039 - Man on Fire: Releasing Patterns of Emotional Trauma
This week on On This Walk, I’m joined by my walking partner, David Mehler, as we discuss how he is helping men overcome internal despair and disconnection to become the kings they were born to be.
In this episode, David shares his first conscious awakening experience when he was 26 years old and experienced his fifth session of NSA. He describes the experience as a cathartic experience where he felt like he came home to himself and was embodied by the experience of grace and gratitude.
Listen as we discuss what David’s journey from the head into the body and back into the heart, which is an opportunity to experience the full array of different emotions that are afforded to us as human beings. He also explains that the more we allow ourselves to face and feel, the more we can experience joy, pleasure, awe, and all of the beautiful things within our life.
In This Episode
(09:31) – The idea of a safe haven.
(14:04) – How our traumas create a distortion in our posture
(23:58) – The distortions in our frequencies
(29:57) – What if your reality is just a tiny fragment of a much grander scheme?
(31:55) – Identifying the distortions behind our patterns
(34:47) – Masculine and feminine energies
(38:11) – How our patterns, traumas and hurts are unique
(40:02) – Who exactly are we?
(43:29) – How do we make that shift when we find the energy?
(54:59) – What is a man’s purpose and how does he find one?
Notable Quotes
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“A spiritual journey for anyone is really to drop out of the head, back into the body, back into the heart, where you actually could start feeling again, come back into the safe place… What if you could go into the center of the pain and actually use it as fuel, as leverage for transformation and growth in your life? What if the pain, hurts, wounds, and traumas were not an accident, but were divinely placed there and planned by your soul, so you ultimately one day would have the leverage to discover more of who you are and give your gifts out to the world? This journey from the head into the body, back into the heart is an opportunity to experience the full myriad, full array of different emotions that are afforded to us as human beings.” – David
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“The mind can be a beautiful and powerful tool for us, but it can also ensnare us as it wants to keep us safe, certain, and focused on problems for the sake of either solving those problems or because of perceived danger. It's the interpreter of our nervous systems, which are all too often dysregulated and on overdrive. These practices, among many others, help us to move back into a regulated, regenerative, more conscious and more mindful state. From there, we can receive information, not through a filter or our on-alert systems, but we can receive information from our bodies, hearts, energy, as well as our minds in a clear and calm state. This opens us up to many more great possibilities for how we can navigate our lives, and in particular, our relationships. Now, more than ever, we need those calm and clear minds. But interestingly enough, the best way to get there is through your body, and most definitely through your heart.”
Our Guest
David Mehler created Man on Fire in 2015 to help men who, on the outside, seem to have everything going for them—they're running at top speed in their career or business—but on the inside, they're drowning in the monsoon trenches of internal despair. He has more than 25 years of experience finding the root causes of the biggest problems in men's lives. His passion, power, and purpose are to save these men and help them become the kings they were meant to be.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
David Mehler
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[00:00:00] David: There is something that happens with a man when he begins this journey of growth where it's no longer about what he wants to do, it's more about what's wanted of him.
[00:00:13] Luke: Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart-centered guests each week as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul, and with something bigger than ourselves.
[00:00:34] And let's go on this walk. Hello and welcome back to On This Walk. I've been looking forward to sharing this one with you for a while because, it took a little bit for me and my guest to sync up our calendars to actually be able to make it happen. And I think the reason why I wanted to share this one was because my guest, David Mehler, has such a beautiful and powerful masculine heart and presence.
[00:00:59] So let me give you a little introduction and then some real background. So today, after over 25 years of experience in identifying root cause issues that underlie the heaviest problems in men's lives, he runs an organization, one that he founded in 2015 called Man On Fire. You actually find all those details meant on fires, details, et cetera, down in the show notes.
[00:01:21] Now, Man on Fire is focused on guiding men, who, from the outside, seem to have everything going on. They're running a top speed in their career, business life, but from the inside they're actually drowning in a kind of feeling of internal despair, of disconnection. They're running on empty. David wants them to be the kings that they were born to be.
[00:01:42] And you can feel that when you watch him work with these men because he holds this unbelievably powerful space and presence that helps these men step forward in their lives to have the courage to face the pain and the hurts that have stood in their way. Now some background. You see, I actually first met David, I think it was close to probably nine, maybe even 10 years ago, through a mutual friend.
[00:02:05] I kept hearing, I was at my friend's event and I kept hearing him talk about and point to this guy, David Mehler. He's, why I've got so much energy up here. He's why I can keep going. He's why I feel so connected. So after hearing this for a couple of days, I finally grabbed David on a break and I asked, what the heck do you do?
[00:02:22] He never, Ted never said what it is you actually do. And so David got a smile and he said, listen, just meet me at the end of the day, at the end of the end of the night that, that we're here for the event and I'll give you a session. Well, I came back and he kind of lies me down on this, this chiropractic table, and he proceeds to light me up like a Christmas tree.
[00:02:41] Now, this was not chiropractic. It was a little different than I'll, I'll describe that in a moment, but seriously, he lights me up in such a way that he and his partner now, actually his wife, had to help me off the table. And laid me on the ground afterwards so I could just resettle into my body for everything that was moving and shifting ground at that second.
[00:03:00] And I spent even the rest of the next couple of days just walking around like I was floating. I had been lighter than I had been in ages. So at that time, David was practicing something called network spinal analysis or NSA, which is also called Network Chiropractic, which is more of an energetic approach to helping the spine unwind and realign.
[00:03:22] We're gonna talk actually about the, the unwinding as part of this episode as well. Cause it has to do with the way in which we posture ourselves and take on certain patterns, energetic patterns within our lives. It's really interesting. So anyway, I loved the approach that David took and it was fortunate enough to find out that his practice was just in New York City.
[00:03:42] I live in Northern, Northern New Jersey. And so I was able to go and see him and actually I loved the approach so much that I ended up bringing my whole family to see him. Pretty much every Saturday for close to like 18 months. So what I saw with David's work even then was his ability to recognize and tap into those energetic patterns that are present in your life, as well as the ones for just keeping you confined.
[00:04:06] And so he was able for me to bring my attention to these issues around time, around trust, to the ways I was bending myself to please others. And he was also able to help me clear some of the blocks that kept me from being much more deeply connected to myself. In fact, he was one of the first to really start helping me clear the way so I could access my vulnerability and share from that place as a means of strength, as well as from confidence.
[00:04:33] And so today we're gonna take a walk through David's world. We'll talk about some of of this work. We're gonna talk about some of those patterns. We're gonna chat certainly about his work with men, their struggles, their purpose, and a whole lot more. On this walk, so please enjoy this. I know I did. If you're new to us, do me a favor.
