forgotten animals
speak to me
in forgotten languages
forever preserved
in forgotten dreams.

(PDF version)

Today’s poem, “easter”, is from part seven (“hints of daylight”) of Iron Man Family Outing, and is one of the final poems in the book.

The dream recounted in this poem was a real breakthrough for me in the course of what has proven to be a journey of many years toward greater reconciliation with my experience of my father and a more complete comprehension of who he is (and was) as a human being, with his own fears, failures, dreams, and disappointments.

In the years since this dream came to me, I’ve gradually worked my way to a deeper, fuller appreciation and understanding of the circumstances of my father’s life, which has helped me heal myself in relation to my inner father, the father I internalized as a child and carry with me at all times. But my relationship with my outer father, the man himself, has never improved, and I don’t believe it ever will.

This is a paradox I hadn’t expected. I would have thought that being able to see my father’s life through his eyes, as best I could, would have gone a long way toward improving the relationship between us, but I finally realized that a deeper empathy and understanding for him on my part did not imply the same from him for me. Ultimately, I had to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t going to change, nor was his treatment of me going to change, no matter what I did or how I transformed my view of him and his life. At that point, I knew my outer relationship with him was over. But my work on the inner relationship continues, as I expect it will for the rest of my life.

As I wrote at the conclusion of “broken bones and the father wound”:

… his life continues to influence mine, even across the distance of time and space, in ways both obvious and mysterious, as I continue to work toward resolution and completion of my relationship with him, that distant point on the inner horizon of my psyche toward which I am always aiming and always moving, but may never reach.

For more poetry on video, visit my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/rickbeldenpoet.

Today’s poem, “gift”, is from part four (“iron man dreams”) of Iron Man Family Outing.

The full title of today’s poem is “gift (iron man dream #3)”. The Iron Man Family Outing project began for me with a series of dreams in which the character of Iron Man recurred in various forms over a period of well over a year. I didn’t keep count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I had up to one hundred of these Iron Man dreams. Eleven of them (including “gift”) are written up as poems in part four of Iron Man Family Outing, and one of those eleven dreams, “curiosity shop (iron man dream #2)”, is the source of the book’s title. There are also bits and pieces from other Iron Man dreams that appear throughout the book.

For a more thorough exploration of my history and relationship with the Iron Man character and mythology, and how they led me to the creation of Iron Man Family Outing, please read my article entitled “My Life with Iron Man”.

For more poetry on video, visit my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/rickbeldenpoet.

he looked so old
I could see he wasn’t feeling well
when I asked how he was doing
he told me
I want to go home
to my home
I knew he meant his little house in the north
2000 miles from here
the one where he’d lived
since he and my mom divorced.

he said
I’ll take the bus
and I said
no
let me drive you
just tell me when you’re ready
but when I wasn’t looking
he snuck out to walk to the bus station
to take that long ride home
alone.

I wanted to do something for him
I thought this might be my last chance
but he wouldn’t have it
maybe it was pride
maybe something else
but whatever the reason
he wouldn’t
and I sat sobbing silently
alone.

now my drinking cup is cracked
and the small white plate
that’s held my food every day
since I left home at nineteen
to get away from him
falls to pieces in my hands.

(PDF version)

my dreams float
just below the surface of consciousness
like ice floes
drifting out to sea.

invisible as gravity
insatiable as imagination
they are the wings that hold me to this earth
they can take me anywhere
but they always bring me home.

I’ve written previously about the essential part that dreams and dreamwork played in the genesis and development of my first book, Iron Man Family Outing. Dreams are such a rich source of information. They often express and correspond to major awakenings in our lives. Today I’d like to share some of the basic ideas and strategies I’ve learned in working with my dreams over the last twenty years.

Recall and Record
The first step in working with any dream is to remember it. One of the best ways to encourage and improve your dream recall is to make a habit of recording whatever you remember from your dreams in whatever way is best for you, whether it’s writing, making a voice recording, or doing some artwork. Your record of the dream doesn’t have to be polished and perfect; the point is to capture the important elements and flow of the dream, as well as your own experience as the dreamer, as best you can.

