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Embodiment Matters Podcast
Men of Depth and Soul: A Conversation with Francis Weller and Alexandre Jodun
00:56:03
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A
Welcome to the Embodiment Matters Podcast with me, Erin Giesemann Rabke and my beloved Carl Ravke. We don't have the luxury of living.
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In ordinary times, but rather we live in extraordinary ones where the way we.
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Live in the next decade will make.
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A huge difference in the future of.
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Life on planet Earth. We aspire in this tapestry of rich.
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Conversations drawn from a variety of ways.
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Perspectives to share, resources to help you embody the wisdom, compassion and skillful actions that are needed during these times. You can find out more about our classes and sign up for our newsletter@ododiment matters.com you can also become a supporting member of our podcast with a small monthly donation. Look for embodiment matters@patreon.com welcome dear listener friends. So glad to have you here. I am thrilled to share this conversation and also this new mini podcast series, a sub series of the Embodiment Matters podcast where I'll be interviewing people with my dear brother, friend colleague Alexand Jodin called Men of Depth and Soul. And this came about really in noticing how much of the daily headlines are filled with stories of uninitiated men in positions of power causing harm in the world. And we wanted to really sit in council and in conversation with elders listening for what is being asked of men in response to these times. And this is the first of those conversations and it is with Francis Weller, a mentor and friend for both of us, psychotherapist, soul activist, the author of the Wild Edge of Sorrow. And the conversation goes to many, many places around men and men's work, the relationship between men and grief, the longing for community, the kind of emptiness that is under much of dominant capitalist culture, just ways. What are some of the pathways toward healing and what's being asked of men. So really hope you enjoy this conversation. And this podcast is being released at the end of January and 2025 and in the second week of February. On February 13th, Alexandre and I are beginning an online depth container for men called Men of Depth and Soul. And Francis Weller is going to be one of the guest teachers along with Pat McCabe, powerful DNA elder who has contributed so much in work with men and life in general. Amazing Elder, we're honored to have them both. We're also going to be working through in the group Jaya John's wonderful book Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. So you can find more information about that class@entodimentmatters.com and if you would like to know more about Francis Weller and his work, his website is francisweller.net Alexand's website is ahealingbridge.com beautiful work that he and his wife Aliona are doing. And if you're moved by this podcast, we encourage you to share it with anyone else who might resonate. So thank you so much for listening. Really glad to have you here. You can support the podcast by going to Patreon and looking for embodiment matters. Enjoy the conversation. So welcome, Francis and Alexand, it's so good to be with you for this conversation. And I imagine it like the three of us sitting around a fire in the desert, like under the stars, calling in ancestors, praying for future ones, and just delving into this mystery of what it is to be a man in these times and inviting listeners to come pull up a stool and. And be a part of the conversation. So thank you so much for.
- [04:40]
C
Good to be with you both. Yes.
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B
Yeah. I just want to extend that gratitude to you, Francis, for taking the time to be with us. This feels like a very important conversation and dear to my heart and I know to both of your hearts as well. So thank you.
- [04:57]
C
Absolute pleasure to be with two men I deeply, deeply love. So.
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B
Yeah, thank you, Francis. As I was sitting feeling into this conversation and what might be a potent place to start, what came to me, Francis, as an inquiry and question for you is what is breaking your heart the most about the state of men in the world today and the perceptions of masculinity that exist in this time?
- [05:33]
C
I. That's a really good question. I think I would just start by saying the loss of soul that this legacy of individualism and the heroic overlay on that has isolated men so much and has kind of shifted the internal focus to self preservation, self development. Again, nothing wrong with those things, but we gradually have lost touch with soul. And so the values of soul, community, beauty, ritual, imagination, those things are not making it to the top of the list of what men pay attention to. They pay attention to muscularity, strength, power, you know, achievement, proving our. Our prowess. But those other qualities that are inherent in a soul foundation have basically been neglected. And so we have a collective of. Of men carrying the scent of a adolescent stability parading around our, particularly this society. This society. And the. The legacy of that has been disastrous. So what's breaking my heart is that the. The foundational ground of masculine soul has been basically forgotten. And we're living in a time of, as you've heard me say many times, of deep amnesia. That forgetting is profound and the consequences are profound. Let's start with that. What do you. What do you both feel?
