Death of a Hero, Birth of the Soul: Answering the Call of Midlife.
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Midlife, a deeply important and often stressful phase of adult development, represents a major reorganization of a man's identity, personality, and value system. Constituting the breakthrough of powerful drives for self-realization and spirituality, its goal is the birth of the unfinished self and the radical restructuring of a man's life in its soulful vision. While, the distress associated with midlife is real, valid, and unavoidable, life transforming renewal awaits the man who accepts its hidden challenge. |
| The developmental dimension of Ordinary Enlightenment, with its tremendous psychological and spiritual potential, is initiated with the midlife passage. At this great divide, the heroic quest begins to fail, for ambition now comes at the cost of soul, and the great questions of life - aging, suffering, evil, and death - cannot be conquered by more success, money, fame, or cleverness. The ego's defeat, however, represents an enormously important developmental step in the individual life, marking the beginning of an archetypal journey of transformation. | |
| Weaving psychology, poetry, myth, and personal experience, Death of a Hero, Birth of the Soul spins the story of the male midlife passage and introduces the reader to mystical reality waiting in life's second half. |
Robert Johnson: "Dr. Robinson has written a book from his heart. It's about what happens to men at midlife, what it really means to be a man, and how men can return to sacred ground in the second half of life...More than a book, it is a story, a meditation, a celebration and a map of the potential transformation of men..." |
Allan Chinnen: "A powerful contribution to men's literature... Robinson offers a breathtaking vision of the depths and heights of the masculine, and a clear, practical account of the paths that lead men safely through this wild and forgotten land." |
Library Journal: "Robinson deftly uses a mixture of myth, psychology, poetry, and personal anecdotes to illustrate (his) points...this title fills a gap in the area of male psychology. Recommended to all public and academic libraries."" |
John Lee: "A must read! This is a book that will help men move close to themselves, each other, and the people they love." |
Bernie Siegel: "For any man willing to look in the most important direction inside himself, this book can be an excellent guide." |
Robery Bly: "There's much in John Robinson's work helpful to men who find themselves wanting to live." |
M.E.N. Magazine: "...a book for the man at midlife who has felt the first shifts in the tectonic plates of his own psyche, who senses that something is seriously amiss, and who sees that he needs both help and information." |
Dragonsmoke: "...an ample book, full of poems, personal anecdotes, and wise meditations...Death of a Hero adroitly charts the journey through the dangerous waters of "compulsive warriorhood" to a mystical return to the garden of the sacred." |
Wingspan: "Robinson's book may well be the single most important work to date about the work of the men's movement. I passionately urge every man and woman who has even the slightest interest in men's issues to treat him/herself to reading it." |
DEATH of a HERO, BIRTH of the SOUL
Preface
Introduction
Table of Contents (excerpts in orange.)
Part 1. The Story of Everyman |
Part 3. Masculinity 2000: The Collective Issues of Men at the Birth of the Twenty-First Century |
Part 4. Return to Sacred Ground: The Mystical Experience in the Transformation of Men 32. Outcomes of the Mystical Experience
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Part 5. Beyond the Story of Everyman Death of a Hero, Birth of the Soul
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Excerpts:
Foreword by Robert Johnson, author of He, She, We, Ecstasy, Femininity Lost and Regained.
"Little is known about the developmental tasks and opportunities of life's second half yet our population wave is racing into this 'new age' in record numbers. Men in particular seem to lack a vision for the gifts, tasks, and deep purposes that arrive at midlife and will continue through their elder years. Few men, in fact, would even consider the process of aging to be one of the great opportunities for personal, social, and spiritual growth. Fewer still grasp the inner work necessary to recover the original story of their lives, to find the work of their souls, and then to grow into the kind of elders our world needs. Death of a Hero, Birth of the soul provides this vision. It argues that the midlife and aging of man, rather than being grim and barren times, represent instead the birth of the soul and the beginning of the new spiritual journey.
Dr. Robinson has taken on the very interesting challenge of integrating the psychology of midlife, the new and vigorous voices of the men's movement, and the timeless teachings of mysticism into a single story. It is his own story, the story of 'everyman,' and the potential story of our collective future. It takes the reader from the security of the known into the vast possibilities of the unknown, yet in such gradual steps that one arrives filled with hope, joy, gratitude, and courage.