Some folks have a hard time remembering their dreams. They may say “I never have any dreams” or “I have dreams but I can’t remember anything.” But in my experience, there’s always something you can use as a starting point, even when you’re certain there isn’t. You may wake up with a feeling, an impression, or an image in your mind. You may awaken with a vague recollection of a person, a place, or just a word that came to you while you slept. That is your starting point for working with your dreams. Record it somehow. If you do just that much, consistently, you’ll notice that your dream recall begins to improve and you’ll find that you can remember much more than you thought you could.

It’s best if you can record something from your dreams, even if it’s just a few words or sentences, as soon as possible after waking up, while the information is still fresh and easily accessible to your waking mind. For many of us, finding that kind of time in the morning is a real challenge. But even a few minutes of recording basic information, if practiced consistently, can improve your dream recall significantly and put you in a position to return to the dream later in the day if you choose.

Deepen your understanding
Here are two suggestions, based on my experience working with my own dreams, that may help bring you closer to your dreams and deepen your understanding of them:

1. Give each dream a title. This will be, in essence, its name. Naming things is important. Can you imagine a child, or a pet, or a movie without a name?

2. If you’re making a verbal record your dreams (either written or audio), do so in the present tense. This is a good technique for keeping your dream alive. It draws you back into the experience and activates your memory of additional details, both as you’re writing/recording it and later on when you read/hear it.

Every element (person, place, and thing) in every dream is alive and has knowledge and a point of view. Some elements are more articulate, are more complex in nature, and have more to say than others. But nothing in any dream is merely an object without consciousness. One way to gain a better understanding of a dream is record the dream from the perspective of one of the other players in the dream, i.e., someone or something other than yourself.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve just had a scary nightmare about being chased through the forest by a wolf. You’ve written out a recap of the dream but you’re still freaked out and having difficulty understanding what it’s all about. You could try re-recording the dream from the perspective of the wolf. Write in present tense and give that version of the dream its own title. You can do the same thing from the perspective of anything in the dream: the trees, the sky, the other animals in the forest, etc. If you let these elements of your dream speak for themselves, you will gain new insights you never expected.

I purposefully chose a scary dream scenario with a threatening character for this example because I’ve learned that the things that seem the scariest, the most threatening, and the most negative in my dreams often actually carry, contain, or embody useful information that I very much need. So there may be times when it is useful, before chasing that monster away, to ask it, “Who are you? Why are you here?” It may have a story to tell you that you never expected to hear, and a gift for you that you never expected to receive and didn’t even know you needed.

Learn your own language
I don’t trust dream dictionaries and have not found them helpful. They tend to be too general, too specific to someone else’s experience, or both. They also tend to take you out of the moment and cause you to doubt your own experience as the dreamer.

The language of your dreams is unique to you, but it has basic features that are common for all of us. Each dream is composed of numerous elements (people, places, things), and each element is composed of one or more (often all) of the following aspects:

* universal (shared) aspects, which are often referred to as archetypal
* cultural aspects (also shared), which are specific to a group time and place
* personal aspects, which are yours and yours alone
* contextual aspects, which are the product of a specific time and place in your life

At best, a dream dictionary might provide some information about the universal aspect of a dream element, but no element in your dream, or anyone else’s, can be reduced to a single aspect without losing most of its meaning.

Dreams are so powerful, so rich, and so subtle, and they carry so many layers of meaning that they can be interpreted and understood in any number of ways. I don’t know if it’s possible to achieve a 100% understanding of any dream, and sometimes immediate understanding is not possible. I’ve learned that there are some dreams I just have to sit with for months or years before I understand what was being said to me. Some I never understand, regardless of how much time and effort I put into trying. I’ve come to the conclusion that some dreams are not meant to be understood, nor do they require it. They simply are.

Learn to listen
Dreamwork is about listening. It’s about forming a relationship with the sleeping part of yourself. When you listen consistently and honor what you are given, that relationship will deepen and you will be given more. And that sleeping part of you will begin to speak to you in your waking life more and more, and you will begin to know, more and more, who you really are.

Focus on what matters most
As your dream recall improves, you may begin to receive far more information than you feel capable of handling. You may find yourself having multiple dreams in one night, very long dreams, or dreams filled with an abundance of detail. You may even experience all of these scenarios in combination. This is a classic example of a good problem to have, but can also lead rather quickly to feelings of being overwhelmed, intimidated, and paralyzed by information overload.