[00:04:53] Make sure you hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode of On This Walk. And now let's go on this Walk with David Mehler and let's get connected. David, I wanna thank you for being here on this walk. I think, as you know, I've been looking forward to, to having you on here for quite some time. I'm glad that we finally get the chance to do this.
[00:05:12] David: It's an honor and I'm grateful to be here.
[00:05:15] Luke: Fantastic. One of the places that I think would be helpful for us to begin is if you would share just a little bit about what I think you've described as kind of your first conscious awakening experience, because it was really what introduced you to the deep work of NSA, which I just mentioned a little while ago in introing the show.
[00:05:34] It kind of introduced you into that path and I was wondering if we could start there.
[00:05:37] David: Yeah. Thank you. 1994, I believe I was around 26 years old. And I was experiencing my fifth session of this work that you just referred to called Network Spinal Analysis. And I remember on the table spontaneously just starting to cry and laugh and emote, make sounds, and my body literally started undulating like a dolphin uncontrollably.
[00:06:03] And it was a very cathartic experience. And the next thing I know, I was embodied by the experience of grace and gratitude. I actually felt what those words felt like emotionally, rather than just saying them out of your mouth, you know, in a nonchalant way. Like, Hey, thanks for buying me this car, dad, where we don't really understand what, you know, being grateful means.
[00:06:27] I felt the experience of gratitude and I just kept saying the words. Thank you. I remember when I sat up off the table, I looked down at my hands and I'm looking at the hands of a five-year-old little boy. Where I still had my innocence, I still had my purity, and I still had my playful nature with that sparkle and gleam in my eyes.
[00:06:50] And I, I've come to learn for myself that at that age, you know who you are, you know why you're here, even though you're just a little boy, it's before the world, you know, brought all of its hurts and pains and wounds and traumas to you where you went into this forgetting. So my spiritual awakening happened at that moment where I felt like I came home to myself.
[00:07:09] I felt like all the noise stopped, all the chatter stopped. I was out of my head. I was just in spirit and I was just witnessing that I'm in this physical body, but I'm a spirit that's just inhabiting it for, you know, as long as I treat it with sacredness, I get to borrow this as long as you know, God has the plan for me.
[00:07:26] And that was my real first spiritual awakening.
[00:07:29] Luke: Yeah. What did that lead to?
[00:07:32] David: Well, what came outta my mouth next, which I don't think I said it consciously. So it just came out and I was observing that it came out. Was you need to learn how to do this, meaning this experience that I just had. I was flooded with the emotions of everyone needs to experience this.
[00:07:49] Yeah. And I dedicated, you know, the rest of my life to learning the art of that particular work, of learning how to really work through a person's spine and help them connect patterns that are happening in their body with patterns that are happening in their life. And take away all the armoring, take away all of the insulation that was put there to protect them, but is keeping a human being from being the fullest expression of themself.
[00:08:17] And it's been a magical ride ever since, but that's what happened next.
[00:08:21] Luke: Yeah. So I want to get into what that opens up in the way of, of exactly where you went in terms of the patterns within people's lives and and within our fields. But before we go there, and a quick just word to everybody is that I had the pleasure and honor actually specifically working with you, but experiencing NSA for a period of time and experiencing it with my whole family, and it really was a, an extraordinary experience of what this be is able to begin to unwind as well as open up within you.
[00:08:50] Some of the words though that you used, that I'd love for you to create some further distinction around, because this is something that I've experienced both through this work but through other forms as well, was the difference between feeling and even embodying that grace and gratitude and it not just being a thought or being words.
[00:09:10] And I think there's a, a very important understanding of what that really truly means. That is a bit of a wall for a lot of people to be able to experience right now.
[00:09:22] David: I think it's fair to say that most of us would acknowledge that, or at least men, much more so than women, have a tendency to live in their head.
[00:09:31] Yeah. And it's a safe haven. It's a place that we've retreated to because the past and its traumas, its hurts, its wounds are stored in the body. So there becomes a point where you say, well, I don't wanna feel that. I don't wanna look at that. And the escape that we go to is up into the head and then you, you hear expressions like analysis paralysis or get in your head, you're dead because the head is connected to where thoughts live, and most people's thoughts are trying to tell them how they're worthless.
[00:10:03] Most people's thoughts are negative. Most people's thoughts are focused on drama and trauma and pain and gossip and all sorts of different problems. A spiritual journey for anyone is really to drop out of the head and back into the body, drop out of the head, back into the heart, where you actually could start feeling again, come back into the safe place.
[00:10:24] And there are different modalities out there and different techniques. Obviously we have our own within our organization where you can help somebody tap into where they stored these different hurts and wounds and traumas, and rather than have to run from them or develop compensatory adaptive types of behaviors in life, whether it's overworking, whether it's, you know, numbing out through different types of drugs or pornography, things of this nature to just try to escape your pain.
[00:10:52] What if you could go into the center of the pain and actually use it as fuel, as leverage for transformation and growth in your life? What if the pain and the hurts and the wounds and the traumas were not an accident, but they were divinely placed there and planned by your soul. So you ultimately one day would have the leverage to discover more of who you are and give your gifts out to the world?
[00:11:14] So this journey from the head into the body, back into the heart is an opportunity to experience the full myriad, you know, full array of different emotions that are afforded to us as human beings. And I'll just tell you this one quick story, Luke. I was at seminar one time with my wife and the lead instructor.
[00:11:31] He asked women to write down all the emotions that they experienced on a daily basis. And then he asked the men to write it down. And you know, the men had like two or three things written down and most of the women had about 10 to 20. And my wife had like a list of 50 to a hundred. And what she's been doing, you know, having this healing work done on her for a long time.
[00:11:52] And so that's what I mean is like, you know, imagine just sitting at a piano and only using one or two of the keys. We're only hitting one of the strings on a guitar, like life has afforded us such a glorious opportunity to feel all these different emotions. But most of us don't. Most of us are so in our head that we've really lost the ability to experience everything from rapture and awe and gratitude and grace, all the way down to sadness and frustration, anger, which are also beautiful emotions, which we can, we can get into later perhaps.
[00:12:21] Luke: Yeah. And I, I appreciate you framing it that way. It's funny cause I started to chuckle because I, I could feel already where you were going with, with that story because I, I resemble that. I recognize the years, the decades that were spent in my head with an emotional range of, of all, of about maybe, you know, a couple, a couple of inches to a foot, is what it felt like.
[00:12:38] And what was interesting is that on that journey, and I know this is part of, of this process as well, that you're so closely, you know, pioneering as well as connected to, is that the more that we allow ourselves to, as you constantly say, face and feel, what those more challenging emotions, some of those more difficult places for us to go are we end up expanding our ability to also feel the joy and the rapture and the awe.
[00:13:07] And very often we stay in such a tight emotional range because we don't want to touch the stuff that's difficult. But of course what we end up doing is we end up stunting how much we can feel the joy and the pleasure and the awe and all of the, the wonderful things within our life as well. You described it as, as some of the adaptive as and maladaptive tendencies are there.
