Purpose, Love, and Wounding (with Luke Adler)

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. So I am pumped to be once again joined by Dr. Luke Adler, my compatriot at arms in the Heart of Shadow program, and pretty excited today. We're gonna talk about kind of the anatomy of wounding, and Luke's gonna bring in a pretty deep wealth of wisdom from the lineages he's been studying in for decades now. And then we're gonna kind of tie it into very specifically how we see it showing up here in men. So I'm going to start things off by really just coming to you and saying, yeah, what have you been noticing or what connections have you been making lately?

Luke Adler: Yeah. Thanks, Jason. When people talk about they use this term energetically or energetically feel this, and it kind of encompasses this sense of emotion, energy level, even just physical health. Like, I'm energetically affected by this. And what we want to do with this episode is get a little more specific as to really what it is that we're talking about. When people typically use the word energetics, they might be thinking of the meridian system or the chakra system. And the. The truth about how the energetic system works is it's a multi. There's multi levels of the way that blood flows through the body at a physical level. But there's even more subtle levels in terms of the depth at which energy flows from your consciousness, which is non physical, into your physiology, which is. Which is physical. And the deepest level of energy that moves through your has a connection to that ephemeral space or the space that is closest to your essence or soul. And we say that those energetics are prenatal in origin, which means they precede the body's existence. It's kind of wild. They're actually the energy that forms your body in your mother's womb. It's pretty, pretty interesting. And the very first thing that occurs when the sperm and egg come together and form a blastocyst, which is the collection of cells that make, you know, a zygote or make a tiny baby, is that the body creates a vascular tube. It creates an impulse, and that impulse becomes the first beat of the heart. And from there, the entire body gets constructed. But before that beat comes together and before even the. The sperm and egg coalesce, there's an energetic that's moving through the parents. And moving through consciousness itself. So there's these kind of precursory forms of energy. That make up, make up consciousness that create polarity. And then the question is, well, how does that actually move into a lifetime. Where a human being can learn the lessons that they need to learn? And this is where polarity gets really interesting. Because in order to create life, you have to create movement. So you have to create opposition. You have to create yang and yin. Or in relationship, we talk a lot about masculine and feminine. But even if we take masculine and feminine away. We're talking about two polar energies. That have to have some tension to create motion. When it comes to learning our lessons, however, we need more than two. We need a way to interact with each other. And so we're actually built with four polarities. And they're structured around two primary centers in our body. The first is the heart. And the second is the kidneys. And the reproductive center. Testicles, the ovaries, the uterus, the adrenal gland. And all the hormones that are associated with that lower center. And if we look at those two areas physically, we know what they do. They provide the filtering of water and the pumping of blood. Basically the movement of fluids in various forms. Look at them energetically. They have to do with two primary things. And this is really fascinating. The heart. We all have a sense of it. The heart's about love. It's about giving love. It's about receiving love. And it's about tending that flame of what we care about, what we care for and what. And who we want to care for us. So there's a flow that moves out, and there's a flow that moves in. What's interesting about both of these centers. Is that their polarity is protective. So if my heart gets hurt, I have a reflex to close it down in order to protect it. Because there's an inborn sense that that's a precious resource. That my ability to love and to be loved. Is something that actually needs protection. Sometimes in energetic work, we kind of villainize protection or reactivity. Like it's bad. And what I really want to make clear today is it's not bad. It's really good. Like, we're supposed to be protective when it comes to working on ourselves. What we really work to do is we want to become conscious. Of the ways we have had to protect ourselves. Because of our conditioning and wounding. Now, the second center, where the wound registers. Is down in the reproductive center. And that has to do energetically with Purpose. So when I'm really in touch with my creativity, and you could use this idea, what I was born to do, what my essence, my soul came here to do, then I have a very clear direction of how I want to move my individuality through the world. I want to take my creativity, my ability to procreate, my ability to create anything that I can dream of, and I want to move it out into the world. Now, to move it out in the world, I have to have an exterior level of protection because the world isn't just going to accept my purpose. I have to have kind of boundaries around it. I have to have parameters. I have to be alert. I have to have my head up, and I have to be looking forward. And at the same time, I have to be looking side to side because I need to be able to track what's coming at me that's affecting