If you find yourself in a too much information situation, you’ll have to make some choices. It’s a bit like fishing; you have to decide what to keep and what to let go. So how do you go about separating the big fish from the little fish in your dream life?

One of the most reliable indicators of a big fish is a recurring dream or a series of dreams with recurring themes, characters, locales, etc. A recurring dream scenario is a big bright flare being fired into the sky to get your attention, and certainly warrants high priority in your dreamwork.

Sizing the other fish is a bit more complicated and takes practice. Some dreams will simply feel more significant than others, but even in those cases, some editing may be required to avoid losing your focus in a maze of details and sidetracks, however intriguing they all may be. You may find it helpful to develop some dreamwork shorthand techniques, such as setting a limit on the length of your narrative for the dream (e.g., one paragraph, three sentences, etc.) as a way to contain the dream and keep your focus tight. Another approach worth exploring is the use of poetry and poetic language, which can be a very efficient way to capture the most significant narrative details as well as the deeper information (feelings, imaginative elements, etc.) present in a dream.

Still, no matter what approaches you use, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have to let some of your dreams go, if only because of the ongoing demands of waking life. However, it’s been my experience that important information communicated to me by my dreams will be restated over and over, often in different ways, until I get it. So if you lose a big fish now and then, don’t worry. It’ll probably keep nibbling at your line until you reel it in.

Learn processes and techniques
Processes and techniques developed and documented by others can be a valuable source of assistance in your dreamwork practice. But bear in mind that not every process and technique works well (or at all) for every person. Your own experience will be the best measure of whether a given approach works well for you and is worth continuing, or not.

With that caveat in mind, here are a few reading suggestions that may help you progress in your dreamwork:

* Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A. Johnson
* Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill: Using Dreams to Tap the Wisdom of the Unconscious by Jeremy Taylor
* Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams by Eugene Gendlin
* A Little Course in Dreams by Robert Bosnak

Work with others
One of the best ways to expand and enhance your experience and understanding of your dreams is to work with others. The assistance of a knowledgeable dreamwork guide can be a powerful catalyst in the development of your personal practice and help you reach new levels of understanding and appreciation of the information you’re receiving on a nightly basis.

Group dreamwork is another approach that can accelerate and deepen your insight into your dreams, as well as giving you the opportunity to help others improve their understanding of the dreams they share, and to learn from them.

Have fun and enjoy the ride
Dreams are a tremendous source of wonder, inspiration, and insight. They provide us with a nightly connection to the ongoing, transcendent mystery of life and being that is at the core of every human experience. Whether we’re aware of our dreams or not, they’re always with us, every day and every night, giving us hints into the underlying truths that lie just below the surface of our everyday existence. They can take us anywhere, but they always bring us home. So when you’re working with your dreams, however you choose to go about it, don’t forget to have fun and enjoy the ride.

“This memorable and occasionally haunting book of poetry is less about art and more about sharing and integrating the experience of growing up as a man. It gives words to men that we have not had before. It is graphic and real. It doesn’t pull punches. This is not your momma’s book of poetry. But it is just what you might need if you are a man who is looking for an example of how to come alive!

“This book is twenty years ahead of its time. That is to say that, on its 20th anniversary, it is very timely today for a male gender that is starting to claim a deeper way of life. I have used this book for my own growth and in my therapy work with men who are looking to live more fully. Rick shines the light on the path. Now it is for us to walk it.”

There’s no way I can possibly express how much it means to me to see a response like this to my work, twenty years down the line. For the better part of those twenty years, the majority of the 2000 copies of Iron Man Family Outing printed in October 1990 remained packed in their original boxes, the casualties of a publication deal gone wrong, stacked like bricks in one closet after another as I moved from place to place to place.

I’d felt the work very deeply while writing Iron Man Family Outing, and my conviction that it had value for others was also deeply felt, but I could find no place for it out in the world. I felt haunted by all those boxes of unused, unread books that were always with me, and in the spring of 2006, after more than fifteen years of trying and failing to find a solution, I finally decided to scrap them. I just couldn’t bear the thought of holding on to them for the rest of my life, and then leaving it up to someone else to dispose of them after I was gone. I made them, I was responsible for them, and I honestly felt that there were no other reasonable options left, so I began the process of breaking them down, one book at a time, and recycling the paper.

