I'm Excited About the New Structure of My Men's Group
I'm Excited About the New Structure of My Men's Group
Sharing the new structure for Brothers of the Ever Innocent Heart
This post is addressed primarily to men (though anyone may find it valuable). If you’d prefer not to receive my posts for men, you can click ‘unsubscribe’ at the bottom and specifically unsubscribe from my ‘Brotherhood’ sub-newsletter.
Brothers,
I’m stoked about the evolution of Brothers of the Ever Innocent Heart.
So stoked that I want to share with all of you. : )
I’ve been receiving some deep inspiration in recent weeks guiding me toward a structural evolution of the brotherhood.
I just recorded this YouTube video to break it all down:
(Keep scrolling for a written summary.)
4-Month Initiatory Commitments
One of the new key structural aspects is something called…
4-month initiatory commitments.
Here’s how it works:
Every 4 months, the men have an opportunity to make a deep commitment to themselves and their brothers, for something they will create or do or accomplish in the next 4-month period.
The invitation is to choose something active that propels a man toward giving his gifts to the world, in the form of creating, leading, holding space, building, sharing, guiding, etc.
The invitation is to choose something that flows from the heart and soul.
Men are invited to choose something that they can reasonably accomplish, that resonates with the current stage of their path, and that has a clear deliverable or is easy to measure (or otherwise demonstrate as completed).
Men are also asked to set themselves an accountability consequence that they will complete if they do not follow through on completing their 4-month commitment.
For example, my 4-month commitment, starting May 1st, is this:
I hereby commit to publish on Amazon my upcoming book which is (almost certainly) titled Both, Neither, Far Beyond Either by the end of the 4 months (August 31st). If I don't do this, I will pay $50 to each of the guys in this group. I will prove I have published my book by sharing the Amazon link here in the group.
The 4-month commitments are flexible too, in that men can customize them to resonate with their current stage on their path. So, if a man is really deep in a healing process and is not feeling called to step into sharing his gifts with the world, he can choose a commitment that relates more to healing (e.g. meditate 2 hours per week or drink zero alcohol for 4 months). Or, if a man’s plate is really full, he can opt out of this aspect of the brotherhood entirely and just focus on the weekly 2-hour live sessions, which constitute the core pillar of the brotherhood. No one is forced to do this, though men are definitely strongly encouraged to participate.
I love this new addition to the structure of the brotherhood.
I feel it balances the brotherhood out in a beautiful way. Until now, the brotherhood has been predominantly focused on men doing deep healing work together: Showing up to share and listen from the heart with raw, real, vulnerable honesty, and holding one another in unconditional Love. This practice is incredibly powerful, and it remains at the very core of what the brotherhood is all about: Honesty and Love.
Yet, at a certain point on a man’s journey, he has to ask, “What is all this healing work *for*?”
Now, healing work has a great intrinsic value, in that it is simply immensely beautiful and worthwhile to bring Love to all of oneself and return to a felt sense of wholeness, harmony, spontaneous well-being, and self-appreciation.
Yet at a certain point, the Mature Man also realizes that he’s doing all this healing & awakening work so that he can lead and act and create and give his gifts in the world *from* this place of wholeness.
One could say that the Healer & Sage archetypes must be counterbalanced by the Warrior, King, & Creator archetypes.
Healing & awakening must be counterbalanced by heart-centered leading, acting, creating, & actualizing.
Once a man has received so much from Life & God on his healing & awakening journey, it is only natural to complete the cycle by giving back.
And so this is what I feel is accomplished by the implementation of the 4-Month Initiatory Commitments. They provide a clear structure that men can utilize to initiate into leadership & creatorship & the sharing of their gifts, while being supported and held accountable by their brothers.
Monthly Archetypal Themes
The other structural change that I’m excited about is…
Monthly archetypal themes.
Here’s what this means:
Starting in May, each month is going to have a theme based on an archetype that is relevant to the journey toward mature masculinity.
If you don’t know what archetypes are, here’s a quick definition from the ChatGPT AI:
“An archetype is a universal symbol, image, or pattern of thought that is present in the collective unconscious of all humans, regardless of culture or historical period. These archetypes represent fundamental human experiences, such as birth, death, love, power, and transformation, and are often expressed in myths, legends, literature, and art. Archetypes are believed to be innate and instinctual, and they can evoke strong emotions and associations in individuals. Examples of archetypes include the hero, the mother, the trickster, the wise old man, and the shadow.”