- [07:26]
A
Yeah. I mean, I'm reminded, Francis, of a conversation we've had several times of just this, you know, how people are often referring to, you know, quote, the masculine or. And. And it's such a narrow band of human that fits into that. And. Yeah. How to have contexts where more. More of that range could be experienced and more of that range could be experienced in community with each other. When you were listening some of those, I was like, how often do men make art together? Do they imagine together? Do they share dreams together?
- [08:07]
C
Right, right.
- [08:10]
B
Yeah, yeah. The. The loss of imagination, for me, of what it means to gather as men and to ripen as men, that really breaks my heart. And from a personal perspective, you know, I've been interested in poetry, in music, in being, in ceremony and in ritual and in the mainstream dominant culture, where are the. The sacred elements of that?
- [08:36]
C
Right.
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B
And I'm so glad I found you elders and friends in my life. But these archetypes of, you know, being a poet, being a writer, like, why are they less or not seen as sacred versions of masculinity, for example?
- [08:57]
C
Well, I think you're both pointing the finger at that very problem, which is the singularity of how we perceive the masculine. That kind of unitary, monolithic prescription. And within that prescription, again, it's about power. It's about, you know, status and rank. It's not about the poetic, it's not about art. It's not about how do you ripen as a man to find your particular place of service to the community. I mean, the community without the presence of the multiplicities, of masculinities, is very depleted. You know, it's. It's. It's been emptied of that ground, as Carl was alluding to. I don't like the idea of the masculine. It's. It doesn't have much imagination in it. So. But you look at traditional cultures, they usually had half a dozen or a dozen iterations of what the masculine could entail. It does include power being like. In the Greek tradition, Zeus carries power, but it also has, you know, the poetics through Apollo. It's got communication, it's got, you know, art. It's got all kinds. It's got grief, it's got so many ways of imagining, so that when you're a young boy and you have that variety, you can see I'm more attuned to that quality. There's something out there in terms of the sacred, in terms of the masculine, that I can identify with. Whereas when, like, particularly In Christianity, we're kind of given one image and it's, it's a beautiful image, but it's, you know, not the most vivacious image. It's a service image, it's a love image. I, you know, I very attuned to that image, but there's not enough variations on the theme so that if I don't fit that image, I don't feel like I belong any place. So I either have to reshape my identity to fit that one dominant mode or I feel I'm outside, I feel shame, I feel less than. And then I'm in the process of just trying to pretense my way through your life. And that doesn't work.
- [11:24]
A
Yeah, as you're speaking, I'm thinking how connected this is to power too. Because in that narrow band there's such a sense of like a power over dominant use of power and, and just different flavors of power that can emerge and be experienced that are outside of that model.
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C
Well, that's a really important thing because in the old imagination, power as you've know I've said before, is always derivative. It's not something I possess. Power is, in a sense, I'm authorized by my relationships. And if my dominant psychological framework is, is me alone, then how do I get authorized? So I, I begin to have a pseudo power again. Rank, privilege, wealth, those are pseudo powers, they're not genuine power. So to have genuine relationship to power, I need a field of relationships that's thick and rich. You know, not just to humans, but also to the animal life, to the green world, to the ancestors, to the cosmos. I am blessed by that. And by that relationship to those grounds I become potent. You know.
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B
As you both share about power and you know, I'm, I'm drawn to the one end of the spectrum where it's very like self centered individual. And I also think about like some men that I work with or men like friends, people that I've been around in the last 10 years particularly. And on the other end of the spectrum, the fear of power and this sense of absolute defeat. And I'm curious, Francis, if you can speak to like in your article that, that you wrote for the Source magazine that, that you shared with me once and it was called the necessity of defeat. And there's something so sacred about falling to our knees. And then it also feels like there's a shadow side to that of being completely disconnected from that derivative power that actually the world needs men right, right now. And I'm curious if you can speak a Little bit more to defeat the necessity of defeat. And that shadow side also.
