The Missing Archetype In Modern Men

It seems like some men can see the future. They can tell where the market is going or how a competitor will act, and they can put themselves in the perfect position to capitalize.

I felt when we stared down, I felt his right hand was twitching a little bit, which was a subtle tell for me. He is ready to unload that right hand, but I feel that could be a downfall for him if he lets that right hand go. I will not be there.

This ability to read the world makes these men powerful leaders, businessmen, and competitors, but it isn't unique to Conor McGregor or to anyone. You have it too. You probably just haven't unlocked it. So in this video, I want to break down how you can develop this skill to read, predict, and then shape reality. To do so, we're going to dive into what depth psychology calls the archetype of the Magician. Now, if you haven't watched my other videos on the masculine archetypes, here's what you need to know. All men have so much more potential than they usually tap into. We're basically living like the Limitless Guy but before he takes the pill. We all sort of, uh, it's really, it's really— Now, these masculine archetypes fall into 4 main categories. The Warrior unlocks discipline and power in conflict. The Lover unlocks joy, artistic creativity, and of course, love. And the King unlocks wisdom and generosity. Then we have the subject of this video, the Magician. People with a strong connection to the Magician archetype may look like they have psychic powers.

You can call me Mystic Mike because I predict these things.

But really, what these people have is awareness of the subtle things that others don't pick up on. They are using information that most people ignore.

So there's a knife on the breadboard with butter on the right side of the blade. Because he used it with his left, it's highly unlikely that a left-handed man would shoot himself in the right side of his head. Conclusion: someone broke in here and murdered him.

And oftentimes these people can't even explain how they know the things that they know. The perception and the synthesis of that information is occurring subconsciously. Subconsciously, but what we want is to tap into that power on purpose. So here are the 4 steps to do so. First, in the words of Yoda, who is one of the great fictional magicians, "You must unlearn what you have learned." You see, we are all social creatures. We understand the world based largely on what others tell us is true. This is important when you're a kid. If you ignore your parents and run into traffic to experience life firsthand, you won't live into adulthood. But in addition to that life-saving advice, we also pick up a lot of untrue limitations. Everybody's two-strapping it. Just stay with one strap. I can't, I can't, I can't right now. What are you doing? What are you doing? Don't succumb to the peer pressure. What are you doing? You're supposed to use two straps. One strap is peer pressure. No, no, no, Charlie Houpert. These aren't hardwired limitations of the universe, but the limitations of our caregivers and our society. So if you want to unlock the Magician archetype, you have to let go of these false limits. As Elon Musk says, "Physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation." Concretely, you have to be willing to look like a fool, to make obvious mistakes, ask dumb questions, and start projects that everyone else just knows will fail, and it will enable you to see the subtle details that everyone else thinks aren't important. "Something wrong in law school?" "How do you know I'm in law school?" "People who aren't usually don't carry around dry academically constipated books about a dead Supreme Court justice." You're a creep, aren't you? The cost is that you will appear stupid or silly or crazy for a time, but if you're testing your experiences against reality and not just social convention, you are on the right path. This takes us to the second step: you need to enter into non-ordinary states of consciousness. Now, this may sound strange, but we all do it all the time. One non-ordinary state is called daydreaming, and it's how Harry Potter was born.

Harry Potter came to me on a train in 1990. I was sitting just staring out of the window, and I, I, the idea just fell out of nowhere. It was the purest stroke of inspiration I've ever had in my life.

And another non-ordinary state, a literal dream, is where Let It Be came from. Listen to Paul McCartney tell the story.

Anyway, I had a dream, and my mother, who died who died probably about 10 years previously, was in the dream. She came to me in the dream and she said, "Don't worry, it's gonna be fine.

Just let it be." Non-ordinary consciousness is vastly underrated by people used to analytical problem solving. We will spend all day toiling over a problem and then forget that our best insights have come to us when we're in the shower or on a walk. And the reason that this happens is because our unconscious nonlinear intelligence kicks in when we aren't aimed at anything specific. So the magician purposely cultivates time for these states. He meditates or prays or practices breathwork, or in shamanic lineages will take substances.

"What's in that tea? Psilocybin?

LSD?" "It's just tea with a little honey." Whichever you do, the important thing is that you must create space for your normal mind chatter to rest so that your deep intelligence can activate, and this brings us to the third point. The magician communes with and surrenders to forces larger than himself. Now, this one was hardest for me because I, like many men, have a big old ego. And when I say ego, I don't mean it in the negative sense. I mean the part of us that is obsessed with survival. This helps us plan our lives, anticipate problems, and generally function in society. But one thing that the ego cannot stand is letting go of control. It thinks you will die if it loses control. So communing with and surrendering to unseen forces is not something that the ego wants.