how I deliver my purpose. So you go, oh, Luke, that makes sense. You have purpose and you have love. You're like, yeah, well, the thing is, where we get messed up is those two things, they need to communicate together. We have to be able to illumine our purpose. We have to be able to ingest it with passion and warmth and love. We have to grow it, we have to tend to it. And if we have love without purpose, then it's as if all of our fire has nowhere to go. It's got no direction to it. It's like, oh, cool. That sounds simple enough. Like, get in touch with my purpose that's down there in the lower part of my body. Get in touch with what I love that's up in my heart and. Sounds pretty simple. The thing that's challenging about purpose and that whole reproductive center is it's ruled by the emotion of fear. Which is why when we look at deep healing and shadow work, why it's difficult to. To do it is because we have to pass through this gate of fear. And of all the emotions, they're all. A lot of the emotions are uncomfortable, but fear's particularly uncomfortable, and we can get into that later in the episode. So we have to be able to face our fear in order to discover our purpose. Once we discover our purpose, we need to tend to that purpose. If we overdo it in terms of pushing too much energy out and not taking energy in to discover and refresh and renew and reinspire, then we get too far in one of the polarities. So we've got these two polarities in terms of elemental energies. The heart's ruled by fire. The kidneys the reproductive system's ruled by water. It's a nice polarizing image. The fire kind of mists up the water and steams it up. And you've get this cooling nature that kind of cools the fire down. And the fire and water generate one another, cool each other down, and tend this alchemy around our. Around what matters to us, what we care about, what we love, and how to move that into the world. That's the curriculum of the soul. That's what we're all here to do when we're all here to discover what that is in our own individual way. But something gets in the way of that process. So if you just look at this anatomically, you have the heart up in the upper chest. You have the kidneys, reproductive center in the lower body. And then you're like, well, isn't there something in the middle? Yeah, there's a bunch of organ systems there. There's the liver, there's gallbladder, there's spleen, stomach, there's pancreas, there's all the intestinal region. And then we really have this conversation of what it is to be human. What it is to be human and why. It's hard. Because to love something, to be loved by something, to face what we're afraid of, to discover our purpose, means we have to feel a lot, we have to tend a lot. And in order to do that, we have to fuel that with food. What gets in the way of a clear communication between our purpose and what we love. And how to move that into the world. And how to protect that and safeguard it. Is really what we're putting into our bodies. Not just in terms of digestion, but people, places that we're having to digest in that middle region. And what occurs, that starts to create fuzz and fog and a lack of clarity in our relationships. And has us question who we love, why we love them. Do we even love ourselves? Do we love ourselves at all? Is this really the career I want? Am I lost? What starts to make that obfuscation more confusing is that the fluid in the middle of the body and the digestive system gets clogged up. Our bowels get backed up. The interstitial space in that area, the area between the organ systems and the cavity of the body, that fluid gets clogged up. The fluid stops moving smoothly. You get stickiness, you get phlegm. If that. If that increases, it overflows up into the upper regions of the body. So you get stuffy nose, rhinitis, your vision gets flurry sense of taste gets diminished. So you have to eat saltier foods and sweeter foods and bit more bitter foods. Like. Right. Adults really like bitter foods because it's a flavor they can taste. Your hearing gets weird, you start to have tinnitus. So you have this deterioration of the upper senses in relation to taxation to the body, but particularly this backing up of fluids and phlegm. So what happens when life gets intense and we're not clear? We numb. We eat things, we. We build. We build the sticky substance in. In the digestive system. And then the kidneys have a harder time filtering that water out. And the heart has thicker blood that it has to pump. And our sense of purpose, our sense of love, it gets. It gets less clear because our fluids get thicker. So there's a direct connection between the vitality of the body and the clearness of our purpose and our love. And the potency of that. You may be thinking, oh, maybe if I just cleanse. This is something I've animated for many years. If I just eat really cleanly and even restrict my diet, then that will clear up. That's true to some degree. But what happens when you restrict too much is you go numb because there's no fuel in the system. See, the design is to stay present with ourselves and to. We're actually, it's not. I guess I want to use the word force, but we're kind of. We're in this situation where we have to nurture ourselves. We have to stay attuned to. If I put this in my mouth, how's it going to make me feel? How's it going to affect the flow of my purpose, the flow of energy from my heart to my kidneys to my genitals, from my balls up to my heart? How's it going to affect my ability to be in touch with myself, to stay aligned with myself? And it's an interesting contemplation. Like anything I put in my mouth.

