Stephen, your account reminded me of the doctor—I can’t recall his name—who nearly died on Everest in an ill-fated expedition in which several people did die. He wrote about his compulsion to climb, which evidently isn’t unusual in the mountaineering community. I am fascinated by the compulsion to seek out intense physical experience, because I don’t have it. I think it has great evolutionary significance. Yet, as your account demonstrates, it is also destructive.
I wish you well in your recovery process! Also, thank you for your impassioned defense of sleep.
I was looking forward to reading about your journey and when I hear about your sadness of losing your community last year, it upsets me all over again. No matter if you are in or out of a particular community, I will always consider you part of my community and often think about you. Thank you for always taking risks and making the writing community stronger. I am always reading and benefiting from your strong and always thoughtful writing. HAIL YOU!
What a share, brother. The content within the content, even. This is a powerhouse.
Admittedly, the headline caught this reader's attention for two reasons.
1. I've sat two 10-day silent retreats, where we sat in silence for over ten hours a day (nine full days in a row, breaking to allow noble speech midday on the 10th).
2. The MKP site copy has never resonated with me, but more to the point, I've often wondered what darkness lies beyond the words.
On silent retreats, they filter out participants for past or present mental illnesses. It's unfair, but their rationale is tough to argue: We're not equipped to help someone in those cases. Still, people get past those filters. On my second retreat, a dude was asked to leave because he was having a rough go of it.
Your point about sleep is not lost on me, even if I don't suffer from bipolar. I shared the TED talk quote with my mother and wife, because it echoes something I'm constantly lobbying for: Don't eff with the sleep.
Even on those silent retreats, I questioned the logic of the late-night Q&As with the proctor. Staying would keep participants up late, and the first bell for early meditation would ring just before 4 am (if memory serves), so I always went straight to bed after the last sit, skipping the Q&A.
But on the ManKind Project. To your credit, you give a charitable review to what reads as a reckless organization on this point of sleep.
When I attended Christian youth weekends as an adolescent, I noticed that as the days passed with minimal sleep, more kids softened up with a pliability. In the review mirror, that all scanned as manipulation of our minds, a way to more easily "cram the Jesus in." I can't prove it, but it sure seemed true to my teenage brain.
You're right, for whatever we imagine is gained by sleep deprivation, mental toughness, grit, a bigger cock... we forfeit so much. The research on this is not confused. And that's true for each of us.
Incredible. Just re-stacked the piece. I said this:
'Stop what you’re doing and read this essay on a serious and intense men’s warrior training, by @Stephen Bradford Long. The honesty, the vulnerability, and the willingness to get naked on the page and tell the truth here is astounding. What a beautiful and important contribution to the human experience, and specifically the male contemporary experience, both physically and emotionally.'
I’m not sure where to begin. So much here is distressing and familiar and unsurprising and shocking.
If I had known you were doing something connected to The Mankind Project, I would like to think I would have at least noted to you the polarization it has among the late bloomer circles I’m in.
I have so much more I want to say and ask and rant about given my own experiences with so-called “transformative rituals” but I’ve only just read your piece and I need to collect my thoughts. Even then, it may be better I say nothing.
Your father’s story about his sash puzzles me as Order of the Arrow is a Boy Scout honor society and I have that same sash, and the next one in rank, that I earned as a teen.
You can rant as much as you need. When I put any article out, everyone is welcome to respond however they see fit, as long as it doesn’t dissolve into abuse (and I know you won’t.)
Parts of this sound like the Catholic youth retreats I took as a teenager-- low amounts of sleep and semi-public sharing of traumas/wounds are hallmarks of those too. As I've gotten older, I've seriously wondered how helpful those experiences actually are in the long run.
I'm sorry it was all a mixed bag. For whatever it's worth, saying a prayer for your recovery.
I've been reflecting a lot of this piece and your journey over the last 18 months or so. A lot of your framing of masculinity appears to be rooted in seeking confrontation or challenge, not against others but with yourself, with the idea of pushing past your limits may allow you to throw off alienation.
