Are You Caught In Codependent Masculinity?

So I recently got a question online through Instagram from an individual, and I've got this question a few times before. So I wanted to address this.

Sean asked, how do I reclaim my masculine essence? How do I reclaim my own masculinity? And I've been wanting to address this for a while. I spoke about it recently on a podcast with a friend of mine, Mike Campbell, called Everyday Legends. And I talked about the fact that we, as men, many of us, have put our masculinity into codependent relationships with something. And the reality is that many men have put their masculinity into a codependent relationship with patriotism, with. With religion, with women or a political ideology. And this is one of the biggest challenges that we see in our culture today. The reality is that. That we as men have outsourced our value. We have outsourced our masculine value and essence and power and validation to political views, to feminine and female approval, to patriotic ideologies, and to religious frameworks. Without question, many of us have been told and indoctrinated from childhood, from birth that this is what real men do. This is what a free man looks like, is that he should give his life for his country or to his patriotic values or to his religion. And we don't question these things at all. And so we sort of enter into our masculinity, or maybe we grow up around the sort of feminine ideology that says that you are a good man if you're a good boy, if you act in a certain way and get women's attention and validation, and that. That becomes the. The idea of where you as a man, where your masculine approval, where your masculine value is predicated. So many of us, and this for some people is lighter than others, right? For some people, they don't have these kind of attachments, but for many of us, this is where our masculine essence and value comes from. We've created an external mechanism where we have put our masculine power and effort and attention and focus into the hands of other people, other organizations, other frameworks, and sometimes the things that we've never questioned, right, because we've grown up in these political ideologies, we've grown up in these religious ideologies, we've grown up in. In these sort of feminine ideologies. And so we've never actually stopped to try and claim a sense of what is my masculine essence, what does my own masculinity look like without the need for validation, for approval, for a pat on the back from all of these external circumstances. And this is A slippery slope because it causes us to constantly be looking outside of ourselves for the answers, for value, for worth as a man. And it's a sort of an adolescent and juvenile kind of masculinity that needs and seeks the constant approval of others. And so the masculine within us is going to crave freedom, it's going to want to be free. And so the easiest thing for it to do is to find external things that it can attach itself to, that purport and report and supposedly stand for these freedoms. And this is one of the challenges that we see in our culture right now, is that many of us have outsourced our own individual value to these political ideologies, to these frameworks, to these beliefs. And we never actually stopped and questioned. Is this where I really want to give my masculine essence, my masculine source? Right now? For example, many men's self worth in North America is heavily political and patriotic. And the system is designed to rope us into that way of being, into that conversation, into that conflict. The system that we grow up in tells us that you are not as much of a man if you aren't contributing to the political rhetoric or narrative, if you're not embedded in some heavy political conversation, or that you are less of a man, if you are not patriotic. I mean, this is just an idiotic standpoint to me. The fact that we believe anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world that your masculinity is predicated on your level of patriotism. I mean, that is asinine. It's asinine. It just doesn't make any sense. Your masculinity is not predicated on patriotism. What did your masculinity do thousands of years ago when there were no countries, right? Where did your masculinity reside then? It resided in your ability to tend to yourself, to your family, to your community. And so we as men, at some point in our life, need to pull in the nets. At some point in every man's life, he needs to cut ties between where he gets validation and his masculinity. The sources of approval for his masculinity need to be cut off at some point in his life. And he needs to pull in the nets to just garner a sense of self validation and self worth and self approval and the capacity to question what he as an individual, as a sovereign being really stands for outside of the frameworks of all of these organizations and frameworks and structures. And, and it's a very challenging thing because for many of us, we, especially in Western culture, have been told that we should be the hero. And in order to be the hero, you need to give your life, your source, your masculine essence, your masculine power to some form of an external cause. And so we have been indoctrinated in this ideology that the most masculine essence thing that we can do is to go and join the military or to go protect a country. And we don't question that. Now, I'm not putting those things down. I'm not saying that there isn't an incredibly honorable nature into serving in the military or as a politician or as a government official or in a religious body or any of these things. Right? It's not that these things can't be honorable and respectful and provide for the world and protect our communities, but it's that if we have never questioned the things that we are giving our masculine power and time and life force to, we're not free men. We're just simply not free men. And we have allowed ourselves to put our masculinity into a codependent relationship with these external structures that says you are only as masculine as you contribute to these external structures, to this political party, to this religious ideology, to. To this woman or women's validation. And so we push all of that outside of ourselves and then wonder why we are caught in this sort of constant battle of wanting to be free. So if you want to reclaim your masculine essence, if you want to reclaim your own masculine power, take a really strong and transparent and fucking honest look at what your masculinity is tied to. Where do you as a man get validation? Where does your masculinity get validation? Is a tremendous amount of it coming from a political party that you support or a political narrative? Is a tremendous amount of it coming from a religious narrative that you support? Again, it's not saying that these things are bad or evil or wrong or things that you shouldn't believe in, but to pull in the nets for a time being to see how that's shaping your own masculine core, how that's shaping your own masculine essence. And if you ever actually really chose it, this is the really crucial part. For many of us, we haven't chosen these things, right? We were born into it. You were born into the country