[00:13:24] But before we get there, before you mentioned patterns and I wanted you to come back to that specific to what you were learning through Network SpinalAnalysis, through NSA, because those patterns are very relevant to the work that you're doing today. And I, I wanted to kind of follow a bit of that thread.
[00:13:40] So when you say patterns, the way in which. Our body holds onto certain traumas, certain hurts, certain pains, and we form certain patterns within us. What did that mean to you when you were primarily practicing an essay?
[00:13:56] David: I wanna articulate this in a way that I feel makes it very rudimentary, although there's a lot more complexities to it.
[00:14:04] If I asked you to go into a posture that demonstrates you're sad, or go into a posture that demonstrates you're angry, or go into a posture that demonstrates you just won lotto, or the Jets just won the Super Bowl, somebody witnessing, you could understand what you're experiencing just from observing your posture.
[00:14:26] And when we have different hurts or traumas or wounds that have occurred in our life, it creates a distortion in our posture. Meaning the body will adapt and go into a defensive posturing to protect you. This is very easy to understand because we've all seen what a cat does when it's scared it arches its back.
[00:14:51] A lot of people know that. That's called a sympathetic nervous system response. Said differently. It's when you're going into fight or flight or freeze, you're either prepared to fight because you think there's an emergency flight, you're gonna run or freeze, you do nothing. Well, if you look at all the micro and macro traumas that somebody goes to in their life, so for example, for me, witnessing my father at one stage in my life, being physical towards my mother, my dog dying in front of me when I was five years old and and feeling like it was my fault.
[00:15:20] Each one of these little traumas, whether it be micro and macro, created some sort of a pulling in your body that created an distortional pattern where you could see that over time, wow, that person's posture is changing because your posture is how you had to posture to feel safe. And then what happens is based on a person's posture, you could predict what patterns will show up in their life, whether it's around lack of, you know, money and abundance and prosperity, whether it's around relationships that will fail, whether it's around your relationship to time, feeling like you don't have enough time to get it all done, whether it's around you.
[00:15:58] Find yourself bending yourself and pleasing others and constantly trying to fit in like a chameleon, but giving away your true identity or whether it's you're always stuck in your head as opposed to in your passion and spontaneous nature, or whether you come from lack as opposed to abundance. There are postures that hold us in a way that actually make us think and behave according to that postural distortion.
[00:16:21] So what I've learned over time is how to actually release those patterns in the body that then allow a person to view life differently and have a completely different experience.
[00:16:30] Luke: So just as, as a point of reference here for everybody, I think it was the second time I ever worked with you. First time was actually at an event from our, our mutual friend out in San Diego.
[00:16:40] And then, uh, it was back actually in New York when you were still practicing. And at the second time, I'm on your table, you touch a spot that is maybe two inches off my spine, around my mid-back. And you asked me the question of what happened between the ages of five and six and I, I was just stunned as to what you had been able to pick up on.
[00:17:02] And for those that have, have listened here to the podcast, I may remember that's one of my childhood home burnt to the ground. And so this, to, to feel the way in which this stuff gets imprinted in your field, imprinted in your body, imprinted in your spine, is extraordinary. And it shows us there is, I think for me, one of the further things that unlocked was the extraordinary wisdom that is also held within our bodies.
[00:17:29] And there's a reason why we hold on to, as you said, some of those postures are so we can feel safe. So there is a protective instinct that's out of love, that at times our body and our field is doing this. And that said, it may not serve its purpose as we grow later in life, but we don't know how to release these things.
[00:17:48] We know how to, how to move through them. How is this work now informing the way that you are doing men's work with men on fire? Because that's one of the things I've seen is that you took, what was something that you learned through a, a physiological and energetic practice? Healing practice, healing art would be a another way of describing it.
[00:18:12] And you've now used it to become a much more comprehensive system, framework, philosophy, all the things that you do with men. And so I'm curious a little bit maybe of, of that evolution of how you, you took these patterns, this understanding, and I know it goes a lot deeper than just these patterns, but how that evolution occurred to say, this is the work now that I can do with men.
[00:18:36] David: There is more wisdom in your body than the amount of books, seminars, videos, podcasts, that you could watch and listen to for the rest of your life. The body holds the treasure chest of wisdom. And what's happening in the world is that we are overwhelmed and overburdened with too much information, but we're wisdom deprived.
[00:19:09] And what that means in English is, people don't lack information to make change. What, what they're lacking is the ability to actually make the change, the action, and the leverage to do so is in the body, not the mind. Otherwise, anyone that is overweight would just start eating healthy and would exercise because they have the information.
[00:19:30] That's what I need. They could hear it from you or from me. And, and it became very obvious to me that no matter how much great suggestions, great advice, you offer up new perspectives to somebody. To some degree it lands. But then what's gonna change, and what I've found in, you know, 30 years of being around healing and transformation, is that nothing will change until changes in your body because the body will give you the visceral reaction and will show you how far you've really come.
[00:19:58] Not the words that come out of somebody's mouth, right? The mirror never lies, and your body never lies. But the words that come out of your mouth, they can always lie. So somebody could say, oh no, I've forgiven him. I've forgiven this person that attacked me, or that molested me. But yet, if you were in front of that person, your body might paint a different picture.
[00:20:16] Yeah. So my background is in understanding that if I wanna help somebody truly have a breakthrough, it's not going to come from what I'm telling them. It's going to come from me, helping plug them into the wisdom that's in their body and find where do they have the leverage, where do they have the fuel to make the change for themself?
[00:20:35] And I want them to discover higher truth. I can give them truths, but what are they gonna do with that truth if they're in a physiology, if they're in a body that can't necessarily incorporate it into their life yet? So the posture will change in accordance with when there's a safety to live into that new posture, which is why I'm not trying to prematurely take somebody out of the posture they're in because it might not be the right time.
[00:21:00] But to watch them start to change it because they plugged into their body and they dug into where they buried the stuff. I'm like a professional archeologist, Luke, like, you know, I love Ladies of the Lost Arc when I was a kid. It's like, I wanna find the buried treasures. So I'm, I'm amazing at helping somebody dig into their body and find where did they bury the goodies?
[00:21:17] Because that's where the wisdom is, and that's where the opportunity for transformation and growth lies.
[00:21:24] Luke: That line specifically of them finding the safety to live into that new posture. Talk about a wisdom that drops in. Is that so often a, you know, kind of as you're describing, we have the ability to connect to any amount of information that's out there.
[00:21:37] We can accumulate knowledge over and over and over again. We can hear these truths drop around us and even, you know, bounce against our mind over and over and over and over again. But until it integrates to a level that we feel safe, that we can feel trust back within ourselves. And until we can feel the coherence that begins to be, is a felt experience inside of us, we are not actually going to fully integrate it and be able to move forward and incorporate it and act from that place within our lives.
