Primal Intelligence

As you become more uniquely yourself, you also become more capable of serving the collective.

Jung once said that the only thing wrong with the world is man.

What he meant is that if we mature and grow wiser as individuals, this extends into our sphere of influence. Right? You become a better father, a better partner, better leader, better teacher, and a better citizen.

You can hold complexity without being overwhelmed. You can act decisively while remaining open to learning. You can provide a stable presence while supporting others' growth.

In this current cultural moment, with all of its polarization, it's the breakdown of shared meaning, its desperate need for mature masculine leadership. Individuating men are urgently needed.

Notice the emotion you are feeling right now in this moment.

Take your time.

Notice where you're feeling it inside your body.

And now notice and track the sensation with curiosity rather than judgment.

Notice the feeling. Look for where it's represented in your body as a sensation. And once you've identified the sensation, just track it. Use your conscious mind to observe the unconscious movement or the subconscious movement of the sensation. It's a really cool process.

I'm just gonna give you some space to do that. And allow your attention to stay with the experience. If you notice it drifting off, just bring yourself back to the sensation and stay present to that. Just do that now for a little while.

Just notice what you notice.

You might notice your nervous system starting to settle naturally as attention returns to your body.

Research shows that generativity is the single best predictor of meaning in life. The single best predictor across all cultures, across all peoples, across all genders.

So what is generativity?

Generativity is when you invest yourself in forms of life and forms of work that will outlive you. It's more meaningful than pleasure, it's more meaningful than personal achievements, and it's more meaningful than personal autonomy.

Eric Erickson, said that generativity is about carrying love into the future.

And he described generativity as the central task of mature adulthood. And here's what's really beautiful: engaging in generative activities fulfills two deep human needs simultaneously.

The first is the need to be needed. This involves having meaningful relationships with others.

And the second intrinsic human need that generativity fulfils is the need for what Eric Erickson calls symbolic immortality. And that involves contributing to something that outlasts your individual life.

So let me bring this all back to you right now. I want you to sit with a few questions.

The first question is Do you feel that your actions or inactions are noticed and have consequences?

The second question is do you experience yourself as part of something greater than yourself? And if so, what is that greater whole?

Self-responsibility is not about blaming yourself for everything. It's about owning your life. It kind of sounds like this.

I cannot change what's happened, but I can choose how I meet it now.

What happened wasn't my fault, but it is my responsibility. I will not keep outsourcing my power to my past or to other people.

Every trigger is a teacher, every failure is an invitation and every wound is a doorway. Every failure is an invitation. I just love that line. It's an opportunity to learn something I maybe didn't know before. Powerful, right?

The immature story says, I'm not enough and it's someone else's fault.

The mature story says, I am responsible for how I live and I'm willing to face what I carry.

Self-responsibility is not a one-time decision, it's a practice. You'll circle back to it over and over again in new situations, new relationships, new edges. The man who commits to radical self-responsibility gradually discovers a different kind of power

At its core, conflict is not just a disagreement, conflict is a rupture in a relational space.

Conflict is a rupture in a relational space. So by the time something is finally spoken out loud, the people often no longer responding to simply what's happening or happened, they're responding to what they think it means, what they fear it means.

What it reminds them of, or the story that they already started building internally. Meanwhile, the relational space, the relational connection is already under strain.

And both people are partly disconnected from each other and partly reacting to their own internal world. This is one of the reasons the conflict becomes so difficult. Because very quickly people stop

Relating to what's actually happening in the present moment and instead begin reacting to their own interpretations and assumptions, past wounds and fears, defensiveness and the need to protect themselves from any perceived threat.

Men who rigidly adhere to self-reliant meaning making struggle to access social support.

They struggle to form emotionally connected relationships, or they struggle to engage in collaborative problem solving.

So men become isolated. And isolated leads to depression. It leads to self-harm, can even lead to su***de. And this is all borne out in research that.

Men that isolate and focus on autonomy and themselves rather than connection with others face severe risks.

So what's important for us as men is to realize that isolation is not a strength. It's actually a risk factor.

It's a risk factor for depression, anxiety, and su***de. And we might try to fill a void that's living within us with things that look like masculinity, you know, going to the gym, being defined by my career achievements, controlling my emotions like a stoic would.

Maybe even filling that void with Andrew Tate videos.

But while each of these things might initially sate the hunger, might provide some satisfaction in the short term, ultimately leave us ravenous for something more.

Let's recognise that safety begins in the body.

Connection is not just conceptual, it's physiological. When safety is present, the body tells the story before the words do. You might notice breathing becoming slower and more rhythmic. Muscles softening, especially around the jaw, the shoulders and the neck. Posture opens rather than contracting.

Warmth in the voice, steady and natural eye contact, an increased capacity to listen, a softer facial expression, less urgency to defend or interrupt, and a greater ability to tolerate pause and silence.

These are the signs the nervous system is orienting towards connection rather than protection. A useful frame is this.

Safety is visible in the body before it is confirmed in words.

We've been conditioned to think that maturity and development means increasing separation and autonomy, increasingly being self-reliant. Right?

In a lot of psychological developmental theories that inform how we think in modern society, we think that we become we're very dependent as children, and then as we get older,

Physically, psychologically, intellectually, we c become more and more self reliant, and somehow that equates to maturity and strength. You know, our myths even tell us this, right? the hero leaving the village, standing alone on top of the mountaintop, right?

Counter narrative to this lone ranger autonomous self-made man idea is this counter idea that as a man you grow through increasing relational complexity and interdependence not through increasing separation think about it you are already inescapably relationally embedded you exist because of relationships

You became who you are as a man through relationships. Even your sense of autonomy was developed in relationship to others.

So the myth of the separate, autonomous man isn't just psychologically limiting, it's actually factually incorrect.

What parts of your story still feel unclaimed or unexplored. Are you willing to see that your wounds might also carry your gifts?

That's right. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Every trigger is a teacher, every failure is an invitation and every wound is a doorway.

As Jung wrote, the privilege of a lifetime is to become truly who you are. And like a stone thrown into a pond ripples up here and they travel far. When he rises, we rise.

The journey from immature masculine to mature masculine is not for some special group of men. It's the journey of every man who is willing to wake up. It asks you to move from scarcity to abundance.

From self-centeredness to service, from wound to gift. It asks for initiation, radical self-responsibility, and a willingness to let the false self burn so that the true self can emerge.

James Hollis reminds us when he says, the unfinished business of childhood is the unfinished business of adulthood.

I'll say that again. I think it's a really impactful statement.

The unfinished business of childhood is the unfinished business of adulthood. That unfinished business shows up as unconscious scripts. I am weak. I must prove myself. I am unlovable unless I perform. I'm unsafe unless I control everything.

These scripts drive behaviour far into adulthood. Myth tells us the truth in symbolic form, the prince sent into exile or the boy lost in the forest or maybe the hero with no name. I'm sure you've got your own version for yourself.

So what were the messages spoken or unspoken that you absorbed in childhood about what made you acceptable or not?

And where did you experience love as conditional based on performance, obedience or strength? Can you name one script that still runs in your life even if you know it's not true?