Order of Man - Return to Masculinity ｜ ELLIOTT HULSE

00:00:00.000 With regards to being a man, it seems to me that society has watered down and diluted the

00:00:04.640 definition of masculinity. And although we may not consciously realize it, the shift from capable

00:00:09.980 man, strong, bold, courageous, proficient to something else entirely has impacted the way

00:00:16.360 we show up in our lives. Today, I'm joined by the one and only Elliot Hulse to talk about that

00:00:21.020 societal shift and how it has influenced our thoughts and actions. We talk about why boys

00:00:26.080 and men need to be initiated, the importance of the patriarchy, how hierarchies serve men

00:00:31.280 effectively, and why we need to return to masculinity. 1.00

00:00:34.660 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart

00:00:39.520 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not

00:00:45.400 easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:00:52.240 This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:57.320 you can call yourself a man.

00:00:59.880 Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder

00:01:03.740 of this podcast and the movement that is Order of Man. I want to welcome you today. Whether you're

00:01:09.140 listening in for the first time or you've been with us for just over four years now, this is a place

00:01:14.740 where we have conversations, critical conversations, with regards to what it means to be a man and how we

00:01:20.140 can more fully show up as fathers, husbands, business owners, community leaders, coaches,

00:01:26.040 teachers, and every other area and facet of life that we're showing up as. And to that end,

00:01:31.060 we're having these powerful conversations with my guest today, Elliot Hulse, but we've had other men

00:01:35.880 on the show, high achieving men, successful men like Jocko Willink, Grant Cardone, Andy Frisilla,

00:01:42.080 Tim Kennedy, David Goggins, and the list just goes on and on with regards to who we've had on the show.

00:01:47.540 We also have a Ask Me Anything show, which is released tomorrow, every Wednesday, where Kip Sorensen,

00:01:54.640 my co-host and I field questions from our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council, and also from our

00:02:00.140 Facebook group, which by the way, if you're not in the Facebook group, I would definitely encourage

00:02:03.680 you to get there. We've got over 55,000 men in the group, and you can find that at facebook.com

00:02:08.980 slash groups slash order of man. And also we've got our Friday field notes, which is just me

00:02:14.920 and some ramblings and thoughts from throughout the week. So we've got a lot, and I hope that you

00:02:19.460 subscribe if you haven't already. And also please leave us a rating and review because that goes a

00:02:23.860 long way in promoting the work that we're doing here. And of course, gaining traction and visibility

00:02:29.040 for this critical mission of reclaiming masculinity in a society that seems to be dismissing it a little

00:02:36.120 bit, maybe not even a little bit, maybe a lot of it. It's my job to reclaim that idea of traditional

00:02:41.000 masculinity and help you as men step more fully into it. So with that said, we'll get into the

00:02:45.760 conversation here in just a minute. I do have two very quick announcements. Actually, we'll just do

00:02:50.100 one announcement. We'll just do one announcement right now. I'll do another one a little bit later.

00:02:53.840 I want to introduce my friends and show sponsors. A lot of you guys are familiar with them because

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00:03:43.200 We've got a whole lineup over there. So you guys definitely need to check it out. You can go to

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00:03:59.960 All right. Again, origin, Maine.com use the code order at checkout. That is all. That's all I have

00:04:06.040 for announcements. Now let's get into the conversation. I've been really, really looking

00:04:09.280 forward to this one, actually probably for years. And we finally made it happen. I am joined today

00:04:14.340 by a man that a lot of, you know, his name is Elliot Hulse. And I've been following Elliot for

00:04:19.340 some time now, but after dozens and dozens of requests to get him on this podcast, I reached out

00:04:25.320 and I made it happen. He's a strength and conditioning coach and built up much of his

00:04:29.780 reputation by teaching other people how to develop physical strength. But his idea of strength goes

00:04:35.600 so much deeper than that and covers not only the physical, but mental and emotional components as

00:04:40.940 well. But lately he's been talking a lot about the demise of masculinity. And it seems like our

00:04:45.260 thoughts and ideas are very much in alignment and how we as men can reclaim and become more masculine

00:04:51.460 and how it would serve us well to do it. I knew this one would be interesting and unique to what

00:04:57.160 we've done in the past. And I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation and get a lot

00:05:01.880 from it, which based on how it went, I think will be one of many more conversations. Sit back guys,

00:05:08.120 relax, get a notepad out if you need to, and enjoy my conversation with Elliot.