The concept of archetypes was pioneered and developed by Carl Jung in the early 20th century. The mythopoetic men’s movement has heavily revolved around archetypes for the past few decades since its inception. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover is perhaps the seminal text exploring the usefulness of archetypes within the context of the evolutionary journey toward mature masculinity.
Archetypes are essentially primordial, universal energy-blueprints of various dimensions & aspects of what it is to be a man & human being. As such, they’re extremely powerful lenses & mirrors to utilize in exploring oneself and discovering which aspects of oneself have been neglected, rejected, wounded, under-nourished, under-cultivated, or integrated in less-than-healthy or shadow-y ways. In making these discoveries, one can then take steps toward wisely & harmoniously integrating the full & healthy expression of all aspects, parts, and dimensions of oneself.
Here’s a list of some of the archetypes we are likely going to be exploring, in the approximate order we’ll be exploring them, in the coming months:
The Inner Child
The Warrior
The Creator
The Healer
The King
The Wild Man
The Lover
The Shadow
The Poet
The Father
The Inner Feminine
The Trickster
The Wealth-Builder
Starting in May, our first archetype month in the brotherhood is going to focus on the archetype of…
The Inner Child.
I’m really excited for this one. In our live weekly 2-hour circles, we’ll be doing different activities and exercises around inner-child work. Most notably, we’ll be doing ‘Dad Shares’ and ‘Mom Shares.’ I first experienced a version of this powerful practice in ARKA Brotherhood.
Essentially, men will be invited to interview their parents, and then to do deep-dive vulnerable shares on their relationship to their fathers and mothers. They’ll share about what it was like for each parent growing up, what it was like growing up as the son of each parent, how the relationship has evolved to the present, how they’d like to further heal/evolve it moving forward, and anything they wish each parent had said to them, that they never said. We’ll do the Dad Shares in the first part of the month, and the Mom Shares later in the month.
During each archetypally-themed month, men are also invited to lean into activities and practices that are associated with the monthly archetype. To explain more about what I mean, here is an excerpt from a communication I sent to the men in the brotherhood yesterday:
“For each archetypally-themed month, I encourage you to do at least a few things during that month that allow you to lean in to the given archetype. This can range from doing a couple easy and gentle things (if you've already got a lot on your plate), all the way up to designing a hardcore immersion or initiation in a given month around a particular archetype (e.g. maybe during Warrior month you really want to activate your Warrior, so you set yourself a hardcore schedule of self-discipline & physical training for that month).
So, feel into the kinds of activities you want to engage in during Inner Child Month to connect to your Inner Child, heal your Inner Child, and healthfully integrate your Inner Child. This might include things like Inner Child guided meditations, doing playful activities, dancing, singing, drawing, being creative, getting in nature, reading Harry Potter or other books you loved as a child, building a bonfire, running around outside, using your imagination, finding ways to laugh, being silly, writing letters to parents or family members, dialoguing with your Inner Child via meditation and journaling and asking it questions such as what it needs from you, building LEGOs, playing with action figures, and so on and so forth. The journaling exercise we did on Carl Jung's quote, "What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Therein lies the key to your earthly pursuits," should give you some great initial inspiration to go about discerning some activities to lean into.”
I’m really enthusiastic about the new archetypal structure.
I sense that it’s going to provide a greater sense of direction and structure to our journey, and that it will help us be truly comprehensive & holistic as we examine all dimensions of the journey toward mature, integrated masculinity.
Another cool aspect is that—assuming this structure feels right and we keep going with it long-term—the structure will be cyclical in nature, so we will eventually cycle back around and start over with the Inner Child, cycling through all the archetypes again and again over time. This enables men to join the brotherhood at any time as it unfolds ongoingly, and to be able to experience the full cycle regardless of where they start. It’s not essential to experience this structure in a particular order, and we will trust that a man will join at the karmically perfect moment for him, such that he experiences the archetypes in the order that suits him. Furthermore, if men remain in the brotherhood for years and reap the great benefits of a true long-term ‘slow roast’—which I encourage men to do!—they will get to upward-spiral back around and observe how they have grown and developed in relation to each archetype, since the last time they cycled past a given archetype.
