This was previously published in Network News Issue 28 Autumn 2001.

A man’s meeting with men, Findhorn, Robert and himself.

I have a primal yearning deep in my heart to be a King. Not, I hasten to add, the king of thrones, empires and gold-plated carriages, but rather the king of a man living and being his soul purpose on Earth. A life where my inner spirit guides my daily life and my worldly life nourishes my spirit. I believe it is the birthright and destiny of every man to be a king just as every woman may aspire to be a queen.

It was as part of my journey to be king that a slightly fearful, vaguely cynical but mostly excited middle aged man made the decision to walk up the iron steps to the upper Community Centre at Findhorn to meet the iron man. The steps led to the registration desk for a weeklong gathering of men led by Robert Bly, one of the elders of the men’s movement. Though I had known about the gathering for some time I only made the decision to join on the morning of the event. Slipping away from the cheese counter at the Phoenix shop to do the deed, the “shall I, shan’t  I” arguments still churned around in my head and belly. As one meanders the journey, those ki chakra flutterings usually herald the start of a significant experience.

As with, I suspect, most men, I need and thrive on layers of relationship in my life and dreams. Near the top of my relationship wish list is the need for Heroes. Robert Bly has been one of those heroes for many years through his work with men, poetry and societal observations. As with kings, my vision of heroes is more of a mythical archetype rather than a man who kills lots of people in battle. A hero is simply a man who manages to manifest an aspect of his divine self in the activities and challenges of the masculine world. The primary difference between them being that I see the king as the expression of an individual journey whereas the hero is in relationship with the collective. As my higher self had anticipated, this week with Robert, men from the Findhorn Community and men from around the world, would be a time of kings and heroes.

Whilst I had enjoyed his books for a while, it was in his recordings of Rumi’s poetry that I first fell in love with Robert;  his voice expressing that depth of soul you find in gospel music and the great narrators. lt is as though their words are extracted from the very core of the Earth yet have the sparkle of the angelic. And then there were those pictures on his book jackets. The grandfather I never had, resplendent in those fine waistcoats and the unruly white curls tumbling atop his upright bearing, his eyes shining with the clarity of one comfortable with himself. That’s the other thing about heroes, you need to love them. It is this ability to inspire collective love and respect that to me is an integral aspect of the male king and separates the hero from the celebrity or leader. I find this hero love takes me beyond the conditional. It feels sourced from the well that feeds the devotional spirit.

On the path of self-knowledge one of the roles of the hero, mentor or teacher is to help us grieve, heal and embrace those dark voids we all carry deep in our psyches. Voids often created during childhood years where neglect, judgement or abandonment crushed our spiritual and co-operative natures. Particularly for men growing up in the often brutal world of traditional boy-only Western education. It was from this world of mainly-absent fathers, estranged grandfathers and bullying teachers that many of the men had travelled to be at this gathering. Just ordinary men tired of the usual void denials. Ready to depart the usual masculine escapes of sex, work, money and perhaps the occasional recreational drug. Men like me yearning to spend time in a place of soul, intimacy and comradeship. Most travelling way beyond the path of least resistance to arrive here.

My resistance was the usual bugbears of the male psyche. My rational judgements about boys wanting to be men by growing beards, beating drums and mucking about in the woods. “Bet there are no warriors or kings coming to this gathering, just a bunch of dysfunctional kids in mid-life crisis,” was one particularly uncharitable thought. Then there were my inner judgements of my own worthlessness and alienation. I can’t play the drum, never seem to see the light and have a chronic fear of intimacy. I am wholly unworthy of being a palace guard, let alone a king.

Then of course there were the other community men. I was not really sure who else was coming to the gathering. Most of my men’s group, which was reassuring, but there might be men who I didn’t really get along with. Baring my soul to strangers is one thing, doing it with someone you serve every day is a whole different story. What secrets could I tell if I thought they would be gossiping about me in the café over the coming weeks? When the king is weak the fear moves into overdrive, and as I reached the registration door, turning back seemed a much better option.

I entered the registration room and it seemed I had made the wrong decision. Over in the corner some bearded guy was banging out a momentous dirge on a drum and chanting something like Ha we ka ha we jaw. He had a beard too. My beard also is greying relentlessly. “Would you like to be a salmon or a wolf?” another beard ‘s voice broke into my thoughts.

