☀️4 seasons 🧭4 directions
Join a year-long cohort of men
- - - - - growing in trust, self-awareness, and spiritual wholeness- - - - -
a year-long paradigm-shifting certificate program of
belonging,
becoming,
and moving into
the beyond
Are you ready to invest a year to rediscover your strength, essence, and lovability?
Are you ready for the grand gesture of committing to a set-apart year to renew your vows to live as freely as possible, tethered only by love?
♥️For Western North Carolina♥️
The location for the Mystery School is purposely located in post-Helen, NC, less than 20 miles from Asheville, NC.
Being here is an investment in the steady rebuilding and recovery of Western NC people and lands.
We will gather every season at the majestic Sacred Waters Retreat, Marshall, NC.
📆 August 21-23, 2026 (tentatively)
📆 October 16-18, 2026
📆 2027 dates TBD
Collaborate with other intrepid men:
🍃 Four in-person immersions based on the four seasons
🏞️ A contemporary vision quest 24-hour solo experience in the wilderness
💻 online gatherings - drop in, check in, & go forth
🎯 Online training course
📓Fieldwork: experimental exercises to reconnect with life.
📚 Equipped with a thoughtfully curated bibliography of required and suggested readings designed to tap into your masculine wholeness
You will:
🥾 Live an adventure
🏘️ Experience genuine community
🙏🏿 Connect deeply
🪘 Drum
🕰️ Learn to live in the moment
⁉️ Be surprised
📜 Embrace your story
⛰️ Make direct contact with creation
🕯️ Experience potent practices and rituals
We will gather four times in one year, allowing the four seasons to serve as our compass.
Far from a linear approach, this is a circular path that honors the rhythms of life.
Here is what our year to grow will look like:
🔆 IMMERSION ONE - SUMMER
⬇️ Looking south at vitality, the heat of the day, and imagination
▶️ Warrior & Wild Indigenous One archetypes
🍂 IMMERSION TWO - FALL
⬅️ Looking west at our shadows, the dark side of our lives, mystery, and soul.
▶️ Lover & Beloved archetypes
❄️ IMMERSION THREE - WINTER
⬆️ Looking north at wisdom, the stillness of winter, competence, and strength
▶️ King and Nurturing Generative Adult archetypes
✨ IMMERSION FOUR - SPRING
➡️ Looking east toward new beginnings, the advent of life, the rising of the sun, and rebirth
▶️ Innocent and Holy Fool archetypes
EXCLUSIVE TO WILD MAN MYSTERY SCHOOL MEMBERS:
➡️ Four Soul-Companionship mini-calls (20 minutes each) ($225 value)
➡️ Access to Wild Man Mystery Online Course (Over 5 hours of online training content)
➡️ In-person and online Wild Man Mystery gatherings
➡️ Monthly materials - including a thoughtfully curated bibliography for more profound journeying.
BONUS:
➡️ Two volumes of poetry ($30 value)
➡️ Four complimentary beautiful poetry prints
➡️ Discounted access to Men’s Estuary gatherings ($900 value)
🕊️ COVENANT
A promise among brothers to study, pray, share, and grow together for one year.
🏘️ COMMUNITY
Quarterly retreats in the woods to listen, discuss, and discern with others - bolstered with one-to-one peer-support
📿 CONTEMPLATION
A regular practice of silence and solitude
❤️🩹 COMPASSION
A regular practice of service to others
MEET YOUR GUIDES
Roy Shirley is a licensed professional counselor and a Living School for Action and Contemplation graduate in Albuquerque, NM, with a certificate in Contemplative Spirituality from Oasis Ministries.
He has led many retreats and workshops about understanding your unique story and for men’s topics related to male spirituality and their life journey.
Matthew Ray Lyda has been guiding men for more than a decade, is a certified Spiritual Director, Author, Retreat Leader, PSAP (Pastoral Sex Addiction Professional), husband of one, father of three, lover of lands, and average pickleball player.
He has lived in Bangladesh and India and is trained by IITAP (International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals) and Oasis Ministries. Matthew also serves as an initiator in Men's Rites of Passage work worldwide.
exchanging outdated masculinity for something wilder
showing feelings is only for women
to sensing
only women depend on others
to friendship
a man takes care of himself without help from others
to inter-dependence
I am what I earn
to I am
keep your problems to yourself
to honesty
Choose your investment
Generosity Rate
$2,299
after December 1st, 2025
➡️ $1,999 ⬅️
If paid before December 1st, 2025
or $180 / month for 12 months 📆
For those who’d like to contribute to the wellness of others.
Resource Rate
$1899
after December 1st, 2025
➡️ $1,799 ⬅️
If paid before December 1st, 2025
or $160 / month for 12 months 📆
For those financially stable and have their basic needs met
Community-Supported Rate
$1499
after December 1st, 2025
➡️ $1,299 ⬅️
If paid before December 1st, 2025
or $120 / month for 12 months 📆
For folks who have a financial hardship
In need of financial assistance? Reach out to matthew@recoverthewild.com
We are committed to ensuring that finances are not a barrier to this essential conversation.
Curious?
Schedule a free 20-minute call.
Ancient Wisdom: We pair the treasures of science with the gems of ancient wisdom. Whether it be time-worn Judeo-Christian practices, lessons from indigenous peoples, spiritual community, storytelling, or heroic journeys, we root our work in a grand story. Considering meaning, purpose, vision, and values.
Vintage, an age-old path.
Body-Based: This stance is faithful to mindfulness, experience, the sensual, and the imaginative; all elements oft-neglected by pseudo-masculinity, and white-washed spirituality. As the wisdom of the body is accessed, an opportunity to heal age-old rifts between the sexual and the spiritual opens
Hospitality: Unsubscribing from perfectionism and backspacing the blunting of empathy (mostly resulting from numbing behaviors Ad nauseam), this posture is faithful to see wounds morph into sacred wounds, a with(ness) to suffering, common humanity, and kindness. This is the call of hospitality to self and others.
Trauma-informed: This stance is a commitment to address systemic issues, hone honesty, craft ‘safe-enough’ settings, and foster collaboration. Dipping deeply from research-based recovery intelligence.
Embrace the Unexpected: The predictable, comfortable, and business-as-usual is death to our souls. The deepest transformations often occur outside of our expectations, and all our oh-so-cherished ways of thinking and behaving. Often, what is needed is the unexpected, the ridiculous, what’s ‘off the beaten path.’
Belonging: the domestic takes us only so far. As Thoreau said, “In the wilderness we have our tonic.” Nature is more than “out there”, but a reality that pushes past the boundaries of our skin, including us! Encounters with land, with more-than-human realities of life are Non-Negotiables to heal outdated myths of man greater than nature and man vs. nature. What we discover is: we belong to this organic reality, awe, and wholeness. We are more connected than we could ever have imagined.