- [13:56]
C
Yeah, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. That's really good. Yeah. And there's kind of two ways that we respond to the conditioning of society. And one of them is to kind of grasp onto that pseudo power of rank privilege. The other side, which I see so much is the nice boy, the passivity, the acquiescence, the accommodation as a lifestyle. I mean, I, I, that was mine. I mean, I didn't feel any sense of potency until I hit 40. And so that, that move, I think, I don't know if I made it consciously, but some level, some part of me saying I'm never going to pick up power because it's so abusive. It's, it's, it's you, it's so damaging. So I'm going to be a nice boy. And of course, then power always moves into the shadows. You know, Jung had a phrase that I just really valued. He said, where the will to power reigns. Where power reigns, there the will to actually get this one because it's so good. Where love reigns, there, the will to power is absent. And where power predominates, there the shadow. Their love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. What I think Jung is saying is if you choose either one of those, you're in trouble. If you choose power, that pseudo power, then your love goes into the shadow. And don't we see a lot of that right now? Men loving in shadowy ways, cool, detached, absent, withholding. But he also said, if you choose love, and I'm saying that's the nice boy strategy, then power goes into the shadow and our power becomes passive aggressive, sarcastic, judgmental, critical. What I think he's saying is don't choose either one. Live them both out in their fullness. Power without love is coercion. Love without power is sentimentality. It's hallmark. Have a nice day. Power with love is justice, it's protection. Love with power is compassion. You know, they fulfill each other. And that's a big focus of my work with men in initiation work was how do we bring these two back into a relationship with one another? So our loving is potent and our power is loving. Now that's a good piece of work for a man to do in his life, is know how to carry both of those valences. But to do so in a synthetic way where they're empowering, whether fulfilling each other and not relying on them as individuals or our loving is over here, but our power is over here. And that's what we have pretty much in. In white society is splitting those two, and they need each other. You're absolutely right, Alexander. We need potent men walking around, but we need those men. We. We need those men carrying power that's infused with affection, with love, with care. You know that we're desperate for that. The decisions coming right now out of our government are so lacking in any quality of love. They're powerful. We'll tell you who can get kicked out in an instant. We'll tell you who can get funding. We'll tell you who can get services. But where the hell is the love that has to do with our common humanity, our shared experiences? This is a difficult life. And to have no access to a potent love or a love that's been made strong by the presence of power. I'm sorry, that's not where we are. That's what we need to do, though, brothers.
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A
Yeah, I'm just feeling that landing and just imagining, too, moving forward into what you've called the long dark, Francis, how much that the need for both of those is so absolutely necessary, like power and a love of. Of life and a love toward future generations that. That could have something left for them.
- [18:28]
C
Yeah. I mean, our love that's not potent again turns into passive wishing. And, I mean, that's where I think the word hope can become so thin if it's held with a certain degree of passivity. But potent hope, you know, hope that has a drive behind it of service and protection and enlivening and feeding the commons. That's a beautiful hope because it's been potent. It's been potentized. I don't know what the right word is, but, you know, it's not a passive thing. It's active. It's a join the message, act of hope. Right? Yeah.
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B
Yeah. As. As you've shared, Francis, I just had, like, tears in my eyes, feeling the grief of everything that we're sitting in. In this moment. And I'm so grateful for all the work that you've done to. To bring grief into the forefront and its medicine and also that ancient technology that grief brings to us and is in our blood, is in our cells for us to remember. And I think about men and men's work and how much perhaps grief work has been lacking for quite some time. And what are the consequences of not grieving? What are the consequences of not coming together as a group of men and being in ritual together? You've done so much work with men and through initiatory experiences also. And I'm curious can speak to, to grief, you know, in terms of men's work.