Rejecting the Wolf and Salmon groups with little hesitation, I was saved by an additional choice of Eagle. At last this was my kind of metaphor. Soaring majestically alone in the great sky suited this particular ego image of myself. “Who would want to be a Salmon?” began my next train of thought when I heard the guy behind me want to be an eagle as well. He is different from me. How can he think he should be an eagle? I don’t feel drawn to share with this man all week, so I begin to beam out “join the salmon instead”. However, he clearly thought he was an eagle and stuck his name tag proudly on his chest. He soared and became a king around Tuesday and we shared deeply every day.

My late registration and addictive nature meant I was working instead of attending the opening session so it was still as a stranger that I walked into the Universal Hall that evening. I had noticed women on my way to the Hall, but it was only as I took my seat that I realised the Hall was full of women. I had forgotten that the gathering had invited the whole community for a kind of gender exploration on the first night. A nice and thoughtful gesture from Robert and Richard became an “oh shit” from me.

Robert began to speak, people were rapt with attention, a warm feeling permeated the room and my fears became love. The men’s faces came slowly into focus. The audience was about even, gender-wise. A good evening throughout though I must confess at this stage the feminine seemed vibrant, deeper, and had a seemingly far greater willingness to move to the edge than the male kings. Perhaps we were overawed by stories of the Findhorn Queen.

Of the times that I have finally succeeded in being the king, if only for a day, many have been in this place. My talk at the Business For Life conference in 1995, being the player for the Business group in the Planetary Game, and the role of Emperor in a play were times of sitting on the mythical throne. Suddenly it was Sunday morning. I was sitting here in my church once again, and the men had gathered alone.

From the moment he opened his mouth, Robert put me in touch with inspiration and strength. This was going to be a special time. I was in the world of a hero and king. To stay I would have to be a king as well. This was a hero that did not want to be surrounded by pageboys. You could almost feel the men sitting more upright and tuning their inner radios to high alert. Suddenly I wish my father, son and brother were here with me. Father and brother are coming up to see us soon. I will do this work for them. They are part of the journey of heritage and appreciation.

For some of the next ten years I too need to be a hero in real life. I am deeply involved in the economy of the community and feel a real sense of responsibility for its success and sustainability. Without the support of men I cannot do it. I know that if I can find the male hero within me, the level of trust and intimacy between me and the other men can grow. We then become more likely to proactively support each other and our projects. My current project does mean the world to me and I hope their hearts will be inspired. I secretly hope that the men see the Phoenix as the retail equivalent of Robert Bly. What I seek is not business “to do” but business “to be” and I hoped Robert and the men would support me.

Robert began each day with a look at the work of Iron John, a book reading that served to evoke male myth, legend and archetypes. He read and talked. We talked and listened. Our questions began to come tumbling out. Each man had the opportunity to be the teacher and the pupil. I glow within myself as my inner kings and the golden curls of Robert’s fairy tale dance together.

“It is as though their words are extracted from the very core of the earth – yet have the sparkle of the angelic.”

I wonder what the golden curls of many young men in our society will be. Who are the kings of the Ardoyne (Northern Ireland) or other disadvantaged housing estates? Where are the heroes of politics or religion or even newspapers? The hero is a necessity in the sort of world we live in. If the state is ruled by ministers rather than heroes then masculine warrior tribes will dominate. If tribes are not ruled by kings they tend to be corrupted by the tyrant. The tyrant wants money, power and control, it’s of a drug, a corporation or a football gang. The same is true of governments. The atrocities of Ireland and the Balkans are evidence of the tyrant’s mythical power. With the tyrant’s energy in charge our young men are initiated by getting drunk and slashing each other with broken bottles, such is the oppression of their spirit.

Much of Iron John is around the importance of male intimacy and wisdom across generations. The grandfather as mentor, the elder as guide, the young as the challenging new inspiration and vibrancy. Each phase of our life waiting to deepen the knowledge of ourselves and our masculinity. If this heritage is embraced by the tribe, we can do this journey as individual males and the collective will be wiser, the tyrant left holding his empty promises.

After the mental journey of the morning, in the afternoons we began prising open our emotional and physical bodies. The probing of emotions held sometimes for decades. I have a place in the back of my head that holds the memory of teacher Mr Rafford, whacking me regularly with a variety of heavy objects in order to humiliate me. The male bully is an epidemic in male myth and reality. When the tyrant is in charge, the bullies rule. Look no further than Mrs Thatcher and the economic bullies who ransacked Britain. One afternoon we walked along the seashore. To see and explore the natural world for objects that spoke to us. Later we used them to evoke, through poetry, expressions of our lives. My simple stone with a blush of moss later reminded me of my father’s face, and places I had not visited for a long time.

