March 10-12, 2023 Weekend

Making the Path to Spirit Warrior Journey

by ROSS T. LUCAS

The March 9-12 Path to Spirit-Warrior weekend started long before the men arrived.  The morning they came, the guides awakened to four inches of fresh snow.  It was in that snowy environment that eight men came to walk their Path to Spirit.

The weekend is about connection, about a man connecting with Spirit and with other people in his life.  The energy of the whole weekend is about welcoming, caring, and creating safety.  The difference between the New Warrior Training and Path to Spirit-Warrior is that P2SW maintains a balance between challenging a man, supporting a man, and letting him know he is cared for.  One man asked what I thought the difference was, and all I could think to say was that it was ‘different.’ He suggested the word ‘ineffable’ to describe the experience.

One man who attended this past weekend had been told before he came that this weekend was different from the NWTA.  Following the life review exercise, he came to me and said, “This isn’t guts!”  He had still been expecting things to be similar to ‘guts.’  Going through the process made it clear that it was different.

The men who went through the work came to understand more about themselves and how their experiences growing up, particularly their family of origin experiences, formed them to be the men they are today.  However, it isn’t just about head knowledge, the weekend is about transforming lives and transcending the old way of relating to the world and to loved ones, as well as finding a blessing in how a man relates to himself.  No one entering into the Spirit of the weekend comes out the other side without being changed.

As one of the guides, I found the weekend to be physically tiring but emotionally and Spiritually energizing.  The real test for the value of the weekend is how the men who went through feel after it’s over.  What I hear those men saying is that they have discovered a new level of joy, hopefulness, and a whole lot of thankfulness for having had the opportunity to walk the Path to Spirit.