The Lover Archetype - King, Warrior, Lover, Magician

Welcome guys and gals to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and on this midweek mini episode we are going to continue on with the archetypes from King Warrior, Lover, Magician. And this week I'm going to be diving into the lover. So just like every other archetype, I'll be sharing the shadow side of the lover, how it comes into being, how it can affect a man in his life, and also the sacred side or the healthy integrated side of the lover, and how we can transition from one to the other. If you haven't already, last week I dove into the magician, which is an incredibly important archetype in our society and one that is oftentimes least understood out of the four archetypes. So definitely, if you are interested, go check that out. And if you know of any guys that could benefit from this, definitely man it forward and share this podcast episode with them as this is an incredible book, but also it can be very informative for men and women who are on the journey of self discovery. Before I dive straight into this, just a quick reminder for all the guys to head on over to Facebook and join the Mantox community. It's a free resource where we talk about subjects like this and we dig into modern fatherhood, we talk about sex and intimacy, pornography, overcoming pornography, and we've got some great, great men in there from around the world. So definitely check that out for a free resource and some free conversation. Uh, if you're looking to do a little bit more of some deep work with me personally and a group of like minded men, then you should definitely check out the Men's weekend which is coming out May 17th to 20th. It's almost full, we've only got two or three spots left, so if you're interested, definitely check that out and apply. If you can't make this one, we will have future ones coming up, so make sure that you apply and stay tuned on that as we're gonna have some on the east coast and maybe even central. No coast at all. All right, so let's do dive straight into the lover. And the lover is a role that I see a lot of men unintentionally or unconsciously identifying with. And a lot of these men, as we have seen the feminine movement rise, men have been called to integrate their feminine and become more sort of holistic, more integrated in many ways. But, but as a result of that, a lot of men have left some integral pieces behind that would allow them to be a whole fulfilled archetype of the lover and Many men that identify as a lover are quite dysfunctional. And we can see this quite a bit in young men over the last 20 or 30 years who really, I sort of embody these, these more feminine traits. But oftentimes if it's not integrated properly, then it's very unhealthy and it can show up in a multitude of ways, which I'm going to get into. So let's dive straight in. So the book King, Warrior, Lover Magician was written by Robert Moore and Gillette Douglas Gillette. And they observed the struggle with the masculine identity as a universal crisis in our present day society. So what they really say in the book is that modern masculinity seems to be a problem that a lot of people are trying to figure out. And probably one of the most iconic pieces, one of the most iconic pieces of work that has been done on this is Fight Club. And in the movie Fight Club, the narrator or Edward Norton's character, the main character, we never actually hear his name really embodies the dysfunctional shadow lover. He is sort of forgotten about by society. He's a very sort of kind, sweet guy. He is completely conflict avoidant. He doesn't seem to have much warrior energy in him or magician energy. He is very much timid and shy and lonely and isolated, but seems to desperately want connection. And he ends up meeting Tyler Durden. And I'm not going to get too much into the movie itself, if you want, definitely go check out Fight Club because it is an iconic movie and the whole thing is all about modern masculinity. The entire entire concept is predicated on modern masculinity. But there's a scene where they have started Fight Club and Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt's character, has a great speech and he says, we are the middle children of history. We have no purpose, we have no great war and no Great Depression. And our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. And in this movie they really looked at, at the men's sort of stereotypical behavior. And even in the book, in King, Warrior, Lover, Magician, specifically in the Lover, they looked at this one archetype and noticed a lot of these shadow archetypes that we talk about between the King, Warrior, Lover, Magician are boys who have become men and haven't initiated into manhood. They've never actually had any guidance or initiation into manhood. And boys who've become this way because nobody has really shown them or initiated into manhood and nobody's really shown them what mature man looks like. So one of the questions that the book sets out to try and identify it is what is a mature man? And what does a mature man look like? And that's why they go through the King, the Warrior, the lover, and the magician. So let's look at the lover archetype specifically, because there are a few important pieces that we actually need to know about the lover archetype. So the lover archetype is going to have a few different poles. And like any archetype through this series, at the top. So there's always a triangle, right? So just imagine, just picture a triangle. And at the top of the triangle, the archetype is lived in its full, fullest potential, right? So this is sort of the aim that we all have to aim towards in this archetype. And at the bottom of the archetype, it's experienced as sort of a bipolar dysfunction. So there's two different parts at the bottom, and that's the dysfunctional form with the active and a passive pull. So each archetype will have an active and a passive pole for its dysfunction. This is also, again, this is referred to as the shadow form of the archetype. So when you hear me referring to the shadow form, you will know what that is. So two key points. One, all four archetypes, as I mentioned before, are present in each person. And two, no one is perfect. No one is perfect. Everyone is, to some degree experiencing the shadow forms of the four archetypes and really understanding that there's importance in this because it provides insight into dysfunctional behavior to help rectify it to some degree. So this isn't to say that we should always all be living it at the fullest potential of each archetype. It's to understand that.