I knew this task was too big, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically, for me to take it on all at once, so I made a commitment to scrap one book a day until they were all gone. Every evening, I pulled one book out of its box in the closet, removed the front and back covers, and tore out all the pages until nothing was left but the spine. Then I tossed all of the pieces into the recycling bin.

I’m not sure how long this went on; probably for about a month or so. At some point during that time, I happened to be standing in the front yard outside my home when the biweekly recycling pickup at the curb took place. As the recycling truck drove away carrying the remains of the books I’d scrapped during the previous two weeks, I saw one of the trashmen riding in the back pick up one of the detached front covers and give it an interested look as some of the torn-out pages swirled around him in the wind. It was a surreal, painful moment for me as I watched my long-ignored work finally catching someone’s interest while its remains blew around him in circles in the back of a trash truck.

This process of scrapping books, one book a day, could have gone on for quite a long time. I was convinced that I was doing the right thing, that I was doing what was necessary to move on from what I saw as my greatest disappointment in life, and painful as it was, I had no intention of stopping. But something completely unexpected happened: I had a dream, a dream that told me, in no uncertain terms, that I should not continue to scrap the books. And so I stopped.

I didn’t know then why I was supposed to stop, but the information in the dream was completely unambiguous, so I did. Eighteen months later, to my complete surprise, Iron Man Family Outing was reborn. Looking back, I can see how absolutely fitting it was, given the genesis of the book’s development in my dreams, that it would be rescued, quite literally, by a dream. I’m just glad I was still listening after all that time.

I sometimes regret scrapping those books and wish I hadn’t had to do it, but I think it was necessary. It’s hard for me to say exactly why. The best theory I have is that I had to let go of all my prior long-held needs and expectations for the book in order for it to become what it was supposed to be, and that I had to sacrifice a little part of it to do so. I had to give up hope to make way for the truth. But even in doing that, I kept my original promise to myself to see the project through to the end, even if it meant tearing up every remaining copy myself with my own hands. I think this was the key. I gave up my hope, but I never gave up my responsibility to the work and to what I had created.

Twenty years is a long time to stick with anything. Earlier this week, a reader wrote to me and said he admired what he characterized as my “perseverance and dedication,” and that sure felt good. But I also know that there’s more to it than that. This project, this process, has always had its own schedule and its own life, and my role has always been to serve the process rather than to drive it. This is trickier than it might sound. When I forget my role in the process, when I try to put my own desires and expectations ahead of the process and the work, I’m only getting in the way and causing myself all kinds of unnecessary trouble. Letting go, being present, being patient, and waiting for direction may sound like “soft” work, but it’s some of the hardest work I know.

Hard, frustrating, disappointing, painful, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, lonely … yes, the last twenty years with Iron Man Family Outing been all of that and more, at times. But not for nothing. Every time I hear from a reader who’s found my book helpful, I feel a little freer because I know I’ve helped someone else feel a little freer. I know I’m not alone in this work, as do they. I liberate myself by helping others liberate themselves. Any sacrifice I make comes back to me a thousandfold as I see one more ugly little shard of my past transformed into something beautiful and life-affirming. That is reason enough to have hung in there with this work for the past twenty years, and to stay on the path it’s shown me, that long, crooked, and sometimes broken path, for as long as it continues to unfold before me.

Iron Man and I go way back. I think I can reasonably say that he actually saved my life, twice as a matter of fact: once when I was a child, and again when I was a man in my early thirties. More on that in a bit.

I still remember the first Iron Man comic I bought: Tales of Suspense #93, published in September 1967. This issue featured a battle between Iron Man and one of his chief nemeses at the time, a much larger armored counterpart from the Soviet Union named Titanium Man. The cover of the comic book showed Iron Man and Titanium Man facing off against one another inside a long, claustrophobic metal tunnel with the caption “POWER vs. POWER!” I was nine-going-on-ten and from the moment I saw that cover, Superman and Batman were old news to me. I was hooked on Iron Man.