John Robinson has written a book from the heart. It is about what happens at midlife, what it really means to be a man, and how men can return to sacred ground in the second half of life. He writes eloquently about the search for meaning, beauty, ecstasy, and service. He writes about what mature men - men who have had the courage to face the great developmental tasks of midlife - can offer a world aching for love, compassion, and mature guidance. Full of surprises and ancient wisdom, personal and transpersonal lessons, and the richness of story and poetry, Dr. Robinson's work fills and nourishes the male psyche. This is a work that must be read and savored, and then read again. More than a book, it is a story, a meditation, a celebration and a map of the potential transformation of men in the middle and later years. A man will find himself in this book and he will find much more. It is obvious that this writer understands and cares for me." T.O.C
"The Awakening of the Soul at Midlife:" One morning, early in my own midlife passage, the following piece of writing exploded into consciousness. It seemed to emerge full blown and complete, needing virtually no editing. To me, it speaks of the core intrapsychic pressure of midlife: the urgency of the unlived self to recover its own deep, powerful and independent voice, and the reality of the prefigured archetypal structure of that self, which cannot be dominated by the ego without irreparable damage to its inborn purpose, and to its cargo and origin: the soul. This is the urgency that grabbed my life at forty. It is a voice that still urges me to take the risk to be what I am - most fully, completely, and deeply.
"To the unsuspecting and uninitiated, there is nothing more painful and disruptive than the awakening and rebirth of the soul at midlife. Aching for its own reality and destiny, the soul is heard as an insistent voice crying out for authenticity in the personal wasteland of conforming outward existence. The ego's shell, hard of substance and hard-won in the early contests of life, too often becomes ossified as a barrier that must be cracked for the awakening soul to feel itself born. Ego becomes soul as the shackles of the false self are loosened and the inner light of eternity activates an urgency for genuinely felt truths.
As this awakening and living process intensifies, the soul quickens its search for the heartfelt path. What has been secretly developing through lifetimes of experience now must come out into the world. Fragile, hidden, and distrusted through the first half of life, the soul now forms its own unique constellation of meaning and desire. And there is nothing more painful than the labor and birth of a soul that has been completely obliterated in life's early contests, and lost, forgotten, or crushed under the tyranny of false standards, imposed material objectives and self-alien values. For even when the false self is successful, what is the worth of fame, power, or wealth when the soul itself has slipped through your fingers?
An urgent need to know and express one's self, one's true and essential nature, wells up in this midlife process as powerfully, painfully and inescapably as an animal's instinct or the sexual awakening of the adolescent. Agitated and soul hungry, this inner driven transformative process erupts inwardly like a volcano and then threatens to uproot and disorganize the entire predictable, secure, and well-manicured landscape of everyday life. Attempts at self-denial and renewed conformity are inwardly felt as crushing, smothering and unbearably oppressive. Yet equally unbearable is the distrust of still unformed truths and the fear that they will be stillborn.
'Be who you are going to be! Get on with it now. Time gives up on those who postpone or betray their destiny.' Such a voice confronts the soul with increasing rancor. Shaken by unseen arms and battered by torrents of feeling, a life in the throes of such cataclysmic upheaval is like a puppet in the hands of an angry child, and the child is one's self. 'Who am I, what am I here for, and at what cost comes the answer? I cannot wait for someday and I cannot go on being somebody I am not.'
Soon the false shell of the other-directed personality caves in and with the internal collapse of false strivings comes an exhaustion and despair that rots will and ambition. All activity originating from the false center of the personality becomes tiresome, empty and anguished. But in the ruins of this shattered fraudulence the soul can yet be found, and it can be nourished and revived with tenderness and love. To heal the injured soul, the real self must finally be intuited, awakened, and welcomed as the authentic center of personality and as a living presence that resides within. The return of the soul then releases creative and spontaneous energies that reshape both the inner and the outer life. And no one can dictate the purpose and course of these energies -- neither the individual, his loved ones, the experts, or society. This is the mysterious birth of the truly individuated life."
As this piece implies, the eruption of midlife is not something you choose, it's something that chooses you. T.O.C
From Chapter 16. Emergence: A New Orientation to Life
The midlife passage marks the very birth of the individuating life journey. Its inner activated energies, encompassing all the inborn potentials of development, rise at this time to give our life its ultimate purpose, thrust, meaning and destiny. If this awakening is ignored, belittled, denied, trivialized, or pathologized, then something infinitely beautiful, infinitely precious, and infinitely important is lost possibly forever. If it is lived without insight, on the other hand, allowing the individual to blindly act out his urgent and restive impulses, then the myriad disasters of the midlife seen by the psychologist may occur. In essence, midlife distress is not a condition to be cured but an invitation to embark on a deeply important journey of wholeness and self-realization. Most men betray this calling and hence most never know what might have happened had their soul's longing for authenticity been enacted.
