This ONE THING Blocks You From Your Potential And Growth

There's one block that you are likely facing, that most men face, that prevents you from stepping into your power, your potency, your authentic sense of self, your potential, your ability in life. And it's an obstacle that I see so many men bump up against, and it's also a principle in Hermeticism It's a principle in alchemy. And it is, in my opinion, the key to building masculine power. And the frame is, the very simple rule is, "As below, so above." The further down you go, the further you can ascend up. Now, where most men get stuck is they only want to go up. And this is a kind of cancer of our modern culture and society. Everybody wants the stock market to go up. Everybody wants to earn more money. Nobody wants to have any type of setbacks or any type of downfall or decay or falling apart. And in ancient wisdom, and specifically in ancient alchemy and Hermeticism, there was a concept called the Nigredo. And there's different stages of existence. And again, these are more metaphorical, stages, but they're, they're real stages that you and I and every other man on the face of the planet have gone through. And the stages are the Negredo, the Rubedo, and the Albedo. And there's also a Citrine stage, but I'm not going to talk about that one for right now. And so the stages are: the Rubedo is kind of like this unfolding, the Albedo is the ascension, and the Negredo is the descent. And where every single man that I have ever worked with has been blocked is that he is refusing his own descent. He refuses to go deeper within himself, his understanding, his fears. You refuse to go into your own shadows, the things that you are afraid of, the things that, uh, your pain, your suffering, your trauma. And where a lot of men get stuck is that they block their own growth and progression by being completely unwilling to go into the depths of their inner hell and to see their own wounds, their own pain, their own fears, the desires that they might have that are unexpressed. And when you do that, when you block yourself, from going into the depths, from decaying, from going into this descent process. You actually prevent yourself from seeing the wisdom, from being able to alchemize the energy, the knowledge, the pain, the suffering, the material that exists in that landscape of your psyche, of your emotional body, of yourself. And so you continue to try and ascend, to try and grow, without moving down into the soil. So this is like a tree trying to grow taller out into the sky without growing any roots down into the ground. And so the basic alchemical principle here: as below, so above. The further down you go, the further you can ascend up. All that it means is that you cannot continue to grow up, to mature, to expand, to reach your potential without going into the areas which you want, which you know you need to go. And so negredo in alchemy actually plays one of the single most important roles. This negredo can also be talked about as the decay, the blackening, the breaking down, the descent. And I think in modern spirituality, we talk about it as the dark night of the soul, but there's even smaller versions. It doesn't have to be this period where everything in your life has fallen apart and you're struggling with depression and your wife has left. And it doesn't need to be some really sad country song, right? It can just be, that there are fears you're unwilling to confront. It can just be that there's conversations that you're unwilling to have because they might lead to the end of a relationship. It just might mean that there are actions that you know you need to take, but you don't take them because you are afraid that it might cause a part of you to unravel, that this old way of being, this old view of yourself as being incapable or dysfunctional or unreliable would actually need to die. So the negredo is kind of like the soil of your psyche. And in order for you to ascend, in order for you to grow, in order for you to expand, reach your potential, engage with your potency and your power as a man, descent is necessary. Descent is a necessary experience for you to begin to make contact with the material of your unconscious, of your fears, of your hidden nature, of the parts of yourself that you don't want to admit, of the elements of your beliefs or your values that are not functional, your actions that you are ashamed of, the decisions that are breaking down your life. That is the material that needs to be engaged with. And the thing that I have seen so common within men, and you've probably seen this either in yourself or another man, is a couple things. Number one is the very deep fear to engage with this descent. And a lot of men will actually try to white-knuckle their way through, not through it, but actually white-knuckle their way to avoid it. To not even engage with the dissent, to not even allow things to break down and fall apart. And they'll stay in this kind of hell of purgatory where mediocrity begins to set in and complacency begins to set in. And it creates a kind of numbness that begins to eat away at their soul because they know, you know, that there is something deeper inside of you. That you know you need to engage with, a fear, a desire, an expression. Maybe you don't even know necessarily what it is. There's just a kind of pain or darkness inside of you that you have to engage with. And when you don't engage with it, you pay a price, right? And here's what the price is. When you don't engage with this descent, down into the negredo, of moving downwards, of growing the roots down into the soil, you pay a price. The first price is complacency, mediocrity, and numbness. The second price is stagnation. You begin to stagnate and you stay stuck in the place where you are, and you can no longer move forward. You can no longer grow up, access more potential, become more financially abundant, become more physically strong, become more intellectually robust, you begin to hit this ceiling as a man. And many of you have felt that. And that ceiling that you hit is a result of, "I don't want to move down any further." The other thing that happens for men is that they don't want to engage with this part of them because they are afraid they will never return. So there's this deep fear in a lot of the men that I have worked with over the last 10, 12 years, that when they recognize that my life is starting to fall apart, there's certain elements, relationships falling apart, I can't contain, I can't keep the lid on my grief, on my sadness, on my anger anymore, I can't contain the pain and the suffering that I'm in any longer, And they are deeply afraid that if they go into it, if they actually allow themselves and give themselves permission to go into it, that they'll never emerge from it. Now, it is important to know that it's helpful to have guides as you go into the Nigredo. That