[00:22:09] And so I'm, I'm really glad that you, you explained that from that lens of feeling the safety. It's something that we miss. I think the other aspect that I'd love for you to share, just your perspective on of the relevancy of what this approach, your approach is to where we are, to where men are right now.
[00:22:31] And let me preface that with a lot of what we've gotten into on, on this walk and what I've shared about my own journey that's been fundamental and how very much my, my work has gone deeper through these years is more often than not, I want to help people find the way to begin to listen to that inner wisdom that is deep within themselves and help them clear away anything that's allowing them, that's not allowing them to hear, to connect, to really, truly feel what's actually there so that they can lead their lives from this much deeper truth, wisdom, love that exists within them.
[00:23:11] And I hear so much of exactly that in your approach. In connecting people back to their own healing, to their own power, to the way that they can move forward, the wisdom that's innate to them, and your approach to helping them do that. Why is that so relevant right now? Because I see this as really, really, really vital for what's going on in society right now.
[00:23:35] David: Yeah. We all have the ability to tune into the frequency, the radio station of, you know, rapture of awe, of omnipresence, and we're like a frequency, right? We're just giving off a signal. But when you have all these traumas that are buried inside of you, it creates a distortion. So now you're tuned into the radio station called, let me show you how to screw up my life.
[00:23:58] Let me show you how to, how to have an affair or how to have a problem with alcohol, or how to have a porn addiction, or how to crush it at work, but not know how to bring the same level of success and presence into my marriage or with my children. So, All these different hurts, wounds, and traumas creates a, a distortion in the frequency distortion in being able to hear the true signal of who you are as a human being.
[00:24:20] So what does that mean? Well, that means that, that we have become disconnected from being in our hearts. And well, what does that mean? Well, that means that we now lack the ability to have empathy and compassion and presence. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means that we have the ability now to hurt ourselves and to hurt others.
[00:24:37] And so we have World War, we have countries still at work. Humanity has not grown. We still live in a polarized state where we're pointing our finger externally and blaming others instead of looking more deeply within. And the whole journey of looking within is to come back into your heart, because when you're in your heart, you can't hurt yourself.
[00:24:56] When you're in your heart, you can't hurt somebody else. And part of the mission behind Man on Fire is to be the guardian, protector and gatekeeper to the hearts of the feminine. Right? But how is a man going to do that if he's disconnected from his own hearts? If you're six years old and you're walking with your little sister and she's five, you just wanna do everything in your power to protect her.
[00:25:15] Or if you're a father, you would do anything to protect your little girl or your little boy. Yet later in life, as you lose your way, as you move from your heart to your head, all of a sudden the person that you swore to protect becomes a person that you're now hurting. And it's not on purpose. It's not intentional.
[00:25:34] It's not necessarily malicious, but it's because you've become disconnected. And when when I say disconnected, I mean disconnected from who you are and disconnected from being in your heart,
[00:25:49] Luke: Disconnecting from our hearts and moving into our heads. This is an all too familiar path for me. For me, I think it happened fairly young, although as even David talks about, this is probably true for a lot of people because we tend to enter the forgetting phase of our lives when we're just five to seven years old.
[00:26:08] Well, for me, it began with that fire that burned out our family home, being in my body, my heart, my emotions, which is simply too painful to consider. It was too unsafe. So I retreated into my head, and I also know that's completely normal. That's not an unusual thing for most people to do. Our minds are where we go to try to keep ourselves safe, to try to control, to try to manage and cope.
[00:26:32] We retreat from our bodies and disconnect because within our bodies and hearts is where we have to feel the discomfort, the pain, the hurts, the trauma that come with being in a human body. In this life, our minds begin to form a wall between us and the felt experience of life. You see, it's like it creates a buffer so we can try to only let in what it wants to allow us to feel what it believes is safe for us to feel, and then the mind wants to uphold the status quo.
[00:27:01] Believing that sameness or familiarity equals certainty, and that that equals safety. All the while we stay disconnected from the most beautiful elements of what it means to be human, our hearts, and to be embodied. For me, starting in my mid twenties, right after nine 11, I began a journey to get back into my body and into my heart.
[00:27:20] I took a while to get there, as my mind was really good at letting me have some of what I was looking for. While it could remain in control and it could guide the experience that it wanted me to have, and don't get me wrong, it worked out in many fortunate ways, but that was just the beginning of my journey.
[00:27:36] Whereas today, if someone were to joke with me, you're outta your mind. I say, thanks. It's taken me decades to get here. You see the leg of my walk that really began reconnecting me in this deeper way to my body and to my, my heart was initially through my study of mindfulness because the, the approach that I went down, it had a specific focus with somatic meditation and then ultimately compassion based meditation.
[00:28:02] And mindfulness as well. So to get back into my heart, I had to start to feel and sense directly again. I wasn't focusing on what I was actually connecting to with my senses nor what I truly was feeling in my body because up until then I was going straight into my mind's interpretation of things. It was the stories.
[00:28:22] It would create, the perceptions, the judgments that it would create instead of actually being directly with what I was sensing and feeling. And so through mindfulness approaches slowing down and actually bringing my awareness to what I was feeling in various parts of my body in the present moment, it allowed that reconnection to begin, you see, to feel without interpretation or judgment.
[00:28:47] That's what I was actually after to touch life directly. I then also started various mindfulness practices that would allow me to just focus on one of my senses, such as what I was hearing with my eyes closed and being the sounds as they would rise from and fall back into silence. Other times I would focus on what I felt on my skin and could feel with my hands or feet or any part of my body.
[00:29:15] This would slow me down to both appreciate as well as more directly perceive what I was connecting to. Once I could connect more deeply with these direct feelings and sensing, I actually could then really begin to feel the emotions of gratitude, love, empathy directly in my body, and not just conceptually with my mind.
[00:29:37] I could actually feel what it's like to forgive someone or even myself and not just say the words. This ultimately evolved into a compassion practice. See, when we go on a journey like this, it not only reveals just how much we can actually be present to and what's actually occurring before any interpretation or judgment is applied.
[00:29:57] It also begins to reveal to us the workings of our own minds. What are its tendencies? Where is it trying to keep us safe? Where is it trying to reinforce its own view? Instead of being open to new possibilities? The mind can be a beautiful and powerful tool for us, but it can also ensnare us as it wants to keep us safe, certain, and focused on problems for the sake of either solving those problems or because of perceived danger.
[00:30:21] It's the interpreter of our nervous systems, which are all too often dysregulated and on overdrive. Well, these practices among many others, including those associated with things like Polyvagal Theory, which is Dr. Steven Porges’ work, they help us to move back into a regulated, regenerative, more conscious and more mindful state.
