The Cornerstones Journey

The Cornerstones
The Purpose of the Cornerstones
Our Promise

The Cornerstones Journey is not a self-help system you get from a book.  It is a partnership of brothers who have dared to venture into essential questions about personal truth, meaning, purpose and spirit.  Throughout our lives, these essential questions have inspired us to explore a myriad of paths, disciplines and teachers – all contributing to our step-by-step journey of awakening. This is a path for men with a foundation of inclusiveness, whose purpose is to connect us to our unique gift or offering to life, regardless of age, sexual preference, ethnicity or religion.

Although our lives are profoundly enriched by a diversity of relationships with men, women, children and the natural world, we have come to understand that in order to be our best in all relationships there are times when these spiritual questions must be addressed only in the company of men. We recognize the necessity to have men in our lives that understand our suffering with compassion and strength, and stand for our magnificence with heart and resolve.

We know these men to be integral in helping us stay focused on our possibility of a greater destiny rather than becoming overwhelmed by our fear of survival. They bring us clarity about being a man, about being a spiritual being, and help us maintain our commitment to freedom.  It is our council of brothers who steadily remind us what it means to be present with our families and friends and what it takes to persist with the practices that we know serve our spiritual freedom. They remind us what it takes to understand and live reverently toward our elders and teachers and what it means to truly live our deepest values in the world.

There is a profound relief and joy that comes from facing the spiritual challenge of choosing freedom.  There is also an immense clarification about our individual journey and the direction it must take, when we allow a community of like-minded men to contribute their wisdom to us. Likewise, there is extraordinary empowerment when our gifts of insight and wisdom are offered to others and received.

Wisdom that is realized in community is eminently trustable. There is nothing more reliable in assisting a man on his spiritual journey than the company of other men invested in the same thing.

For many men this work comes at a critical turning point in their lives. This work recognizes the need to live something deeper than the daily grind. We honor the impulse to seek the companionship and guidance of other men who are also considering a deeper life or who are seeking clarity about how to deepen the journey they are already on.

This is the Cornerstones Path

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The Cornerstones

The primary tool we use to help each man discover a larger perspective about his life is the Cornerstones foundation.By investigating his life in regard to the four energies or “modes of being,” which we call the Cornerstones, each man will have the opportunity to see more clearly how he is living his life.  These prominent energies emerge to varying degrees in each of us. It is through understanding his relationship to each of these four energetic domains that gives a man the chance to see how he is living them now and make choices that further his journey of freedom.

Through the course of life, the attention of human beings usually becomes fixated or habitually oriented toward certain modes of being. Through the Cornerstones Path, each man can see how he is fixated in ways that limit choice and freedom. In discovering how he is presently living these energies, a man can reclaim attention normally relegated to habitual and limiting ways of being, shifting attention toward something other than survival. For example, he can shift from fear, shame, and hopelessness to inspiration, love and service.

We explore the Cornerstones together within a respectful circle of brothers.  This consciously created community is another essential tool that allows our self-discovery to be reflected by a variety of men. And, by offering his distinct insights to other men in the group, each man also discovers his unique contribution or gift.

Understanding these energetic domains can help us reclaim attention that has been overly fixated on personal survival and expand it to include more than survival. Our experience is that before this shift can occur every man must come to terms with how he is living now before he can claim a new possibility for freedom. Through the Cornerstones a man is able to easily discover where his attention lives. We contend that you create what you focus on. When a man discovers where his attention lives, he then has choice. Men may discover that there are areas in life, highlighted by the Cornerstones that require his attention and willingness to grow, so that he can offer his gift from a balanced and steady place in himself.

Men often discover that their offering IS the freedom they seek.  For many men, the obvious place to focus “reclaimed attention” is on what they have always wanted to offer the world of themselves.  In our own lives when we have freed-up our attention and have begun to unwind from the bondage of our fixations, such as “making it” in life, then creative possibility naturally arises. Some of the words that capture what can be available to someone passing through the fires of truth are:  Vision, Service, Freedom, Creativity, Hope, Love, Equanimity, Happiness, Energy, and Connection.

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The Four Cornerstones

Purpose

KING  - SURRENDER - VISIONARY - SACRIFICE - SERVANT LEADER
BLESSING – RESPONSIBILITY – STEWARD – FAITH – DIVINITY

• Is there something greater than my own survival that I can serve or surrender to?
• Do I have a vision or calling for my life?
• What is the deepest dream I have for my life, for those I love, for life itself?
• In the face of change do I have faith that there is a purpose for my life?

Presence

WARRIOR – PRACTICE - ADVOCATE – DISCIPLINE - CHAMPION – CODE OF HONOR - PROTECTOR – BOUNDARIES – GIVING AND KEEPING ONE’S WORD

• What am I willing to champion and protect with my life?
• What are the circumstances in life that weaken my resolve to surrender to something greater than my own survival?
• What circumstances challenge my ability stay steady and unperturbed?
• Do I have a “Code of Honor”?

Power

MAGICIAN - KNOWLEDGE - TEACHER - STRATEGY - HEALER - LANGUAGE
INVENTOR –INSIGHT - ENTREPRENEUR - INVESTIGATOR OF REALITY

• Is what I am manifesting addressing and fulfilling my deepest spiritual longing?
• Do I determine what I learn and create mostly through my need for survival or my inspiration to live a deeper life?
• If I had all the resources I needed what would I create?
• What is my experience of the process of bringing something into reality?

Passion

LOVER – HUMOR - ARTIST – ECSTASY - WILD MAN – SEXUALITY
FAMILY MAN – RELATIONSHIP - POET – FEELING – PLAY

• How do I meet the world with my heart and love?
• Do I feel the world as a constant threat or do I allow life to move me into deeper feeling and connection regardless of circumstances?
• What would people say about how loved at my funeral?
• What do I feel in my body?

These navigational principles are the main foundational tools of the Cornerstones Journey.

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Purpose of Cornerstones for Men

To use the Cornerstones to discover how we are living these energies now so that we can responsibly bring them into further balance in our lives and recover the energy and attention needed to devote ourselves to a destiny of freedom and live our deepest spiritual calling.

• Discover how you are currently living your life in relationship to the energies of King/Purpose, Warrior/Presence, Magician/Power and Lover/Passion.

• Know the power of living these energies in a balanced way.

• Recover the energy and attention needed to live your deepest spiritual calling.

• Receive the collective wisdom of a community of men.

 

Our Promise

• Each man will leave the course knowing clearly what his next steps are in bringing into balance the four Cornerstones!

• Each man will leave the course gifted with practices personally designed to assist him in taking steps toward living the life he has discovered is possible.

• Each man will have available to him a community of men to practice living his deepest spiritual calling.

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Cornerstones for Men
Foundational Tools for Your Spiritual Path