Brotherhood: The Missing Nutrient

Jason Lange: Jason Lange: Yeah, I think what we've been discovering, both in our own journeys and in the journey of leading men through this program is what an ache it often is for guys. You know, maybe love feels a little too woo, woo for you, but something about acceptance and approval as well is another way to think about it. And was really sitting with me this last week in that all of us as men, as humans, right, the mechanism we go through is we're born into some family system and then we adapt to the family system to survive. And that adaptive child, you know, we might call it our inner child, our wounded child, is often who shows up to try to handle life when we're not sure what to do. And almost inevitably that adaptation which I've talked about on my show before, you know, oftentimes it's what protects us when we're young. It becomes the very barrier to what we want as adults. And the key thing here is, though people might think otherwise, the way to grow that part of all of us up is through love and acceptance. It's not through shame, it's not through discipline, it's not through getting rid of that part of ourself. What we've seen, and certainly what I've experienced is when that part is met with love and acceptance, it knows what to do to grow itself up, to reintegrate back into the nervous system. This is, you know, something Yuen and I have talked about in this program. In a sense. You know, the type of shadow work we do is it's a type of anti coaching because we're not actually telling you what to do. We're creating a context within your system where you have an insight, a realization. Love touches you in some capacity and then the system just knows often how to reorganize. I know it sounds totally woo woo, but it's just we see it in guys as they're receiving this type of love and acceptance. It's like their whole nervous system starts to rewire and settle in a way. And why this is key and what makes it not just woo woo is I can tell you if you want to be a powerful, effective man in the world, you have to be able to show up in the ways you want in the moments that matter most. And most men have not fully integrated their wounding and so they get a little triggered, they feel a little under resourced and suddenly that inner child is running the show. Whether it's in their job, their company, with their spouse, their intimate partner, their kids, you name it. I mean, I've been doing this stuff a while and yeah, mine still shows up a couple times a month. I'd say have a very different relationship. And I'm able to bounce back from that in a pretty profound, profoundly different speed, but it's still really important. And it's that longing, just that longing for masculine presence and love that is so key and so core to the transformations we're seeing in men.

Luke Adler: We get so used to as men not receiving love, particularly from the masculine. And I might tell my story here, I've told it many times. And so what ends up happening is we put tremendous pressure on the feminine for love. And it sets up this discordant amount of pressure between masculine and feminine. And we could actually see that dynamic as the source of a lot of problems between masculine and feminine. There's so much pressure to fulfill each other. In reality, there's this major nutrient that's missing, and that nutrient is the love that comes from masculine. Something we've been touching on this last six months. The masculine love does a couple things. First thing it does is you feel safe. You feel safe to be in a space of no demand. You don't have to perform, you don't have to show up, you don't have to push your body. When you're in the presence of masculine love, you can let go. The beauty of letting go is as you let go, you feel yourself be lifted up, your body lifts up, your spine elongates, it becomes more erect, and it enables you to pick your head up, to look forward, to look at the horizon line and gain perspective. But to have the strength to do that, we first have to feel safe, to move out of fight or flight, where our vision narrows, tunnels down and our head dips and we get really myopic about what we have to do to survive. When the presence of masculine love enters our nervous system, the first thing we do if we're exhausted is we collapse because we're tired. But then we recoalesce, we rise, we lift, we look around, we see, ah, there's someone here that I feel safe with, Someone here that I can, I can reveal the pain that I'm under. And we don't feel alone. Our relationship to being alone and lonely begins to go away. You and I have been running shadow work sessions individually for many, many years before we collaborated and of course together in our men's group. Jason I think we've done 14, 15 sessions, you know, five day sessions over the last eight years. And we've experienced this phenomenon so many times that now it's not, it's clear that there, there is, there are principles of, of the animate nature of vitality that are operating when men get together in a, a context that allows their longing and love to come to the foreground. And so this brings in the question, what is that context? What is that? What are those set of conditions that you and I create that allow that to happen? Because men have been gathering for centuries, or just we'll speak in more modern terms into locker rooms or into work culture. And love doesn't necessarily flow to the degree that we're talking about. There are levels of camaraderie that move in a locker room that enable a team to win a championship around throwing or kicking a ball. And of course we aggrandize that as this incredible thing. And it is incredible in certain ways. Right. But there, there is a kind of, I hesitate to say cracking a code, but it's, it's more like we dismantle the already established conditions and reestablish new conditions that allow that longing