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C
Well, we would do a year long process with, with these groups of men and the very first weekend is all about predator and grief. When you really begin to see how con. Conscripted our lives are and constricted our lives have been and you really begin to feel how much you've accommodated to try to fit in to the dominant images. You realize how much of your own life you had to abandon, how much of your own life you in a sense you had to betray. I couldn't be who I am because it wouldn't fit in. It wouldn't get recognized, it wouldn't get approval, it would, you know, whatever it is. The amount of life that we've had to shed to fit into this heroic strategy of, of trying to be in this society is monumental. I mean, I'm sure you all have done that. We all do that because the, the desire to belong is even more powerful than our desire to be ourselves. It's, it's like a, an a priori requirement to feel some sense of inclusion, to be inside of something. It's terrifying to be outside. But we will abandon ourselves in order to be inside. And I have seen so many, many, many, many times when a man finally confronts the reality of the self betrayal, the grief wash that comes after that is enormous. And it's also so healing to begin to weep together and to begin to hold each other and to begin to see how much this prescription has kept us apart, has kept us not trusting one another, has kept us competing for a spot in the special category. You know, I'm better than you, but the loneliness that men carry, I'm sure you've felt that in your men's circles, right? That just the loneliness that is kind of endemic to being a man in, in this culture. And so those tears are really holy. It's holy water. But that's the very first thing we, we, we touch upon in our year is perceiving your life as possessing something worth fighting for, which is the predator work. And then seeing the consequences of all the times we said no. You know that wonderful line in that poem, you know, all the times we said no to our lives, you know, and those are not neutral no's, they're costly no's. They set us back again and again separate from our own souls and any true sense of belonging. Because any, any belonging that we gather based on facsimile and trying to be something. We don't buy it anyway. Right? I mean that that pseudo belonging is, you know, we can't put any weight on, will collapse immediately. So even to be provisionally inside of something, it's not the same as bringing your whole heart and soul and being able to confess yourself fallible and human, as Jung would say. Until we do that, we never feel like we belong. Particularly in the circle of men. Yeah. Yeah.
- [24:02]
A
I noticed so many men, when they come to groups, have expressed just how exhausted they are, you know, around having to be, you know, in competition, sizing each other up, that they almost would rather not be with men because there's just so much of that and how much can be reclaimed in terms of our life force and a more like uncontrived, inherent sense of belonging that's not based at all on production or. Or what you do, but just this. This essence of. Of who you are under all that.
- [24:41]
C
Yeah. And we're all longing for that. Yeah.
- [24:50]
B
And where has the capacity to bless others, especially as men? Where has that gone? You know, it feels like that's such a. An important part of becoming a ripened adult. As you've shared many times, Francis, you know, growing this capacity to bless others. And I. I'm just so grateful that, you know, being with you both, there's been so much of that exchange over and over again, and it just feels like something in the soul grows every time that we're blessing each other. And it makes me curious, like, where did you first experience that from? From men in your life?
- [25:35]
C
Well, first, let me just say, where did that go? Well, in that heroic model, it's all based on perfection. It's based on being the. On top of the heap. Well, you don't bless those who are in competition with you. You also don't bless when you feel like what you are basically full of is deficit. So you're always trying to make up, you know, and then what I've seen in the. In the initiation work is how much our conditioning is. The directional arrow is towards the self. That's not a blessing move. That's a gathering move. Again, nothing wrong with that, because we do need to take in. But if that's a one directional arrow, and I'm just simply out there trying to get, you know, little accolades, a little. Little praise, a little, you know, acknowledgement that I'm. I'm better than you, there's no space to bless now. In my own life, I have. I don't know how this grace came into my world, but I've had these mentors from a very young age when I was 22. Well, even before then. But when I came out to California at 22 years old from the Midwest, I surreptitiously found myself in the. In the company of this man, half Bora Bora, half American, named Kohli Bob. All I got from him was blessing. All I got from him was seeing in me something worth saying yes to. And he kept coaxing me out, you know, and his final blessing was to say, I have nothing more to teach you. You are my equal. This man was like, you know, 20 years older than me. He was in his 40s. He was really old, you know, and. But what a blessing that was to say, you are my equal. You know, sit with me, stand by me. And then mentors after that, Clark Berry and Bob Stein and Larry Spiro, and these men just kept seeing something in me that I did not see in me. And I think that's the. That's the. The value of an elder of us. They can persist in seeing something that you insist is not there. You know, I didn't, you know, have my wound being shame. It was really hard to find value inside of me. But their persistence overwhelmed my story over time. And that. What a gift that is, you know, that they could just keep seeing me. I remember one of them saying, you know, I was. I wasn't going to go on and get my license after graduate school, school, because, I mean, who am I to do that work? And they got right in my face and said, you're gonna get that license. You're gonna do. You know, they knew. They saw things in me and potentials in me that I. I didn't see. So I just feel like that all I want to do is pass on the gift of abundant blessings, you know, that I see the two of you. I. You know, I. I adore the both of you and see so many gifts in each of you that I want to just keep nudging further and further out into these days, these times. Yeah.