that you were in. You were born into the religion that your family taught you. You were born into the ideology that you should seek women's validations at all costs, because apparently in some ways, it's more relevant and important than your own. So we need to question these aspects and we need to pull in the nets for our own self worth. We need to reconnect to the masculine essence within us. The part that wants to provide, the part that desires to protect, the part that craves freedom, the part that really wants to press itself out into the world and to be of service to a larger cause than itself, to be of service as a sovereign being to the collective in a way that contributes to the betterment, to the progress, to the building, to the construction of things and narratives and structures and organizations and new technologies and community support that allow us to be generative, to survive as a culture, to protect the, the life force of existence. This is what the masculine essence is really craving and hungry for. But we get misconstrued, we get lost in that. When our masculinity has in some ways been adopted by these structures and we've never really chosen to give it freely. We've told that we've been, we've been told that we've had to, that you have to, and that there's something wrong with you if you don't. And I heard this the other day, a friend of mine, Dallas Hartwig, we were having a conversation and he said, being moderate is the new radicalism. You heard this somewhere. I don't actually know who said it first, but he said being moderate is the new radicalism. And so there's this idea in this sort of chaotic crisis oriented time where, where everyone's looking for heroes to step up and everyone's looking for men to sort of do the right thing. A lot of individuals find themselves on polar opposite and opposing sides because that's what this sort of masculine core within us wants to do. It wants to find a sense of truth, it wants to find a sense of justice, it wants to find a sense of purpose and function in the world. And so that leads to sometimes very sort of black and white oriented thinking and juxtaposed thinking. And so we need to return to this place for a period of time in our life consciously where we as men become moderate, where we as men pull in the nets of validation and external approval from the companies that we work with and the people that we're surrounded by, our friends, our family, our political organizations, our religious leaders. We pull the nets in internally and we start to develop a sense of leadership and validation and worth within ourselves. Whether that's you connecting to source within, whether that's you connecting to your own worth, your own masculine essence, however you want to frame that. But that is our mission. That is one of the single greatest challenge I believe that we're facing right now is that most of us as men have allowed our masculinity to become in codependent relationships, become enmeshed with these external structures, and that our value and worth as a man has now somehow become intrinsically connected to the fate and the outcomes of these external structures, of these religious bodies, of these political bodies, of these political leaders. And so it's a very dangerous time. And so we all sort of need to take a collective step back and start to question why is it that I have placed my value, my worth as a man on these external structures, as a human being on these external structures, and to question whether or not that is really in our individual greatest interest, in our community's greatest interest, in the interest of our collective, as a human species. Because we're facing some very big questions right now that we all should be asking. And we should be asking those things not in the siloed bubbles of other people who have co opted and put their own essence and their own power and their own source into the same ring. Right? I mean, the conversation that I have with one of my men's groups, it's like there's many different opinions. Republican, Democrat, religious, atheist. I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a melting pot of differential opinions. Then it seems like we have lost that capacity because in some way shape or form, the tribal nature of our masculine, the tribal nature of the masculine within us wants to sort of move into a space where it has a very primal function. It's of service. But for many of us, we have never really had a say in that. And we've just kind of allowed that part of us to be given to us, to be indoctrinated into us, to be assigned to us. Right? You were born in America, you were born in Canada, you were born in Germany. You are a patriot to the, to those countries. Why? Why, why are you a patriot? Why is your masculinity connected to the patriotism of this country? It's not how it works. America is only as free as its individual and sovereign, but beings. And for many of us, we needed to a reality check that we are woefully, woefully unsovereign. We are not free. We are not acting as free beings. We hear people on the news and on and on a radio show tell us that something's happening and we don't even look into it. And then we can script our masculine essence and power and voice to that rhetoric, to that ideology, and we go out and we fight somebody else's war without taking a step back and really asking, is that the best for all? Is that really the battle that I'm going to go fight? Is that, you know, have I placed my own worth on that narrative? Have I put place my own value on that narrative? It's like, that's a very scary time, that's a very scary way for us to live when our masculine essence and force and value is intrinsically tied, enmeshed and codependent with these external structures and narratives. And so we need to pull in the nets, my brothers. Like, I hope that, I hope that you hear this and you just take a moment today and tomorrow to question, where is your masculinity codependent? Where is it enmeshed? What is it a meshed with? What is it connected to that you never really asked for, that you never had a choice in? If you're listening to this on the podcast and let me know what you think about this episode and share this episode, if you found value in it with a few men in your life, get their thoughts, see what they think, maybe they disagree. That's okay, have some discourse, right? When did we enter into a time suddenly where we have discounted the inherent beauty of disconnect, the inherent divinity of differentiation? We have lost the ability to see divinity and beauty within differentiation. And that is a slippery slope. I think it's dangerous. And I think that we as men have a responsibility to take a step back and start to look at and look for the inherent beauty and strength within differences of opinions, to be able to hear one another again and have active, powerful, meaningful discourse rather than just saying, this is what it is, and if you don't believe that, then you're a fucking moron. That's. That's not going to go anywhere. It's not going to get us anywhere. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for listening and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this video soon.