to come forward and that, that love to start to radiate into a, into a space. And, you know, I think one of the things that drew me to this work, and I know you too, Jason, is that there was, there was something, There's a, One of the conditions in the work is that we create a non shaming environment. Shame is, is really not permitted to enter the space, which means we're never talking down or never being critical. We're never being authoritative in a demeaning way to anyone in the experience. Which is strange because in the transformational marketplace, really for a long time, as long as I've been in it and my parents were in it from the 70s through the 80s, etc. Shame was definitely a part of transformation. Putting someone on the hot seat, drilling them down, calling them out, taking them to task in various ways, in various styles in the name of dismantling their ego so that they could experience who they really are. And you and I never ever do that. So it's, it's so then, so then how do the breakthroughs happen? And of course for me, the, the breakthroughs and transformation I've seen in this work have been the most profound and complete that I've ever experienced. Part and parcel because there was no damage incurred to my sense of identity in the, in the letting go process. I didn't have a, the facilitators I worked with never said, you know, Luke, wake the up, Luke. Don't be a Luke. You're full of, oh, you're doing, you're doing that thing again, Luke. Never heard that once. And I have heard that in different, different things I've studied and been a part of. I could, you know, I could name, name some names of organizations where, where I was coached that way. And so I think, yeah, I think we should maybe talk about that a little bit. Like what, how, how do we set up that context?

Jason Lange: Because it's, it's pretty interesting yeah, I'm really struck, actually. I'm thinking about this latest cohort we wrapped. One of the gentlemen pointed something out that in terms of the flow of the program and journey we take men on, he was like, yeah, one of the wild things is this has kind of been in reverse. Usually you meet someone in the world and you put your best foot forward, and then as you get to know them, you start to get to know the kind of shadowy elements, the stuff they don't want you to know or aren't proud of or where they're out of integrity, you know, whatever it might be. And his experience of our program was. It was reversed. Like we started, and we just go right for the jugular. Here we are. Here's what doesn't work. Like, here's where we're in pain. Here's what I'm not proud of. You know, we kind of reveal that stuff pretty early on. You know, we have very tight agreements and structure around this. So it's not. It creates a level of trust to allow this to happen in. But we do go pretty fast in that sense, and we get to go under the hood, so to speak, of each other as men and see, yeah, what's running the show for us. And then towards the end of the program, we kind of start to sprinkle in the other stuff where, oh, wow. Yeah, here's. Here's what I'm celebrating. Here's what's great about my life. Here's what I'm proud of. Things that often we lead with in a normal context, but we do it in reverse. And the power of that. Yeah. One thing I've definitely realized in this program, one of the great powers is when we intimately connect with someone else's pain, we bond. Right. There's like. It's a very human to human thing. And I think also part of what makes this work so important in this day and age of disconnection, tribalism, objectification, us, them thinking, you know, which is all over the globe right now. Something different happens when you first meet someone at a human to human level in the rawness of their pain. Because all those labels, all that bullshit, it just falls away. It just falls away. And it's like, wow, this is a human. And I connect to their heart. And when we've bonded in that way, first something else becomes possible. And that's part of what we're talking about here. And then when we bond in that way and then in some sense shower these parts of ourselves that we really thought and sometimes through experience, learned from our day to day systems were unlovable. When that gets touched by love, that's when the healing really tends to happen. That's when the reorganization tends to happen. That's when the integration tends to happen. And we're able to move through the world with more of ourselves online and more capacity to be present in things. And you know, every time we do it, part of the joy of this program is we're seeing how to. We're seeing what the process is. That is not even something you and I created. It's just like, wow, there's this thing and every time we get, something gets revealed to us of how we can continue to further refine it and support it and allow the connections to deepen. And love really is the central ingredient. And it is the thing that almost all men coming into our program are profoundly malnourished in. Just profoundly. Particularly from the masculine, right, from the men in their lives, from the male caregivers that they experienced, where most often, you know, the default in our culture is you are rewarded for what you do, right? If you do a good job, if you make enough money, if you get good enough grades, if you win in the sports, you're rewarded. And that has a huge cost on our heart and soul as men. And the wild thing again, for any skeptical men listening here, what we're seeing, the kick ass thing is when men are loved for who they are, not for what they do, but for who they are, they actually end up having more capacity to go do more shit because then their well being isn't dependent on the outcome, which allows us men to in some sense live more boldly because we have this safe, stable place of love that we can bring anything to in our groups that we help create.