If I might be so bold, I would recommend you check out Todd McGowan's "Embracing Alienation" and Miyamoto Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings" if you haven't already. I think they would be lovely companion pieces to your Stoic journey and could provide some different lenses to view your Stoicism through. Of course, if this does not suit you or you are not looking reading materials feel free to ignore me.
Not matter what, know that I appreciate the candour of your writing and your kind soul. I wish for nothing but love and peace for you however you may define it.
I so appreciate the thoughtfulness and reflection you bring to my work. I will look into those books. Your recommendations are always excellent.
Yes, confronting challenge — particularly inner challenge — seems to be a theme. It was also a major component of the NWTA.
It also seems to have landed in my life without my conscious awareness. It’s been 16 months of extraordinary challenge, and I felt I had to rise to the occasion. It is also very possible that it needs to be balanced with other energies, and the books you suggested might aid me in that.
You're very mature and generous about a potentially fatally negligent set-up. I hope you can continue to "hold fast to what is good" about this new brotherhood.
Wow, thank you for sharing Stephen. This made me feel a lot of things. I’m so sorry you went through this and I hope recovery goes well.
Have you ever seen The Work (2017)? It follows a few Folsom Prisoners in an intensive form of group therapy that sounds a lot like this. I wonder if a lot of those men were also left more damaged than the film portrays? I’m curious about that sort of aggressive-type therapeutic experiences that men supposedly need.
Also, I’m assuming you’ve been a part of an addiction recovery group before. If so, how does your iGroup compare to it? Does it offer something more than a recovery group does?
"I provoked a dragon of immense anguish inside of me that had largely lost its power over me through years of therapy and healing. It had been asleep, and now it is awake."
Did *you* actually provoke it?
There is a line between I made a choice to do x, and therefore I caused consequence y.
They took down your defenses and then led you to a door and invited you to step through it.
You weighed the risks and did your best evaluation of what to expect beforehand. They did not have anyone on hand to handle a deep traumatic response. It also sounds like they just let you go home after, even though you are a super high risk for suicide and self harm.
They were much more reckless than you were because they knew exactly what they were going to put you through.
Every single thing about this enrages me as a trauma survivor.
You did nothing wrong and you didn’t deserve this.
I’m a woman and I accept that men need things I don’t need. I will never understand what it’s like to be a man and as I’ve gotten older (we’re about the same age) I’ve gradually taken my hands off the wheel and stopped trying to make my husband more like me.
I agree with you that a lot of men benefit from going out in the woods and building fires and doing male bonding stuff.
It’s the secrecy that enrages me though. Because when the people at the top withold important information, it creates a power imbalance.
They required vulnerability from you but couldn’t be vulnerable themselves by sharing the activities and schedule. In fact, they armored up by having you sign waivers. They asked you for something they were not willing to do themselves. And I won’t respect that.
I’m so glad you wrote this and called on the organization to change. If they care about the men they serve, they will take your advice.
I hope they take your suggestions seriously. The cynical voice in my head says they prioritize the NWTA because it's a revenue engine. With your request to prioritize iGroups, they have an opportunity to prove otherwise.
I attended, it was suggested by my guide at the time. I was growing exponentially leading up to the weekend, and I grew for that attendance. In fact, I grew beyond that experience and attended online groups knowing many were stuck, including the many facilitators. Later, I spent time with an insider and understood the need for transformation within the network itself. I noticed the problems inherent in the project.
I hear your pain, and your analysis isn’t without merit. I simply feel you have unlocked a part of yourself you obviously know is part of the valid healing process – acceptance is everything, itself leading to deeper healing.
That’s the point, I think, (and bundle me up along with the whole if not) acceptance of all our experiences means just that, full acceptance.
Thanks so much for commenting. I’m open to communicating. I don’t recall you at my NWTA. Did you attend a previous one.
Right now, the unlocking I did doesn’t feel healing. I’m open to that changing, especially since making meaning out of suffering is what I do. But, I do wish it hadn’t happened. I feel that it retraumatized me unnecessarily.