00:05:12.920 Elliot, what's going on, man? Thanks for joining me on the Order of Man podcast.

00:05:16.380 Thank you for having me, Ryan.

00:05:17.700 I think this has been just destined to happen. It's been a long time in the works,

00:05:20.760 whether we knew it or not. Absolutely. I agree.

00:05:23.580 And I told you this as well, is that as I let the guys know on Instagram that I was going to

00:05:27.820 have you on the show and we're going to have a conversation, the guys were excited. I got a lot

00:05:30.840 of good feedback. I think what you're doing is a good thing, man. I'm excited to have this

00:05:34.160 conversation and really hash out this idea of what it means to be a man in modern times.

00:05:38.520 Yeah, it's super important. I'm glad to be alive at this time where we get to do this work,

00:05:43.800 restoration work, really.

00:05:45.140 Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. In fact, that's a word that we use as well,

00:05:47.900 it's really restoring what it means to be a man in a society that seems to be dismissing

00:05:53.160 it more and more. Would you agree with that?

00:05:54.880 Oh, yeah. A hundred percent.

00:05:56.420 Your message has seemed to maybe shift a little bit or just be refined a little bit more,

00:06:01.940 I think, over the past little while from mostly strength to now embracing this holistic idea

00:06:07.220 of masculinity. And even within fitness, you've gone from bodybuilding to, I think,

00:06:12.740 what looks like and sounds like an entirely new approach to that. Why the shifts with these

00:06:16.980 things?

00:06:17.980 If you notice, I started my first YouTube channel in 2007. So I came out when YouTube first came out.

00:06:24.720 And of course, my focus was on strength and fitness because it's my career. I'm a strength coach. I

00:06:29.380 played football. I was always into fitness. My uncle was a personal trainer before it was a thing. So

00:06:33.940 it's what I did. It's my ministry in the world. But there was always a lot more brewing underneath.

00:06:40.400 I've always been a deeply spiritual and religious man. I started reading Ralph Waldo Emerson and the

00:06:47.880 Bible and poetry and all this. I was introduced to Lao Tzu when I was in high school. But I didn't

00:06:54.120 bring them to the world as my insertion point, if you would say. My career, like I say, the thing that

00:07:00.100 I did in the world was teach men how to be strong. And that's physical first. In 2013, when my channel

00:07:10.000 was just starting to get some traction, starting to grow really rapidly, I began a second channel.

00:07:18.520 And that second channel, I called it Elliot Said What? Because I gave myself permission to talk about

00:07:23.660 all of the other things that really were the undercurrent for the things that I spoke about

00:07:29.960 in fitness. And if you notice, even my fitness, the way I would answer questions, which was part of my

00:07:35.220 popularity, was I never answered questions straightforward when it came to lifting or

00:07:39.880 fitness. I always took like a philosophical bend on it. I like when you said the word refined,

00:07:46.560 because I've always been this way. But just in these last few years, I've really sharpened that

00:07:55.640 sword of dealing with men in particular, but not just mentoring to the bodies of men, but to the

00:08:04.440 souls of men. And I knew for a very long time that that's really what I've been put here for,

00:08:09.220 to make men strong, yes, physically, but also metaphysically.

00:08:14.200 Why do you think the shift now, does this come with a level of confidence on your part? Does it

00:08:22.040 come with something that you see in society? Because you could have started from the beginning

00:08:26.760 with this. So why make, I don't want to say pivot, but refining this way of communicating

00:08:31.960 and talking about things on a deeper level rather than just physical strength? What's with the timing,

00:08:37.260 I guess I would say? Well, because I had a lot of wounds to heal before I went into this

00:08:42.980 phase of my ministry. Lifting came supernatural. I was born strong. And so for me to put myself out

00:08:51.060 in the world as a strong man and teach people how to be strong, it's like I already did that maybe in

00:08:56.440 a previous lifetime. It's very easy for me to be a warrior. But this path of the priest that I'm also

00:09:04.040 called to, there were some things inside that I needed to resolve first. I needed to be the strong

00:09:12.080 man on the inside and I had some weaknesses that needed to be exposed to myself and then dealt

00:09:18.620 with before I was prepared to go full on in the direction I'm going now.

