Embodiment Matters Podcast
Mini-Series: Men of Depth and Soul
Episode: A Conversation with Francis Weller and Alexandre Jodun
Release Date: January 30, 2025
Hosts: Erin Geesaman Rabke & Carl Rabke
Guests: Francis Weller, Alexandre Jodun

Overview

The inaugural episode of the “Men of Depth and Soul” mini-series offers a profound collective reflection between Francis Weller—psychotherapist, author, and soul activist—and Alexandre Jodun, co-facilitator of the series. The conversation unfolds around the wounded state of masculinity, modern men’s disconnection from soul and community, the cost of unaddressed grief, the scarcity of genuine blessing and belonging, and the urgent invitation for men to embody power infused with love. The tone is intimate, vulnerable, and wise, blending personal stories with cultural critique and heartfelt counsel—“Three of us sitting around a fire in the desert, under the stars, calling in ancestors and praying for future ones…” (Erin, 04:18).

Key Topics and Insights

1. The Loss of Soul and Restrictive Masculinity

• Francis Weller grieves the loss of “soul” among men in today’s society, linking it to legacy of individualism and an unyielding, heroic model.
  • “The foundational ground of masculine soul has been basically forgotten. And we're living in a time of… deep amnesia.” (Francis, 05:33)
• Traditional soul values like community, ritual, and imagination are neglected, replaced by an obsessive pursuit of strength, rank, and achievement.
• The Western “masculine” becomes a narrow, monolithic and ultimately alienating identity—“You either have to reshape your identity to fit that one dominant mode or…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.” (Francis, 10:33)

Notable Quote

• “We have a collective of men carrying the scent of an adolescent stability, parading around… The legacy of that has been disastrous.” (Francis, 06:07)

2. Power, Love, and the “Nice Boy” Trap

• Discussion about the shadow dynamics of power in men: domination (pseudo-power), passivity, and accommodation patterns.
• Jung’s insight:
  • “Where love reigns, there the will to power is absent; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” (Francis quoting Jung, 14:21)
• Healthy masculinity requires the synthesis of potent power and embodied love:
  • “Power without love is coercion. Love without power is sentimentality... Power with love is justice, it's protection. Love with power is compassion.” (Francis, 15:44)

Notable Quotes

• “To have genuine relationship to power, I need a field of relationships that's thick and rich... not just to humans, but also to the animal life, to the green world, to the ancestors, to the cosmos.” (Francis, 12:17)
• “We need potent men walking around, but we need those men... carrying power that's infused with affection, with love, with care. We're desperate for that.” (Francis, 16:48)

3. Grief as Essential Men’s Work

• Unprocessed grief is a root wound for men, fueling exhaustion, competition, and loneliness.
  • “When a man finally confronts the reality of the self-betrayal, the grief wash... is enormous. And it's also so healing to begin to weep together and... see how much this prescription has kept us apart.” (Francis, 21:08)
• The initiation work Francis leads foregrounds grief as medicinal—an ancient technology for healing and restoring belonging.
• Belonging based on facsimile or pretense is “pseudo-belonging” and collapses under the weight of truth.

Notable Quotes

• “The desire to belong is even more powerful than our desire to be ourselves... But we will abandon ourselves in order to be inside.” (Francis, 21:51)
• “Those tears are really holy. It's holy water.” (Francis, 22:44)

4. Blessing, Witnessing, and Eldership

• Blessing others is a lost art in modern masculinity. The heroic model undermines the capacity to bless because it is rooted in competition, perfectionism, and deficit.
• Francis shares stories of his own mentors—how their persistent blessing and seeing brought out his gifts and forged him into the man he is.
  • “They can persist in seeing something that you insist is not there... their persistence overwhelmed my story over time.” (Francis, 27:52)

Notable Quotes

• “All I want to do is pass on the gift of abundant blessings... I see so many gifts in each of you that I want to keep nudging further and further out into these days, these times.” (Francis, 28:41)
• “What if that was one of the deep purposes of friendship: to draw out the medicine... I insist that you bring this out. We can't be a community without your medicine.” (Francis, 32:03)

5. The "Long Dark": A Soulful Approach to Crisis

• Francis describes the “Long Dark” as a generational crisis requiring deep recalibration, not heroic or quick solutions.
• Soul asks for “fidelity to silence, to holding quiet and darkness as fertile grounds of imagination, of dreaming and receptivity.” (Francis, 34:26)
• He invokes Indigenous wisdom, especially from the Inuit concept of “kat saluni”—sitting quietly together in darkness, waiting for creative emergence.