We experience dysfunction and whatnot throughout our days. And we have to cultivate awareness to understand where that dysfunction shows up and how it actually shows up. So let's focus on some of the archetypal energies of the lover, specifically, because the lover, again, as I've said, is really a prominent figure. So Moore and Gillette define the lover by sort of whatever name, whatever name they give it as the primal energy pattern of what we could call vividness. I think they refer to vividness in aliveness and passion in the actual book. So vividness, aliveness and passion are deeply important to the lover. The lover in his fullness is often deeply sensual. When the lover is connected to his true nature, he's deeply sensual and sensually aware and sensitive to the physical world, his internal world in all of its glory. So he really is in awe and wonder of everything that he sees around him. And he feels. He feels sort of compassionate and empathetically united with everything that he sees. He not only sees the world in a grain of sand, in a leaf, in the seagull flying by, but he also feels it. He also feels that connectivity between his internal world and his external existence and everything that's around him. So he's deeply connected to all of those things. And you've probably felt this in some form in your life where you. You've been to just the most beautiful, beautiful place. You know, I remember going to Hawaii for the very first time, and there was. I can't remember what the name of the trail was, but I climbed this amazing, beautiful trail. And I remember getting to this one point and I'm like 1,000 or 2,000ft up, maybe not that high, but, yeah, maybe that high. Let's say 1500ft up on the side of this cliff. And the trail is only like 4ft wide, and then it's basically straight down. But. But all you can see when I looked back over my right shoulder was the coastline of Hawaii and this beautiful, beautiful view of the ocean. And there's trees everywhere, and it's so green and lush. And I remember standing there vividly, not only thinking to myself, what a beautiful view, but realizing that I am an integral part of that ecosystem, that I was deeply connected to it. And it wasn't just a thought. It was an actual feeling in the totality of my existence where I was standing there and could literally feel connected to all of that. So that's part of the role of the lover. The lover wants to touch and be touched physically and emotionally. The lover really wants to be able to experience the sort of vividness and aliveness of life. He recognizes really no boundaries because he's connected to the infinite and wants to experience the world in its totality. Now obvious, obviously, for a man who's in the shadow lover, which we can get to in a second, that can feel disconnected. So the height of the archetypal lover really feels joy, the joy of life, and really is connected to a sense of being connected to both internally in himself and others, but also the sort of playfulness that comes along with being alive, the vibrancy that comes along with being alive and being connected to the people, people that you love most in your life. And all of us, when we actually just sort of pause in our lives and we let go of the social media and we let go of the mask that we Wear around most people when we as men let go of the need to perform, and I really use that word to perform for people in our lives. Like the jester, the joker, what we need to perform for people when we let go of that. And we just allow ourselves to be fully present and we allow ourselves to fully come forward in there in its sort of simplest, easy way. Almost as if you sigh and you sigh into who you are and you just allow yourself to be there with other people, people that you love, friends, family and your lovers, the partners that you enjoy. That's when you're accessing the true nature of the lover. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it's really something that we can experience within ourselves. And it's really something that we can experience with the people in our lives. And so the lover in his fullness, the lover in his fullness not only feels alive with the sort of vim and vigor that you can expect, but he's a man who has, who has really developed empathy, who has really developed a sense of connection and connectivity not just to people, not just to performance, not just to being able to achieve things, but also to the energy of everything that he comes into contact with. And a modern story that really exemplifies the lover archetype is Zorba, the Greek. Zorba is a man who lives fully to his fullest. He's very earthy, he's connected to nature. He loves great food and drink. He dances, he really just dances in a very freeing way. Dances really with his heart full. And Zorba understands that for a man to be fully free, he needs to have a deep emotional life. And he needs a little bit of madness, you know, he needs a little bit of, of letting go in a chaotic sense. And we can see this in this counterbalance, the importance of the lover in the training of the Spartan warriors. So the Spartan warriors used to train and the Spartans used to be seen as the most. And even today are sort of seen as some of the most formidable tacticians or hand to hand combat. I don't know what the word is that I'm looking for. Not veteran, but they were really the most feared warriors on the face of the planet for a long time. There we go. And they were so feared because they not only worked together but because they had this camaraderie between each other. They deeply loved one another and they loved one another's families and they were so connected. And the interesting thing is that part of the Spartans training regimen was not only fighting Hand to hand and using to fight with their shields connected and using their spears and their swords. But a lot of their time was actually spent working on being poets and being exceptional dancers and being great musicians. And so the Spartans realized that in order to be a fully sort of full blooded man, they not only needed to know how to fight and how to kill and how to work together in combat, but how to love deeply and how to be connected to everything around them. So let's look at the shadow. What happens that causes the shadow? Well, there's really two pieces. So in the immature masculine, in a very young man, how the lover will show up is in the mama's boy and the dreamer. And that's really in the sort of oedipal child. And the edible child is what Freud talked about. And Freud talked a lot about how men who haven't disconnected from their mothers, and when I say disconnected, I don't mean that they have completely rejected their mothers. But men that have gone away from trying to seek approval and attention and validation from their mother or the mother archetype in the world are seen as the oedipal child because they're always trying to gain attention and validation from the mother. And so in that way, the sort of immature positive pole of the immature masculine of the lover is the mama's boy and the passive pole is the dreamer. And oftentimes.