One of my uncles, who was six or seven years older than me, had quite a comic book collection at that time and was more than happy to let me dig around in it, as he’d already moved on to James Bond movies, cars, and girls. He had a few of the older Iron Man comic books, not all of them, but enough for me to become even more intrigued as I saw the progression of the Iron Man armor from the original, which looked something like a gray cast-iron wood stove, to a slightly less clunky golden version, to the familiar red-and-gold armor I recognized. Along the way, his helmet and face mask also changed several times, as did his power source and the array of features and weaponry built into the armor.

I also learned about his other identity, Tony Stark: inventor, industrialist, arms merchant, millionaire, playboy. And I learned about why he built the Iron Man armor, why he needed to continue to wear it, how it changed him, what it gave him, and what it cost him. I identified with this man who was brilliant but deeply injured inside, who built layers of protection and defense around himself so that he could deal with external threats, and who hid his true face behind the frozen expression of a metal mask. Tony Stark’s heart was wounded and so was mine, his from the fragments of a bomb that nearly killed him and mine from an angry, abusive, emotionally distant father, a ferocious giant who was my own “Titanium Man.”

I was in desperate need of some sort of positive masculine figure, even a fictional one, to help me cope with the difficulties of my life, and Iron Man came along just in time. I read my Iron Man comics. I played and pretended and fantasized. I wanted to be Iron Man. I needed to be. He saved my life by showing me that I could use my own ingenuity to protect myself, to armor myself up (psychologically, emotionally, and physically), to hide my vulnerabilities, and to survive. In the process, I internalized Iron Man and his qualities in ways I couldn’t begin to understand at the time.

As I moved into my teens, I abandoned the comic books and moved on to other interests, much like my uncle before me. I gave my comics away to younger cousins and forgot about Iron Man. But my armor was still in place, and I continued to add new layers to it during my late teens and throughout my twenties as life brought more painful experiences, rejections, and disappointments that I lacked the skills to handle with any real effectiveness.

Just before my 29th birthday, a woman for whom I cared deeply betrayed my trust with another man and broke my heart worse than it had ever been broken before (which was quite an accomplishment for any woman, given my history up to that point). Nothing I knew how to do for myself could reduce, or even manage, the pain I felt. At that point, I decided to break one the biggest taboos in my family of origin: I decided to seek help.

Not long after making that decision, I found myself working with an innovative counselor who used some very dynamic emotional release techniques. As my work with him progressed, emotional and psychological pathways began to open in me that had been closed down for a long time. One result of this opening was that I started dreaming prolifically. That was unexpected, and what was even more unexpected was that I began to have recurring dreams involving the Iron Man character that I loved so much as a child.

Initially, as a man moving into his thirties, I felt more than a little silly dreaming about a comic book character from my youth. But the dreams continued anyway, regardless of how I felt about them, and as time went on, I was more and more urgently compelled to understand why Iron Man had reentered my life. I found a guide who could help me work with my Iron Man dreams, to help me try to understand what they were all about and what I was being told. The assistance I received was critically important in helping me improve my understanding, but I knew I needed to do more. I found myself drawn to go out and find the old comic books I had when I was a kid. I bought Iron Man action figures. I made Iron Man collages. I worked and (perhaps more importantly) played with the image and the mythology of the character in every way that I could.

The result of all this activity was another surprise: my first book, Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood, in which I wrote for the first time about the childhood experiences that originally drew me to Iron Man, the effects of those childhood experiences on my life as a young man, and my efforts to develop a greater understanding of myself and take a greater responsibility for my own life and my own healing. At the center of the book were a number of my Iron Man dreams, those initially inscrutable messages from deep within my psyche that had proven to be the keys to finding myself and saving my own life. For the second time, Iron Man had saved me.

At the time I did this work, there was no Iron Man movie. The character was very obscure and my relationship with him felt very personal, very special, and very intimate. I usually had to explain who Iron Man was when I spoke about my experience with him to anyone. Things have certainly changed. Just about everybody has at least some idea of who Iron Man is now.