Notable Quotes

• “One of the biggest things for men in this time is to learn to become attuned to a pulse larger than their own ego.” (Francis, 35:38)

6. Emptiness and the Legacy of White Culture

• Weller names the existential emptiness at the heart of dominant (white) capitalist culture, tracing it back to ancestral disconnection and the loss of ritual, tradition, and land.
  • “The emptiness is symptomatic and it's calling our attention to the absence of living culture... It is an abandoned lineage.” (Francis, 39:19)
• Primary satisfactions rooted in relationship, beauty, and earth have been displaced by chronic dissatisfaction and addictive consumption.
• “We live in a system that depends upon chronic dissatisfaction... And now where does that come from if not from this emptiness that can never be satisfied by secondary satisfactions?” (Francis, 43:54)

7. True Belonging & The Ordinary Initiated Man

• Many men, especially those adrift or drawn to toxic communities, are simply searching for a sense of belonging and recognition of their unique medicine.
  • “How to have some place for men that's... more appealing than a skinhead group where men can have a sense of being like, hey, you. You matter here.” (Alexandre, 48:20)
• True belonging arises in spaces of confession, ordinariness, mutual care, and blessing—not in achievement or perfection.
  • “It's ordinary for us to care for our families, for our communities...to protect what is vulnerable.” (Francis, 51:14)
  • Moving story of a man remaining present at a funeral as simple, vital initiation: “That's what we need, you know, men who see the needs...and just said, 'Well, no, I'm standing right here.'” (Francis, 52:22)

8. Blessing to Future Generations (Closing)

• The episode ends with Francis’s message to men 10, 20, or 50 years from now:
  • “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... Let yourself fall to the ground in both tears and gratitude. Take in this dazzling world...it all turns on affection.” (Francis, 53:48)

Memorable Moments & Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On Soul Loss:
  • “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.” (Francis, 05:48)
• On Power and Love:
  • “Power without love is coercion. Love without power is sentimentality...Power with love is justice, it's protection. Love with power is compassion. You know, they fulfill each other.” (Francis, 15:44)
• On Grief:
  • “Those tears are really holy. It's holy water... 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 to our lives... they're costly no's.” (Francis, 22:44–23:40)
• On Blessing:
  • “All I got from him [my mentor] was blessing. All I got from him was seeing in me something worth saying yes to.” (Francis, 26:19)
• On Belonging & Initiation:
  • “What if that was one of the deep purposes of friendship, right? To draw out the medicine...I insist that you bring this out. We can't be a community without your medicine.” (Francis, 32:08)
• On the Long Dark:
  • “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.” (Francis, 34:26)
• On Emptiness:
  • “That emptiness is not a flaw. It's a reflection of what it is we have forgotten. And so only through remembrance...when we're around the frequency that speaks to the soul, we come alive.” (Francis, 44:09)
• On Ordinary Initiation:
  • “It's ordinary for us to protect what is vulnerable...John was just being an initiated man, saying, 'Now these kids need me right here, right now.'” (Francis, 51:17)
• Final Blessing:
  • “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.” (Francis, 54:20)

Suggested Listening Segments

• The Loss of Soul and Narrowing of Masculinity – 05:33 – 11:24
• On Power, Passivity, and Love (with Jung) – 13:56 – 17:18
• Grief and Men’s Initiation – 19:11 – 24:41
• Mentorship and Blessing – 25:35 – 29:07
• Describing the Long Dark – 34:26 – 38:00
• Emptiness & the Failure of Culture – 38:46 – 47:47
• On Making of Ordinary Men – 49:39 – 52:49
• Francis's Final Blessing for Future Men – 53:48 – 54:20

Tone and Takeaways

The tone is candid, mournful, nurturing, and wise—woven with reverence for soul, ritual, the earth, and communal life. The hosts and guests speak from lived experience and deep study, inviting men (and all listeners) to return to embodied, soulful community and action rooted in love, sorrow, ritual, and cultivated satisfaction.

For men, especially, the call is clear:

• Reclaim the full range of your soul.
• Weep the holy tears of loss and belonging.
• Gather for genuine blessing and witness.
• Let love potentize your power, and power infuse your love.
• Root your days in affection, presence, and the slow arts of culture-building amidst the long dark.

For more information:

• Francis Weller: francisweller.net
• Alexandre Jodun: ahealingbridge.com
• Embodiment Matters Podcast & offerings: embodimentmatters.com

(Summary crafted to guide new listeners into the heart of this rich, timely episode.)