[00:30:42] From there, we can receive information, not through a filter or our on-alert systems, but we can receive information from our bodies, our hearts, our energy, as well as our minds in a clear and calm state. This opens us up to a great many more possibilities for how we can navigate our lives, and in particular, our relationships.
[00:31:04] Now, more than ever, we need those calm and clear minds. But interestingly enough, best way to get there is through your body, and most definitely through your heart.
[00:31:24] I love the way that you just explained that the nature of the mission behind the work that you are doing presently with your organization with Man on Fire, is to help men reconnect in, to move through that distortion and actually truly get to know themselves, know their hearts, know their spirit at that level so that they can show up in the world the way that we truly are designed to, as opposed to a lot of the distortion that is, that is being presented the world for many hundreds, if not thousands of years right now in our history.
[00:31:55] I wanted to come back to a couple of the patterns and I will, uh, willingly put myself, you know, kind of in, in the camera's eye and on the, on the microphone here, because I've had a couple of the patterns that you've described. And originally this came up during our NSA work. It's stuff that I've, I've continued to work on through the years, but I wanted to use this to go into like, what do these patterns potentially look like so that people can, can have greater detail, greater understanding of this.
[00:32:19] And so one of the ones, for instance, it's something that's, that's been relevant to my life very recently, and I know that you've got some personal experience with this from things that, that we've shared and you've talked openly about. One of those patterns is around people pleasing, around bending of myself according to what is expected or according to what cultural norms role, society expectations happen to be.
[00:32:43] And as opposed to being at a place where you create the culture. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit of maybe even your own perspective, your own path of how have you moved through a pattern like that? Because I believe that you've got experience with that. How was it manifesting? How was it showing up so that we can see it?
[00:33:04] I can certainly share how I see it. And then what were some of the things that allowed you to unlock so that you were helping create culture as opposed to following the norms of the existing culture?
[00:33:17] David: I wanna just go backwards for a moment. Yeah. Because I'd like to create clarity on something. So I'm saying that there's a necessity for us as a human being to live more in our hearts.
[00:33:27] But let's just for a moment, speak specifically to a man. There needs to be a healthy integration for a man to be in his heart, but also to have a backbone, to have chutzpah, to have balls. Right. To have fire, to be deeply rooted into the earth. Grounded, you know, unwavering in perturbable. Willingness and ability to fully confront and face everything in his life.
[00:33:52] There needs to be a connection to our intuition, our home of knowing, our inner knowing, where we fully trust that and we honor that, and we take action on our knowing and foster a beautiful relationship with the above, whoever that is for somebody, whether that's omnipresence, whether it's God, whether it's Jesus, whoever it is for them, but to have a beautiful relationship.
[00:34:13] So there needs to be a healthy integration. So there are plenty of men that are in their heart, but they don't have balls. So they're not gonna do anything with being in their heart. They're never gonna take action. They're never gonna make an, you know, an impact in humanity because they're terrified. And then there's plenty of people that have balls, but they're not in their hearts.
[00:34:28] So they're actions are misdirected, right? There are great leaders out there that have caused destruction. Because there's no connection to the heart. So what we're really after is more of the integrated man. What we're after is the man that has the integration between all of it.
[00:34:41] Luke: As you explain that, just to clarify, when you say, you know, does, does that man have balls, can you explain what you mean by that?
[00:34:47] Because we, we can hear that phrase used in different ways and in men's work, and I think it get really confused as to what might be meant by that.
[00:34:54] David: Absolutely. So every man has a masculine and a feminine energy, and every woman has a masculine and a feminine energy. So we're not talking about sexuality, we're talking about energy, and the masculine energy is energy that directs energy, that can confront energy, that master time, meaning a master's space, like his directional, knows where you are, where you're headed, time and space, and it's structured.
[00:35:20] And it's goal oriented, and everyone needs that. And the feminine energy is more free flowing, it's more sensitive, it's more acutely aware of what you're feeling and sensing internally and outside of you from people to nature. So there has to be a balance of both energy. So when I say that somebody lacks the balls, what I'm really referring to is that person doesn't have a well-defined masculine energy.
[00:35:45] So they're all woo woo and they're all into spirituality, but they're never gonna be able to do anything with it because they have no direction in their life. They have no ability to face and confront what's in front of them. And so they'll run from their problems. And the other thing, Luke, is that today, Many, many, many men, the majority of men are wearing more of a feminine mask, meaning they've allowed their feminine energy to take over and they don't have a properly developed masculine energy.
[00:36:12] And many women today for good reason because they don't feel safe around the masculine. Right? I've had to, by default go into their masculine energy and put on a masculine mask, right? And. Deep down, they're feminine in nature. Deep down we're more masculine in nature. There's been a reversal, there's been a wearing of masks and it's created problems.
[00:36:29] Luke: It's interesting to hear you say it that way, that that, you know, there are men wearing much more of the feminine mask in in this point, because obviously a lot of what is also perpetrated in in culture and media culture and everything else is toxic masculinity, where masculinity unchecked, as it were, and very imbalanced, very unconscious, very much in shadow, is showing up and creating all of these, these challenges inside of the world.
[00:36:50] It's an interesting dichotomy to hear you frame it that way.
[00:36:53] David: Well, I'm a big fan of anytime we're gonna use the word, it's important that we define what we mean by that word. So if I use the word energy, or if I use the word spirituality, or if I use the word God, if you use the word toxic masculinity, so to me, toxic masculinity is either using force, meaning like being overly alpha to compensate for you feeling inadequate.
[00:37:14] Mm-hmm. And so you're forcing things in life and you're forcing your energy on other people. And that's part of being toxic masculinity. And the other form of toxic masculinity is you don't have a backbone. And so you've gone two into the feminine, two into woo woo two into sensitive, which is a beautiful trait to have, but if it doesn't have an integration, it becomes toxic.
[00:37:34] So then what happens is the man becomes a pleaser. Or a yes man, or next thing you know, he is turning his wife into his mom and he is seeking her approval. He's codependent. He's frenetic in his energy and he doesn't know his value and his own worth without externally sourcing it through other people's approval.
[00:37:50] That's toxic because that's harmful to himself and harmful to the relationships that he is in. So I just wanted to be clear on, appreciate that the word, it's important that we clarify it.
[00:37:59] Luke: Yeah. I appreciate you framing it both on those perspectives and on that spectrum. So let me bring us back, right? So I kind of took us a little bit off there on the, the tangent just to explore masculinity and what we mean in, in that role, what you were talking about.
[00:38:11] To come back to what I was asking around some of the patterns around bending of self culture, et cetera, was for the masculine to have a much more integrated energy, much more integrated presence in who it is that they were.
[00:38:23] David: So earlier we had discussed that. Due to the uniqueness of people's hurts, wounds and traumas, you know, micro and macro traumas like macro would be sexual abuse.