No, not your group. I actually attended around 7years ago.
The warrior aspect, and hero journey are but aspects of our overall journey as humans, and to suggest the Mankind Project is capable of achieving full healing would be wrong. As you rightly point out, to have an old wound opened, especially one so deep, and even having had help in processing that during the process, to have no follow up or help in integrating what came up is in many ways a failure.
Personally speaking, I found that having a guide who recommended MKP, a personal shadow worker who was there to help me process afterwards, helped immeasurably.
I’ll direct message you, the choice to chat if you want is there then.
I’m a caring human is all, there to hold where I can, in this case offering some sense of a problematic foray into deep healing.
Well Stephen, I'm glad you are still alive. Obviously it was severely traumatic and you're going to need a bunch of time and a bunch of help to recover. And I don't mean "help" from your "brotherhood"...sounded sus from the start, I mean a real therapist with all the right knowledge to help work through things properly.
I do wonder, though, between this camp and the T article saying you're more aggressive and horny on more T (allegedly -- still curious about your actual #!) but that's somehow normal male behavior, why you seem intent on proving your "manliness" when you kinda have to be plenty tough just to survive being gay and having bipolar 2 with psychosis? Sounds like pure chaos as it is and you're probably doing way better than you think!
In any case maybe if there's an LGBTQIA+ community wherever you are maybe hang with some of those folx too? Just some thoughts, no need to answer. Bit concerned...hang in there ❤️🩹
I have so many thoughts on this I do not know where to start. So I will just say a couple of them. You are an extremely brave and compassionate man. And I will continue to pray for your healing and peace.
Stephen, your account reminded me of the doctor—I can’t recall his name—who nearly died on Everest in an ill-fated expedition in which several people did die. He wrote about his compulsion to climb, which evidently isn’t unusual in the mountaineering community. I am fascinated by the compulsion to seek out intense physical experience, because I don’t have it. I think it has great evolutionary significance. Yet, as your account demonstrates, it is also destructive.
I wish you well in your recovery process! Also, thank you for your impassioned defense of sleep.
Yes, that resonates. I’m fascinated by it too, and I have it.
I was looking forward to reading about your journey and when I hear about your sadness of losing your community last year, it upsets me all over again. No matter if you are in or out of a particular community, I will always consider you part of my community and often think about you. Thank you for always taking risks and making the writing community stronger. I am always reading and benefiting from your strong and always thoughtful writing. HAIL YOU!
Thank you ❤️
What a share, brother. The content within the content, even. This is a powerhouse.
Admittedly, the headline caught this reader's attention for two reasons.
1. I've sat two 10-day silent retreats, where we sat in silence for over ten hours a day (nine full days in a row, breaking to allow noble speech midday on the 10th).
2. The MKP site copy has never resonated with me, but more to the point, I've often wondered what darkness lies beyond the words.
On silent retreats, they filter out participants for past or present mental illnesses. It's unfair, but their rationale is tough to argue: We're not equipped to help someone in those cases. Still, people get past those filters. On my second retreat, a dude was asked to leave because he was having a rough go of it.
Your point about sleep is not lost on me, even if I don't suffer from bipolar. I shared the TED talk quote with my mother and wife, because it echoes something I'm constantly lobbying for: Don't eff with the sleep.
Even on those silent retreats, I questioned the logic of the late-night Q&As with the proctor. Staying would keep participants up late, and the first bell for early meditation would ring just before 4 am (if memory serves), so I always went straight to bed after the last sit, skipping the Q&A.
But on the ManKind Project. To your credit, you give a charitable review to what reads as a reckless organization on this point of sleep.
When I attended Christian youth weekends as an adolescent, I noticed that as the days passed with minimal sleep, more kids softened up with a pliability. In the review mirror, that all scanned as manipulation of our minds, a way to more easily "cram the Jesus in." I can't prove it, but it sure seemed true to my teenage brain.
You're right, for whatever we imagine is gained by sleep deprivation, mental toughness, grit, a bigger cock... we forfeit so much. The research on this is not confused. And that's true for each of us.
