Initiation: What Makes You A Man?

All right, man. Welcome to the Man Talks show. I am Connor Beaton. If you are new to the podcast, if you're new to this show, Man Talks is about helping you to become a better husband, a better father, a better leader, a better man in general, whether that's in your health, your fitness, your finances, whatever area and avenue of your life you are looking to better yourself in. That's what this show, that's what this community is all about. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about initiation, specifically male initiation and a few of the surrounding pieces of it, that there is an absence of male initiation, the importance of male initiation, why we need it, why it's relevant, and what can happen in your life if it's absent. Many of us have grown up as men, have grown up in an environment where we have been steeped in this sort of absence of the father, absence of a father figure. And now maybe this isn't you, right? Maybe you're like, well, I grew up, I had a father around, he was always there. I had a stepfather around, and he played an active role in my life. But you will likely have grown up with a number of men in your life who have had very different circumstances. And you've probably seen them struggle. You know, you've probably seen them look for validation from women. You've probably seen them flounder in their self esteem and their confidence and their capacity to know whether or not they have direction in their life. You know, if you are a man that grew up without a father, you've probably experienced yourself dealing with some of those pieces, right? Lacking clarity, lacking direction, lacking a sense of self worth sometimes and purpose. And this is where I think the bridge between the role of the father and the role of initiation culturally within our society is so absolutely paramount. You know, if you look at the role that the father plays within most young men's life, and there's a lot of research around this that you've probably heard, right? Things like, you know, fathers are important for risk, you know, risk taking for children. And they, you know, generally we as, as fathers give our kids a little bit more leeway. We're less prone to, to protecting or sort of swooping in. And that's a very important aspect to rearing a child, right? Risk is an incredibly important value. And being able to risk is an incredibly important value, especially for you as a man, if you are wanting to develop yourself physically, if you want to develop yourself mentally, if you want to build a career or a business, hell, if you want to have a Public facing profile in our world today, you have to risk failure. And so this capacity, this, this value, this skill of being able to risk of being able to put yourself out in the world, put your image out into the world, not only put your, your image out into the world, but, but risk the failure, the public failure, the public humiliation, the rejection, the feedback, the criticism and commentary. I mean, we live in a society today where criticism has become a main staple within our diet. And not only are you being criticized if you have an Instagram profile or a Facebook profile or YouTube or you're just on social media in general, even within the work environment, but specifically within mainstream. Right, within social media, anything that you post online is now subject to the opinions of other people. And how it was Pre, sort of 2007, 2008 was that you could be criticized, you could get feedback, but the people you were getting that feedback and that criticism from were generally people who you knew, people that you hopefully have chosen to be in your life, that you respected, your friends, your family, your colleagues, you know, people that you, people that you worked with, you know, people that, whose, whose opinions you respected and ideally people's opinions that you admired so that you could sort of soak that in and you could rearrange yourself hopefully for the better. You could use that feedback for the better. But what's happened today is that you are subjected day in and day out to the criticisms of absolutely everyone, complete random strangers that follow you on social media that find your posts and your content that you put out. And so you're subjected to a kind of unwelcomed, unasked for opinion onslaught and criticism onslaught. And it's no wonder that we're seeing teenagers, specifically teenage girls, but also teenage boys, struggling more with things like anxiety and depression and body image and you know, self esteem and self worth and all these other, all these other things that we need. So for us as men, having a strong father figure in our life who teaches us to take healthy risks, who teaches us to be more unapologetic, be more resolute and sound in who we are, and to put ourselves out into the world to put our work, to put our gifts, to put our thoughts, to put our values out into the world and know that they will likely be rejected, they'll be criticized, they'll, we'll get feedback, we'll be attacked, there'll be hostility that will come towards us. That role of the father is paramount for teaching us that it's okay to take that risk anyway, that you still have a place to belong within yourself as a sovereign man. You still have a place to belong within your family, within your friend group, right? Within the men that you surround yourself with. But we have decommissioned that role. And so you look at mainstream culture and you see the role of the father being diminished in modern