Article 4  

What is a “Real Man”

after a fighting against the obstacles to his own growth, has found his proper place in the world.

First of all a man, to be “real”, has to know himself: many people think they know themselves, but this knowledge is actually the result of much hard work, and the process can only start when we realise that we don’t know ourselves at all. We need to free ourselves from the psychological and cultural schemes imposed by the outside world, which prevent us from really knowing ourselves as, since our early childhood, they have always imposed models for us to comply with.

If we observe the overwhelming majority of our contemporaries we realise that they aren’t aware of living an automatic life based on external models without having any real contact with themselves.

In order to spark off the interest in knowing oneself, a person has to go through an event or experience which leads to a crisis in his certainties and creates a rift in his perception of himself and the world.  

It is also important to meet with people who belong to another way of thinking, to a different vision of the world from the dominant one, people who can give the right orientation, otherwise a human being in this situation is in danger of losing himself.

But what is the correct route to knowing ourselves?

In order to know, we must first observe. We have to observe carefully inside ourselves and accept everything we see, like when we open the car bonnet and look into the engine, noting all that we see.

This exercise, done on ourselves, is more difficult than we expect: in fact not only must we observe, but at the same time we must also accept what we see.

Inside us there are some good things and some bad things, but when we see something that we don’t like, such as anger, greed, weakness, etc., a part of us rebels, because it doesn’t want to abandon the good image of itself which it has created.

But we cannot achieve full knowledge of ourselves if we don’t accept ourselves as we really are (and not as we imagined ourselves to be).

It’s easier to see others than ourselves, and that’s why it's so important to work on ourselves in a group: the others are like a mirror for us, always showing us the parts of ourselves that we don’t see.

It is also vitally important to have a guide, who knows the various phases of this process, and can give us the right directions in every situation.

It’s tiring and sometimes painful work, but as we forge ahead it gradually creates within us a different way to be. In other words, remembering what we have discovered about ourselves and what, sometime painfully, we have learned to accept, in our lives we will start to behave differently, almost without realising.

This change cannot be achieved by direct action, as we would initially like it to be, but takes place imperceptibly, on an ever-deeper level as we continue with this work of observation-acceptation.

Later, knowing and being lead to action. Before we start working on ourselves we think we act according to our will, but there is actually something inside us that acts, a multitude of forces driving us, and it’s important to realise that we can’t actually do anything.

But on the path of knowledge, if we are lucky enough to meet a guide, we may be required to act in a certain manner, for example to fight against parts of ourselves or habits that we have to break. It may seem strange, but in order to gain the ability to act freely and consciously we have to learn to act under the direction of a person who has already followed this path and who knows the right way to act.

This method of operation, which at the beginning is hard and sometimes incomprehensible, leads to the development of a strength which is already close to real will and which reveals itself when all the secondary trends and desires of a human being have been subdued to a main purpose.

Those who have been through these phases, knowing - being - acting, have carried out an evolutionary process, and perhaps at this point we can speak of a “REAL MAN”.

To know who we are, to be ourselves, to know our own position in the world and to act in harmony with all of these elements: these should be the goals of all human beings.

In ancient times, in all civilizations, every aspect of life, from education to art and religion, had the purpose of helping men and women on this evolutionary path.

Nowadays everything seems to be designed to make human beings less and less aware, and more and more automatized.

Nevertheless, even in this day and age, those who really have an authentic aspiration and those who are sincerely searching for the way to find themselves and to become “real”, are sure to meet the person who can give them the help they need to find their way.

Andrea B.