00:09:26.240 Well, I commend you for that, first of all, because I think there's too many people out there who

00:09:30.180 pretend that there's something they're not. What type of work do you feel like you needed to do to

00:09:35.320 expose your own weaknesses and really explore that path?

00:09:38.700 I spoke exactly to this, to a young man that hired me for coaching yesterday. And quite frankly,

00:09:44.300 I had to deal with my inner beta, that feminized, weak, sick, sad boy that's traumatized and confused 1.00

00:09:52.040 on the inside. Again, you know, to show someone how to lift when you know how to lift is pretty cool.

00:09:57.220 But to lift someone else's soul up, my soul needed to be lifted first. Because I knew that this was a part

00:10:03.660 of my path. And I knew that healing was essential for this part of my path. When I reached the height

00:10:11.980 of my popularity in YouTube as a strong man, I was called to go inward and I stopped making YouTube

00:10:18.160 videos. People thought I was crazy. I was like, how does this guy reach a million subscribers

00:10:21.460 and stop? You know, it came on for a myriad of different reasons. I like to say the body is the

00:10:27.580 mind. And so what's reflected in the physical is what's happening in the metaphysical. And I

00:10:32.000 started having a lot of physical injuries, but it also gave me the opportunity to step away

00:10:38.160 and to go into a catabasis of sorts, go into the tunnel where I could begin working on those things.

00:10:45.220 How did you recognize that there was this, the term you used was inner beta? Because I think a lot of

00:10:51.760 the times we put ourselves into these boxes and we don't even really realize that we're acting or

00:10:57.300 behaving a certain way. And we also don't realize that there's an alternate way to act that might

00:11:02.580 actually serve us better. How did you come to that realization? I guess I would say that I was

00:11:08.220 stunted in my growth in this lifetime in relationship to women, to the feminine. It's

00:11:15.200 interesting because I married my high school girlfriend, basically the first woman I had sex 0.62

00:11:20.820 with. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. So I discovered the barbell and I started having sex at the same time.

00:11:26.540 So as far as girls were concerned for me, I was done. Right. I didn't need to learn anything else 1.00

00:11:32.820 about them. I wasn't, it was like, okay, I've got my girlfriend, so I'm having sex. I was grateful 0.94

00:11:38.200 because I was able to excel in my business and in my career and with my body and all the things that

00:11:45.120 I love because I didn't dissipate my energy trying to meet women and busting nuts all over the place. 0.89

00:11:50.700 So it was an advantage, but at the same time to be a mentor to men means you've got to have the

00:11:59.800 empathy and the knowledge to deal with them in the type of pains that they're going to experience.

00:12:07.840 And I didn't have those experiences for a myriad of different reasons, but just the mere fact was

00:12:12.980 I didn't deal with intersexual dynamics. And so I never needed to confront my inner beta in that way.

00:12:20.640 I had to heal a lot of things. That was one that was super important for me on the surface,

00:12:26.860 meaning like actually be able to minister and speak to men in that way. This past year has been

00:12:32.920 the toughest for me because I had to confront a lot of that stuff since April of last year to now,

00:12:38.120 but has also been the most enlightening. And this is where I've found you. I started looking at what

00:12:44.560 are men talking about? And I discovered the manosphere. I didn't know this existed. I discovered

00:12:50.520 Red Pill and Rolo Tomasi's book, The Rational Male. All these things were just like added to me at the

00:12:56.700 last moment to arm me with, okay, exactly the language and the tools I need to now bring my

00:13:04.760 experience and the value thereof, because I've got quite a bit of value when it comes to women, 0.99

00:13:10.480 but not in the same way that men are hankering and needing it in this moment.

00:13:15.720 Yeah, that's a great point. I think there is a lot of desperation that comes across in a lot of men.

00:13:19.700 I definitely want to address that. The Red Pill, Rolo, Meg Tao, we'll get to all that stuff.

