Awakened Man

If men have never been shown the life changing power of their pain and their

adversity, they will never be able to overcome it and become the strongest version of

themselves. As a culture, we seem to have given up on the notion of the overcoming

of adversity as key to the formation of masculine energy in a man. If you're not being

fed the contemporary notion of masculinity as cruel and unfeeling, you're left with

the 1950s archetypal bully in today's cultural conversation. Both of these

conceptions are leaving men with nowhere to turn, as neither of these amounts to an

integrated, awakened man. But what is an integrated man? This question has led me

down many rabbit holes over the years, from feminism to red pill movements, but

none of these have been as effective, heartfelt, and experientially true as the path of

masculine formation as laid out in Robert Bly's classic book Iron John, a book about

men. Iron John was originally a Germanic mythic tale about an animalistic, rugged

wild man who's captured by a king and unwittingly freed by a naive prince. While

there remains a great threat that the boy prince will be killed by the wild man,

instead, he ends up learning from his raw, naturalistic energy, learning how to face

fear and process his trauma along the way. Now, this story carries such relevance

today because the boy prince acts as a symbol for modern man. Today, we're

sheltered from the brutality of reality by the walls of safe society, distance from the

grit and guts of our forefathers who built the societies we live in, and most often

enmeshed in the all-consuming love of the great mother archetype. The great

Mother archetype may come in the form of a closeness to an actual mother without

the corresponding closeness to the father, or it could even be a symbolic closeness to

the feminine in terms of yin energy. Either way, both of these clash with the inner

masculine instincts of the boy and create a dysfunction in later life. And while it's, of

course, healthy for men to have an understanding of and a Blending with the

feminine, our modern world seems to offer men and boys few positive, wise

archetypes of masculinity. To learn from meaning, men have an over reliance on the

feminine. This, in turn, leads many men to becoming what I term lost boys. That is,

men who identify with their ego, who seek hedonism and feel an inner nihilism and

purposelessness within the path of the lost boy, inevitably spirals down into an

obsession with one's personal status, with chasing women, or within a dysfunction

addictions and a lack of deep purpose and vision in life. However, as the tale of I am

John goes to show, we can, if we face the wild man, ensure that we find a positive

archetype of masculinity to teach us and mold us and take us to a place of courage,

purpose and vision. Now, the first step a man must take on this path is integrating

the wounds that have stemmed from his relationship with his actual or symbolic

father. Many men grow up today without a father figure, or with an emotionally

distant one at least. And Robert Blythe states that the whole of the remote father

leaves a gap in a boy's life that demons can enter through anxiety, depression,

despair, anger issues, and addictions. All of these are examples of demonic entities

that can enter the wounded boy's soul. This lack of the physical and spiritual father

has led young men to develop what Bly terms female instincts. And while much of

society says we need more female influence on boys, I would beg to differ. While

young boys do need their mothers for a time, as they get older, boys need their

fathers to introduce them to the world as a man. Paraphrasing Carl Jung, Blythe

states that in developing female instincts, this blocks a man from actualizing himself
on the world. It stops him from implementing self-discipline and most

fundamentally, makes him struggle with being assertive in the world. Now, many

lost boys know this has happened subconsciously and therefore begin to resent their

mothers for it. They may say they love their mother dearly, they may not even be

consciously aware of the resentment. But look closely and you usually find that they

are still their mother's son. Now, harboring hatred towards anybody is extremely

dangerous, but it's especially dangerous when it's aimed towards one of your

parents, because that traps you as a lost boy in an identity of pain, because your

whole character is based upon events that happened in your childhood, meaning you

haven't broken free of it. Trapped in a web, many men develop grandiose beliefs and

compulsive behaviors to hide their wounds, while others display them like trophies

on Twitter. We live in an age of anxiety, trauma and depression. But it's worth

asking, what would some people be and do without these maladies to define them?

Others, as happened to me, may well turn to addictive behavior in an attempt to

almost obliterate the soul, to bring an ending to the inner pain that they

unknowingly perpetuate within. Yet in all the attempts we make to escape inner

pain, the solutions do not lie in the external world, they lie in the pain within. Now,

it's very important to note in your journey of growth as a man that the aim here isn't

to turn into the wild man. It's to interact with the wild man and learn from him,

making you half wild man, half civilized man. And while the wild man of Iron John

is a poetic metaphor, your own wild man will appear when you take the decisive step

away from blaming others. Victimhood and fear. The first step to this is inculcating

the great spiritual axiom, and that's that your wounds are gifts. Right now, that may

well seem like an insane thing for me to say to you, but when we look back over our
history as humanity, who among us has truly become great without honoring their

wounds and pushing through their suffering to find transcendent meaning? Gandhi

was great because he was oppressed by and overcame the biggest empire of all time.

MLK was great because of the very racism that tormented him physically,

emotionally, and spiritually. He morphed in to our growth as a human species.

Winston Churchill was great because of the Nazi menace that plowed through

Europe and threatened to plunge the whole continent into darkness. Jesus was great

because he was tortured and murdered, despite never committing a sin, even once,

and showed the world the power of forgiveness and love as its fundamental root. So

if you feel your life has no meaning, that you've been wronged by life, that you feel

oppressed, there's one key question that you need to ask yourself. How does my

suffering help others? A vital part of being an integrated man is the capability to be

honest, stoic, and helpful to others. Part of being this man is also in learning to be

part of a meaningful community. The mythological tale of Narcissus, the man that

we get the word narcissist from, is very useful here. It's very important to remember

that before Narcissus fell in love with himself, he was separated from his tribe. In his

loneliness, with his wounds, he fell in love with his own image. This is the tale of the

man who rejects society in order to stay a lost boy, using grandiosity to hide himself

from the world. It's common for men to fear the tribe because of an evolutionary

driver of exclusion. Yet we must fight to overcome that innate fear, as whatever

keeps us in the comfort zone will kill us quicker than fear. Staying in the comfort

zone is another behavior stemming from the great mother, which seeks to always

nurture and protect. This may be okay for boys, but men must break free from this.

And if society and culture has turned its back on positive masculine archetypes, you
must find your own way yourself. This journey of stepping out is the symbolic stride

from the mother's world to the father's world. And this step into the father's world

begins with a step into the unknown. And it's not as simple as we just enter the

unknown and become integrated men immediately. The idea is that we fail, that we

stumble, and that we keep falling over, that we get knocked from every direction and

we learn to pick ourselves up and stand on our own. 2ft this journey is truly vital for

modern men to make as women lost boys in the world yearn for integrated, brave

and capable men. We learn in this journey the value of persistence, of ambition, of

grit, and how by facing adversity consistently, we can find inner peace and

contentment within. I hope you enjoyed the video. Do remember to give me a like

and subscribe if you're new. It's always really appreciated when you do that. And

also if you're interested in the topics covered in this video, do check out my nine step

path of initiation offer through my men's coaching service. If developing as a man

and building that integrated, awakened masculinity is something which really turns

a light on within, do check out the program and we can have a chat about walking

through those steps together. Other than that, have a great day.