Grail Labyrinth

THE GRAIL EXPERIENCE – AND HOW I GOT THERE!

Firstly, I need to say that whenever I hear of these workshops going by names that seem to borrow from grand mythological themes, my ’sceptic meter’ immediately moves to the red zone.  They seem to suggest such high falutin’ themes that I wonder whether they can really have much to offer the average Joe just trying to find meaning beyond that offered by the consumer society of which I am part.  But ‘The Grail’!  Anything less than King Arthur and I would feel ripped off.

Yes, I did have a deep yearning for something other than what my life was offering at this time.  I have always struggled with emotional honesty and yes dammit – with the feminine itself.  The other half of the human race seemed to me to operate in the world by a set of rules that I did not only not understand, but were revised from moment to moment to suit their particular moods and whims.  I guess in the end the real pull for me to attend this event was the fact that my wife had done the sister event – The Gift  (almost Arthurian but this just scrapes through on the sceptic meter) – and was hinting strongly that she thought it would be good (there goes the feminine energy again!), and that she was now speaking with a different kind of language which seemed to offer the possibility that the decision could be mine to make without being wrong for deciding otherwise.  I hate this in a woman!  Giving a man real choice.

So I committed to the possibility of doing the event, but only if the work I had lined up which looked like it may overlap, cleared from the proposed dates, and that my best mate would come with me, and that my mother would write me a note allowing me to go.  I hate it when I dare the Universe in this way.  Sure as hell, no sooner the words were out of my mouth then the dates of my job moved perfectly to embrace the potential of The Grail, and my best mate affirmed he would come as a matter of trust in my judgement in this being an event worth putting out hard earned bucks for. Bugger!  (I was just joking about the note from my mother – really!)

Ah, but then I was offered another chance to prove that this was not the event for me.  For some reason I had assumed that when they were speaking of an event organised by the same people who organised The Gift, and that it was for men, men would run it.  But no, it was to be run by three women.  This was too much.  It was amazing how much self-righteous indignation I managed to muster.  I mean how dare women think they can dabble in men’s business, or that they would know the first thing about men’s emotional healing or sacred space.  Just cause they can see the shed from the house doesn’t mean they have any idea of the depth or meaning of any rituals performed within!   I kicked and bucked against this for some time, until a couple of men whom I respect and who had done the event shared with me that that they too had had this reaction, had gone anyway (something about following their intuition) and reflected to me that in both cases it had been one of the most powerful experiences of their lives.

Well now even the blokes were conspiring to take away my right to manly indignation.  So I relented, and signed up, albeit with a certain anxiety about what I was allowing myself to be cajoled into doing.

What was it like for me?  It was a struggle.  I brought into the space a lot of preconceptions and judgements of what I was seeing, hearing and experiencing.  Throughout the three days I found the security and arrogance of my beliefs slowly crumbling.  Somehow my rational brain couldn’t get a foothold.  These women of whom I had held such judgement (although I had never met them) not only held the space with grace and humility, but laid themselves on the line in a way that humbled me and lead me to realise that all of the mind games of resistance that I brought with me into the space, were nothing less than this – mind games!  And that what was really behind these beliefs was a lot of fear.  Eventually I surrendered to the experience, to discover that it was exactly as the men who had played the greatest role in getting me to The Grail, had suggested.  This was powerful stuff.

The struggle has gone on, and goes on.  This for me is to be human.  I have been to other Grail events since, and find that each time I discover another level of the construct I put on my existence being peeled away.  And ironically with my scepticism about women having any role in men’s space, I have through this work discovered a network of authentic men with whom I now share a deep connection.

I now know this work to be amongst the most powerful modalities of healing and community building around.  The Grail is as the title suggests – a vessel. (The sceptic meter now has no reaction what so ever).  It is a vessel in which I can immerse myself in sacred space and know that the only truth I can really know is my own.  There is so much permission in this for me. And this is something I had not known before doing this work.

So that’s how I got there, and I can unconditionally say that I feel, and have felt, deeply served by my connection to this work.