- [29:08]
A
Thank you, Francis.
- [29:09]
C
That's.
- [29:10]
A
I know we both feel that as just this incredible gift and blessing, and it feels important both for. For mentors and students and also for colleagues and friends. And I'm wondering. I mean, I feel so wealthy in having brothers and colleagues who tune toward my medicine and coax it out and reflect it when I forget about it. And I'm wondering if you might share the story of when you started the initiation work and your two friends and colleagues, because that really moved me and kind of framed a kind of responsibility of being together as men.
- [29:53]
C
Yeah, I guess there's 1996 Maladoma so main rob Albee and David Kukla and myself were kind of given this charge to create something for the men that we began just having men's gatherings. And we would have 120 men show up for these things. They were huge and beautiful and alive. And. And then we decided to move in the direction of initiation. Robin, David and I had gone through initiation with Melodoma. And. And when we made that announcement, 11 men showed up out of that 120 some odd men. And we, damn, what the hell? Where did all that commitment go? Where did. And then we realized, thank God, only 11 men showed up because this is the hardest work we've ever done. But we knew we had to know each other thoroughly in order to do this work. We couldn't wonder and we couldn't question, you know, whether that brother's at my side and had my back. So we started meeting every Monday, spent the whole day together just talking and sharing and bringing our stories in. And I would listen to them share their pathetic stories of how broken they were and how inadequate. And I'm listening. What the hell are you guys talking about? Your lions of courage, your mountains of power, you're. And then I would tell my pathetic story, you know, no weak, and I don't belong here. And they would look at me. What are you talking about? You're a fountain of wisdom, of compassion, the poetic imagination. What you bring to these men is essential. And we just kept challenging each other's stories. And then one day, David came back from Chimayo into Mexico, where he was working with this project with the native folks down there. And he said, you know, I was sitting in council with those people, and everywhere I looked around the circle, I saw your two faces. And I realized, I have become the man that you have seen in me. Whoa. Now, what if that was one of the deep purposes of friendship, right? To draw out the medicine that Carl was saying just to say, I insist that you bring this out. We can't be a community without your medicine. And then every single one of us is absolutely indispensable to the medicine field of the village. You know, again, not just having this pinnacle person, you know, who's got the most money or the most power or the most whatever, but you see a field of medicine carriers. And that. That's what initiation is meant to do. It's meant to activate the incipient medicine in the soul. Not again by self will or self power, but by witness and encouragement. This is what we see in you. And this is the name that we want to give to you, and this is the work that the village needs from you. And again, it's not a career move, but it's a soul move. You know, helping people cry or helping people feel like they carry value. We're helping people face fear. These are not career, you know, opportunities. But like I say, you can't make a living from that, but you can certainly make a life from doing that.
- [33:44]
A
Yeah. I'm curious, Francis, kind of going back to this, this movement of soul and this time of the long dark that you've described and can. I'm wondering if you like. I think that there's such a. A yearning for men to do something, to orient in some, Some way toward it, but that the, like, the values of the light and ascension and like, having a solution or fixing this, you know, all of those things aren't what's being called for. And, and what are some of the, like, underground currents that can be cultivated?
