Sex. Passion, and Enlightenment: The Infomercial

There were some noticeably nervous men walking in the door at the beginning of the the free all day Warrior Sage workshop yesterday: many they had been dragged, threatened, cajoled, or sweet-talked into attending something they might not ordinarily and willingly attended without the threat or no sex for a year or impending alimony and child support payments.

And although I could almost hear them thinking, "WTF am I doing here?", almost all of them were singing a different tune at the end of the day.

But before I get into what I really liked about this workshop. let me touch on what I didn't. As I expressed in my previous entry, I was turned off by what I felt was a pretty tasteless web presentation that could have been geared to hawking Viagra tablets. The presentation was similar in that I couldn't get away from the sense that I was sitting in infomercial hell (If you act now, that price is only....).

The second thing was that Satyen Raja, the man I went to see, was no where to be seen. In fairness, the infomercials never said he would be, but they sure implied it! The workshop was facilitated by Gary and Deborah, a charming couple with lots of presence and energy, but I felt let down by not seeing Raja.

Now to the good stuff. The best part of the day was when some actual work began. The men and women were separated and off to do their own work. When the men were in their "cave" (actually a medium sized hotel meeting room with no chairs), Gary's tone noticeably shifted to a hyper-masculine mode. After talking a bit, Gary had us do a couple of exercises that helped the men both get in touch with their softer sides toward other men, and to define and challenge each other's purpose, with other's giving feedback. Pretty powerful stuff, designed to allow us to take ourselves off the relativistic cross the we've allowed ourselves to bear, through culture and our own confusion about what it means to be a 3rd stage man.

The women had been doing their own work, and when we came back together in a set up procession, the polarity between the men and women was incredibly high. The men were stronger, more capable of meeting these women on their own terms. empty, ready to be filled, and the women, more juicy and full than when we had left, and both, literally, melted into each others masculine and feminine with an almost indescribable richness. This is really good stuff!

My friend Brian, who also attended and is a member of SeattleIntegral's Core Group, and I talked later about how important we thought a men's group would be for SeattleIntegral. Warrior Sage has a local men's group, but you have to go through their actual 3-day workshop before you can join it, and we want to offer this work to the men of SI as soon as possible. 3rd stage/second tier men need to have other men meeting them, challenging them in a loving manner, and holding each other accountable.

An example of how you can lovingly hold your male friend accountable: "Dude, I love you you, but you need to get your ass off the couch and into the gym...."

You could never say that to your woman, but you could say, "God, it really turns me on when you come back from the gym and you're just glowing...."

So to all my men friends, in and out of SeattleIntegral, in spite of a pretty cheesy marketing program (which apparently works because there were over a hundred people there): "Dudes....get your ass to a Warrior Sage workshop and learn how to fully meet your woman or to call that woman into your life and stop screwing around in the dark around your relationships."

Besides.......there are some really juicy women there!

And to my female friends, if you're single, these guys that attend are doing the work...and if you're already in relationship, this will greatly improve that relationship.

Two thumbs up to Warrior Sage for doing great and really important work.