day TV and in the news and there's lots of commentary. I mean, a lot of the characters that you probably watch are, are sort of dumb and helpless and you know, this sort of Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson style where they're just complete goofballs who are always screwing up and they're never getting anything right. And there's no real strong archetypes of what a father looks like. So how does this play into initiation? Well, male initiation, the father was really the first role, the first person that helps a boy initiate into what it means to be a man, right. In some ways, a father figure is to a young boy, the larger than life like mythology, this sort of like mythological fantastical creature, right? He's, he's large, he maybe he's loud, maybe he's silent and mysterious like, who knows? But for, for pretty much every single young boy, when they're really little, they look at their father with this kind of adoration and there is this mysterious air that begins to grow within the psyche of that young boy who's looking at his father and thinking, you know, am I going to become that big one day? Am I going to grow that large physically? Am I going to read the books that he reads? Am I going to be able to lift the weights that he weighs and that he lifts? And all of these questions start to emerge within that boy, initiating him into what a man looks like, what a man does, how a man acts, how a man behaves, how a man relates to women, how a man relates to the world, to his purpose, to money, to his body, to food, right? So a boy is initiated even into boyhood through the viewing of his father. And the role that his father plays is very important. So that's the first sort of initiation into boyhood, right? And I think we don't talk about that enough. I don't think that we talk about how there's sort of this pre initiation initiation that a boy, a young man is, is getting steeped and immersed into masculine culture based on the masculinity that his father represents, right? Based on how he, as a man treats his wife or treats the women around him, treats his own mother, treats his sisters, right? Treats, treats his daughters, right? So that young boy is going to start to see this is what a man looks like, feels like, sounds like, right? And there's this curiosity, and all these wonderful things come out of that. Initiation is sort of the next step, right? It's. If you look historically, if you take a sort of anthropological look at and a historical look at the role that initiation has played within our society, not just for men, but within society in general. What you'll see throughout human history is that it's never been assumed that becoming a man was something that simply happened. If you look at every single culture, it's never really been assumed that becoming a man is something that just happened when you reached a certain age, when you made a certain amount of money, when you have accumulated a certain material object. And yet within our culture, within our Western culture, there is this void that has taken place. There is no real initiation that most men go through. And so the byproduct of that is that most men assume that they have become men simply because they have come of age, simply because they are 21 or they're 30 or whatever. And the downfall of that is that if a man has lacked a father figure and then a man has lacked any kind of initiation into manhood, there will be this background noise, psychologically, emotionally, physically, this sort of percolating question that's always there, always vibrating in the background, asking that man, are you enough? Do you know that you're a man? Have you proven yourself? Have you proven your worth? Do you really contribute to society? Are you really able to provide what is necessary, what is meaningful? Not just money, not just food on the table, but are you really able to provide in a deep, meaningful context that leaves you feeling rewarded and fulfilled? And so this background noise, this background questioning, I have seen now, working with thousands of men from around the world, and it doesn't matter their age. They can be 60 and have their own kids that are in their 30s. They can be 40, they can be 20, they can be 16, they can be 35, 42. It doesn't matter. There are so many men, and I was one of these men who have lacked initiation. I, you know, I. And all the men that I've worked with and all the men that I've seen have had this questioning going on within us of, am I really a man? Did this happen by chance? You know, did I just be sort of become a man? There was no threshold that I crossed. And when you look at things like the hero's journey, when you look at mythology, what those lessons are really teaching you, at least my interpretation of them, you can Disagree. But what I think that those mythologies are really teaching us, whether it's a biblical story, whether it's a mythological story like the Iliad, other mythological stories like Iron John, you know, the Brothers Grimm, the sort of famous book that Robert Bly wrote. All of these mythologies, all these tales, all of these stories are bringing you through the journey, the arc of a boy being initiated into man. And what's interesting is that historically, all cultures have really taken great care and great diligence and a quality of vigilance within the culture to ensure that. That a boy is ushered into manhood, to ensure that a boy doesn't just nonchalantly waltz into adulthood. And there's a number of reasons for this that I'm going to talk about, and I'm