I’m nerd-ing out about this, hahah. Seriously. I’m really excited and feel it’s going to be super potent. I’m looking forward to making archetypal AI art with Midjourney to share in the brotherhood in relation to some of the archetypes we’re exploring. ^_^
I’m also planning to link each archetype with one or more chakras, as I believe archetypes and chakras line up in fascinating ways and can be synergistically illuminating to examine in tandem within the context of healing, clearing, awakening, evolution, and integration.
Here I’ve gotta give a shoutout to Dane Tomas, whose 2017 book The Integrated Man was impactful for me and heavily inspired me in formulating this new structural element of the brotherhood. As mentioned previously, archetypes are big in Men’s Work and I’ve worked with them for years, but Dane was the first one I’ve seen who connected archetypes with chakras, and who heavily emphasized expanding beyond the King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover to work with other archetypes relevant to the journey toward integrated masculinity. Dane explores ~8 archetypes in his book, and I’ve integrated pieces of his maps while also expanding and innovating in my own ways.
My relationship with the work of Dane Tomas has at times felt complicated, as he’s a fairly controversial dude who does some edgy stuff in his containers. I’ve personally had intense experiences in his containers, some of which I would not recommend to most people, though I am grateful for the experiences and believe I’ve managed to integrate them healthfully. Like all of us, I believe Dane has his shadows, and I recommend approaching his work with discernment. That being said, I also believe Dane is a great seer and visionary genius; his work impacted me deeply and is part of me; and ultimately I find there is a certain humor and ‘poetic justice’ in the fact that, despite my at-times conflicted feelings about him, his book inspired me to make archetypes a bigger part of Brothers of the Ever Innocent Heart.
The Next Level
In sum, I believe these new elements of the brotherhood are going to take everything to the next level.
This really feels like a natural and powerful evolution of my unique form of Men’s Work.
My deep prayer is to maintain the core essence of the brotherhood, which has always been men gathering to share with Raw Honesty and hold one another in unconditional Love…
While also skillfully integrating these new elements that 1) give everything a well-rounded, holistic structure driving toward comprehensively integrated masculinity, and 2) call men forward to step into their creative leadership and share their gifts with the world.
It’s going to be epic! : )
So…
Brother.
(Yes, you, the one still reading, 2,000 words later.)
If this sparks something in you…
If you can sense the power of what is being activated here…
Join us.
NOW is an especially auspicious moment to do so.
May 1st is the date on which we are starting the archetypal structure with Inner Child Month and starting with the 4-Month Initiatory Commitments.
These coming months are about to be massively transformational for the brothers who really show up and lean in.
Presently I lead a weekly Sunday circle and a Tuesday circle. Both of them run from 5pm - 7pm Central European Time (10am - 12pm US Central Time). When you join the brotherhood, you choose to join one of these circles. Each circle has a few open spaces for new men. Monthly contribution is on a sliding scale from $111-222/month. The minimum time-commitment is 4 months.
You can learn more and apply here, or simply go ahead and schedule a free exploration call with me here:
Let’s be radically honest, brother.
If you read this entire post…
If you’re still reading now…
Something in you is calling you to this work.
This brotherhood is not another online video course that you buy and log into once.
This is a deep commitment to yourself and your fellow men to show up, week in and week out, for powerful LIVE sessions in which we do the work *together*.
This work is not some superfluous fluff or ‘just another program’ that you do and then forget about.
I view Men’s Work as essential medicine & training for modern men.
I see it as something that literally every guy on Earth would be wise to dive into at some point.
If you haven’t read my ‘101 Reasons Why You Need a Men’s Circle’ and ‘20 Ways Men’s Work Changed My Life,’ those posts can help you understand where I’m coming from.
This work has changed my life in deep and powerful ways, and continues to do so. I’m regularly blown away by the healing & transformational potency of what I witness in these spaces. It’s cathartic, inspiring, activating, initiatory.
It grounds you, humbles you, drops you into your heart, betters your relationships, improves your health, and catalyzes your leadership. It teaches you to be something rare to find in this world—a man of honor.
If that speaks to you, brother…
Love & Brotherhood,
Jordan Bates
Men’s Leadership Coach
