On Being a New Warrior

An exercise in Sacred Tension

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Two weeks ago, I published my article My Nightmare Initiation Into the Mankind Project. It has now been viewed thousands of times, sparked discussions about masculinity, mental illness, and rites of initiation, and it has promoted serious conversation within The Mankind Project about my experience, informed consent, and sleep. I consider all of this an enormous win. I do not expect immediate change or perfectly polite dialogue. I do expect to be taken seriously and for the organization to take meaningful action to mitigate risk for men like me. I, and more importantly, other men with mental illness, have received both from MKP.

My original article is necessary reading for this post, and you can find it here:

In this follow-up article, I will do three things.

First, I will take accountability for the mistakes I made in the original article. I am doing this of my own volition and not because MKP has pressured or asked me to. I am a writer by calling and trade, and I am held to a high standard of truth-telling.

Second, I will explore more of the negatives from the New Warrior Training Adventure that are continuing to develop. This is not to pile on, but instead to continue to tell the truth as I see it to the best of my ability.

Third, I will recount the newly discovered positives from my NWTA. I promised myself that, if my experience of the weekend evolved, I would report that change. In this article, I keep that promise.

The Corrections

I made some mistakes in writing my first article, and it's important that I correct the record so that I remain in integrity. I have made updates to the original article, but I will also spell them out here.

In the final section of my article, I offered five invitations to MKP. One of them was to do a thorough, anonymous follow-up so that men can speak freely about their experience without fear of embarrassment or retaliation. After I wrote the article, I received a follow-up survey which allowed for anonymity. I was very happy to receive it and fill it out. I still believe the follow-up process can be improved. We are, after all, still dealing with men who often struggle to reveal their wounds to loved ones, let alone strangers in a survey.

More importantly, I originally stated that, on the first night, I estimated that I received about three hours of sleep. I also made this inflammatory comment, which I fully believed at the time:

Psychiatrist Pau Pérez-Sales argues for the 6/24 rule: that any detention center or political party that deprives a human of a minimum of six hours of continuous sleep per 24 hours for three days in a row is potentially committing torture. I am not accusing the NWTA of torturing its participants. I am saying that by the end of the weekend, I was personally two-thirds of the way there.

Neither of these statements are true. After dialogue with the staff, I now know that I personally slept for about 5 hours or so the first night, and that the second night was likely closer to 7. I’m honestly a bit stunned by this, because my personal experience was one of acute sleep deprivation. My subjective experience told me that I had much less sleep than I thought I did. I retract my statement that I was 2/3s of the way to torture as explained by Pérez-Sales (though I certainly felt tortured), and I am happy to stand corrected.

On the one hand, these facts make my article narratively less powerful. On the other hand, I believe they make my argument stronger: even partial sleep deprivation can cause havoc on emotional regulation, and it is still true that one night of poor sleep can spark a dangerous cycle in people with Bipolar. Every human has different sleep needs, and my individual needs are high. In the context of my own needs, I was critically sleep deprived, even if it wasn’t in the way I thought. I believe the spirit of my criticisms about sleep, informed consent, and mental illness remain intact.

I should have taken the time to let more facts come in. There were good reasons why I didn't: The writing of that article felt urgent and necessary, and it sustained me in the first 10 days after the NWTA. I felt a driving need to honor the story that I had experienced and the urgency with which I needed to tell it. I also wrote it in an impaired state that did not align with my high standards for fact-checking. I am including these corrections to be in integrity with my standards for my craft and with MKP as an organization.

The Negatives

A few weeks before I left for the NWTA, I was joking with one of my good friends from MKP about mentally preparing myself for ritual scarification.

“Not ritual scarification,” he jokingly texted back, “just emotional.”

In ages past, boys were initiated into manhood by surviving hellacious ordeals and brutal levels of pain. Some boys didn’t make it. Some received permanent injuries on their bodies. Some didn’t survive the healing process.

My friend was right. I came out of the weekend without a mark on my body, but I was psychologically wounded by the experience. A horrific trauma has been reopened, and it hurts afresh in ways I never thought it would. This was not the intention of anyone present — this is the opposite of what MKP wants — but it was the result. I can’t help but feel that my initiation was spiritually closer to those ancient rites and that the scarification is not on my body, but my soul.

I wish that, when my past with violence and murder came up, the facilitators had said, “We aren’t going there. That is for your therapist.” I wish they had simply said “no” and redirected me towards more manageable emotional work. I wish they had the humility to recognize the limits of their skills.

The work done over the weekend can be cathartic and powerful for healing wounds of a smaller order. But get a man in there who has serious mental illness or has experienced combat, violence, serious moral injury, or sexual assault, and the risk is far higher.

When I invited MKP into a fearless moral inventory of their actions in my previous article, it was over this feature: the intense, dangerous emotional work men are encouraged to do over the weekend. I have simultaneously honed in on sleep deprivation because I believe that sets the conditions to make these processes even more reckless and likely to result in lasting harm. Men’s work will always be messy and dangerous. Risk will never be 100% eliminated in this work, nor should it be. This is about managing and mitigating risk, especially for those with fragile minds.