Jason Lange: Huh?

Luke Adler: Craving a lot of chocolate right now. I want to eat the chips and those things are going to turn into that sticky, gooey substance that has a correlate emotional state. I don't feel good about myself. Why? Well, because I can't connect down to my purpose. I can't feel the warmth of my heart connecting to what matters most to me. And I can't feel what matters most to me illuminating and directing the love of my heart. I can't feel that happening because there's a blockage, there's something stuck, there's a backing up of fluids and bowel and etc. And so on in the middle of the body. So there's more I could say about that, but that's kind of the general overview. And there's some things that we can, we can fill in there. But the big highlights there are that we're built to love, we're built to receive love. We have an inborn sense of purpose that lives within us. And the polarity around those two is that we're actually designed to protect those two things in different ways. But the protection is also an energy system that precedes the body. So it's kind of a map of how the soul moves through life in relationship. In relationship. So it's not just in an ashram, meditating or in a cave. This is what happens when we're manifest and, you know, here to relate to each other. So I think I'll set it down there for a moment. Jason.

Jason Lange: It'S beautiful. Yeah. It reminds me of some of what we've talked about before with, with stagnation and how we often see that show up in men. And I love the tying of purpose to the, to these very foundational elements of our body and our nervous system. Right. I think a lot of times in men's work, purpose gets hypercognitive. Like I gotta, you know, sometimes even work I do with men, it's like mapping it out and having the clear vision. But what I hear you speaking to is the, the other type of purpose men's work talks about, which is like what happens when you just stop moving? Like if you get really still at some point there's some kind of impulse for movement, including sexually. Right. There's just like, oh, there's this charge now and it wants to move through me. And our creativity, I think is the same way. Right. In terms of, ah, yeah. When, when, when I'm really with myself and I have some space and I slow down, something often wants to move through me. And that's often our creative impulse and that's kind of our purpose. Right. And that's something. When we don't have a signal on and we see. I see this in all the men I work with, the men we work with, when, when we don't have a clear read on that signal, it's extremely painful, I think, for men. Like it's a, it's a unique pain. I've talked about it in some of my previous work is, I think to some extent the equivalent to the so called female biological clock is there's, there's like a masculine Purpose clock of like this, this feeling that really kicks in particularly middle age of like oh shit, I'm, I'm not going to be here forever. So what is my legacy? Like what am I doing? And if that's not flowing, it's.

Luke Adler: Really.