There is no such thing as spirit. We are made of matter and nothing more.

And it will come up with all sorts of reasons to never let this happen. In fact, this scene from Doctor Strange plays out the conversation that almost every one of us will have when we first hear that we need to surrender.

You have to surrender to its current and use its power as your own.

I control it by surrendering control?

That doesn't make any sense.

Not everything does. Not everything has to. Silence your ego and your power will rise. Come with me.

So assuming you're still open to exploring this surrender thing, how do you begin this process of surrendering to something larger than the ego? Well, concretely, you want to start placing trust in your intuition. Start small. Take a different route to work just because you feel like it. Call up the old friend who randomly popped into your mind rather than ignoring it. Or when you need inspiration, open a random book to a random page and see if it holds unexpected wisdom. That is literally how System of a Down's Chop Suey came to be.

He didn't have any ideas, and I said, okay, pick a book off the wall. I picked a book randomly off the wall. I said, open it to any page, tell me the first phrase you see. That's what's in the song, and it's a high point in the song.

Why have you forsaken me?

In your eyes forsaken.

If you practice this, you will likely find that the voice of your intuition is an amazing guide. It just doesn't explain itself in the terms that the ego can understand. Now, there is an important caveat here. If you really start to hone this intuition, you will probably produce amazing results. And at first, it's very natural to acknowledge that something larger than you played a significant role in what you made. This was Kanye West early in his career.

The music on this CD was— I was only the vessel for this. God was in the studio with me when I was working. Even— I don't know. In the future, I don't know if I'll be able to make anything like this.

But after some time, it's easy to forget that you are just the vessel and to confuse yourself with the source of what flowed through you.

Just like that, when someone comes up and says something like, "I am a god," everybody says, "Who does he think he is?" I just told you who I thought I was— a god. I just told you.

We've seen this pattern many times. Men who have tapped into rich magician energy, achieved great things, and then completely self-destructed. The problem here is that they haven't integrated the other archetype sufficiently, specifically, the king who knows how to wield power while serving a cause higher than the ego. And you could see the outcome in Conor McGregor's spiral after fame, and the same energy is portrayed masterfully by Jeremy Irons in Margin Call. Now, in this scene, he basically kicks off the 2008 financial crisis by dumping bad assets on the market to save his own company and his own skin. If you do this, you will kill the market for years. It's over. And you're selling something that you know has no value.

We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price so that we may survive.

So if you don't want to get locked into just survival concerns, it's really important that you develop connection with all of these archetypes in a balanced way. When you do that, you're opening to the deepest lesson of the Magician archetype. Really, this is the deep lesson of all of the masculine archetypes. And again, I will let this scene from Doctor Strange lay it out because it does so beautifully.

Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.

Which is?

It's not about When you recognize that you are connected to something much larger than your little self, a massive weight is removed. It's like you've solved a lifelong riddle that you'd forgotten you were even struggling with. And this is where modern men could learn a lot from these fictional icons, because by the end, the fictional magician usually releases his ego and he offers himself in service of the greater good. In real life though, most men do not transcend their egos. They live and die in service of the our small self, and that's not just a personal failing. It's a broader issue with our culture that glorifies individual success without reminding us that we're all deeply connected. What color is your Bugatti? Oh, fuck off then. And it seems like it's only in fictional stories that that mystical connection to everything truly exists. But it's not just in fiction anymore. Something is shifting in the world. There seems to be a resurgence of the Magician archetype and the spiritual drive in the men that have it. Even Conor McGregor seems to be feeling it. After everything that he's been through from his meteoric rise to his apparent drug issue, he had this to say just a month ago.

Since around that time that you mentioned at the last event, I've engaged on a spiritual journey and I've saved— I'm saved. I am healed.

Now, don't get me wrong. This isn't a call to any particular religion or spiritual path. It's a call to serve something higher than yourself. Higher than your own ego. This is ultimately where all of the masculine archetypes are leading. If enough men embrace this call, not only will their lives— will your life— become so much better, but the world is going to become an even more beautiful place. Now, if that speaks to you, you might want to consider joining my first-ever in-person program on topics like the masculine archetypes and, quite frankly, much more that I've been working on in my own life. That program is likely going to be early next year in Los Angeles. So if you'd like more information on participating, you can drop your email using the link below, and I'll reach out with details when the time comes. Either way, I hope that you enjoyed this video, and I will see you in the next one.