Luke Adler: Yeah, it's, it's become such a normal thing in our lives. Jason, you, you're in my life that, you know, our lives really reflect that, that we have. We have this space of love that's alive. And because it's been in existence for so long, we're able to bring that to our wives, our kids, to our workplace. And it's just become normal. And of course, when we meet a new group of men, you and I bring that normalcy that at one point was really strange. You know, I think my first experience of it was. It was familiar in that it was something that I had recognized, but I hadn't experienced for decades. That level of acceptance and permission to bring my pain forward. And so when we meet a new group of men and we, we lay out the, the kind of contextual elements, you know, the first, first few things we ask men to do is to agree to two very challenging things, which is to be transparent and to be vulnerable. And of course, to enable that, we have to put a third condition, which is confidentiality. We're not going to, we're not going to air out everyone's history to the world. So that lays out a certain level of safety. And then we have a couple other agreements. We're asking men, people, I mean, next year we're going to be working with women too, offering the first cohort of heart of shadow. We're asking them to do something society has told them to do. Essentially the opposite to, you know, keep your cards close to chest, to not reveal, to not trust, to not get manipulated. And so it requires a big leap, you know, And I can think back. God, I remember I was with you, Jason, in Honolulu. Well, we met in Honolulu and then we went to the, the west side of the island of Oahu. And I remember asking you because you had worked with this particular teacher before, and so what are we going to do, Jason? And, you know, I think you tried to describe it in a certain way, because I'm trying to reference it to was this like shamanic work or is this like the landmark form, or is this like, you know, breath work or whatever? And my experience was that I was a little bewildered because I had never been in an environment. Just thinking about it, I can feel the kind of tenderness of my heart where I could say and express myself in any way that wanted to come through me. Because I was basically asking you, Jason, what are the rules? Like, how do I do this? Right? And it was bewildering to discover, like, well, I mean, there's a kind of basic, like, obviously, be respectful of human beings here, but. And having a space that was that open relationally. Here's an interesting correlation. The closest place I had experienced that level of openness was in deep meditation, where I experienced consciousness as a phenomenon open ever more infinitely into space. And I would describe that space as being free and full of love and full of joy and peace. When I first experienced this work, I felt that same space, but in a relational context between me and human beings. It was familiar because I had experienced it energetically, but it was bewildering because I had never touched it in an actual eyes wide open relationship. And I think that that that was possible blew me away, blew, blew my conception of what was possible open. And then that there's this whole realm of, of experience to be had in relationship that is. That is place related to that same location in consciousness, that that's nature is free and full of love. And I know that that might sound really strange to folks out there, but what we're really talking about when we talk about love is a place. It's a location in awareness inside that when you start to feel it and sense it, you gain the ability to take yourself back there, to even start to live there, and to not be relegated to only experience it in meditation or in a plant medicine journey or in a breathwork journey or whatever spiritual practice you may do to touch that space of freedom and love and acceptance starts to become available not just inside my being, but between me and other people. And then the journey starts to get really interesting.