The dreamer can really get caught. And we can see this in a lot of men who struggle to take any sort of action. Maybe they love life, they love women and getting connected. But for whatever reason they, they struggle to do any sort of action because they are constantly dreaming. They're stuck in this dream state. And then there's other men, like the no more Mr. Nice Guys that are out there. They fall into the mama's boy and also.

The other two poles of the more mature masculine lover, when a man gets older, can be the addicted lover and the impotent lover. And so this is when we, this is when we get a little bit older and maybe we've had more experience. But the impotent lover is really the man who is the passive form of the shadow lover and the impotent lover. Shadow arises when a man is out of touch with the lover archetype in his fullness. And so he rejects love. He rejects intimacy and sensuality and aliveness and vibrancy. He rejects all of those things. And while the lover in his fullness sees the world in beautiful colors and textures and something to be experienced, the impotent lover really Only sees a dark, dim gray that seems to be pervasive everywhere. And the impotent lover can show up in a lot of ways. We can often be depressed and flat and can experience a void inside. Now, on the other side of the impotent lover is the addicted lover. And we see a lot of this. I see a lot of this today. A lot of the men that I work with really oftentimes fall into these two poles. I see a lot of men fall in these two poles. Guys that feel like the impotent lover not because they are impotent sexually, although sometimes that happens, but mostly because they are impotent in the way that they feel disconnected from the vibrancy and the aliveness of life. And they feel disconnected from their wife and their kids and they feel disconnected from a sense of source and aliveness with, in them. But the addicted lover, the addicted lover is very interesting. He's a man possessed by needing to love. And as Robert Moore puts it, he says he's externally restless. He's forever searching for that thing or that person or that experience or that one way ticket to Thailand that will make him feel truly alive. And if he can just get that hit, he can reconnect to a sense of, of that aliveness and that vibrancy of the lover archetype.

But whether it's because he has sort of an overinflated sense of expectation or because he doesn't even know what he's looking for in the first place, the hunger and the sort of drive for wanting to experience those things really takes him over and consumes him. And this, this. The addicted lover really falls into lust. He thinks he falls into love, but he really falls into lust. And he sort of has this insatiable craving for women and connection or men. If he's not heterosexual, he'll have this craving that's insatiable and he'll sort of find himself lost in his purpose in his life. Because in many ways he'll sacrifice whatever he can in order to get that lover, in order to get that partner and that sense of connection and aliveness. So how do we access the lover? How do we shift? If we've identified that we have these shadow parts within us and we've identified that the shadow parts really show up for us.

How do we start to connect? Well, first we have to know how the lover archetype has been prosecuted within our culture. You know, depending on where you grew up. Like I grew up in Central Alberta and I remember the lover archetype really being Diminished and persecuted and hated on by mainstream masculinity, right? So there was this expectation that as a man I had to perform and I had to be an incredible athlete and I had to make a lot of money. And being a lover, being a. The experiencing this aliveness and this playfulness and this vibrancy of life was really looked down on, right? Because that was oftentimes associated with more of the feminine. So those parts are often suppressed. And so we need to know that in order to access the lover in its fullness, we need to understand how that part, how that archetype within us has been suppressed, has been persecuted, has been put down, whether by friends in our life or the social circles that we've run in, or the society, the culture, the religion, the parents, you know, the family members that have. That have really hurt those parts. Because this depreciation of the lover, which we can see in today's culture really starts in boyhood. And it starts when we're young boys trying to become men. And oftentimes we feel that vibrancy and that aliveness and it can be destroyed, it can be killed in our childhood. And the lover archetype in manhood arises from that Oedipal child in boyhood, as I mentioned before, and that oedipal child. The other part of us that we need to be able to sort out is, as Robert Bly says in Iron John, is that we need to be able to have the courage to go and steal the Golden Key from underneath our mother's pillow. And the golden Key is a representation of taking our choice into our hands in some ways and not looking for permission from the feminine to live the lives that we ultimately want to live, to stop looking for supreme validation and supreme worth and basically life from the feminine and actually be able to take that into. Into our own hands. And to be able to see our mothers, see the mothers of the world as someone that is the Great Mother and.

