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The birth of Adam Adams’ son helped him identify five areas of focus necessary to compel his rebirth.
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As I gazed at the small purple screaming baby my first thought was holy fu*king s*it – It’s Alive! My second thought was equally ridiculous, am I the only person in this room who seems to care that my baby is purple?
After 25 hours of watching my then wife in labor there was not much left in the brainpower department. As all parents who have been through the magic and miracle of birth know, it is an event like no other and every second, even my inane commentary, is precious to me.
What I had not considered until fairly recently is that another miracle was at work even as my son, my beautiful blessing, came into the world. I’m referring to the alchemy of personal change that fatherhood has represented to me. To say I am a different man is a dramatic understatement. It would be far more accurate to say I can credit my son as being a stimulus like no other on my ongoing path to discover sacred masculinity and the meaning of life. So, I offer these five points, which have punctuated my journey.
“Self” Orientation to “Other” Orientation
This may sound blindingly obvious as applied to new parents, but I can assure you, you may be surprised to learn that many parents never quite got over the hump in this respect. If I’m brutally honest, it took at least two years to get past what my experience was—of incessant ego bruises and feeling profoundly useless.
I remember deep anguish at my inability to soothe my baby when he was crying. I felt like a total failure and was almost certainly taking it personally. As regular readers of this column will know I was abandoned by my father and so spent a lifetime promising myself that when my turn came, I would do better. Having built it up to such a degree, you can make the argument I was self-sabotaging, hardly a new behavior, but distressing nonetheless.
It was a gentle moment of clarity provided by a mother that began the process of moving from ego to healthy love; as it flowed towards my son it inevitably, then rippled onto me. The lady in question advised I wasn’t giving him what he needed—such a simple truth with such profound implications. Instead of focusing on my pain and perceived failure, I became keenly aware his needs were paramount and all else was irrelevant.
At the time of this writing, I now live life on the basis of service and as Dr. David Lieberman suggests, the more I do so the more ego naturally diminishes—a surprising and welcome relief.
2. Letting Go of Anger
As a child, it seems all I can remember is anger. Anger at my father for his transgressions, absence, and my grandfather for his brutality towards my grandmother—what stories to fill my head with notions of how evil is man!
Anger at my mother for being so big and so loud and seemingly hostile, and me, so small and defenseless. Anger at my stepfather for lying to me incessantly and thinking me too small to see through it and being too small to defend against the emotional pain. Anger at the neighborhood kids for sitting outside the back fence and inviting me to sing a racist song with them before I had any clue what they were saying about me and my family. Anger at the community for abusing my mother as “a monkey with glasses,” and anger at poverty—incessant poverty—while all around me everyone appeared to be living the high life.
Of course, with adult eyes it all looks different, but as a child, logic is an unrecognizable beast. Surrounded by anger, it is hardly a surprise I should adopt it as a primary filter for reality and a way of behaving that was both obnoxious, counter-productive and in the end, almost self-terminating.
Yet, as I look at my son and he, at me, there is such love between us that I have no interest in being angry towards him. I am aware that for a few years at least I will be bigger than him and I do not need to imagine how terrifying it would be to have giants screaming at me for transgressions I did not understand—all children to some extent have that experience and it teaches helplessness, fear and inadequacy.
As an adult unpicking the ravages of multiple sclerosis in my personal life, and specializing in supposedly incurable dis-ease in my professional life, there are clear links between anger and these diseases—and so the release of anger as a stored emotion, much less as a strategy or reality prism, is of paramount importance. I have been somewhat successful and need to be more successful, but I can assure you letting go of anger, however deserved it may seem to be—has nothing to do with condoning anything so much as liberating oneself from a toxic and poisonous reality.
3. Fearless Self Examination
Whilst studying advanced hypnotherapy for addictions, I came across a concept used in treatment, based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model—the concept of fearless moral inventory. In no way devaluing the excellent successes of that model, I find it to be too abstract and so I invited my mind to give me the essence of the intention in a way my mind can hear it.
The result is fearless self-examination. So what does that look like in practice? I am reminded of the quote by Carl Jung, “ Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” So, every single criticism or pointed observation aimed at me, I assume contains a useful truth. Rejection leads me to consider internal issues around adequacy, abandonment, attachment, valuation of self and others. Internal dialogue leads me to question whether these are my thoughts or the unpleasant echoes of a priming influence.
4.Search For The Sacred
As a former militant atheist, and now a committed mystic and spiritual seeker, it is with no small sense of irony that I offer this fourth tip. Since the day my son was born, I have been connected to the world in a different way. Without wishing to sound religious or woo-woo, my experience of fatherhood has taught me to find the sacred in life’s simple things. The sound of my son laughing freely and unburdened by the seriousness of adult life touches me in spiritual ways.
It has opened the door for me to be present with the beauty of moments in a way I never was before.
5. Re-orient To Love
It’s fair to say that men talk about sex far more than they talk about love. Where there are two or three men the conversation is likely at some point to involve sex, and I have gay friends and straight friends—this seems to be universal truth for all orientations.
I don’t know whether I’m getting old, having a midlife crisis, a mystical experience, or simply going mad, but I find myself resonating with the principle of love in every context of my existence. Full self-disclosure; that does not mean I cracked the magic code of relationships yet—far from it—rather that my intention in everything I do whether coaching, therapy, friendship, fatherhood and even business is to orient to healthy self-love and a reflected love of others.
I’m really living a better life on this basis. I’m frequently misunderstood, but notice a qualitative improvement in my sense of belonging, my sense of being, in my sense I have something worthwhile to contribute. I am aware that many men, perhaps locked in a different set of archetypes, values, language, experience and motivation, will call me a pussy or in some other way attempt to assert what I’m saying is not manly.
Love of my son has taught me not only can I ignore such thinking, but I can also work in my own small way to teach what I am endeavoring to practice. I make no representation that I am perfect, but as an aspiration this reorientation in particular moves me—so I am going to continue on as far as I am able with this practice. Reorienting to love is not cowardice, pacifism or something that makes me a hippy, so much as a truth revealed I intend to live and share, whether anybody comes with me or not. Alpha male-like I could say with a smile.
What does this mean for you?
There is no such thing as a perfect man, only a man informed by the concept of perfectibility and smart enough to avoid perfectionism while seeking excellence. As somebody who has been to death’s door and poked his head inside the darkness I feel these insights are valuable. I offer them freely with love and with the hope these messages will find a welcome home. They led to my rebirth, who knows what magic they can work for you.
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