Initiated Men

Part 42

THE WOMB

After dinner than evening, we sat on special blankets that Ben had brought. They were small—two feet by three feet or so—and hand woven by his grandmother, he said. We didn’t sit directly across from one another but rather slightly out of line—still facing one another but at an angle. I initially sat cross-legged, as did Ben, grateful to still have some flexibility after not doing yoga for a few months.

Ben had said nothing about what we were to do or expect or experience. It wasn’t like the sweat lodge, where he’d described every step and possible sensation in advance and done everything he could to reassure me. I had the sense he had no idea what he was going to do tonight, because he’d never done anything like this—not even as a participant.

When it was finally completely dark, we began. He sat with his eyes closed, a small hand drum that he’d fetched from his trailer at the last minute resting in his lap. I looked up, staring into the dome of stars visible through the stone-ringed pupil of sky within the darkness. Even if we did absolutely nothing but sit here for an hour, it would be an hour unlike any other in my life.

I let the starlight bathe my thoughts for a while, and then I, too, closed my eyes with my face still lifted to the sky. As usual, I studied the display on the insides of my eyelids—surprised to find color and movement since it was dark beyond them—and listened. There was absolutely nothing to hear. Even the crickets that I’d heard earlier in the evening were now silent, as if they, too, were waiting.

I took long, slow breaths, imagining the atoms comprising my body dissipating into the darkness and becoming dancing motes of dust in the starlight. This body, this vehicle I traveled around in, had little to do with the deep nature of my mind. Of course, my brain controlled the mechanics of my body, but mostly without my awareness. My body was a dwelling that my spirit inhabited and, like any construct, it would degrade over time. It was degrading now, in this moment. My body was degrading, and my mind was changing too, but not degrading. No, quite the opposite. I felt my mind expanding and losing its boundaries. I’d felt this ever since I’d gone to the sacred mountains.

Something nudged me to bring my grandmother into my thoughts. My eyes snapped open, and I felt my gut clench. She was the last person I wanted in my mind now…but I knew that until I no longer felt hatred for her, my heart’s options were limited. She was just a mean, ignorant woman I happened to be related to, whom I saw maybe a dozen times in my life before she passed at age 58. I was only nine at the time, and I never heard what she died of. I remember being not just relieved but jubilant when I heard the news, although I didn’t reveal this to my parents in any way, of course. I had no response when they told me, but they figured a child my age wouldn’t even know what death was, so they thought nothing of my lack of reaction. It seemed to me a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders, because the one person who knew how evil I was had left the world. I was free…or so I thought.

Or so I thought—until puberty. I’ve heard the Buddhists talk of hell realms and, although I don’t know what they mean by a hell realm, I’d certainly consider puberty to be one of them. For me—and others I’ve spoken to—the teenage years were a prolonged period of particularly sinister mental illness. Certain deranged people submit to the voices in their heads, whereas teenagers submit to the will of their hormones. It’s like some sort of medieval curse. Hormones torment us with fantasies and drive us to pursue our desires only to torture and humiliate us—even if we aren’t discovered jerking off by our grandmother.

All right, Grandma, come on in. Let’s have this out.

With this silent invitation, a low murmur emanated from Ben, which built slowly into a moan and then a chant. He’d rarely made a sound in the sweat lodge, so this surprised me.

Without moving my head, I shifted my gaze to Ben, illumined and almost ghostly in the starlight. His eyes were still closed, the drum remained in the knot of his legs with his hands resting atop it, and he seemed something other than himself. I’d always known him as taciturn and even shy, and now his soul was expanding before my eyes.

He chanted in a soothing, mellifluous bass in what was probably Diné Bizaad, but I didn’t recall having heard the melody sung by anyone in the sweat lodge. I closed my eyes again and reclined into the beauty of the sound—which two crickets, one on each side of us, soon joined with their pulsing song.

Ben sang for what seemed a long while—the same melody and what sounded like the same words over and over, conveying a sense of pleading or insistence, but it may have been a prayer of gratitude. Indeed, the emotion in his voice was that of surrender, not desire. Funny I was able to detect that.

Eventually, the singing grew softer, almost a whisper, and then he stopped. The crickets, as if on cue, stopped a few seconds later, both at once. My eyes were still closed, and the silence was profound.

After maybe a minute, Ben began speaking in a voice not his own.

Oh, my beloved sons, all the beloved sons. You are here to become men—at last. Thank you for your gesture, for which the spirits rejoice, the earth rejoices, the mothers rejoice, the Beloved Women rejoice, your great-great-grandchildren—who wish to be born but may never be—rejoice. You are the only hope, the seeds of redemption—if it isn’t too late. We in this realm are eternal but not omniscient. The world is a weaving with no pattern. You are the thread and the weaver.

