is an obsession only for the juvenile false self. The sting of this hard truth evaporates the more we are living out of our true selves and in a place of maturity. The mystery of this world is that God/Love/The Spirit/The Friend seems to be not all that interested in control either, and folks from Abraham, to Jesus, from Gandhi, to the Buddha all lived lives of surrender, not dominance. Rather than controlling us, God seems more interested in seducing the entire world to willingly lay down our pitiful toys and come to the dance floor of real Joy!

Life's not about you—you're about life! In this awakening, you move from the world orbiting around you and your constructed self and awaken to see how you are as fleeting and as beautiful as a wild flower in a meadow. This calls you to ask how you might add one movement in the season of your flowering, to ensure that there will be future seasons of life flourishing for descendants (not only of flowers but all of life’s incarnations). "Leaving a legacy" turns from preserving the ego to offering service towards the good of all that is, and is yet to be. "Leaving a legacy" is not about ensuring the remembrance of ourselves by those in the future but about ensuring that we have transformed more pain than we have transmitted, that we have contributed to all of life’s robust and beautiful conversation with star dust. As "fallen trees still feed the seeds they cast before they die."

Today, give yourself the time to see what in this day reveals the hard truths and the common wonderfuls.