Jason Lange: Painful and then it, yeah you're right. It, it, the pain is so much. It often draws us to the things that actually make it harder to find that signal. Yeah, right. The food, the numbing, the weed, masturbation, porn, you know, the things we've just seen. I've, I've experienced many men have seen in their lives, right. And it also strikes me that that love and that purpose. I think I was talking about this in another show I did of. I think part of what I've really discovered in myself and now see in the many groups I've created and created with you of two of the things men's groups create for men is belonging and purpose. And what I mean by that belonging is like that kind of heart space, love, giving, receiving and purpose. It's actually quite tied to that in that another way I've been thinking about purpose is just oh, my presence matters here. It's the feeling of my presence actually matters and impacts things. So I can be on purpose just by going into a group and my voice, my heart, my sensitivity, whatever it is, my pain actually impacts the other men and then they, you know, there's less division between purpose and belonging than I think we often think. But particularly in something like a group, it's suddenly those two things can really be flowing of. You know, I'll. Many men, I know one of the great pains I think in that heart space is disconnection, right. The feeling of like just loneliness and depression which comes both from a cultural and in interpersonal sense. Like I don't feel connected to people. I don't feel like my purpose is impacting people and I think environmentally as well this, the, the weird society we've created where we can be utterly isolated, at least we can create a story we are from, from the world around us that like oh, I'm not connected to that, I don't belong to that. That's separate from me. Certainly what I've seen on particularly more nature based retreats is how realizing oh I'm part of the natural world, like it's not separate from me also can start to eradicate some of that loneliness and depression because it's like oh wow, yeah, my presence matters here too. And you know, I'm part of this grander system. So these are like deep, very present wounds for a lot of men. And, you know, it also strikes me that. Another way those two are connected, that I'm starting to believe more and more is right. Oftentimes, I think men in particular, I've done this. It's like, okay, if I'm not on purpose, then, yeah, I need to get, like, more rigid with my discipline around, meditating more or blocking this or doing this or working out a certain amount of time or just eating a certain amount. And then I will have the capacity to, like, penetrate and create the things I want. And what I've really come to see is that often isn't quite as effective as we think, because oftentimes the nutrient we're missing doesn't necessarily just come in from down there. It's actually coming in through that heart space, right, that. Oh, what does it mean to get soothed, to get nourished? And then my whole nervous system downshifts so I can literally get more nutrients from the food I am eating, which then creates more energy and capacity, so then I can bring my thing forward. And that's where I, I have seen the disruption. You know, we can kind of co create with men in these groups is, oh, you know, they're not moving forward on something and then they beat themselves up. And so I gotta da, da, da, instead of goals and deadlines, and it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. Actually, what often tends to work a lot better is get connected, get some love flowing in your system. And then that impulse starts to have more fuel to just come forward. So I'll pause there and toss it back to you. I love it.

Luke Adler: Jason, that was so beautiful. You illumined that with such concrete examples. And the last piece you touched was also just so intuitively connected to this model that I'm offering. And yes, this is something I have animated for so long that as my purpose gets clear, I doubled, triple, quadruple down on more discipline, more meditation. You know, waking up earlier. And, you know, I've. I've learned that that doesn't work because it. It ended up burning me out. And you could look at those archetypes. You know, the archetype there is, is the sentinel, the. The commando, the warrior, the boy scout, that, that doesn't need anything, the lone wolf. And, and you can just see the extreme imbalance there that I might have such. I might have, like a really clear purpose, but I've got no one to share it with. I'm all alone in that. And, you know, you could, you could Kind of see that as kind of like the. A variation of the macho guy who's really lonely and isolated. And then the other polarity is like the nice guy who's, like, really loving and he cares about everyone. And, you know, he's protective of his heart, but he's more heart forward, but he's not so clear on his purpose. He doesn't have. He might be clear to a certain degree, but he's not in touch down there with his. His balls, his kidneys, and his ability to move his love with. With a. With a trajectory and a vector and a force to value that his love matters and it's needed and it's important and, And. And that the world needs it. And so you see those polarities where. Where men and women, but where men divide up. You know, here's. Here's the nice guy, and here's. And here's with a lot of heart. And here's the guy with a lot of purpose and drive and not a lot of heart. And. And really what Heart of Shadow is about, right? It's in the name heart. Shadow represents the kidneys, the reproductive system. When we bring the two polarities together, you start to have this experience of what it. What it feels like to be a complete human being who's on purpose, who's on love, who's on, like, the pulse. And I love the image you created of when you slow down to feel. All right, and the feeling's done with the heart. This is actually really powerful, this image you created. You slow down to feel with your sentience. That's mediated through the heart. You can feel into things, feel around things. You start to sense an impulse. That's the word you use. That is the word. There's an impulse that comes from our individuality. That individuality is linked to our cosmology. And that impulse begins to direct that fire, that love. And that's an inside relationship with what is alive inside of us. Um, and by the end of Heart of Shadow, the Heart of Shadow experience that can be felt within the group. There's a group feeling of that, and there's a feeling of that that's alive in every man.