We wish to tell you this: The divine female is the sustainer, and the divine male is the savior. Or, more accurately—since your spirit has no gender—the feminine will endure if the masculine protects it. This is the balance, this is the harmony, this is the only way the planet survives. So simple, but it has evaded us—the brothers and fathers and sons, the crippled masculine—for eons, even though the divine masculine resides within all.

But, of course, you believe you are only two young men—one wounded by the action of the female and the other by the silence of the male. By a female and a male, not the feminine or the masculine. By a shape of body, of purpose, and because of their own wounding. We must stop this wounding. You must.

Without knowing why, I was weeping. Again. First, the sweat lodge, and now here, in the dark in the middle of a rock womb on an Indian reservation in Arizona, in front of a man I barely knew.

I felt something welling up from my gut into my throat and, without thinking, I said, “I need to be healed.”

“We are here for healing,” replied Ben. It was his voice but different, from a deeper part of himself.

“I hate my grandmother,” I said, the words feeling like hot poison spewing from my mouth, “and, maybe, I don’t like women, or I don’t trust them. Because of what my grandmother did.”

“I have failed my father,” said Ben in entirely his own voice, and I heard his breathing grow faster as he struggled with his feelings. Then Ben began to sob, and I could feel his shame, a shame as deep as my own but of an entirely different origin.

My own eyes then became dry with grief—that parched desert of searing pain. The grief of the soul’s ruination by that cheap, artificial, other-induced travesty of authentic emotion—shame. I knew I had no reason to feel it, and yet it ruled me, still. I remained that little boy, terrified someone would discover I was a sexual being aware of his own sexuality. That was the devil of it—that I knew I was a sexual creature. That old original sin. It was almost laughable to think of myself as the victim of it. But I felt I no longer needed to be, and my liberation was at hand.

I waited to see what we should do next.

Ben wept quietly for another minute, and then he was silent. I opened my eyes just long enough to see he was still sitting as before, but he’d moved the drum, and it rested beside him. He hung his head.

Seeing him in such agony, I had an overpowering urge to embrace him, as one would embrace a distraught child. But I knew this wasn’t appropriate, in the sense that he needed to go through this, as awful as it was and as helpless as we both felt. So, I closed my eyes again and embraced him with my intention that he find peace in the truth of his nature.

After another minute, he said, “We must heal ourselves, brother. We can do this, even without the guidance of an elder. We can do this because we are kind men, and our kindness is strength. Together, we can speak with your grandmother and my father in the spirit world, and they will tell us what to do. Together they will help us, and all men.”

“Ahó,” I said, feeling the power of the affirmation expand in my chest.

“Joseph,” said Ben.

I didn’t know if he was addressing his father or me, so I opened my eyes. He was looking at me.

“Do you feel all right about asking your grandmother to join us?”

I let myself feel my response before I spoke it. I felt fear and something like nausea but also an urgency to put this behind me. “Yes,” I said.

“We’ll sit until you feel ready to ask her. Just say her name, and request that she join us.”

I took a deep breath and thought of my father’s mother. Alice. Alice the divorcee. Nobody uses such a word anymore, but in my family, it was almost like calling a woman a slut. If a man divorced his wife, it meant she did something to displease him. When I was old enough to understand what it meant to be divorced, I was certain my grandmother deserved to have my grandfather leave her, and I felt glad if she suffered for being a divorcee. Of course, now I saw that was wrong, but it didn’t change how I felt about the pain she caused me. I clenched my fists, took a breath, and said, “Grandma Alice, please come and be with us.”

I had no idea how I’d know if she was with us. Would she speak through Ben? I hoped not. I wouldn’t want her spirit tarnishing that of my benevolent friend.

We waited. I glanced around, thinking I might see a vapor or even a ghostly form of my dreaded ancestor, but I noticed nothing.

You are my beloved.

It was a voice that wasn’t Ben’s speaking through him again. This, of course, didn’t sound like something my grandmother would say. But she was a spirit now, so she might have changed.

“You kept me from becoming a man,” I blurted without thinking.

I did. I have no excuse. It was wicked of me.

Now, this does sound like my grandmother—self-righteous and at the same time denying the gravity of what she’d done.

“Then fix it!” I demanded.

The man with us can do that.

“He says you must, or, at least, you must help…us.”

I don’t know—

“You’ve ruined my whole life!” I shouted. “Don’t you get that? My whole life. You did.”

What does it mean to be a man?

This was spoken in the voice that had come through Ben before. It sounded like a male talking, but I don’t know why I thought that, except I felt it was sincere, and it didn’t enrage me.

“My father,” murmured Ben.

I had no idea how to answer that question, and I said so.

Yes, you do. Be still, and the answer will come to you. It will come to both of you. There’s no rush.

Ben and I gazed at one another, although all I could see of his face was the glint of starlight in his eyes. He nodded slightly, picked up the drum, and began to tap it lightly with two fingers in the rhythm of a heartbeat. To create a sacred space.

Initiated Men is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback versions here.