I’m not going to write about this emotional scarification because it hurts too much, I fear making it hurt more, and I’ve already written about it in greater detail in the original article. Given my track record with writing about painful inner states, that should mean something significant. I was grievously wounded, and this pain isn’t for the general audience. I will give a few details later in this article, and that’s it.

It’s tempting to tell myself that this psychic wound is so grievous that it will be here forever — that trauma, my old enemy, is back and that, this time, he is here to stay. But there is a good chance that this isn’t true. Time will heal this wound, the mind will knit itself back together, and dreams will do their merciful work. I am choosing to trust that I will heal.

Here is another unexpected shadow: my post-NWTA experience left me extremely lonely. Those closest to me all saw the rubble when I arrived home, and I do not judge them for now hating MKP with a passion.

I’m told that I am in a cult and in love with my abusers. Can I judge them for believing any of this? Is it outrageous for those who love me most fiercely to be appalled and enraged by what I’ve endured? Not given the state I came home in and the secrecy I feel bound by.

Ironically, the most loving response I've gotten has been from my MKP brothers. They are the only ones who know the details of the weekend, so they are the only ones I can talk to about it with zero filters. Their love and support have been nuanced, understanding, and sustaining. They have taken all my concerns seriously. I am now relying on the brothers more than ever. I’m so grateful to them. The upshot of this is a lonely duality: intimacy with the brothers, and isolation from all the others who are concerned and frightened for me.

I wish I weren’t in this situation. I wish I could write all my experiences from the weekend and reveal the full spectrum of beauty, love, horror, and heartbreak. I wish I did not have a conflict of conscience between my desire to give full disclosure to other brothers considering attending and the promise I made to keep the weekend confidential. I wish I could process it fully with family and friends outside the organization, and that I could relieve the apprehensions of my readers with full transparency. I believe that this would be healthier for me, the organization, my relationships, and that it would release me from the corner I have been publicly backed into. I love my brothers deeply, and I’m grateful for their support, and I don’t know how to thank them for their support; I’m also unsure of how healthy it is that they are the only ones I can talk to about the experience without filters.

The secrecy is, in my judgment, a fatal flaw. I understand why it is upheld: it maintains the sacredness of the ritual. But it disabled my ability to make an informed medical choice for myself; it has compromised my relationships; it has hampered my capacity to heal outside of the organization; and it has backed me into a corner with my audience who, after reading this, have good reasons to suspect I’m in an unhealthy cult, despite all my reassurances. None of this is good, and I can’t protect the organization or myself from the inevitable outcomes. I did not want any of this.

Conversely, I have received a different, though more gentle, message from some men within the organization: that my harrowing reliving of the shooting on the carpet was, in fact, a beautiful, healthy, and perhaps even necessary experience, and that I needed to address some deeper trauma that had been hidden.

I don’t believe that this is true, either. I’m experiencing distress related to violence in a way I haven’t in years, as if a supervillain from past seasons of this show has reappeared. I have nightmares; I jump at loud noises; I relive violence in ways that deeply distress me. I was put on a new antipsychotic to control the burgeoning mania I was experiencing after the NWTA. No, I don’t think that’s good, or healing, or healthy. Sometimes, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. Some dogs —mania, depression, trauma — are only chaos when they come awake, and we are best to leave them to their slumber when they have finally been put to bed. I resent suggestions to the contrary, because I am the one who must live with these dogs.

I know what it’s like to see my friends’ blood splatter on the floor at odd hours of the day when I least expect it. I know what it’s like to see flashes of the white, terrified face and dying eyes of someone I love at unexpected intervals. I know what it’s like to see a semi-automatic rifle in a man’s hands instead of a closed umbrella. I know what it’s like to go to bed afraid of nightmares, and that I might hurt myself or my partner in my sleep. I know what it’s like to start crying or shaking and not be able to stop. This all leaves me feeling weaker than I was before, and I hate feeling weak. I do not appreciate the suggestion that this is all somehow good, necessary, or beautiful, especially from those who will never know what it means to carry the burden of violence in one’s soul. And this, too, is loneliness.

The Good

The good from the weekend has started to shimmer through, particularly in dreams. Transcendent moments have come into focus as I sleep: dancing by firelight, discovering a deeper purpose to my life, and feeling close to my fellow initiated brothers. I am unearthing new reservoirs of strength. Slowly, so slowly, the good is falling into place, and I awake with a deeper appreciation for the NWTA.

Some processes during the weekend devastated me, yes, but others illuminated and empowered me. I have a clearer understanding of my purpose in life. I am here to create a world of radical acceptance, compassion, outrageous kindness, and appreciation for the diversity of the human experience. I knew all this going in; I know it more fully now. It has landed like a heavy stone in my heart. This is exactly what the NWTA was designed to do.

I also feel strong. I was declared a warrior when I was initiated — not a warrior of terror, or abuse, or harm, but a new warrior who walks with self-awareness, compassion, and fights for change. Oddly, I feel that. I feel like a warrior. I feel more confident. I am less conflict-avoidant. I am more willing to take risks in the service of what I believe is true.

