When the Ground Gives Way
How Men’s Work Saved My Life and Rebuilt My Masculinity
[A Sovereign Alignment Perspective]
There are moments in life when the ground gives way, our stomach churns, we are gasping for air, and we are faced with the reality we prayed would never happen. My moment came when my marriage collapsed.
For most of my adult life, I believed in a kind of loyalty woven into my bones: my marriage would last forever, just as my parents' had, spanning 57 years (and counting) of unwavering love, care, and devotion. That was my compass, a standard that showed my capacity to be a man, a husband and a father. I believed this to be true. So when my wife fell in love with another man and followed a calling that brought her joy and inspiration outside the framework of our daily family life, I was utterly unprepared.
It wasn’t betrayal. It wasn’t malice. It was her truth speaking louder than the agreements we had made. Family life with small kids (any-sized kids) is hard, and holding integrity and authenticity in that space is very challenging (a discussion for another journal entry). For me, it came as an implosion of identity. I had spent decades, falsely, building myself a castle of cards in the roles of husband, father, protector, and provider. And then, with a gust of westerly wind, all of it tumbled in an instant, and beneath it lay a vast landscape of emptiness I had never known (and didn’t want to know).
The Collapse: When Masculinity Has No More Scaffolding
Until that moment, I thought I was spiritually strong. I had 13 years of Buddhist practice, meditation, study, and good conduct. The feelings and emotions of being sad, lost, disappointed, angry, confused, victimised, anxious, and much more, could not be held through the Buddhist teachings (these came back later); there was no way I could sit and connect with the blessing of the high realms of consciousness. My sense of being Ricardo, my identity, was shattered from within. Who was I? My masculinity, my standing as a man among my peers, friends, and family, was simply lost. Arguably, it was never truly there. The scaffolding crumbled, the façade fell, and the valley swallowed me whole.
There was a lot of work to be done, little did I know at the time, that deeper down in the basement of my subconscious, written and precariously stored in boxes were my inner beliefs, my small and big traumas, my past experiences, which fully influenced the way I would experience the world. It had little to do with the outer world; it was all about doing my inner shadow work!
The Shamanic Bridge: Meeting Teachers in the Fog
As I progressed through this dark fog, crawling in the mud and confusion, teachers, methods and new ways of seeing appeared. Not in monasteries or through abstract philosophy, but in ancient shamanic traditions that reach into the depths of my soul, my body and my mind, to meet with my ancestors, with my past stories and to be taught by the unseen wisdom of other realms. They guided me through rites of passage, not to elevate me above my suffering, but to walk with me through it. They didn’t promise comfort; they offered initiation. Through their guidance, I didn’t bypass the collapse; I descended into it. I had to meet my demons and invite them for tea. This is where I saw my fears, understood the nature and truth of human suffering and matured into a bittersweet reality.
Slowly, the sun began to appear through the trees. Slowly, the fog loosened. Slowly, I saw myself emerging with greater groundedness, greater humility, and a strength that guides me every day. As I write this, 8 years later, I still feel the wound, I see my fears, I recognise this is the texture of who I am. The difference is how I show up for myself, how I am honest and authentic, and how I can feel myself across the multiple layers of consciousness that define who I am in this incarnation. But now I’m in the driving seat! I was able to heal my heart, to find my maturity and masculinity, which has led me to a new marriage, this time with two sovereign beings - independent, loving, sensual and with an openness to discovering who we are through the support of each other.
The Masculinity I Never Knew I Needed
During this time, I encountered the work of David Deida, whose teachings brought me many realisations. I had been living a half-formed masculinity, disconnected from the deeper currents of my sexuality, my purpose, and my relational presence. Deida speaks of a masculinity that isn’t rigid or performative, but alive: ferocious in truth, devoted in love, radically present, and deeply open.
For the first time, I saw sexuality as a spiritual force, a transmission of consciousness, an energetic presence and exchange. To be present requires authenticity, trust, loving kindness and compassion. This, underpinned by the teachings of Ananda Sarita with self-love, self-pleasuring, sensuality, touch, play, attraction, polarity and orgasmic states of mind. This was not a masculinity I had encountered, never spoken of, never shared in our social and cultural relations.
Walking the Inner Realms: Warrior, Lover, Magician, King
Through plant medicine ceremonies, ancestral work, and deep psychological inquiry, I began exploring the archetypal inner landscape mapped by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. I met the boy who seeks to become the Warrior: disciplined, honest, courageous. I met the lost and broken heart to become the Lover: sensual, alive, open to beauty. I met the trickster who became the Magician: intuitive, perceptive, weaving insight into reality. Eventually, I met the King: the force of blessing, order, and sovereignty.
Each archetype peeled away the illusions I carried. Each one broke down a false identity and guided me toward a more grounded truth. This wasn’t self-help; it was initiation. It was a rebirth.
The Brotherhood That Holds Me Still
If there is one thing that saved me more than anything else, it is the brotherhood. A circle of very close men who became my anchor when I was unravelling, when I needed support, when I could support them and be present for each of our life unfoldings. We have been meeting weekly online and monthly in person for over 5 years now. We sit in honesty, accountability, and integrity. We witness one another not as roles, of father, husband, provider, but as men in the rawness of our becoming.
We kneel at the lodge's doorway in humility. We pray to the ancestors. We sweat for our truth. We sing to our pain and our power. We drum until something ancient awakens in our bones. In the presence of men, a man can finally see himself. These men held me when I felt unholdable, challenged me when I wanted to hide, and reflected back the man they saw emerging and not the one I feared I had lost.
Sovereign Alignment: The Path Forward
Sovereignty is not independence; rather, sovereignty is inner alignment with the truth of who you are. The Sovereign Alignment Journey is my attempt to share the path that saved and reshaped my life, integrating psychotherapy, meditation, shamanic work, archetypes, sacred masculinity, and conscious brotherhood.
Now I sit every morning in meditation - to Be. To experience the dance between duality and non-duality. To be the divine nature of consciousness in its vastness of love, wisdom and peace and to return to the constructs of my ego identity, my thoughts, feelings, emotions that make up the texture of who I am as Ricardo. I seek authenticity, I seek liberation of what makes me suffer through the perception of my ego identity and the conditioning of the physical world. I stand as sovereign and aligned to my purpose. To reach out to you and say, there are many ways, and this is one of them. Let's stand up and do something beneficial for humanity, for life on earth. Stop with the greed around money, and the failing capitalist exploitations led by immature masculinity. Modernity is in severe crisis. Arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic won't do anything. Let's take action on how humans can survive when we are floating in the water. Let’s care for the living ecosystem of this beautiful web of life.