is a marker. If you read any myth, any story where somebody enters into hell, Somebody enters into purgatory. Somebody is lost, goes into a cave to fight a dragon. Even Perseus, who goes to fight Medusa, has help along the way. He is not alone in that battle. He's not alone in that confrontation. And so when you look at any myth, when you as a man go into this descent, you're not meant to do it entirely alone. You're not meant to go on the journey. There are always gods, helpers, guides that are meant to go along the way. And so a lot of men prevent themselves from actually moving into the descent, growing down into themselves and growing down into who they actually are, because they are either terrified that they'll never emerge or they are rejecting the help and the support that they genuinely need in order to traverse that territory and that terrain and that period of your life. All right, my friend, exciting announcement. I've put together a free 90-minute self-worth workshop. After working with men for over a decade, I have seen this pattern time and time again. Men come in because they're struggling with confidence. They are continuing to sabotage themself. They can't seem to be disciplined and get their routines and habits into place. And they've done some therapy, they've done some personal development work, and some of it's worked, but none of it's really stuck. And they can't figure out why they're struggling with the same bad habits, the same lack of confidence, the same lack of discipline. And what I have found is that that is because there's something off with their sense of self-worth. Their self-worth was interrupted somewhere along the way. And so I've built a— a free 90-minute live workshop for you where I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know about self-worth. I'm gonna teach you what it actually is, what builds it, what breaks it, and then give you very specific tools and strategies to actually build your self-worth in a lasting, meaningful way. So if you're interested, head on over to mantalksinfo.com/pod. Again, it's mantalksinfo.com/pod. Connorbeaton.com/pod. You can sign up today. The workshop will be on June 18th, and I'm looking forward to seeing you live on the call. And so what I would like for you to do is for a moment, begin to think about how am I preventing my own growth? How am I stopping my own connection to potency and my internal power, my internal sense of knowing and understanding? By avoiding growing down into myself? What are the deeper truths, fears— what are the deeper truths and fears that I do not want to admit to, or I don't want other people to know about? What are the things in myself and my life that are beginning to decay, fall apart, and that are not working, that I'm actively avoiding? And what would it look like for me to admit that and confront it? The key here is to relinquish control in the face of this descent. Our modern culture and modernity actually sells this idea that you can get around, you can escape having to go through a period of negredo, and it is a lie. It is false. You cannot escape it. What you can do is prevent it for long enough that it plunges you down sometimes so deep into the depths of despair that it does become challenging to emerge from. And so by preventing yourself from going into this falling apart or this period where you're letting things decay, you're letting things break down, you're owning the things that are breaking down, you're confronting the things that are hard, your pain, your suffering. And so that's the last piece that I would encourage you to look at. What is the pain and suffering that I've been avoiding that has allowed me to stay disconnected from this descent? You falling apart as a man, having things decay, fall apart, end, die, that is not bad. Those are the moments where the roots of who you are have an opportunity to grow deeper into your psychological soil. So if you want to mature as a man, you have to utilize— and utilize is not even the right term— but you have to allow yourself to be pulled into those depths. Some men will pursue those actively, I am certainly one of those guys. I think I realized through reading the stories of Odin and reading the stories of Hercules and reading Carl Jung's pretty much entire work that this is an elemental truth of the psyche, that if you want to be more robust, more potent, more individuated into who you are, you have to descend down into your years into your pain, into your own suffering, into the elements of yourself that you don't like and don't know how to contend with. And you can either do that consciously and intentionally, or life will serve it up to you. So whether you are in a period of negredo as a man right now, where maybe your relationship is falling apart, maybe there's some career struggles or financial issues, or, you know, you're struggling with anxiety or depression or attachment issues, whatever it is, whether life is serving you in negredo or things are going well, I would encourage you to move towards the descent. Answer some of the questions that I gave you. Begin to turn towards what parts of myself or my life are beginning to break down, what parts of myself and my life are struggling right now that I'm struggling to connect with or understand, that I'm afraid to deal with. And then find the guides and the support to be able to traverse that terrain. And if you can do that as a man, you will grow down into yourself and you will feel more consciously confident within yourself. You will know more of who you are because you as a man will go— have gone on your own internal heroic journey. You will have faced the caves, the dragons and the demons inside of you and come out the other side. Now, the challenge is, and the last sort of caveat that I'll give you, is this isn't for the lighthearted, but you also can't escape it. You cannot escape it. And so you either face and confront these things consciously, you kind of keep an eye and an ear out for where in life life is bringing you the negredo, where things are actually genuinely falling apart and you're just holding on and not allowing it to fall apart, or what inside of you is not workable anymore, what inside of you, you are afraid to face, confront, admit. And that might be your pain, it might be trauma, it might be suffering, it might just be this old judgmental story about yourself or a critical nature. A very hypercritical nature towards yourself that's dysfunctional and does not work for you anymore. Whatever it is, it is about engaging with this confrontation, and it's the refusal to engage with this confrontation, with the negredo, with the breaking down, with moving down, that is preventing you from growing up. So comment your thoughts below. Don't forget to man it forward, share it with somebody else. And as always, until next week, Connor Beaton, salam aleikum. Connor Beaton signing off.