- [34:27]
C
Well, the long dark, for those of you who are new to this idea, it's a kind of a soul language that parallels the poly crisis or the great simplification or other terms that has been given to this. I like the long dark because it evokes imagination. Long because it will be. We're talking at least two generations. This is not going to be a quick turnaround. We're not, you know, the next quarterly report is not going to change where we are. The long dark and is a necessary and essential time of recalibration, but it's not going to be based on that heroic mentality. There's a beautiful idea that comes out of the Inuit people called cart salooni. And this is the. I think it's primarily the men who would be going out on the hunt. I don't want to say that specifically, because I might be wrong, but the idea of kaluni, the word translates into sitting quietly together in the dark, waiting expectantly for something creative to burst forth. Now, this is so un American and it's so untraditional, white, masculine, which is, like you said, you know, going out and doing something, making things happen, finding the solution. What the soul is asking for is that kind of fidelity to silence, to holding quiet and darkness as fertile grounds of imagination, of dreaming and receptivity. I think one of the biggest things for men in this time is to learn to become attuned to a pulse larger than their own ego. In other words, what does the earth rhythm speak to you? How does that speak to you? And what do what's the interior work I need to do to become receptive to that impression. You know, to get quiet enough to listen enough to, you know, get still and being able to be impressed upon like the rituals that we need. How are we going to get through the long dark without ritual, without song. Right. Without beauty, without grief, work without giving thanks. All the things that we need to do, we must be informed by a much larger dreaming animal like the earth. And I, I don't want to make the earth a singularity either because I think it, it dreams differently in each part of the world. It has its own imagination that speaks differently in, you know, where I live in the redwoods, as it would to the desert or to the mountains or, you know, to be specified in the way that these images come and the dreams come and the rituals come. Rituals we do here have been dreamt here and they, they speak to that archaic psyche. They speak to us in ways that help us know how to be in relationship to the larger watersheds, the bio regions, to the communities of people and, and ferns and animals. Yeah, long dark.
- [38:01]
B
And there's such a contrast, Francis, of when you speak about song and dance, dreaming the earth, this archaic way of being that is trying to move all of us and the contrast of that with what you've spoken about in terms of the emptiness of white capitalist culture like these onto epistemologies that are just famished. And I'm curious if you can speak a little bit more to that and how the context of what men are feeling right now is not separate from that emptiness that we're speaking about.
- [38:46]
C
That could be lead to that three hour conversation. Yeah, I mean it's another one of those un American words. We even in psychology our focus is on abundance, right. We amplification addition. But the reality is most of us feel pretty empty inside. The problem is, is that we end up blaming ourselves for that emptiness. Like, what did I do wrong? The intimation is that we expected something more than this. Right. Otherwise we wouldn't feel empty inside. Like if that was full, if I had gotten everything that was supposed to be happening, I probably wouldn't feel this emptiness. But this emptiness is symptomatic and it's calling our attention to the absence of living culture. I once gave a talk called at the Heart of All Our Sorrows. And I mean that, I mean that for all people of color. Every person on the planet is being impacted by the legacy of white emptiness which began probably three to 4,000 years ago. I don't know if that's too much. But just a quick aside, My brother is very attuned to the, what you call ancestry and the geo. What's the genetic inherit, inheritance and so forth. So he did our family tree back to the 1600s and found the town that the Weller name came from in Germany. And he went there and came back with photos that you shared with us. And one photo was of this massive black wall that was called, it's called the Black Gate. And it was built in 79 AD by the Romans. Then my ancestry, my, my people were colonized by first. The first wave was Roman. It might have been a way before that, might have been the gold, I'm not sure. But the Romans came and then the Christian Romans came and completed the assimilation where rituals, traditions, practices all were banished. And so in a sense, what I am the inheritor of is a, is an abandoned lineage. And. Well, a couple weeks ago, I hope this isn't too non linear, but couple weeks ago I was doing a. A winter solstice event with Pat McAbe. And you both know Pat, I think, quite well. And Pat's a Dena elder teacher. This was the first time Pat and I did something together. And we met the Monday before the solstice event to just plan our event. And I'm just listening to her talk and then I'm so moved by