Jason Lange: Right?

Luke Adler: And then we use this. We use a metaphor, but it's really not a metaphor. This metaphor of tending the fire. And we're talking about tending your heart, tending. Tending your creativity, tending those. Those pulsations of energy in your body that are intelligent, supremely intelligent.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Powerful. Yeah, It's. And it's. It's direct, right? It's. It's experiential. I think that's the part of what we're talking about here is when that whole system is lit up and I guess open. You know, it's not just a mental thing. It's not just an emotional thing. It's not just a biological thing. There's. There's just. There's like a heat animating us. And you know, another way to think about this is it's, it's aliveness, right. The thing we really see happen in the groups, particularly in retreat and then afterwards is the aliveness that starts to come through men realizing, hey, we can connect more deeply, I can express myself more fully and that aliveness needs to be tended. Right. It's. It is a fire inside of all of us that I'd say more, more than ever in days like this. It's. It's really easy to kind of numb out to or not feel or in a sense just have mediated. There's so much that wants to mediate that inside of us. And you know, I think it is like fire in that, right? It's. It's creative, it's powerful and it can be destructive. Right. So I think sometimes people are like, oh well, to really come alive means my life might change because, right. I might burn away what doesn't suit me. And that creates instability in life in some pretty big ways that we've certainly seen with men we've worked with, that I've certainly experienced in, in my own life as way. And you know, that instability, if we're not prepared, you know, it can turn into that, that kind of fear and that worry and contracting and not wanting to do it wrong and whatnot. I did just have one more thing. This is kind of unrelated but related on that like, you know, discipline thing that I've really had to come to terms with within myself is when does a crossover into actual rigidity.

Luke Adler: Yeah, right.

Jason Lange: And that, that this is like such the fine nuanced art of practice. I think of, well, am I taking this thing on because it makes me more free or is it becoming a rigidity in itself that oh my God, if I don't do this, then da da da. And it actually tightens up my system. And I think it's also why a lot of guys who take on practices or set goals, they don't end up working because it's, it's actually coming from a place of confinement and rigidity versus when we're truly on purpose in a sense. You know, this is the kind of mythical follow your bliss Stuff that has some truth and can cause some challenges for a lot of guys. But when you're truly on purpose, it's like, I'm not doing the practice because if I don't X, Y or Z, I'm. I'm doing the practice because it's actually the easiest pathway to freedom in my life. Right. Like, it actually makes me more free so I don't have to, like, convince myself to do it in some sense. And it takes some work, you know, to find that and to find the actual balance of, you know, for me, I know it's been a big shift to orient a lot more of my stuff to lifestyle where it's like, oh, if I, if I take things on as a lifestyle, I don't actually have to be rigid. If I'm mostly doing something in my life, it actually creates a lot of room for days where I'm not doing it, and that's less confining. It's like, okay, I didn't, I couldn't work out today. That's fine. It's not a big deal. Or, you know, we're going out to eat, I'm going to eat a little less healthy than normal because overall, I can feel the deeper freedom of, you know, what, what applying myself or eating healthy or whatever that might be gets into. And yeah, I've just seen it. It's a delicate thing for, I think for a lot of men is the, the rigidity piece. And I think the thing with rigidity a lot too is it has, it's. It's like self generated. Yeah, like. Right. It's like fully. It's this will thing, which I think what interrupts that with the heart space is, you know, certainly something that transformed me. Becoming a leader more and more, having a family more and more was. And this isn't like the nice guy version, but it's like, oh, fuck. I don't necessarily practice and get fit just for myself. It's like, I want to be able to love more. Right. I want to be able to show up for my clients. I want to be able to pick up and throw my children around. Like, there's a, there's a visceralness to the why that comes from the heart space, then makes it much easier to step into. Oh, how do I take care of myself? Well, I'm not. I'm taking care of myself so that love can flow more freely, essentially. And if, again, it's, it's why these two things go like, so hand in hand. And again, I think why, partly why Men's groups are so powerful is because they can kind of ignite both systems at once. And you can see how deeply entwined they are and how just going one or the other isn't quite enough. But when you have both active, it can really change things fast.

