Omari’s Story

Who are your people? 

I come from a community that has a lot of history. A history of perseverance, of accomplishments, of beauty. I come from a strong culture, an urban culture -- Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. There’s a lot of pride, a lot of critical thinking, a lot of joy. But along with that substance dependency, incarceration, childhood trauma and abuse, and marginalization economically. So I come from a community that I'm very proud of, and that has a lot of challenges. 

How did being from that community inform your path?

I’m an endless learner. Knowing that I come from a powerful lineage, and significance is my destiny. But there’s an insidious struggle in there too. It’s so hard to find the balance between a real material situation, which is limited, and the endless possibilities for internal liberation. I’m working on it. 

How did you find All Kings? 

I was on a path pursuing artistic endeavors, going deeper into my work, and into a conversation about how masculinity has served me and how it hasn't. I was starting to realize that there was a blockage in me. It felt physical, like something at the base of my sternum, something clogged in me. And in just naming that, I realized there was a part of me unexplored. Around the same time, I heard about All Kings, and it was the right moment.

What was your first weekend experience like? 

It was weird and powerful. So much of the shift for me was about stories, and pretending. There was this incredible turn when I realized that not only was I “performing” on the weekend, but that I was performing all the time -- pretending to be someone I’m not, telling myself stories about myself and my life, some pleasant stories, some unpleasant stories, but all just stories. To really accept that was transformative. 

Can you say more about that? What was transformative? 

It was a lot about getting out of my head, and learning to trust my body. I realized how much I lived in my ideas about myself and reality. But in fact there were huge things I had forgotten, or blocked out of my mind. And those things were still living in my body, and I was reacting in resistance to them. You know, I could feel them. And while I’m very good at talking about things, intellectualizing them, to just feel my feelings, to be in the stillness of them, sitting with them and soaking them up -- that was a challenge, and a transformation. 

You’re a social worker by training? How do you see All Kings fitting in with that work? 

For me, All Kings is a way to build on what I've learned academically, to innovate and invert, and find new routes to healing. I mean, there are differences. In All Kings, we all do the work together. In other contexts that can be frowned on, but here it’s profound. In All Kings, there’s an openness to play, and drama, and spirituality. But basically I feel like I’m taking the values, and practices, and ethics, that I was professionalized into, and moving out of occupation and into purpose. It’s not just labor, it’s tradition. 

What was it like for you to do this work in a community of men? 

It’s the only community of men in which I’m not trying to compare or compete. I’m not trying to do anything but be, and bear witness. Just witness someone else's joy and pain, to really see them, and be seen. Being that way with other men allows me to recognize their sovereignty. 

You know, growing up, whenever I was in a group of men, there was only one alpha. And if you’re not the alpha, you’re no one. I don’t feel that in All Kings. That whole desire to compete isn’t there. And when it does come up, it’s challenged in a loving way. We’re not challenging each other to be the alpha. We’re challenging each other to let go of the desire to win or be categorized, and in that way we all become leaders. 

What’s it like to be doing this work in a diverse group, with men of different races and socioeconomic statuses? 

For me, the whole thing is about striking the balance of acknowledging the material conditions and also letting them go. I’m not going to pretend that I'm from a community that’s not oppressed. But I’m also not going to live only in that story. Being in a group that has multiple shades, I’m not going to pretend that privilege doesn’t exist, and that there’s not lived wisdom about how I can open to my own power. And at the same time, I push myself to forgive, to have empathy, and recognize the sameness that we do have -- intrinsically, we are all motivated to hold both, the difference and the same. 

What’s one thing you’re working on in yourself or your life? 

Fear. I’m working to allow myself to admit that I’m afraid. And watching how quickly I fall into coping mechanisms that served me as a boy, that are soothing, but that don't allow me to go through the feeling of fear. It allows me to avoid it or try to going around it. As I move into man psychology, I need to go through the fear, by acknowledging it, and then working to channel it.  

I'm also working on letting go of words, and trying to connect to my body. And let go of judgements. I still very much sit in judgement, and I’m trying to recognize that when I sit in judgement of other people I sit in judgment of myself. If I forgive, and accept, and let go of control, I’ll have advantages myself. And also to just accept that I’m selfish too -- that I’m doing this work to heal myself. It’s not just that. But when I’m in the trenches with you, I’m working out my shit too. 

What else would you say about your experience in All Kings? 

This maybe sounds ridiculous and it might put some people off, and maybe really attract other people, but it’s helped me believe in magic again, and in miracles. It’s confirmed to me that there's something else, something unexplainable, ancient, immeasurable that I’m missing from my life. And that all the struggle, all the hard things, all the pain that I have to go through — well, that’s where the gift is too. I learned that not just through my work, but being really deeply committed to the work of other men. 

Anything else you would say to someone considering getting involved? 

You have to be in a place to try things. It’s not for the people that think they know it all. Or people who think everything is fine. All Kings is for someone who believes that that you have something inside that you haven’t tapped yet, that you could do more, could be more, that you’re wearing a mask — or that maybe there’s something you once knew but forgot. For me there was a specific tangible feeling that said I needed something different in my life. So I think it is for everyone for everyone in a way, because I think we need rites of passage. And there also has to be a call.