I’m glad that I had Iron Man to myself, so to speak, when I was dreaming about him. I’m glad that I had to put some time and effort into finding those old comic books and, if I was very lucky, even the occasional action figure. My process and my relationship with Iron Man were driven completely from within, from within my own memories, my own body, my own history, and my own unconscious. There was almost no external source of information to mediate, influence, or alter what I was being given from those mysterious sources deep within me. It was a very pure experience in that respect, as I believe it needed to be.

Given my extensive history with Iron Man, the news that the long-rumored and perpetually-delayed movie based on the character was finally coming was a matter of great personal interest to me, not simply as an exercise in escapist fantasy and entertainment, but as a filmic actualization of internal mythology and personal archetype. I followed all the media updates, starting in summer 2007, and was understandably eager to see the movie when it arrived in theaters in May 2008.

For the most part, I was pleased. Although the timeframe of the origin story had been modified and several storylines had been compressed in order to work within the constraints of a two-hour movie, Iron Man was still a very faithful adaptation that retained all of the original archetypal elements that captivated my imagination as a youngster. Robert Downey, Jr. was the perfect choice to play Tony Stark, completely believable at every step of Stark’s transformation from a careless hedonist who takes nothing seriously to a man who finally understands his path and his purpose in life. Iron Man even battled a much larger armored counterpart in the finale, just as he did in the very first Iron Man comic I bought as a child.

Still, the Iron Man in the movie didn’t feel like my Iron Man, and of course, it wasn’t. I can’t say I was surprised by this. I’d spent an enormous amount of time with that character and the associated mythology over many years, gone very deep with it, and alchemized it into something that’s totally personal and unique to me. It would have been ridiculous for me to expect any movie, no matter how well done, to match that.

Nevertheless, taken on its own terms the Iron Man movie has plenty to offer those who are interested in how certain aspects of masculinity and the male experience are expressed and represented on film, and I hope my review at Masculinity-Movies.com provides readers with some useful insights about some of the deeper themes found in the movie.

Iron Man is no longer front and center in my life in the way he once was. He very seldom comes to me in my dreams now. The old comics, action figures, and collages from the time I spent with him in my early thirties are packed away in a box in my closet, keepsakes of another time in my life. I won’t be giving them away this time.

But the Iron Man who first came to me when I was an emotionally and psychologically wounded boy who needed a hero and a role model, and then reappeared twenty years later when I was a confused, distressed young man who’d forgotten who he was and could be, is still at work in my life and in the lives of others. He lives on in the book I was inspired to write by my dreams about him, and he comes to life in a new way in the mind and heart of every person who reads my story. Most of all, he lives on in me, because I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him.

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

- Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

I’ve been following the Deepwater Horizon disaster with increasing feelings of dread, sadness, and horror as the oil continues to pour into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico with no viable plan on the part of BP, the US government, or any other party for stopping it. Even if the flow of oil was stopped today, the damage that’s already been done is incalculable, and I have yet to see any comprehensive plan from any party for dealing with that either. Every attempt by BP to address the blowout at the wellhead has failed miserably, and the US government is completely paralyzed from the top down at the worst possible time as the entire ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, and all of the associated man-made systems that are directly reliant upon it, are put to their death before our very eyes. If the oil moves up the East Coast and into the North Atlantic, as some have predicted, or even more likely, if one or more severe hurricanes enter the Gulf this summer, the catastrophe could increase exponentially in scale as well as scope.

Those are some of the physical realities and consequences of the situation, but I also find myself compelled to consider the Deepwater disaster metaphorically, as a collective waking dream. In my interpretation of this group dream, the water of the Gulf represents the collective American unconscious, and the oil thousands of feet below the surface the collective American shadow. That shadow, which had previously been controlled and contained, is now gushing upward through the collective unconscious, permeating every level as it makes its way to the surface, to consciousness. This powerful mass of psychic energy, this collective shadow, can no longer be denied. It must be seen and addressed, in its purest and rawest form, and we must reevaluate our relationship with it, and deal with the consequences of our failure to do so properly in the past.