Jason Lange: Yeah, that. It's such a great way to phrase it, you know, another way to think about. I think what we see, men, where we see them end up is a type of relational freedom. So it's. It's not just the freedom at the top of the monastery, alone on the mat or alone in the woods, but it's, wow, I'm relating. I'm in connection to you and I still get to feel free, right. I can drop all the shit I think I have to do to be in connection with you, and instead I get to just show up and be in connection with you and feel free. And that's a profoundly precious space, I think we have found, that isn't available to most people out in the world. And when they first touch it, it's. It's life changing. Like, it's legitimately. Like, whoa, okay, I just saw the Matrix here. And now I have this place I can plug in that fuels the rest of my life, right? There's this. There's this deep place of knowing and connection and trust and love. I mean, you know, go deep enough in. And a lot of these things start to collapse. Freedom and love, like, it all just becomes the state of, oh, it's all okay. It's all okay. And that for so many men that come into our program, shouldering so much burden and heaviness, what they think they have to do or even how they think they have to be in the world in order to X, Y or Z, when that gets taken away, that's where so much of the life force and the energy we're talking about starts to come back. It's like, oh, wow. All of that capacity, all that resource I was using to try to figure out all that just becomes available to me now to feel alive to feel more deeply, to love more, to move towards what I want in an even more profound way. And a lot of guys have just never had that and don't necessarily know how to even receive it. And I think that's part of maybe the gift of the groove our. Our groups create is they do have a certain amount of momentum to them, meaning there's like an energetic tidal wave that comes to help break down some of those barriers to reception, to guys, that. It's like, there's actually nothing you have to do here. You just have to let go and go for the ride. And as guys experience that, it's. It's pretty cool. It's like, wow, wait, there's. I don't even have to do my work in a certain way, right? Like, what are the rules? I want to do it. I'm going to make sure mine's as deep and as valuable to the group as everyone. It's like, no, all that goes out the door. All that goes out the door. And that's where so much trust is born and so much camaraderie is born amongst the men as well that we've seen. And the real magic of, you know, this phrase I've been using lately that I learned that the group starts to work towards mutual freedom and the awareness of what happens when a man realizes, wow, me vulnerably going to these places inside myself actually starts to free the men around me. It's really cool because most men, you know, want to be of some kind of service in the world. And this is a really unique way to do it that reformats things for a lot of our guys that, whoa, I'm not being too much or being selfish by, you know, getting some support right now. And it's just so great. Every time we do it, we're like, hey, guys, does it feel like this guy's asking? Everyone's like, no. You know, we're usually loving it. We're loving, loving in a man in that space, and it becomes this really profound synergy, I guess, is another way to put it where, yeah, we're. We're receiving from the group, but every time we're receiving from the group, by, you know, stepping into transparency and vulnerability and allowing love to flow our way, we're actually giving to the group at the very same time. Every man. One of the most common things we hear when we do this process, every man feels served by every other man's work. It's really profound.

Luke Adler: Yeah, the. The. The nature of. Of masculine presence is that it wants to give, it wants to serve, it wants to step forward and, and help construct a reality that feels safe and empowering. That's just built into kind of masculine essence. And so when you give a man an opportunity to come forward and give his longing, you know, to extend his heart to another man who's hurting, we love that opportunity. You know, it speaks to our heroic nature to want to kind of lift the world up. And we, we all want that. And it's such a gift to be given that opportunity to serve someone. And I want to just take a moment to describe the nuance of what occurs around this sensibility of love and care. And it's this beautiful virtue that starts to arise not in the beginning of the group, but it is definitely present by the end of the program. And it's not a quality that comes online, but it initially, because it's more refined and it reflects a level of trust. And different traditions call it different things. One name for this quality is adoration. Another name for it is devotion. But it points to this quality of kind of loving gentleness, loving care that's attuned. There's an attunedness to it. And that attunes occurs as each man steps in and shares, as we hold each other's stories, as we become keepers of each other's truths. And what adoration does is it titrates its focus to deliver the right dosage of care. And when that dosage comes in just right, it's like medicine. It unlocks the pathology. And things, you know, blood and energy start to flow, things that were once constricted and tight, deconstrict, relax, and you get life force, you get vitality coming back. And that feels good, that feels safe. And we just want more of that. We're no longer bound to hold our grief in, to hold our lust in, to hold our rage in, to hold our fear in. In all their derivative forms, we become antifragile, we become resilient and indomitable as that devotional space is open from brother to brother. And ultimately, Jason, something that we also say is that, you know, often we're the last ones to get updated to how great we are. Various reasons which are somewhat self explanatory. But when that devotion, that sense of adoration, adoring in a fully awake way, starts to come back to me, like I start to appreciate myself with care, then the entire cycle becomes complete. And that's in part, we didn't fully anticipate this when we designed Heart of Shadow, but that we designed it to be decentralized, which means when the program ends, Jason and I don't own your group. You own the group. You and the other men in the group are owners of it and its culture and the thumbprint that you created and that we, you know, our job is to facilitate that. We're like midwives of the soul of the group. And we midwife, we help birth that. Once it's alive, then it, you know, it's like a. It's like it's a being that just needs to be tended. And you have the capacity to do that just like loving parents would to a baby. They're devotional, they're adoring, they're attuned, they're listening, they're attuned to that pitch of the cry of the baby. And, you know, in some ways captures the essence of all of life as Heart of Shadow is like a. A birthing back to what's most beautiful about you. And you get, you know, nine. Nine brothers to help that unfold. Once it's established, yes, it has a living momentum, just like a child. It's alive and it will continue to thrive as long as it's tended with love, devotion, care. We'll just continue to grow and grow and grow.