Eivind, Peter and Pelle in front of the Charles Bridge
I spent five days in Prague in the latter parts of August. Every three months, I meet up with my friends Peter Kessels and Pelle Billing somewhere in Europe. We support each other in going deeper with our own personal life processes, actively build brotherhood, challenge each other to greater consciousness and generally have a good time.
None of us had been to Prague before and we all bloody loved the place. Amazing city. So much culture and history. It is a felt sense, quite unlike anything I can feel here in Oslo. The place was full of beautiful women too. I don’t know if they were tourists or Czech, but the ones we did go deeper with were natives. There was this lovely blonde in a slick book bar one night that I was very attracted to (and the feeling appeared to be deeply mutual), though I decided to stay committed to the brotherhood-building. I only half regret it… I really enjoyed feeling her open up with me and start playing with her hair as she looked into my eyes with increasing surrender. Women are a blessing..!
Two main challenges (these are the ones I’m currently present to at least) crystallized over these days for all three of us: Our relating with women and maintaining consciousness. I had some great experiences just pushing my edge on how I communicate with women and I feel very inspired about my future relations with women now. I’m only starting to realize what is possible. And I also realize how great it is to have Brothers around me when doing this sort of work. It’s easy to chicken out when I go it alone.
With regards to the consciousness…it was slipping at times. Here are these three deeply committed and resourceful guys and when not even we can maintain full consciousness, how can we expect your average Joe to do it? I realized that for me, when consciousness is dropping, I just start getting really frustrated. I feel it happening, but don’t always know how to course correct. I have realized lately that one way of addressing lapses in consciousness is to say something a bit “out there” to jolt myself back into it. My experience tells me it normally jolts people around me back into consciousness as well, provided they are reasonably mature human beings (guys who haven’t done the work can get defensive). One day we were walking along one of the main roads along the Vltava river and I felt incredibly frustrated. I expressed with some force “so guys, are we going to have fun tonight or are we going to keep having a shit time like we are now?”. That worked. From there on out, it was anything but shit.
We established a “War Room” in the flat where we did all the deep processing stuff. I also got to do a live presentation of the KWML archetypes there, further developing my platform for presenting them to you in the time to come. It was powerful to dedicate a room to inner work like that. It became our ritual space. And if it is true that men only grow in ritual space as Robert Moore suggests, it was a great boon to have that space so readily available.
I’m so grateful for the brotherhood I share with Peter and Pelle and realize that any kind of real progress would be almost impossible for me at this point in my life were I not to have these sorts of potent relationships with men. The difference between having committed and inspired friends and having distracted, apathetic and confused friends is like night and day.
If there is only one thing I could advice men who wish to grow to look at, it’s their relationships with their closest male friends. Without these potent friendships, we will never even come close to our potential.