Thank you so much for sharing. I have avoided meditation retreats for exactly those reasons.
Incredible. Just re-stacked the piece. I said this:
'Stop what you’re doing and read this essay on a serious and intense men’s warrior training, by @Stephen Bradford Long. The honesty, the vulnerability, and the willingness to get naked on the page and tell the truth here is astounding. What a beautiful and important contribution to the human experience, and specifically the male contemporary experience, both physically and emotionally.'
Thank you, brother
Oh. Stephen.
I’m not sure where to begin. So much here is distressing and familiar and unsurprising and shocking.
If I had known you were doing something connected to The Mankind Project, I would like to think I would have at least noted to you the polarization it has among the late bloomer circles I’m in.
I have so much more I want to say and ask and rant about given my own experiences with so-called “transformative rituals” but I’ve only just read your piece and I need to collect my thoughts. Even then, it may be better I say nothing.
Your father’s story about his sash puzzles me as Order of the Arrow is a Boy Scout honor society and I have that same sash, and the next one in rank, that I earned as a teen.
You can ask, rant, and say as much as you need ❤️
Re: the Order of the Arrow — yes, it is a boyscouts thing. It was also in South Korea (my father grew up there) and the sixties. Different times.
Ah. Ok. That makes sense.
Still thinking about the necessity of me ranting.
You can rant as much as you need. When I put any article out, everyone is welcome to respond however they see fit, as long as it doesn’t dissolve into abuse (and I know you won’t.)
Parts of this sound like the Catholic youth retreats I took as a teenager-- low amounts of sleep and semi-public sharing of traumas/wounds are hallmarks of those too. As I've gotten older, I've seriously wondered how helpful those experiences actually are in the long run.
I'm sorry it was all a mixed bag. For whatever it's worth, saying a prayer for your recovery.
Thank you. I’ll take the prayers.
I've been reflecting a lot of this piece and your journey over the last 18 months or so. A lot of your framing of masculinity appears to be rooted in seeking confrontation or challenge, not against others but with yourself, with the idea of pushing past your limits may allow you to throw off alienation.
If I might be so bold, I would recommend you check out Todd McGowan's "Embracing Alienation" and Miyamoto Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings" if you haven't already. I think they would be lovely companion pieces to your Stoic journey and could provide some different lenses to view your Stoicism through. Of course, if this does not suit you or you are not looking reading materials feel free to ignore me.
Not matter what, know that I appreciate the candour of your writing and your kind soul. I wish for nothing but love and peace for you however you may define it.
I so appreciate the thoughtfulness and reflection you bring to my work. I will look into those books. Your recommendations are always excellent.
Yes, confronting challenge — particularly inner challenge — seems to be a theme. It was also a major component of the NWTA.
It also seems to have landed in my life without my conscious awareness. It’s been 16 months of extraordinary challenge, and I felt I had to rise to the occasion. It is also very possible that it needs to be balanced with other energies, and the books you suggested might aid me in that.
You're very mature and generous about a potentially fatally negligent set-up. I hope you can continue to "hold fast to what is good" about this new brotherhood.
Thank you. I need that blessing.
🧡
❤️
Wow, thank you for sharing Stephen. This made me feel a lot of things. I’m so sorry you went through this and I hope recovery goes well.
Have you ever seen The Work (2017)? It follows a few Folsom Prisoners in an intensive form of group therapy that sounds a lot like this. I wonder if a lot of those men were also left more damaged than the film portrays? I’m curious about that sort of aggressive-type therapeutic experiences that men supposedly need.
Also, I’m assuming you’ve been a part of an addiction recovery group before. If so, how does your iGroup compare to it? Does it offer something more than a recovery group does?
I haven’t seen the doc. I will look into it.
Yes, the igroups feel similar to recovery groups, but the support I’ve found in MKP even outstrips the support I found in recovery.
"I provoked a dragon of immense anguish inside of me that had largely lost its power over me through years of therapy and healing. It had been asleep, and now it is awake."
Did *you* actually provoke it?