not what she says, but how she says it. And then on Saturday we get together and she says to me, you know, I'm a little starstruck being with you. And I'm laughing my head off because I'm saying, pat, you have no idea. Last night was our village meeting. I spent most all of my time talking about you. I said to them, I was sitting with this woman who had 10,000 years under her feet. She wasn't speaking a solo language. She was speaking a language so imbued with the living legacy of her people, of that land, of the ancestors. She wasn't flying by herself. And I feel like I'm barely touching any ground underneath my feet, you know, that, that, that emptiness, the symptomology of individualism is a consequence of that emptiness. We don't feel that we're part of a living culture. We don't feel that there's a rich ritual ground underneath us that we can go to whenever there's trouble or whenever we want to say thank you, or whenever there's a need for the young ones to be taken through initiation, or whenever we're guiding somebody into their elders stage. None of that's there. So you Know, in my grief work, I began to understand these gates of grief. And the fourth gate of grief is what we expected and did not receive. And what we expected was this rich tapestry of communal life, a rich relational ground with the animate world of foxes and hawks and, you know, everything. And almost none of that materialized. And in that absence, in that silence, this emptiness, began to permeate white soul. And consequently, we have become obsessed with capitalism, with colonization, with, you know, control and domination. Those are symptoms of emptiness. If there's fullness in our beings and in our community, why the hell would we go out and try to take everything from everybody on the whole planet? There's very few places on this planet now that are not infected by capitalism or by microplastics. You know, all of it is symptomatic. So I think a lot of our work right now, brothers, is how do we not fill that emptiness, but how do we first of all weep into it? Cry and cry and cry into that emptiness. And then maybe in the incipient moves of caring for one another, begin to re knit something that might be called living culture. Because there's no substitute. That emptiness is not a flaw. It's a reflection of what it is we have forgotten. And so only through remembrance, you know, the trail on the ground that you've heard me talk about, as you said before, Alexandre, about this, in a sense, this deep time memory echo that we all carry, that when, when we're around the frequency that speaks to the soul, we come alive. That's what we have to track now. Not the latest iPhone or the latest anything. When we're inside of what the soul wants. I was talking to someone the other day about economics, and I said, yeah, the whole entire economic enterprise would collapse in five minutes if we were all granted primary satisfactions, you know, the whole thing would collapse. We live in a system that depends upon chronic dissatisfaction. We have to make sure that everything collapses. You know, like, you know, phones last for a couple years. Well, get a new one, you know, everything's designed for constant chronic feelings of dissatisfaction, always, always wanting more. And now where does that come from if not from this emptiness that can never be satisfied by secondary satisfactions? We can never be satisfied. I work with a lot of wealthy people in that practice. I asked them point blank, sometimes, how much is enough? And they said, there's, there's never. I'm always anxious, I always want more. And I think that's been part of the reason why it's been easier for me to step away from work, because I'm, you know, I'm fed, I am nourished. I am, you know, I have what I need in terms of my community, my village, my friendships, my love. Yeah, that's enough. Yeah.
- [46:53]
A
So. So much in that, Francis. We could. Could go three hours just on primary satisfactions.
- [47:00]
C
Yeah.
- [47:00]
A
And I'm. I'm surprised how often even in kind of the, you know, green movement, like, how little the cultivation of satisfaction and not trying to fill that. That emptiness with. With something is talked about. And I think even the fourth gate, these. This longing for something is like. It's its own compass toward that. That longer inheritance, you know, sort of pre.
- [47:32]
C
That.
- [47:33]
A
That black gate and emptiness and how that the last thing is so much different when it's like a dusting off rather than. I need to have this training, this accumulation, this status, something to. To add on, to be okay.
- [47:48]
C
If we don't know that ground, then we're always beseeching the next thing that might at least temporarily fill us up. But like any addiction, you can never get enough of what you don't need. You know, you always want more. Another degree, another class, another certification. Again, I'm not saying any of this is wrong, but I'm saying it's built on a premise that is so distorted that we don't even know we're participating in an illness. We don't even know that this is a pathology. It's what we consider just normal, white capitalistic culture. This is what you do. And the outfall of that or the fallout of that is where we are right now. Crashing. None of this is sustainable.
