Gustavo’s Story
I was going through a series of reflections in my own faith and spirituality. You get older, and you start asking deeper questions. A friend told me about Illuman, so I went to my local council meeting. I thought, “I’ll just go and see how it feels.” At first, I didn’t “get” everything that was said, but I was drawn to something. I kept going back each month. I sensed there was something good happening there.
Later that year, I did my first Men’s Rite of Passage (MROP). After that, something shifted significantly for me. When I went, I felt like I was holding onto my faith by a thread, saying, “I'm not sure if this thing is for me anymore.” I wasn’t questioning God exactly, but I was questioning the paradigms I had for my own faith, and the way my own faith was expressing itself.
I arrived at MROP a bit skeptical. But I also arrived kind of hoping that I would have an experience that would, kind of, you know, do something to me. That I would feel something. I can be so cerebral: I know my theology. I’ve been trained how to think. But I was longing to feel.
I’ve been trained how to think. But I was longing to feel.
I’m still processing what happened there. It was wild, but I think I did have what I would call an encounter with the Divine. And that felt so important. It’s what I was longing for. When I came back, I felt like I’d had an incredibly significant experience.
Every man has a different experience in their own journey. And that's part of the beauty of the MROP, too. It opens up the space for people to work out their own stuff there, in a way that's not necessarily prescriptive, but that’s guided and contained.
The work that Illuman is doing in creating those spaces, that is something that we need more of. We need to create space for men to explore their deeper questions and reflections about anything, particularly spirituality, in a way that feels safe and freeing, but still guided.
Since becoming part of the Illuman community, I have new eyes to look at things. I feel more open to others, to their perspective, and I feel significantly less judgmental. Before, every time I had a conversation about faith or spirituality, I would kind of be looking for the ways that the other person was wrong. I’d be listening, but thinking, “How do I fit your experience into my framework, so that I'm still on the right side of things?” Now, I feel free from that.
At the MROP, I was really impacted by a poem by Hafiz. It goes:
the small man
builds cages for everyone
he
knows.
While the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the
beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.
My experience in being liberated to be myself has given me a clearer purpose. I want to be the sage.
My experience in being liberated to be myself has given me a clearer purpose. I want to be the sage.
We believe the stories we live by, the ones we tell ourselves. And we might need new stories about what it means to be a man today. We might need to rewire ourselves so that we can be free to be ourselves.
If you span the long arc of history out to the very end, I don’t think we’ll need Illuman. But right now, Illuman is helping men build better versions of themselves. Illuman is helping build a better world, so that one day, we won’t even need the work it’s doing.