going to talk about initiation and what missing initiation can look like and what. What integrated initiation might look like. So there's very specific reasons for this, right? Mostly because we know that within our modern culture we can feel this absence. There's a really wonderful Franciscan monk named Richard Rohr R o H R who has written a number of spiritual books, religious books, but he does a tremendous amount of work with men. And the work that he does dives deep into male initiation. Not all of it, but some of it. And he's got a great quote where he says, unless a male is brought on a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power. Unless a male is brought on a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power. And in my work, in my sort of dealings with men, right, in supporting men and being a man in my own journey, that is absolutely true. When we as men haven't been taught, haven't experienced real powerlessness, where we succumb to. To the unknown, we are submitted by life, by a challenge, by something so much larger than ourselves. We can. And our ego can, our sort of masculine ego can get caught in this notion, in this false belief that it can overpower, outsmart out, rationalize, overcome anything. And it creates a kind of. I mean, I hesitate to use the word narcissism because I think that that word is wildly overused, especially when it comes to men. But I think that it creates a kind of blindness and deep inferiority that manifests within our shadow. Right. Carl Jung, for those of you who have followed me for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the shadow quite a bit. But the shadow is just the unknown part of our psyche, right? It's. It's our unconscious mind. And for men, our unconscious mind is the Feminine. Right. Jung called it the anima. And so all of these inferiorities move into our unconscious mind, and we operate blind from them. We operate as if that inferiority doesn't exist, as if we are a kind of supreme power and we lack humility. And there's this naivete. There's this sort of adolescence naiveness that just. That just you can feel when you're around a man who hasn't been put in a situation where he's been completely powerless, you know, where he's been kind of choked out by life, or he's gone through an initiatory experience where he has been radically and ultimately humbled by some form of larger power. You know, whether that power is through the initiate, like some initiation practices. Use pain, you know, as an example. There's. There's a tribe in Africa where you, as a young man, put your hand into a glove with these bullet ants, and they. They sting you for about five minutes. And the sting is said to be so painful that it radiates through your body. And it can feel like your body is on fire. It can feel like it debilitates you. It can leave you just sort of, you know, curled up on the ground, shriveling and crying. And that might seem barbaric in some way, shape or form to some people listening to this, to some people, you know, that. That maybe aren't interested in male initiation, aren't interested in masculinity, think that maybe masculinity is. Is toxic or harmful or whatever else. And so we've adopted this notion that we should tame masculinity, that we should not only tame masculinity, but that we should make it a cultural prerogative to domesticate men. And I would say that that is one of the most dangerous aspects of what's facing our culture and our society today is that when men have become domesticated, when men are not initiated, when men have not gone through an experience where they are powerless, where they are helpless. I think this is why so many men go and try out something like the Navy seals or why something like Tough Mudder has become so popular. It's because there is something innate within our masculine makeup, within our physiological bodies, that wants to test itself against the largeness of the world, against the largest of culture, society, that wants to test itself against nature sometimes as well. And. And be reminded that we are small. You know, we. We are small. We might develop ourselves into having these wonderful bodies with muscles and. And minds. And. And we might be very gifted practitioners in. In certain Fields like architecture or engineering, or we might be incredible professors or, or great literary artists or whatever it is, and we might have a greatness within us, but in the grand scheme of things, there, there's still this humbleness that we have to be reminded of. And so initiation plays that role. And so I think it's a dangerous thing for us to not have these initiation practices, to invite men, to invite young men, to invite middle aged men, to invite older men who feel this stirring within their bodies, within their minds, within their souls, into an initiation practice. You know, this is why when we hold men's weekends through Man Talks, or you know, we have the, the Man Talks alliance, which is this online group where we have literally men from all over the world, there are initiation components built into all of it. You know, the weekends that we hold are built around initiation. Having a man confront something that's so much bigger than him, that he. That that maybe has weighed him down for his life. Because the reality is that when we miss initiation, from what I've seen, a few things happen. Number one, when we miss initiation, a man will become one. He will become crippled by the power around him, by the largeness of the world. He'll feel like society, culture, women.