This is the challenge of midlife: To consciously exchange security for awakening, to permit your life to be reshaped by the forces inherent in your own essential unfolding nature, and to give back to life whatever authentic truth or accomplishment this transformative process brings through you. For the ultimate message contained in this critical developmental transition seems to be this: that in the depth of our being resides an apparently purposeful and intelligent maturational force that pushes from within to expand and evolve the individual self. This mysterious inner realm of energy and purpose holds dormant the stages, workings, and secret teleology of our individual and collective evolution. Accepted and welcomed, this awakening of soul leads to life's highest attainments; betrayed, this individuating force may atrophy steadily for years leading at best to a barren but conforming life and at worst to depression, meaninglessness and the multiple forms of tragedy and wasted potential a man can experience in his final years.
When the midlife passage is successfully and creatively traversed, a new era of life arrives. In the first half of life we grow ego, in the second half we grow soul. This second half opens new vistas for the man who has allowed the ambitious, materialistically motivated hero to die, and who has presided over the birth to a creative new self. In this renewal, a man may be able to identify the timeless work of his own soul amidst the universal tasks and teachings of the fall and winter seasons of life. A man's own work, his heart and soul work, really cannot begin until the personal truths of this passage are realized and allowed to radically transform him. Midlife, then, is a play of epic meaning and significance in the movement of the individuating self.
So far, the male midlife has been characterized primarily as an individual journey. And it is. But the male midlife is also part of something larger, an ongoing cultural change process, with numerous social and transpersonal themes, and ancient roots. In the passage through midlife, men need to heal their collective wounds and unearth an archetypal experience of masculinity that can restore the masculine soul.T.O.C
From Chapter 22. Men at Midlife: The Hero's Death
The hero dies at midlife.
The questing, conquering, ever-invincible, and ever-progressing warrior dies. He dies because he can't achieve forever, because he is not a machine, and because there is a longing in his soul for something else. This pretense of manhood runs out of steam.
The hero archetype is an invaluable resource early in the Story of Everyman. Filled with the energy of adolescence, that biologically organized maturational thrust of young manhood, and inspired by magic images of power and success released from within his own psychological core, it gives a yound man the strength and the courage to do really heroic things: leave his mother, stand up to his father, and enter the frightening world of men, women, career, babies and survival. Without this heroic energy and noble vision, a boy might never leave home.
For the majority of men, however, this heroic vision carries them into their own lives. Once activated, they build lives and careers. They become somebody in a world that finally belongs at least in part to them. Their myopic, absolutely singular striving, sometimes leaves wives and families feeling neglected, and this is one of the tensions intrinsic to the complementary developmental processes of men and women. But the fact that most men succeed in the fundamental task of acquiring a trade and supporting a household and family is no small matter. It is one of the great achievements of the heroic quest. Then men reach midlife.
We have seen in the previous section that the forces of midlife must defeat us. For men, what is defeated most centrally is the hero. By midlife, this glamorous image of the self has degraded into the Compulsive Warrior because the man inside this suit of armor is now tired and soul-hungry. More achievement is not what he really longs for. Like the Woodcutter, he longs now for rest and renewal. More deeply and unconsciously, he longs for a submission to something truly greater than his own egoic grandiosity and the empty envy of other men. He wants desperately to stop serving the gods of success, capitalism, and income, to serve something higher. He longs for the a baptism of something greater.
Even for the fortunate man who began with an abundance of life's resources, found the blessing of a mentor, and identified the own calling of his own soul, still all this is not enough. He must surrender his ambition and heroic dream. Neither the individual ego nor the culturally-sanctioned warrior can offer a man what he needs most at midlife: baptism by defeat. Midlife supplies the Compulsive Warrior with this preconfigured defeat, so that the weary hero can sink deeply into his dark baptismal waters to die and be reborn.
The inevitable defeat of the hero is a man's initiation into the life of the spirit. He must allow the storm of midlife to break through the bulwark of persona and expose his very soul. Like Job, there is no hiding. The storm rages over and through him until something new and sacred is revealed from his deep psychic core. It will become the next equation of his life, a new organizing principle that reshapes his entire landscape. If he is not strong enough, and if he has no vision or grasp of the purpose of this violent time, a man may surrender instead to confusion, despair, flight or collapse.
During such a cataclysm, therefore, a man needs friends to see him through, particularly other men who have survived this same defeat and found, on the other side, the gift of male friendship. This is the gentle, comfortable, and compassionate kind of friendship we see in older men's groups where comparison and competition are left far behind. Men see that the Compulsive Warrior mentality now has no more value to the soul and, in fact, must be discarded for the soul to be born. They see that each man must be challenged, broken, and defeated by the divine sculptor who knows things about his destiny that he, egoic man, can neither anticipate nor fathom. T.O.C
Publisher and ordering information:
Death of a Hero, Birth of the Soul (ISBN 1-57178-043-2) is published by Council Oaks Books (1350 15th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74120) and can be purchased in any bookstore or ordered directly by calling 1-800-247-8850.