- [48:50]
A
I've had this. This conversation with Aaron recently about. It was an interview with someone who became a skinhead. And he was saying that there wasn't any resonance with the ideology. It was a resonance with people saying, like, hey, you belong here. Like you. There's a place for you here. And. And how to have some place for men that's. That's more appealing than a skinhead group where. Where men can have a sense of being like, hey, you. You matter here. Your presence is important. You. You have medicine that this world needs right now. Because I don't think many men get that shine, you know, back to them.
- [49:40]
C
No, there's very few places where we can make the confession, you know, of how lonely we are, how interiorly we feel inadequate. Yeah, we need places. Jung had another phrase, if you don't mind. He said, there appears to be a conscience in mankind that severely punishes the man who does not somehow and in some way, at Whatever cost his pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself, fallible and human. Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him out from the living experience of being a man among men. So where. Where can we go to confess? You know, maybe after, you know, a couple bottles of wine, you can confess. But to have spaces where we get to share the. Just the consequences of these conditions is very rare. And so I'm deeply grateful that the two of you are doing that. You know, I. Again, that's been a big part of my life to try to recreate spaces where men get to be ordinary. We called our. Our work. It was called Men of Spirit, but kind of the subtitle was the Making of Ordinary Men. It's ordinary for us to show up. It's ordinary for us to care for our families, for our communities. It's ordinary for us to protect what is vulnerable. I remember one man who went on to become part of our team. There was a suicide in his village, in his community. And it was a friend, a close friend of his daughter. And the funeral happened, and John went to the funeral, and a friend drove along with him to that. And they had. It was one of those big outdoor tents, and it was filled with people. And as the. The memorial came to an end, there was a cluster of teenagers just huddled together, holding each other and sobbing. And this guy said to John, well, it's all over. Let's go. And John says, I'm not leaving. My position is right here. Not a word said. Nothing in the paper about it. Nothing glamorous or glorious, no attribution of being special. And look, look at me. John was just being an initiated man, saying, now these kids need. Need me right here, right now. But it brings tears to me. Just. That's what we need, you know, men who see the needs of the young ones and the communities and the children and the salmon and everything else, and just said, well, no, I'm standing right here. I'm going to witness this, hold this, care for it, protect it. And, you know, I'll never forget that.
- [52:49]
B
I'm slightly preparing myself for another two hours of conversation. And I'm also like, okay, maybe don't. Don't get into too much of a big thing, because I know we're. We're close to the top of the hour. Yeah, I'm. I'm wondering, Francis, if this was a moment where you could leave some kind of message or blessing or teaching for men out there. If we imagined that. I don't know 10, 20, 50 years from now, some young men would find this recording, you know, maybe all of us wouldn't be alive anymore, you know, and what would you want them to hear or know?
- [53:48]
C
That you're so much bigger than anything you've been taught. Your soul is as immense as the night sky. That you are a carrier of medicine that the community needs, that you are the ones we've been waiting for. You can bless, you can care for, you can protect what is alive and what needs protection. There's a lot of vulnerability out there, and we need to have men who are willing to care for that vulnerability. I would say let yourself fall to the ground in both tears and gratitude. Take in this dazzling world and let it. Let it infuse you. One of our old elders, Wendell Berry, said, it all turns on affection. I would say, whatever you do with your life, make sure it turns on affection. Keep loving this world ardently, deeply holy. And who knows, that might just create a little aperture where a new dream might seep through and we might once again be returned to this place in a good way. Thank you, brothers. Thank you.
- [55:20]
B
Thank you, Francis. Thank you, Carl.
- [55:22]
A
Thank you, Alex.
- [55:23]
B
Thank you. Everyone listening.
- [55:24]
A
Thank you so.
- [55:27]
C
Amen.
- [55:31]
A
Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, it's great if you want to share it with friends or post about it on social media media. Also, you could make a donation to support the podcast or find out more information about our classes and offerings at our website, embodiment matters.com.