[00:38:34] Macro would be, you know, your father left home when you were one or you were given up for adoption. Macro would be, you witnessed physical abuse, right? So there's macro and there's microtraumas. And what ends up happening, as I had shared earlier, is that in that moment your body goes into a fight or flight distortional pattern.
[00:38:54] And so to keep it very simple, your body either gets pulled very similar to the way a fishing rod will bend that's pulling in a heavy fish or it gets, starts to get torqued or LA in laterally kinked. So if you look at your family or you look around at your friends, or you look at anyone that's, you know, 35, 40, 50 years old, you start to progressively see somebody's posture changing and you say, oh, well that's just a product of old age.
[00:39:16] Well, no it's not. It's a product of somebody has had a lifetime of stress and trauma and never learned how to dissipate it and discharge it. And so now that person is in more of a vigilant state, and in that vigilance, they're perceiving the world through the lens of that vigilance, meaning they're not really in reality of what's happening around them, they're in the reality in accordance to the postural distortion that they're trapped in.
[00:39:40] So this pattern that you keep wanting me to talk about, pattern number three, has to do with our pelvis, right? The sacrum and the butt bones. And what happens is that early on in life, we are pretty much forced to fit into the culture, like what our parents, you know, we're after our parents love, so we're gonna do things that are gonna get dad's love and mom's love.
[00:40:02] And we gotta fit into the school system. We gotta fit into the religion, we gotta fit into, you know, what our town is saying to do. Our city is saying to do, our country's saying to do. And next thing you know, we wake up one day and we say, I don't know who the hell I am. My whole life I've been bending myself and pleasing others, and I've lost my way.
[00:40:19] And oh my God, how did I end up being a lawyer? I don't even wanna be a lawyer. I actually wanted to be a rockstar. How come I'm not doing that? And you realize you've been bending yourself. So what that means though is that there's a, a physical structural hold that's happening in a certain location in your body.
[00:40:37] And my mastery, you know, has taught to me by my teacher, is knowing how to release those distortions. So what would happen to somebody who starts to release that distortion or said differently, grab the energy inside the distortion and use it as fuel and leverage to make change and flip that pattern from what we call a wound into a gift.
[00:40:56] Well, what ends up happening is that person realizes that. I'm no longer here to follow in other people's footsteps. I'm here to march to the beat of my own drum. I'm here to set culture, create culture rather than follow culture. So someone like yourself, Luke, you're clearly here to create culture. You're calling men, you're ushering men, right?
[00:41:16] Holding them into the next level of their spiritual evolution into a higher level of consciousness. Why? Because you wanna make sure that your kids and their kids and their kids are growing up in a world that is a safe place of belonging, a magical place of belonging. So you're here clearly to no longer fit in, and it's not like you're trying to fit out, right?
[00:41:36] It's not like you're being defiant, but you're realizing, you know what? The rules that were placed upon me no longer serve who I am as a spirit, as a soul. And I no longer wish to say moo, because all the other cows are saying, moo. And you've had the courage to then walk in your own path and take others on this walk and start to illuminate this so that we can live in a different world.
[00:41:58] Luke: I appreciate that. I very much do and it, it acknowledges and is part of the reason why I wanted to speak to you about this particular pattern because there is, in what has only, I can only describe as my experience and the perspective I have from that experience. More and more individuals, men in particular has been our focus, but I see this very true with, with women as well and women that I've worked with are arriving at this point and it seems, I don't know, maybe it's just because of the exposure, but it seems more as much now as ever, more people are arriving at this point feeling like the rules we've been playing by the norms that we have agreed to, the culture that has been doesn't fit.
[00:42:49] It doesn't fit me anymore personally. It's not really beginning to fit my family. And that kind of collective pressure seems to be bubbling out more and more now. We can't change the collective without changing ourselves. At least that's my perspective anyway. Right. And my experience. I'm curious if we could speak to a little bit, I, I really appreciated you used those words dissipate as well as discharge.
[00:43:12] And I was wondering if you could take us into a little bit of how we actually do that. And I know we're here on audio for, for most people who are listening in. So there might be some, some limitation, anything that we can do. But I was wondering if you could speak to how do we create that? How do we create that, that dissipation?
[00:43:29] How do we create that discharge? Once we find that energy, how do we make that shift?
[00:43:35] David: Well, I'll give it to you first in a very generalized way where, where anyone at home could already start to do this. And then obviously if you get exposed to the different types of modalities that I, that I use at our events as a form of facilitation to support and create breakthroughs in the men that is more detailed.
[00:43:58] More nuanced, requires more specificity and refinement. But, uh, but generally, I'll give you a classic example. Somebody might have had a stressful day, they might have gotten some bad news. Things happened at work that didn't go their way. One of their kids is getting sick or their wife is upset about something.
[00:44:16] Let's just say a man in this particular case, well, most likely he's got all that in his head. It's just all bottling up in his head. And maybe he'll, he'll start to, you know, talk about it out loud and then maybe he'll start to, excuse my French, he'll bitch. And he'll moan and he'll complain. But that will never move the energy.
[00:44:34] What needs to happen is he needs to be real with what am I really feeling in this moment? And what he's feeling is frustration. What he's feeling is anger. And so what has to happen, he has to open his mouth. He has to make the sound of what he's feeling. Obviously you don't go screaming at somebody, obviously you don't go hitting somebody.
[00:44:50] You don't hurt yourself, you don't harm another, but you gotta get with that energy. So an example that's playful Luke is, you know, I used to watch a lot of cartoons. That was my form of pain management to get away from the chaos in my home as a, as a little boy. So there was this one Tom and Jerry episode where they were babysitting a little, you know, a little baby.
[00:45:10] And Jerry takes a hammer, Jerry the little mouse, and he slams Tom in the foot. And Tom didn't wanna scream in that moment because he didn't wanna wake the baby. So he opens up the door, runs up a hill, and just screams out all the pain, discharge dissipate. That's what I mean. But how many of us have so many things happen from physical to emotional?
[00:45:34] Where we don't dissipate it and don't discharge it, and we don't make the sounds because the culture doesn't support that, right? Unless you're in an emergency room or you're in a football game, right? You're not allowed to make sound without people thinking there's something wrong with you. So when we speak about dissipate, when we talk about discharge, we're talking about just being real with the emotions that are bubbling under the surface, that later in life for some reason has become more socially appropriate to show up as the heart attack, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, you name it.
[00:46:06] All that is is all the energy that's been bottled up. It had nowhere to go. The bound energy imploded. As opposed to you finding a healthy way to get with that energy. And more than likely it's just through sound. It's just by moving your body a certain way and letting sound come out of your mouth for everybody.