The government, right? All of these external things are so big that I'm crushed down by them and I'm powerless entirely, right? So he'll become a victim, he'll become a martyr. And he won't be able to stand for himself for his life, for his relationship, for his woman, for his work, for whatever it is that he wants to take a stand for. So he will become small and compressed by this sort of chaos and the largeness of life and existence. The other thing that will happen, as I was sort of alluding to before, is that he will become sort of maniacal. He will be delusional and he'll live in this kind of fantasy world that he is unstoppable, right? That he can not be humbled by life, that there's nothing that can take him down. And these are generally the men that lie, that cheat, that steal, that, you know, act in sort of all of these immoral ways and then rationalize their behavior because they have built such a wonderful rational capacity. You know, we as men in our western, not even a western culture, our modern within modernity, we have over indexed rationality, especially as men. I mean, we have over indexed it to this unrealistic degree. And we expect our rationality to do unthinkable tasks. You know, and that's why so Many men struggle with what I call mental masturbation, right? This continual ruminating thinking where we are constantly living in our thoughts. It's not even that we're living in our head. We are trapped in our rational thoughts and nothing outside of that exists. And so it creates a very one dimensional version of us as men. And that's why, you know, your, your wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whoever might say, I, I don't feel you, it seems like you're always distracted. I don't have your presence. So a lot of that will be very common. So the other part of missing initiation is that, as I just said, I just want to recap that one, that we as men turn into these sort of blind men that live within this sort of illusory world. The last piece that I've noticed is that regardless of the prior two, we can try and create this kind of pretend initiation. And I'm going to explain this one because I think it's very important because I did it, I see a lot of men do it. So we'll create a circumstance in our life where we can see that we're heading towards a rock bottom where we know that we are sabotaging ourselves in such a dramatic fashion. And we don't know why, we don't know why we're cheating, we don't know why we're destroying our marriage, we don't know why we're destroying our finances. We don't know why we're collapsing our business. But we seem helpless in the face of it. Notice the connection, right? We feel helpless in the face of it. There is a part of us when we are manufacturing that initiation where we, creating this rock bottom is bottoming out in our life. This implosion of our life as men. We are, we are unconsciously doing that because this part of us that has been lost is still there, lost from us. Consciously, but not unconsciously. This part of us is yearning, is desiring. An initiation to know that we can confront hardship, to. To know that we can battle against obstacles. To know that we can press ourselves out into the world and let our presence be known. To know that we can face something so much bigger than us. And even though we might be powerless to win or be victorious, we long for these hardships. To know that we can give absolutely everything within us, everything physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically. That we can give everything and still be made helpless, still be rendered powerless in the face of something larger than us. And so real initiation. I'm going to talk more about this in A separate video. But real initiation, the thing that all men are craving, is meant to bring us a kind of integration. And integration comes from the Greek word integration, which literally means to make whole, to bring back into completeness. And so real initiation is about having ourselves be made whole again, to be right with the largeness of the world, of the universe around us, whether that's our relationship to God, to nature, to whatever it is outside of us, to culture, to society, to our family system, to our. The family that we've built, our relationship, but to make us whole and right with our internal and external structures. And when we do that, real initiation is about you as a man being as whole as you can. Obviously, that's a sort of, you know, a logical fallacy. Wholeness is a sort of logical fallacy and a utopian illusion. But we still aim in that direction. And so we return to this notion that when we are more integrated, there's a sort of utilitarianism to it. There's a utility to you being a more effective man, to you being a more whole, more complete individual that is capable of then going back into your relationship, into your work environment, into your culture, into your society, into the world around you, into and contributing in a much more effective manner. And so that's something that we have known for a long time, that we have forgotten. We have forgotten the wisdom of initiating men into manhood. And we have started to take for granted that boys just become men, that something magical just transpires and they just become men. And then they should be good men who are able to. Who are able to advocate for women, who are able to have a right relationship with women, who are able to be good fathers, be good husbands, be good leaders, who are able to set right the wrongs in the world, who are able to be moral within our society. And it's a fallacy. It's false, it's an illusion. And so we need to, in some ways, bring back and reinstill these practices of initiation for men. So I would love to hear what you think about everything that I've said today. What do you want to know more about? What would you like to learn more about? What do you want me to speak more about? What questions do you have and what thoughts would you add? What did you disagree with? What do you agree with? So if you're watching this on YouTube, comment below. And if you are listening to this on the podcast, fire me off a message on Instagram. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.