The Mankind Project, an international men’s organization, held a membership drive meeting Tuesday at the Case Museum in Jersey City.
“There was a very good turnout for a first meeting,” said Alan Downing, a member of and organizer for The Mankind Project. “About 14 men attended, and five of them were not members. One of them was from Jersey City.”
Operating in America and Europe, the organization’s mission is to assist men in “reclaiming the sacred masculine for our time through initiation, training, and action in the world,” said Downing.
According to Downing, many contemporary males have issues with what is meant by the words “integrity” and “manhood.”
“Many people react to situations without knowing why,” Downing explained. “What do you usually do when you’re driving and someone cuts you off? You curse like a sailor and give them the finger. What we’re offering men is a chance to step back from themselves and ask themselves why they do that.”
The advantage, as Downing sees it, of The Mankind Project meetings is that they offer a “safe space,” often referred to as Open Circles, where men can look into themselves and find out who they really are.
“It’s a lot easier to do that in an Open Circle meeting than to search yourself while driving a car,” said Downing. Downing said the meetings of The Mankind Project operate in three phases, the first being The New Warrior Training Weekend.
“The NWTW is a comprehensive, three-day initiation rite,” Downing said. “The men who participate are challenged to look into themselves. They get a chance to get rid of what it is about themselves that is not working.”
Downing said these weekends consist of coordinated series of activities including group discussions, games, guided imagery visualizations, and journaling.
“The entire program is designed for the man to get in touch with his truth,” said Downing.
Many of the men who have participated in the Training Weekend often return to other weekends to work as guides for new participants, Downing added.
“Following the Training Weekend, we have a meeting of the Integration Group,” Downing stated. “This where the participants get to go over what they have learned about their inside lives.”
Downing added the Integration Group meetings give the participants the chance to re-enter their personal and social roles as “initiated men” who now have more self-knowledge.
In the third phase, according to Downing, regular Open Circle meetings are held. The meetings combine physic and discovery work and self-knowledge to extend what has been achieved in the earlier two phases.
Bly was inspiring
Downing credits the works of poet Robert Bly and other founders of the Men’s Movement in the early 1990s as an inspiration for The Mankind Project.
“A lot of what we do has been inspired by what Bly and other have done already,” Downing explained.
The Men’s Movement began in the early 1990s with the publication of Bly’s “Iron John” and the creation of the Wildman Weekend movement by Ron Hering, Bill Kauth, and Rich Tosi. The movement seeks to promote men’s sense of leadership and integrity, but feminists have criticized the movement as a misogynistic reaction to the successes of the Women’s Rights Movement.
The Mankind Project, in an effort to reach out to women, has an all-female organization called Women Within. The leader of the East Coast branch of the Women Within organization is Shela Anmouth and the name of the branch is the East Coast Sage Circle.
“The name ‘sage’ has two meanings,” said Anmouth. “It can mean someone with wisdom. It is also used in a Native American tradition where sage is burned as a cleansing ritual called smudging. We took our name from that practice. Sage is burned at the meetings of the women’s and men’s groups.”
Anmouth said the East Coast Sage Circle, which has a membership from Maine to Georgia, eschews the more physical aspects of the men’s organization’s Training Weekends, but still provides participants with a chance for self-exploration.
“We provide a safe place for women to explore the physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of their lives,” said Anmouth.
Many of the women who take part in the Women Within programs have many of the same questions about themselves as their counterparts in The Mankind Project, according to Anmouth.
“They want to work on their history,” Anmouth explained. “People want to know why they act out they way they do.”
Anmouth said the purpose of the meetings is to have women touch on her own inner power to create the lives they want for themselves.
Anmouth said the organization has been around since 1997, and news of the events held by Women Within spreads by word of mouth, according to Anmouth.
“We bring some people in and they become part of the effort,” said Anmouth. “Sometimes they tell others about it. In some cases, women take part in the Women Within program and get their companions to get involved in The Mankind Project.
“My husband went on one of the weekends,” said Anmouth. “He came back having learned a lot and suggested I try it. I did and I got involved since then. It has been great.”
For information on The Mankind Project, go to www.mkp.org. There are two web sites for Women Within: www.womenwithin.org and www.ecsagecircle.org.