[00:46:22] Luke: Listen, this is something that I used to do in ways that were supportive, but it got much more refined and, and part of that very directly to David's help and service with, with me. I used to, you know, and still am very much into exercise, right? So I wanna move my energy, I wanna dissipate, I wanna discharge, I wanna do things.
[00:46:41] And so I would take it out on a run, I'd take it out on a workout, I'd lift some weights, I'd do those things. That's great. Okay. It definitely, it's, it's part of moving and, and re-energizing your body. That's great. But the distinction I wanna make here is that when we connect, that discharge to the specific feeling, the specific energy that we have going on.
[00:47:01] And then connect it not only to the physical activity, which might bring breath and movement, but to vocalizing, verbalizing, giving off a sound, whether it be grunting or crying or whatever, yelling, whatever it's gonna be in a healthy way, right? Not at people, but in a healthy way. You're specifically tying that discharge to the specific feeling and energy that is in your field at that moment.
[00:47:25] And I wanna bring that up just because there's a lot of, you know, what I've experienced in a lot of the wellbeing and and wellness type patterns and trends and whatnot that are out there, all well meaning. Great. I love the fact that people are outdoors more, especially after the pandemic. I love that there's, you know, a little bit more exercise and fitness conscious and health consciousness that that is emerging within our population.
[00:47:47] And at the same time, this is about facing and feeling and working with the specific energy, the specific hurt, pain, trauma, challenge, stress, whatever it is that's there. And so I just, I, I wanted to clarify what you were bringing up there From my, my vantage point, from my perspective, because it's made a big difference.
[00:48:09] I know what it's like to go out and disappear on a hike for three, four hours. And believe me, I am happier when I get back from that hike, but it doesn't necessarily get at the root or the direct discharge of the energy that I'm experiencing at that particular second.
[00:48:24] David: You know, for those listening, what Luke is sharing is that, you know, if somebody, God forbid, had cancer and they tell the patient, well, look, you know, we have this laser.
[00:48:34] And we know how to get it down to the millimeter to only eradicate the cancer cells at the depth and the, and the actual location that the cancer lives, right? You don't wanna radiate the whole body. You wanna go right to where the cancer is. Well, these hurts and these wounds and these traumas, these life experiences that we've stored in the body, right?
[00:48:53] Uh, just imagine like there's this perfect mirror and it shatters, and the fragments scatter throughout the body. And your journey through life is about putting the mirror back together. But you gotta go find where all the shattered pieces are. So there is a physical location, there is an actual depth, there is an actual sound, there's an actual vibration.
[00:49:14] With each one of these fragments and what, what you're explaining to the listener is that we have tools to actually teach somebody how to go find exactly where it lives, what it sounds like, and how it needs to express in order to be discharged and dissipated.
[00:49:30] Luke: Part of what I have found extraordinary with some of this work, and without us going into all of the kind of the depth, cuz that'd be a whole training, what you have broken down in the understanding of how we've got our, our bioenergy, right?
[00:49:44] Related to the, to more, mostly to the physical. Just keep this simple. We've got the emotional energy, we've got lower upper mental soul, collective soul, et cetera, type of fields that are running through us. And the fact that what I've witnessed you do, witness you teach and then experienced myself is how through these different phases, through these different stages and the way that consciousness is integrated throughout the whole of our field.
[00:50:09] We're able to recognize if we make a change within that bioenergy, there's certain feelings, literal clicks, and the little changes that we're gonna feel stretching out inside of our bodies. If we change emotionally, other things are gonna change within our bodies. We experience something at the lower mental, upper mental, other experiences are gonna happen, and it's all of those connections that to me, it's as if you are providing a map that we have not been provided before so that we can begin to recognize through our physicality, through what we're experiencing, through our language.
[00:50:46] Through certain patterns that we can witness within all of these things, we can tie that together and be very pinpointed in the way that we work with what needs to be released. And it's gonna go on for a while, right? We don't fix five things, then all of a sudden we're, we're good. There's a whole lot of shards of that mirror that we are still putting back together again, so that we can see the whole image once more.
[00:51:11] The other aspect, and I think this is tied to this issue around culture that we've been speaking about, but maybe you'll take this in a different direction, and I'm gonna direct this very specifically to men, is that we are really questioning our purpose. At this time, and I hear this, it's a frequent conversation.
[00:51:29] Now, part of that is because of the work that I do, and people come to me with these types of conversations, but it's also, well, outside of that sphere of, of conversations that have come up where a lot of men seem to be coming back and trying to redefine what purpose is to them and to their life right now, and it is something that's causing a bit of a struggle.
[00:51:50] Something I've shared with you on this is that I see this provider's dilemma, meaning that in the case of, and I'm only speaking about men, this can be true for men and women too. All right? Just to be clear, but I'm only speaking specifically to men, is that when men are, if they are the primary breadwinner in the household, feeling like, this is great.
[00:52:10] I've protected and provided for my family. I'm doing all of these things. I've afforded us a certain lifestyle, certain healthcare, all the education, the whole thing, but I feel this pole to go in a different direction, but I'm no longer willing to risk what I've got. And so I bury my purpose and I, I don't even go there, but I find more and more men right now are coming back and saying, I've been doing that for a while.
[00:52:33] This isn't going away. There's this inner something that I don't even know what it's calling me towards, but I'm really struggling to connect with the fact that there's a bigger purpose or something in me right now that feels like it needs to be addressed. And I'm, I'm just kind of curious how you are seeing this come up.
[00:52:49] I mean, you serve hundreds of men directly, thousands of men through all the, the seminars and trainings and everything else that you're doing on an annual basis. And I'm curious how you're seeing this relationship, this issue with purpose playing out right now.
[00:53:05] David: Let's have, uh, a little bit of clarity around a few things.
[00:53:08] So if a man was really honest with himself about what is his life really about, if he was able to look deep enough, he would uncover that his whole life has been about trying to escape his pain. It's sad, but if we're all honest with ourselves, we'll realize, well, everything I'm doing actually is so that I'll feel like I'm enough.
[00:53:29] Cause I don't wanna feel like I'm not enough. So if I'm a, if I can provide for my family, well, why do you wanna do that? Well, it's the right thing to do. Well, I love them well, so that I don't feel like a worthless piece of crap. So like most of our journey is literally to outrun feeling worthless and useless and unlovable, which is exactly what Man On Fire helps men with is how, how do you actually just finally face those feelings so you no longer have to run from them?
[00:53:55] Well then there's the guy that is really good at what he does and he provides this beautiful living. But he has other passions, he has other interests. And like you said, the provider's done well. How do I leave the thing that is provided for my family and puts my kids at sleepaway camp and in a private school and afforded us this winter house and summer home and regular home?
[00:54:14] And I can also have my parents move in and take care of them. Like I can't give that up. So, because I'm really passionate about being in a band, right? I'm going deeper than that. I'm saying that there is something that happens with a man when he begins this journey of growth, where it's no longer about what he wants to do.