There is a line between I made a choice to do x, and therefore I caused consequence y.
They took down your defenses and then led you to a door and invited you to step through it.
You weighed the risks and did your best evaluation of what to expect beforehand. They did not have anyone on hand to handle a deep traumatic response. It also sounds like they just let you go home after, even though you are a super high risk for suicide and self harm.
They were much more reckless than you were because they knew exactly what they were going to put you through.
Every single thing about this enrages me as a trauma survivor.
Thank you for writing this, Stephen.
You did nothing wrong and you didn’t deserve this.
I’m a woman and I accept that men need things I don’t need. I will never understand what it’s like to be a man and as I’ve gotten older (we’re about the same age) I’ve gradually taken my hands off the wheel and stopped trying to make my husband more like me.
I agree with you that a lot of men benefit from going out in the woods and building fires and doing male bonding stuff.
It’s the secrecy that enrages me though. Because when the people at the top withold important information, it creates a power imbalance.
They required vulnerability from you but couldn’t be vulnerable themselves by sharing the activities and schedule. In fact, they armored up by having you sign waivers. They asked you for something they were not willing to do themselves. And I won’t respect that.
I’m so glad you wrote this and called on the organization to change. If they care about the men they serve, they will take your advice.
I hope they take your suggestions seriously. The cynical voice in my head says they prioritize the NWTA because it's a revenue engine. With your request to prioritize iGroups, they have an opportunity to prove otherwise.
I hope so too.
I attended, it was suggested by my guide at the time. I was growing exponentially leading up to the weekend, and I grew for that attendance. In fact, I grew beyond that experience and attended online groups knowing many were stuck, including the many facilitators. Later, I spent time with an insider and understood the need for transformation within the network itself. I noticed the problems inherent in the project.
I hear your pain, and your analysis isn’t without merit. I simply feel you have unlocked a part of yourself you obviously know is part of the valid healing process – acceptance is everything, itself leading to deeper healing.
That’s the point, I think, (and bundle me up along with the whole if not) acceptance of all our experiences means just that, full acceptance.
To talk beyond that is everything…let’s talk??
Thanks so much for commenting. I’m open to communicating. I don’t recall you at my NWTA. Did you attend a previous one.
Right now, the unlocking I did doesn’t feel healing. I’m open to that changing, especially since making meaning out of suffering is what I do. But, I do wish it hadn’t happened. I feel that it retraumatized me unnecessarily.
No, not your group. I actually attended around 7years ago.
The warrior aspect, and hero journey are but aspects of our overall journey as humans, and to suggest the Mankind Project is capable of achieving full healing would be wrong. As you rightly point out, to have an old wound opened, especially one so deep, and even having had help in processing that during the process, to have no follow up or help in integrating what came up is in many ways a failure.
Personally speaking, I found that having a guide who recommended MKP, a personal shadow worker who was there to help me process afterwards, helped immeasurably.
I’ll direct message you, the choice to chat if you want is there then.
I’m a caring human is all, there to hold where I can, in this case offering some sense of a problematic foray into deep healing.
Sending love.
Well Stephen, I'm glad you are still alive. Obviously it was severely traumatic and you're going to need a bunch of time and a bunch of help to recover. And I don't mean "help" from your "brotherhood"...sounded sus from the start, I mean a real therapist with all the right knowledge to help work through things properly.
I do wonder, though, between this camp and the T article saying you're more aggressive and horny on more T (allegedly -- still curious about your actual #!) but that's somehow normal male behavior, why you seem intent on proving your "manliness" when you kinda have to be plenty tough just to survive being gay and having bipolar 2 with psychosis? Sounds like pure chaos as it is and you're probably doing way better than you think!
In any case maybe if there's an LGBTQIA+ community wherever you are maybe hang with some of those folx too? Just some thoughts, no need to answer. Bit concerned...hang in there ❤️🩹
I appreciate and receive the concern ❤️
I have so many thoughts on this I do not know where to start. So I will just say a couple of them. You are an extremely brave and compassionate man. And I will continue to pray for your healing and peace.