The body had its chance another day. There is a part of man that needs to physically challenge other men. This is the principle of martial arts, backslapping and even handshakes. As a hunter I need to know who I am hunting with. As a warrior I want to know who I am fighting with. If this is not done in a regular safe way then uncontrolled violence will surely follow.

In the evenings we spoke and Robert listened. Alongside him, Richard Olivier and Michael Boyle. They both played themselves and key archetypal roles during the week. Richard as a theatrical Prime Minister and Michael as a General. They both encouraged, taught and guided. In the evenings they listened to us as well. Each man invited, in his own time, to tell his own story. No judgement, no blame, no shame, and mercifully no feedback. Nothing worse when you have shared your soul than the man who just has to contribute his point of view on your progress. I think this is one ritual the personal growth movement should revisit. Mostly we cried on the inner, and occasionally on the outer, as each story unfolded. Brutality, judgement and isolation being common masculine themes. It is much harder to love as a man if you felt hated as a boy. We know who teaches the world to sing, but who teaches our children how to love? So far my son goes to the Steiner School. I try and love him each day.

I look around the room. Most of the men from the community are in the 40-60 age range. Time for us to be and to demonstrate eldership. Most of us have experience of the world and come from a global variety of spiritual backgrounds. Despite this I know we collectively still struggle with our own young men. On an individual basis things seem positive, but as tribe to tribe it’s not a great relationship. Many of the traditional issues exist between the male generations here at Findhorn, just like everywhere else unfortunately. This is no male wonderland.

We get to know Robert the man as he leads us into a world of myth, ancient civilisations, Persian poetry and tales from the lands and peoples of the world. He is a man of the earth and he offers the blunt, practical friendship of the American Midwest, informed by a liberal education. The kind of older man you feel safe with and can respect.

In all creative processes there are moments when you are called to make the jump over the edge. The place that separates the extraordinary from the ordinary. In a male tribe it is when you take your first public stance with the group. Finally the time comes for initiation. In olden times many boys died in these rituals to manhood. I think there is a primal fear in all men that the other men in the tribe will kill him if he gets it wrong. It may be a spiritual, emotional, mental or physical murder. You can never be sure how they are going to get you, but they will. We all have that inner sensor that tells us when we are in danger from other men, and cultivating it increases a man’s sense of inner security, making his world and thus everyone’s, safer on the outer. It is that lack of inner security that makes men afraid and want to kill each other. Gatherings like this help us as men to unravel the endless threads tangled around our hearts that prevent our inner movement. As we cut those ties we begin to rejoice in the rediscovery of our masculine spirit. Hugs become noticeably longer. Men start to go beyond their private fears. The time to leap comes progressively closer.

In the middle of the gathering we went into the Ritual. This was an intensely personal experience for each man and I think I need more time to consider what might be a trespass on the sacredness of that collective time together. What I can say is that as a male tribe we created, danced, chanted, grieved, healed and celebrated together, intensively, for a couple of days in the landscape of dunelands. We erected a temple to our spirit and then took it down again afterwards. That was a collective highpoint of the week.

“The men grew taller, their eyes sparkled, it felt like there was magic in the air.”

The end days went by quickly. We continued to explore the male journey through myth, ritual and honouring. The men grew taller, their eyes sparkled, it felt like there was magic in the air. The magician is a strong element in male myth. It is a powerful energy. Even the strong silent types were disintegrating behind their walls. Inevitably the end came too soon. But the end became a beginning.

The gathering was formally over and we were just sitting in the Hall sharing gifts of song, dance and story. The young prince was introduced and rose to be king for a song. Sadly it emerged that money was tight and our youngest member at 16 could not afford the cost of the week. The men opened their hearts and raised £2,500 in an impromptu auction. It helped him and set up a fund for future young men to do workshops and rituals of this nature. A long-haired man, probably a salmon, gave away his cherished drum. My male heart opened a little more.

Thanks Robert it was a pleasure meeting you. The King is gone, but not forgotten.

David Hoyle

Editor’s note: David Hoyle is the inspirational driving force behind and in front of the Phoenix store.