[00:54:35] It's more about what's wanted of him, or it's more about what's needed of him or from him for the world, for humanity. So to tie in the the six human needs, which was further evolved by Tony Robbins from Maslow, in working with billionaires, millionaires, and homeless people, no matter what country somebody comes from, he said, we all share the same six human needs.
[00:54:59] And he has never seen anyone have a life of joy and fulfillment if they didn't eventually get to a point where they valued the top two needs as their highest needs growth and contribution. So to bring this full circle, Luke, yeah. What's the purpose of a man? Simple to grow? Why? Because if he grows, he is more awake.
[00:55:19] Well, what does that mean? Well, that means that he can be of more service to humanity by serving the gifts of who God made him to be and simply being. Being who he is no matter what he does. Whether he is working at a job, doing his passion, hanging out with his kids. The whole point is to just be you. Be the change we wanna see in the world.
[00:55:39] Gandhi, you were sharing it earlier in your own words, like so many guys are tortured. I don't know who I am. I don't know why I'm here. You're just, you're here to just be you. That's it. You're just here to be you. All The rest is nonsense. But as you wake up and as you evolve and as you grow, you will feel.
[00:55:57] An internal hunger to wanna be of service to others, and that will light you up in a way you can't imagine. Now that's different than, well, I got, I wanna give to others so that I could feel like I'm enough. No, that's called getting away from certainty and getting away from significance. No, no. I'm talking about, I wanna be of service to others because it is why I was born.
[00:56:18] And I believe every man's journey on this planet is to get to that point. Whether or not they get there, I don't know. But I know, I do know that you and I, Luke, in our own separate modalities and ways of doing it, we're gonna pull as many as we can. We're not gonna save every starfish that washes up on shore, but everyone we pick up and throw back in, that one got saved.
[00:56:37] Luke: Absolutely. It matters to that one. Most definitely.
[00:56:44] Okay, so I dropped in this big issue that we could devote many episodes to the provider's dilemma. Let me touch on this just a little bit further for the moment. So I framed this as the provider's dilemma, that being the primary provider for your family, and yet feeling pulled in a different direction, but you feel trapped.
[00:57:02] You need to keep doing what you're doing for the benefit of your family. Hence the dilemma. I know I have faced this one. It's frankly, it's how I recognized it when it came up for me for a long time. As it would come up, I might dream of alternative paths, of new journeys. So throwing caution to the wind and just going for it even.
[00:57:19] And yet I'd never act on it because again, I was providing for my family and I was not gonna risk that. So what had to give? Well, part of my notion about what I needed was misguided. Quite literally was misdirected. Nearly all the time. The idea of purpose is connected to what we do in this world, meaning what we do for a living.
[00:57:40] We focus on purpose as an external activity that's meant to give us this internal feeling of meaning and value. Well, I had it reversed. As David said, you want to emphasize who you are no matter what you do. David has shared and you know, talked about how man's purpose is to grow, and I very much do think that's true, but in a specific way, it's to grow into who you really are, which again comes back to connection as we spoke about earlier, getting connected to the truth of who you are, to the truth of your experience, and getting connected to what you're really meant to bring and give to this world through who you are, not simply what you do.
[00:58:21] The starting point for the provider isn't finding a new source of providing the starting point is finding yourself. Finding authentically what matters most to you? Finding what supports joy, ease, and peace to just flow within as well as from you to finding the presence you bring to life. When you have no masks, no agenda, no judgments, no concerns, no attachments, so that you can just bring who you really are directly into this moment and into this interaction.
[00:58:52] Once you know what that is like, then it's a matter of how can you bring that, bring the truth of who you are into all you do, including what you happen to be doing for a living. It's funny how many people I know actually never even needed to make a change, but simply needed to find themselves and then they fall back in love with whatever they they were doing because they're bringing more of themselves into it.
[00:59:15] Or maybe they realized what they were doing was completely fine, because outside of that foundation, outside of what it provided for their lives, they had so many other passions and pursuits that they could pour themselves into that they had the space for. For others still, it was a time of change, but most of them did it through exploring and trying new things on before making drastic changes.
[00:59:37] For those that were able to jump ship entirely, they created the means for themselves to do so, so that they could have many months, maybe even six months, maybe even a year, to explore, to take some space to experiment, and then reenter whatever path they chose, but with their head up and their eyes and hearts wide open so that they wouldn't lose themselves again in what they were doing for a living.
[01:00:01] We each need to understand our purpose is to be who we are meant to be. And then as my teacher would also describe next, Comes finding the best aligned vehicle or vehicles as it could be, more than one to carry that purpose, that purpose being you. Now let's drop back in with David as we start to wind up our walk.
[01:00:33] So I've got one more question for you, and I'm gonna ask this in a completely different way than than I even mentioned that this may come up. I want you to imagine for a moment, you've got three minutes to be able to say whatever it is that you wish to say, but your audience is a classroom of young men like my son Jake, and you're sitting in front of Jake and all of his buddies, and you get your three minutes to share whatever you want to share with them, to be able to help them, prepare them, support them in whatever way moves you right now.
[01:01:11] What do you say?
[01:01:13] David: Mostly I would say nothing. I would just be in silence witnessing them. I'd giggle with them, I'd laugh with them. And what would come outta my mouth is I would let each of them know how special they are and how beautiful they are, and how important they are, and that nobody, nobody can tell you your value other than you.
[01:01:37] Hmm, who you wanna be in this world, and who you are and what you're worth. Only you get to determine that. Nobody gets to determine that for you. And I tell them to never lose their playful, pure spirit. And I promise that as they age, they'll be happier and happier if they give more to others, and if they give up any form of judgment of another human being, and instead replace it with love.
[01:02:10] That is what I would tell these children, that they're here to change the world by never forgetting who they are. We're all kids at heart. Every disease, every pathology is nothing more than we got away from being a kid.
[01:02:23] Luke: Well, David, uh, however many years it was in your early twenties, you had an experience that allowed you to come home to yourself.
[01:02:30] And I know for the journey that you have been on since it has been inviting people to go on that same journey so that they can come home to theirselves. And I wanna thank you for the work that you're doing. I wanna thank you for sharing that wisdom, your experience, your energy with us here on, on this walk.
[01:02:45] And I wanna thank you for sitting down with me cause this is, uh, been a long time in the works and it's much appreciated that, uh, we finally got here. Thank you brother.
[01:02:54] David: Absolute honor. Luke, I have the utmost respect for you as a human being, as a man, as a father, as a husband, and as a friend. And I'm excited to watch the impact that you're gonna have in this world.
[01:03:09] Thank you.
[01:03:11] Luke: Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com, and click on Community in the upper right hand corner.
[01:03:38] It's free to join until we go on this walk again. I’m Luke Iorio. Be well.