The corporate and political gods in America have been tapping and channeling our collective shadow for decades now, packaging it, marketing it, selling it, and using it to manipulate our deepest desires and our worst fears for their own gain, a process that has been greatly intensified in the nearly nine years since 9/11 allegedly “changed everything.” But playing with, and preying upon, the collective shadow of a people is a dangerous game. The line between controlling such a mass shadow for one’s own ends and turning it loose is fine indeed, and once it’s been turned loose, the illusion of controlling it is laid bare and the damage to the culture, its people, and all related systems (environmental, material, etc.) is inevitably and inexorably severe, as numerous examples throughout centuries of human history have amply demonstrated.

Every group of human beings, whether a family, a business, a political group, or an entire culture, has a shadow, just as every individual does. And just as in the case of an individual, the long-term health and viability of any group of human beings is largely dependent upon how it relates to its shadow, whether it represses it, manipulates it, or deals with it honestly and directly, and to what extent, and when. As Americans, we tend to want to look up rather than down, out rather than in, and forward rather than back. But moving in one direction to the exclusion of the other precludes balance, and always looking up, out, and forward leaves us vulnerable, as individuals and as a nation, to those parts of ourselves and energies within us that we barely know, if we are aware of them at all. Worse still, we may attempt to manipulate and control those unknown or barely known parts and energies, as if they were mere raw materials that are somehow separate from us, to be harvested and used until they burst forth into our lives and our consciousness with a force, and with consequences, we never saw coming.

Our shadow, whether individual or collective, is not evil and it is not our enemy. As psychologist Carolyn Kaufman has written, “Carl Jung believed that in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness – or perhaps because of this – the shadow is the seat of creativity.” Our shadow is a primal, elemental part of who we are, that part of our selves and our history, our very life and our very life force itself, that we have disowned and forgotten, for whatever reason. It is the part of us that remains unknown and unclaimed. We each need to know our shadow, to accept it, to honor it, and to accept the benefits and the consequences of its presence in our psyches and our lives in order to be fully conscious, fully integrated, and fully who we are, both as individuals and as a collective. I see the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster as yet one more very dramatic reminder that it is incumbent upon each and every one of us, as Americans and as individuals, to do our shadow work now, because I believe that to the extent we do not, what remains unresolved and unacknowledged in our inner world (individual and collective) will continue to find its way into our outer world in forms that are increasingly dangerous, damaging, and toxic to all.

Addendum (06/19/10): I continue to be extremely irritated by the prevalent and ongoing use of the term “spill” to describe the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not a spill. If I knock over a glass of water on the table in my home, I’d call it a spill. If a pipe bursts in my home and water is gushing out of it uncontrollably and spreading into the nearby houses for 45 days, I’d call it a flood.

(PDF version)

there are four volcanoes nearby
in various stages of eruption and
pre-eruption.

one of them has a restaurant atop the crater
people are still there eating.

I can’t believe they haven’t left yet.

(PDF version)

temptation + obligation (firetrap dream #2)

I’m sitting between two women
the woman on my right is my girlfriend
the woman on my left is a friend of hers
her friend is incredibly warm + sexy.

we’re sitting on top of a bus
the bus is parked on the side of the street
we’re watching people come back from fighting the fire
it’s like a parade.

her friend starts
coming on to me
flirting with me
she asks me what my birthstone is
she tells me
how attractive I am
how much sexual power she feels around me
she begins to kiss the side of my face
her lips are warm full + soft
I like it.

my girlfriend starts to get upset
in her usual restrained way
I’m really leaning on her + now
her friend’s really leaning on me + I feel like
this isn’t fair to my girlfriend at all.

(PDF version)

Rick’s work, if it is anything, is transformative. It holds out in optimism that by courageously facing the child we were, we can create a more rewarding future for the adult we want to become.

You can read his full post in its entirety at Men’s Well-Being.

In other “IMFO in the UK” news, another counselor based in the United Kingdom, John Kennett of Kent Counselling for Men, recently added Iron Man Family Outing to his Amazon UK Listmania list “Men, masculinity and maturity”, describing the book as a “raw and powerful means of accessing the inaccessible.”

In response to this recent UK news, a friend remarked to me via email, “I do think it is great that Iron Man is offered for sale in English pounds.” I have to agree.

I’ve posted some preview material on my web site at rickbelden.com/new_book, including an excerpt from the introduction and some of the poems that appear in the book.

