To the Lost Boy
You live at a fraction of your potential — exhausting yourself to overcome brain fog, insomnia, lost libido, stomach bloating, chronic inflammation, and excess fat. And amidst all this struggle, you’ve lost your boyhood wonder to explore nature, venture into the unknown, and connect with the real sense of what it truly means to be alive.
Never in history is there a time when mankind has been so blessed with material wealth — you and everyone you know, live like the kings of yesteryear. You have access to food from all around the world, medicines that can revive you from near death, and the world’s knowledge at your fingertips.
Yet, why are you still so disappointed? You live in a sedentary lifestyle, where you no longer need to flex your muscles and endure nature in order to provide for your family. You live by being told what to do — and as long as you comply, you will get your next meal. And you live not having to know your neighbors — you’ve lost your trust in humanity and therefore in yourself. You know deep down that somehow, all this “living”… is inching you closer towards death. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. You. Are. Dying.
Stop it!
Tap into the yearnings of your soul and listen.
What does it say?
Take all your desire to be politically correct, fair to all humanity, and whatever else — and throw it out the window. You are alone. By yourself. And you alone can discern the truth of who you are.
So who are you?
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You are a hunter
The idea of being “hunters and gatherers” only half exist in today’s world. Your masculinity can no longer be expressed by physically stalking, capturing, and killing your prey. There is no more wood to chop, no tribe to protect, and no need for you to become the tribal chief. You are no longer afraid for your own survival or protecting those that you love. You grow fat. You get anxiety from frivolous concerns. And your body is slowly killing itself manifesting in the form of diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. You are doing all that you can to give yourself the slowest and most agonizing death possible. You hate who you’ve become and you are trapped with no escape.
Why does the art of living become so hard, when everything else becomes so much easier? You live your life sedating your masculinity and feeling confused about your overcompensating feminine energies. You’ve lost all need for the “hunt”. You are no longer interested in charming, deducing, and connecting with your sexual counterpart. Instead, you are stroking yourself while watching paid actors intercourse, and opening that tinder app — swiping right, right, right. Or maybe your addiction became work and you sit in front of a computer screen all day doing the exact same thing: click, click, click.
As a married man, you are equally confused. Preparing dinner, cleaning your home, and nurturing the young are not tasks exclusive to one gender, but they do present an undeniable feminine quality. It is important to balance feminine energy in the male psyche so you should fully embrace these tasks. However, you are now left with an imbalance — what household chores can you do to exercise your inner masculinity? You are taught to be nurturing, diplomatic, and caring. You are taught that ferocity — your internal fire — is bad; that you should suppress your aggression and crying is a sign of weakness. You are taught that Ying is good and Yang is bad — yet one cannot exist without the other. By trying to suffocate your inner fire, it will manifest in the form of inner demons. The shadow of the fire will show itself through depression, anxiety, OCD, or other mental illnesses. It will burn you until you crave relief through drugs, sex, gambling, video games, work, or other addictions.
You are taught to embrace fairness and equality — but do you feel that your inner masculinity has been fairly represented? Are you ever ashamed to talk about your manhood? Are you threatened if someone accuses you of being feminine? What about this makes you so insecure? Why — after having done everything that you are taught — do you still feel so empty — and perhaps even less of a man? Why do you struggle to retain your youthful vitality, and why do you feel like you are so far from living to your truest potential?
Since 1960, testosterones in men continue to drop 1% year-over-year. To-date this accounts for a potential 60%+ overall digression from the norm. Considering that your body naturally reduces testosterone by 1% every year you age, as a 30-year-old — you could have the same testosterone level as your 50–60-year-old ancestral counterpart. The very idea of manhood and the “masculine movement” is kept hushed — being connected to patriarchy, pickup artistry, porn aficionados, polygamy, extreme right-wingers, and a generally sexist undertone. You live in a society with a fucked up view of what it means to be a man. Masculinity — in its true form — is about males realizing their truest potential, and should not be connected to the stigmas created by “wounded boys proclaiming to be men”.
“The drug dealer, the ducking and diving political leader, the wife-beater, the chronically “crabby” boss, the “hot shot” junior executive, the unfaithful husband, the company “yes man,” the indifferent graduate school adviser, the “holier than thou” minister, the gang member, the father who can never find the time to attend his daughter’s school programs, the coach who ridicules his star athletes, the therapist who unconsciously attacks his clients’ “shining” and seeks a kind of gray normalcy for them, the yuppie — all these men have something in common. They are all boys pretending to be men. They got that way honestly because nobody showed them what a mature man is like. Their kind of “manhood” is a pretense to manhood that goes largely undetected as such by most of us. We are continually mistaking this man’s controlling, threatening, and hostile behaviors for strength. In reality, he is showing an underlying extreme vulnerability and weakness, the vulnerability of the wounded boy.”
On one hand, when we think of “man” we visualize the archetypal bachelor. People like Don Draper, George Clooney, and Tiger Woods. Notice how each of these men have been deeply scarred by their addiction to sex and promiscuity?
And then there’s the hot-shot CEO — the archetypal successful man. The corporate executive is willing to sacrifice all in the name of profit. The calculative masterminds bent on grabbing power at any cost. The Gordon Ghekkos, Jordan Belforts, and Kevin O’Learys of the world epitomize the misconstrued notion of what it means to be a successful and self-actualized man.
The reason for this disconnect is that we lost the rituals that teach us how to behave like a man. We have lost our “rite of passage” that co-evolved alongside us since tribal times that initiate the passage of a boy’s psyche into manhood. In this process, the boy is inducted to participate in the “hero’s journey” and lives through a microcosm of extreme real-world suffering and a near-death experience. This ritual climaxes at the point of death — whereby the ego of the boy dies — and consciousness expands into the mature masculine. Once initiated, awareness awakens and can never return to its slumbering state. The boy awakens to the suffering of mankind and is thrust into challenge after challenge, driven by his desire to obtain true freedom from the cycle of pain. He has no choice but to grow and will ultimately die trying. Upon death, he is reborn into a new identity. One that is not hinged on past conditioning. He is now awakened: self-aware, actualized, and his desires transcend ego. He is concerned for the community and is ready to take on the role of the tribal chief.
A boy has become a man.