The NWTA is not solely, or even primarily, responsible for these changes in me. The weekly work in my igroup was a major instigator for these transformations. I was already strong, determined, and courageous before my NWTA and long before I arrived at MKP, but initiation crystallized it, called it forth, and focused me after the weekend. It bestowed nothing upon me — it called forth what was already in me.

Despite all the nightmares I had endured, I felt mighty afterwards — mighty enough to write a nakedly brutal 6500-word article inviting radical change in a forty-year-old organization. Who would have the audacity to do such a thing? A new warrior. So, having been declared a new warrior by The Mankind Project, I turned around and, galvanized by that energy, went to loving war with them.

In writing that article and lobbing such brutal criticisms, MKP could have chosen to make me their enemy. I was prepared for that eventuality and that I might lose another community. Instead, they have embraced me. And this unveils the second great good: love.

The brothers — leadership and rank-and-file alike — pulled out an enormous pillow to break my fall. I already considered some of these men my best friends who will be in my life regardless of whether I stay in MKP, and they are showing up for me as brothers show up for their wounded.

I won’t tell these stories. They are much too tender, vulnerable, and precious to reveal to the world. These are men who have held me as I sobbed and soaked their t-shirts with snot and tears; they have sat quietly next to me with a hand on my shoulder when words would not suffice; they have had long phone conversations with me as I vented all my rage and anguish. They have taken accountability for their wrongs, apologized for the ways they failed me, provided consoling presence, and have caught me when I reached my breaking points.

I could tell so many stories of extraordinary MKP men providing support with their compassion, bodies, and hearts. These are the types of friendships MKP has made possible in my life, and these are the type of men that MKP, at its best, produces.

Yes, it is complicated and fraught to trust the organization that provided the context for such a hideous wound to begin with, and it is not ideal that the secrecy binds me to them as primary support. And yet, these relationships reach beyond MKP. Some have told me explicitly that they care more about me than they do about the organization. They have shown up for me because they are friends who love me.

The unintended hideousness of my NWTA pushed me into needing affection, care, and love. I am receiving it. This does not make the breaking necessary or good. I wish I had never broken in the way I did over the weekend. And yet it has cracked me open to receive compassion the likes of which I have never known.

"O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a redeemer," goes the refrain from the Catholic Easter Vigil. The happy fault of my breaking over the weekend has resulted in necessary small redeemers — small Christs that have tended to my wounds. I have been held, literally and figuratively, in a way I never have in my entire adult life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why, throughout history, brutal hardship has been seen as necessary for male initiation and bonding. What is it that makes these extremes seem so mandatory? I don’t know, and I’m not condoning it or giving apologia for it. I also cannot deny the consequences of my own accidental scarification: it has forced me to rely on men I love, bonded me to them, and helped me discover the limits of my strength. I'm not saying that any of this justifies the horror of my NWTA or its secrecy. I'm not saying that this makes it "worth it." I am simply saying that it is the way this story is being written.

Perhaps the biggest shift in me is a softening of my heart. When I was a leader in The Satanic Temple, I lived by these words from the Temple's invocation: "That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise." Good words, powerful words.

I am angry about my experience, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have been this angry in my entire life. Each time I’ve been this angry, I break things—big things.

But after all my work in my igroup, I find a new invocation forming, and it has shaped how I wrote the article and how I am interacting with the organization: "that which will not bend must soften, and that which can be destroyed by truth must be shown mercy."

I have been shown mercy by the men of MKP. They have tended to my wounds, graciously corrected my misstatements, and taken tangible steps to mitigate risk for men like me. That is all I ever wanted: mercy.

So, it’s time I put down my sword and offer mercy in return. I will still fight for change, and I will still pull no punches in criticizing imperfect systems. To me, mercy means offering my limited skills to make MKP safer, stronger, and more loving, and I know that I have already done so with the publication of these articles.

Coda

It is at this point that I have to direct your attention to the name of my Substack: Sacred Tension. That isn’t a poetic but meaningless phrase. It is a phrase that governs my life and, in particular, the stories I tell.

Critics want me to mercilessly tell a story about how the NWTA was all darkness. I judge that some of the brothers want to hear a story about how my pain was healthy or necessary.

As Doctor Who told his companion: “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things.”

The same is true of my NWTA and my experience of MKP as a whole. The good is not softening the bad things. The bad things are not spoiling the good things. The temptation with a story like this is to round it down to the worst parts and make that the whole of the experience. Or, conversely, to round up to the very best and let that be the whole. Neither of these stories is true. They coexist together.

So, am I glad I did the NWTA? Yes. Parts of the weekend were powerful, and I’m glad I experienced them. Do I regret that I did the NWTA? Yes. I went through so much unnecessary pain, and I continue to feel so much pain. Does the pain feel healthy or redemptive? No, not in itself. I wish it had never happened. But I will make it redemptive, because that is what a New Warrior does.

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But that’s just me. What do you think? I invite everyone — MKP members, leaders, and onlookers — to share your thoughts.

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