Luke Adler: It's beautiful. The rigidity archetype, the isolation from each other, the remediation through connection, the, the other polarity. So we touched on the. There's, there's the, the polarity of purpose and, and discipline. You need some discipline to enact your purpose. Too much discipline. And then you're, you're cut off from your heart. Then there's what you love and receiving love. And the polarity there is really interesting in a healthy form. It's like a sense of, it's a sense of discernment. Is this a good love to bring into my life? Is this healthy? Is this, is this a good thing to, to eat? Is this a good project to take on? Does this resonate with me? And when that one goes rigid, it, it moves not into, or not necessarily when it goes into its extreme, not necessarily rigid. But when that lack of discernment, when discernment becomes fuzzy, we begin to enact the saboteur. The saboteur, which is an aspect of the criticism. And we start to create wish fulfilling prophecies around our inadequacy. If we're not clear that our love is important and that love is something we're worthy of, we start to magnetize situations to reinforce our conditioning and wounding. Right, so this is the other place the wound gets in, is that something's wrong with me. I'm not lovable, I'm ugly. Who would want to be with me? You know, everyone has failed me in my life. Religion has failed me, my parents have failed me. In its extreme, it's scorched earth. You know, just you get the. Away from me. I don't trust you. You know, and it can be, it can be very scary because for, for someone with this much wounding when they open up, the, the elastic reflex to want to close is really strong. Like I don't want to let you in. I'm gonna have a lot of that cranky, fussy baby energy. Like I'm gonna be a contrarian. I'm gonna like always bring up opposition and kind of see the glass half full. And this is the various degrees of that tendency of like, I want to love, but you know, but don't hurt me. Like I need you, leave me alone. And what it, what it, what that polarity Favors is closure. Like, it really favors closure around the heart. But that closure creates a trembling is that fire wants to burst through. It wants to love, it wants to burn down the resistance. It wants to feel connection. But the. The wounding creates a lot of sabot. Sabotaging energy. You know, it wants to prove like, I want to create. I want to be annoying enough to you, Jason, that you're just like you, Luke. You're a pain in my ass. Like, get the out of here. And you know, when you're around that kind of energy with someone who's really resistant, whether they're covertly resistant or overtly resistant, like active resistance or passive resistance, um, you know, the cry of love is definitely there. It's like the wolf crying, crying at the full moon, like, howling like, please come see me. And yet the behavior can be so spiky, you know, and it's something that we see a lot, you know, in. In our work. And you know, at least in terms of facilitation, recognizing that there's a cry for love and connection is. Is the key, but working with it is. It's tough. It's a tough one. You know, when someone's been hurt that much that they're just kind of. There's like a. A lot of resistance, you know, a lot of resistance. And it can just. It can seem like they don't want love, you know, they just like get the away.

Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it ties into attachment wise, something I've talked about a lot in terms of nice guys, right? And some of this frame comes from Gabor mate, and it's great. And I'm just seeing how it maps onto the frame you set so beautifully, right. When we come out. We have two incredible needs as kids, right? We have that creative impulse for our authentic expression of what we need, what we want, what we want to create, like our authenticity. Right? That's part of, I think, what you're speaking to, to like our guts, our sexual energy, like, oh, I need to eat. Oh, I need to create this. Oh, I want this, right? Like, I'm in pain. I'm gonna express it. Boom. That. That's very important. Where a lot of growth goes awry is when that comes into conflict for our need for heart space, connection and attachment as kids. Right? Well, what if my expression of my authenticity here actually pushes my caregiver away, right? It threatens my safety in a sense. Well, what I quickly learned to do is ignore, numb that disconnect for that whatever it might be, in order to preserve the connection and I think developmentally what we see a lot of times, certainly what I've had to work is, oh, okay, well, if that hasn't been allowed, that has to be able to come back through, right? I need someone who can hold me in my authenticity of, fuck. I don't want to be held like that. I want to be held like this or don't talk to me like that. I need this. Right? When we say fussy baby, there's just like the pure energy of what my system needs and is feeling right now. And it can be really healing to get those two working together again, right? Where they're not so directly in opposition in that all that lower energy and that upper energy don't have to be in conflict, Right. I mean, and this is. I mean, again, it just ties into so much men's work. For a lot of men, it's like this imaginary split between purpose and relationships, right. For me to really be on purpose, then I can't have a family or like, it threatens this or that, or if I really go to family, then I can't live my purpose. And it creates, you know, a pretty extreme binary in a lot of guys that they really feel a lot of pain in navigating that, you know. And what we're saying here is ultimately you can get both. Yeah. And there's an energetic that goes all the way back, you know, that we're working with in the system and how we fuel ourselves and what we're letting in and out, you know, is a big part of that as well. Right. What relationships? You know, I always think about when I was heavier in my plant medicine journeys, one of the shamans would talk about, you know, thing with plant medicines is, you know, as hard as those ceremonies can be, like, we always talk about integration is. Is harder. And oftentimes people don't want to put attention on that. But they were like, you know, you're going to come in here and, you know, ayahuasca in particular has a very big purgative element, right.

Luke Adler: It's.

Jason Lange: It's about very viscerally clearing out the system. And they were like, yeah, you know, you come in here to clear things out, literally to purge it from your body. But you damn well better be very careful what you're going to put back in. Right? So it's like, people come, they have incredible state experiences, they release stuff, and then they're like, well, just as important. That is, what are you going to do for the next week? Literally, what food are you putting in? What thoughts are you Putting in. What relational energy are you allowing to come back into that space? And that's where that discernment, I think, becomes really important in a sense of, oh yeah, what am I allowing in here? Both in the heart space and biologically as well? Because they really matter. And I think we're starting to see more attention on that, you know, in, in, in the world, in the work that, okay, you can't really separate the two, you need to do both. And it's encouraging, but it's also not super fun or sexy. As I say, it's kind of the shit work of life of like, ooh, yeah, what am I eating? And like just, yeah, literally what am I ingesting in, into my system relationally, environmentally, biologically, to really take a clear look at that. Because it's like, well, if I'm sabotaging myself at these very primal levels, it's going to be really hard to you know, create the things I really want.

Luke Adler: Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up, Jason. I think it's a good thing to just, just mention. I don't want to make people feel too badly, but as we lay out what this system does, you know, when you. We're, we're not, it's, it's not a problem to dampen it down. I mean, we don't have to feel totally vital and alive all the time. Like you said, it's okay to have a burger and fries, it's okay to have some chocolate ice cream to enjoy these amazing creations that we get to experience in a human body.

Jason Lange: Right.