I’m also making preview copies of the complete manuscript available to those who’d like an early look. Please see rickbelden.com/new_book for information about getting a preview copy.

In her comments about my book, Rebecca said:

What a treat to read such an authentic and heartfelt book. Through the use of poetry Belden tells his story of growing up with an abusive father. Belden allows the reader an insight into his heart and takes us along in his struggles to claim a conscious manhood. If you are looking for pretty poetry, this isn’t the book. This is raw, truthful, and captures both the darkness and the lightness of meeting one’s past. While Iron Man Family Outing may seem to be for men, it helped me as a woman have a better understanding of what men may be going through within themselves.

You can read her full post in its entirety at The Mindful Beat.

Rick Belden is a fellow Austinite who has written a book, Iron Man Family Outing, of healing poetry about his own personal journey of growing up male in American society. His poetry is moving and poignant. His descriptions of his family, himself and his relationships strike a chord with everyone with whom I’ve shared them. I highly recommend this book.

You can read her full post in its entirety at Kellevision and also at Kellen’s blog at Intent.com.

Kellen’s recent post “Making Yourself a Target: Replicating the Scapegoat Role in Your Life – How to Stop Doing It” is yet another insightful entry in her excellent ongoing series on the the role of the scapegoat in dysfunctional family systems. This is a subject that deserves far more attention than it gets, in my opinion. I’m grateful to Kellen for shedding some light on the experience and the dynamics of the scapegoat role, and for providing practical, helpful information for those who need it.

* Jason Fierstein of Phoenix Men’s Counseling praised the book’s “use of metaphor” and said the “poems are very transformational, and really give a voice to the modern male experience – one which is frequently (and unfortunately) not discussed.”

* Jack Kammer of The Center for Men and Boys in Social Policy commented on the isolation many men feel with their so-called “personal problems” and said the book “makes it unmistakably clear that any man who sometimes feels alienated from his best hopes and from his own, best, most cherished view of himself is most decidedly not alone.”

* Life/Executive Coach Sean Casey LeClaire said that “Belden explores the shadow side of the male journey” and added that the book “comes at a wonderful time, as millions of men find themselves without work … the opportunity to face themselves with courage and decency, which Rick’s poems do, is most timely.”

The complete archive of reviews for the book is available at http://rickbelden.com/reviews.

my dad seems unhappy + remorseful about his life
not the angry man I knew
he seems sad about his relationship with me + anxious
to make some kind of connection between us.

he + I are standing in the
big doorway of the garage he built
this is dad’s territory
mom stays in the house.

he gives me a real old iron man comic book
but first he goes through it
tearing out stuff he says I’m not supposed to see
stuff that has something to do with work
his deletions appear random to me
I can’t see a pattern of anything sensitive
in what he removes.

he describes in great detail the way iron man moves
including the precise number of seconds it takes
for iron man to respond to an attack
then dad asks me how long it takes
for me to respond to an attack.

the iron man comic he gives me is a one time only
special issue
this is the one I’ve been searching for
the one where iron man’s face mask changes
from pointed + horned
to rounded + smooth.

in this issue
iron man reveals that he is actually a monk
when questioned
he explains that the monk is the other side of
his usual playboy/inventor/materialist identity.

in the dream
I recognize this comic book as
a very special gift from my dad
something important to him
something he’s saved for a long time
it’s a peace offering
something we both value.

in the dream
I feel touched yet saddened
our communication is still so indirect.

a comic book is no substitute
for a warm hug + loving words
between a father + a son.

(PDF version | Video version)

A few highlights from recently posted reviews:

* Dr. Martin Srajek, Director of the Center for Men and Masculinity, wrote an expansive review that provides one of the most thorough, nuanced commentaries on the book to date.

* Graeme Daniels of Self in Addiction wrote a detailed, perceptive review that included specific comments on some of the individual poems. Graeme also posted some additional review comments on the book and on specific poems in the reader reviews section of this blog.

* Tom Golden of Crisis, Grief, and Healing emphasized that the book’s portrayal of “the masculine style of healing through creativity” provides useful insights for women as well as for men.

The complete archive of reviews for the book is available at http://rickbelden.com/reviews.