The sort of connection to infinite love and infinite nurturing and to respect that and to know that that's within us so that we don't need to seek it outside of us. We don't need to seek the validation of love and nurturing for. From outside of us constantly. Because we can experience that within the lover, within ourselves. And when we start to sort of separate ourselves from our mothers in that way and be able to take a stand in some ways to move our lives in a direction not away from them, but towards ourselves, towards what our gifts are.

That'S when we can really Start to claim this part, because otherwise we can stay in this shadow type of the lover for a long time. Maybe we had a dysfunctional relationship with our mother. Maybe she was controlling. Maybe she didn't nurture us the way that we wanted her to. Maybe she was disconnected and cold, and she didn't give us love. We didn't receive the love that we should have from a mother. Maybe we were depraved from it. Or maybe our mother was controlling and vindictive. Or maybe she spoke poorly about our father and tried to sort of, you know, A lot of divorced children, a lot of the men that I work with that have divorced parents Will often talk about how their mother tried to turn them against their father. And this can feel depending. This can put the boy into a very conflicting situation where he's not too sure what to do. He's not too sure if he should side with his mother or, you know, and go against his father, which can create in him this identification with the feminine, with the lover in a shadow way, because he's. He's trying to appease her as a young man. And he can feel like he has to reject the masculine. He has to reject things that are masculine because they are seen as bad or wrong. And so we can be depraved of the things that we actually need the most when it comes to this type of healing. So how do we access. Now that we've gone through all these different types, how do we start to access the lover more and more? Well, the first thing that we need to know is that it's vital to our success. It truly is vital to our success. And one of the easiest ways to tap into the lover archetype is to really slow down and to take as much time as you can, more time than you think possible, to really enjoy the stuff that brings you joy, that brings you aliveness and pleasure in your life. You know, if that's being outdoors and you go hiking, you can enjoy that to its fullest. You know, go out and yell and, you know, dance around and hug a tree and, like, you know, pick up. Like, I remember on my bachelor party, the. The 15 guys, we went for a big hike, and we would stop along the way, and some of the guys were, you know, picking up moss and. And smelling it, because it just smelled so incredible. And we were in this lush forest, and it was just such an incredible moment because here's 15 guys walking through this forest that looks like it's something out of avatar. It's just this beautiful greenery. And nobody had their phones out. And everyone was being so present and just enjoying life to its fullest. And it's that kind of enjoyment, that type of pleasure that we can be fully present to, because a lover is always looking for the sort of high that will last indefinitely. And when he takes the first sort of quote, unquote, hit something new, the new drug, the new lover, the new place, the new experience, it lights up his brain with dopamine and pleasure, but they quickly reset. And so we need to be able to find a way to come back to experiencing joy as much as humanly possible. So if you enjoy things like having coffee first thing in the morning, but what you normally do is sit down and have a coffee in your. On your phone, checking your emails, checking Instagram, et cetera, et cetera, shift that routine. If you find joy and pleasure in that, maximize that pleasure, maximize that pleasure. So create a ritual and a routine where every day you get to connect to this part of you. You get to come back to this part of you where you can fully enjoy certain moments, even if it's just for two or five minutes, where you can be so fully present, present to the enjoyment of something that you can smell the coffee, you can take it in, you can, you know, drink it in fully and taste the nuances of the coffee. And you can just have this beautiful moment with drinking coffee. And this is a very Zen way of being right? This is a very Zen way of existing. And it's in those moments, it's in that sort of Zen practice where we bring ourselves back to the heightened moments that a man can connect with the lover. So that's what I have for you today. I mean, there's so much more that I could share about this archetype, but really, if you're wanting to cultivate more of this archetype, it is slowing down and being able to take in those experiences. So next week, I'm going to go into the warrior again. Please share this with somebody. If you're wanting to do work on any of these archetypes, I definitely strongly recommend joining the community, joining the Man Talks alliance, which is an online group. We go into these archetypes and work on them weekly or come out and join me for a men's weekend, because we will have more coming up. So until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.