Luke Adler: It's just if we're doing that stuff every day or every other day, we're going to go numb and we're going to feel, we're going to feel those two polarities, that pulsation of love and that impulse of purpose and creativity. They're going to be cut off from each other. We're not going to be able to feel them. And then we're going to feel the state associated with that, which is bewilderment, confusion, depression, anxiety. When we're cut off from our heart, we feel depression. When we cut off, when we're cut off from the groundedness of our purpose, we feel the opposite polarity, anxiety. Right. Those are, those are physiological states, they're emotional states, but they're energetic phenomenon that's based on a disconnection between fire and water, heart, balls and yeah, I like what you said. This is like, you know, the non sexy part of work where it's like, it's not a license. Like, I always think about, you know, our first trainings together and many trainings I've done in other circles. Like, you have a big breakthrough, and then you take, you know, break time, and then everyone's eating the chocolate and. And the. And the candy.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Luke Adler: And you're like, oh, this tastes so good. You know, and then you come back to circle, and you're like a little Judd. You know, you're a little thick. You're like, okay, I can't quite feel the breakthrough anymore, but that's good because I don't want to feel all the shakiness, you know? And so we're also pointing to. There's, like, an energetic fitness that occurs over time as you. As you. As you're enabling your body to hold the power. This is fucking raw universal power. The power of your heart, the power of your impulse for creativity. I mean, this is raw primal power. We're talking about the primal power of the earth and the primal power of cosmology. Those two forces coming together and then vectoring forth the quadratic polarity of masculine and feminine relationship. That's the love between you and me, and me and my wife, et cetera and so on. There's. There's these quadrants of energy that are polarizing. There's cosmology, there's earthbound energy, and then there's the relationship between human beings and our innate polarity. And it, you know, if anything, it's a ton of energy. There's a powerful energy flow to access. And, you know, this. This is really, you know, this is what we're teaching people. And that our. Our flagship course, Heart of Shadow, is. Is kind of the foundation of it. And then our advanced courses are about, you know, those who want to embody it more and more and more and potentially teach it kind of move, moving more. You know, basically build the fitness. Build the fitness. The physiological, energetic fitness to hold those polarities in consciousness and awareness and live them and ignite them in others. You know, this is really our vision.

Jason Lange: Yeah, Yeah. I think what's key about that is, you know, you know, a state of aliveness. It's pretty hard to sustain that 100% of the time. You know, we all have to come down sometimes. Like, it's just the way it is. It can't always be summer. Right. It's right there. And a lot of the work, we have seasons for a reason. The tending of the flame that, you know, we see in the groups, though, is, okay, well, I have an easy place to come Back and warm and reignite when I need to ignite, right when I need to come forward fully or I need some of that vitality, there's this place that's just kind of ready to go that at any moment, any man can kind of reenact and it can ignite that flame, can ignite that system. And again, what's great about that is it relieves some of the burden of feeling you have to do that all the time. It's like, oh, no, I have this thing so I can go offline a little bit sometimes.

Luke Adler: It's totally okay.

Jason Lange: It doesn't have to be a source of shame or further beating ourselves up, because I know I can go back and light up my system, light up my purpose, light up my. My lower self, light up my love, my capacity to give it and receive it. And, like, the whole thing, you know, it's an. It's an energetic state of being that we get imprinted in these groups that then we can access again. And we give men some specific tools for. Like, how do you anchor that. Whatever this experience you have on the retreat, like, how can we anchor that as something that you can literally reach out to and grab and. And that the group holds the experiential memory of? Right? That's like, oh, yeah, I know. I know what you're like in that state. Cause I saw you. So even when you forget, I get to remember, you know, remind you. And I think it is when this system is integrated and fully online in a way that we have that purpose component and we have that just deep capacity to love and be loved online. And, you know, when those two things are happening, it's like, life feels pretty unstoppable for me. And, you know, things tend to look pretty shiny and bright to men, just in the sense of not like, oh, my God, life's gonna be perfect, but like, oh, yeah, this is. This is how I want to be.

Luke Adler: I think that's. That's the good news, Jason, is that as we realize that this is the way we're built energetically, this is just how nature designed the system. And we start to feel it more and more as generated by a steady presence of men in our lives. Right? This is something you and I discovered, that that sense of purpose and love and being loved, it just starts to exist. And we don't have to be afraid it's going to go away because it's being tended and nourished by a structure that we've created and invested in over time that now exists and is reliable and dependent and and then life really starts to work along the lines of relationship health and well being. And yeah, if that's appealing to you, if this is resonating with you, we have another cohort starting in September. We also have our advanced course for those of you who have done Heart of Shadow and those of you who have done shadow work with Jason and I prior to us beginning Heart of Shadow many, many years ago, they have advanced courses open to men who want to start to learn to bring this to other men. And that's starting just just a few weeks that's going to be a retreat here in Oregon. So heartofshadow.com you'll find out all about that or you can message us and we're happy to connect with you. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Lange: Thanks, brother. You're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world? Just go to evolutionary men, apply.