00:13:23.940 One of the things that I thought about as you were talking about marrying your high school sweetheart

00:13:27.860 is, did you feel like there was a sense of complacency in that you didn't have to pursue

00:13:34.720 women or there wasn't anything from a sexual pursuit that was driving you to excel? Do you 0.98

00:13:42.100 feel like that at all or something else entirely? It was a lot of things. You put it well when you

00:13:47.480 said complacency. When it comes to sex, it's like an itch that needs to be scratched. And I had someone

00:13:53.760 scratched my itch. She's a great woman. And that's why she's my wife to this day. But that itch was

00:13:59.880 easily scratched and I became complacent. But also too, and this was exposed to me in different ways

00:14:07.160 in my life. And then I had to confront it when it related to women. I was afraid of rejection.

00:14:13.800 I didn't like rejection. I don't like being told no. I don't like being told I can. So when it came to

00:14:20.720 women, it was like I muster up all kinds of courage for all kinds of other things that has done great

00:14:26.320 things in my life. But I never had to confront how you would say aversion to a rejection in terms of

00:14:34.000 women. And I suffered as a result of it in other areas. How do you deal with that? Because I can't

00:14:40.100 imagine that you just said, well, I'm going to go step out on my wife and sleep around and ask a bunch 1.00

00:14:45.360 of women on dates and expose myself to this fear. How do you begin to address that in an appropriate

00:14:51.200 way, I guess you'd say? Well, number one, I would say that that colored the essence of my

00:14:58.440 catabasis or healing process. But really, it began with confronting my own inner wounded feminine,

00:15:06.700 as a Jungian would say, my anima. And that took on a lot of different weird, I say weird,

00:15:14.380 but you know, nothing's off limits when it comes to the soul. A lot of weird things that I had to

00:15:19.140 confront and do and see about myself, as it related to the relationship I had with my own

00:15:24.980 inner lover. And during this phase, I did all kinds of strange things. Like I, man, I didn't smoke weed

00:15:32.000 in high school, in college. When I came into this phase, I ended up smoking weed, a lot of it and

00:15:40.000 doing yoga. I was a professional strongman. Here I am smoking weed. You can't do yoga.

00:15:44.380 Are you kidding me? Dude, I was a pro strongman, like, tough guy to the teeth. And I quit all that,

00:15:51.680 became a vegetarian, started smoking weed and doing yoga. I mean, feminine as fuck. 1.00

00:15:57.440 I can see in retrospect, I had the wherewithal at the time to give myself space to do that. 0.99

00:16:02.880 But I was really healing parts of my inner wounded feminine that needed to be dealt with. And that

00:16:08.220 was in the depths of the water. As I started coming to the surface, I began to realize my

00:16:14.100 inappropriate relationship to women, and I'm not talking about sex, my wife, I'm committed to my 0.98

00:16:20.000 wife, but I have three daughters. I have a mother. We deal with women out in the world in a, in these 1.00

00:16:27.380 very strange times. And I began to realize that I had an inappropriate relationship to women. 0.84

00:16:33.100 women. The way that looks is how most men are taught to behave towards women and think of women.

00:16:41.160 When I came across red pill, I discovered how wrong it was and how backwards it was. And I needed to 0.97

00:16:47.820 repent. So how would you describe your relationship to women prior to some of these changes that you've

00:16:54.640 implemented in your life? Well, I'll use one that all men can relate to. Most men can relate to.

00:16:59.300 And it begins with the inappropriate relationship to mommy that we have in the West. There is an

00:17:05.480 inappropriate continuation of the relationship with mother beyond the age of teenage adolescence.

00:17:12.500 Are you talking about continuing that relationship with your mother? Or are you talking about trying

00:17:16.960 to make your wife your new mother? Ah, well, that's a great point. I love that question. Because 0.90

00:17:25.020 that's what a lot of us do. We end up projecting our mommy issues on our wives. And I saw myself doing

00:17:32.760 a whole lot of it. So the big part of the reason why most men can't have healthy relationships with

00:17:37.860 women is because of the inappropriate bond with their mother that's still there. Whether you hate 0.55

00:17:43.800 your mom or you're a super mama's boy and mama tells you what to do, even though you're 40 years old.

00:17:49.420 In all cultures that retained a process which I am committed to bringing back and that I am bringing

00:17:56.120 back, it's a part of my ministry here, is the rites of passage and initiation for men into different

00:18:02.740 phases of their life, particularly going from boyhood to manhood. And a critical, I would say,

00:18:10.340 the foundational aspect of the rites of passage of masculinity, of being a man,

00:18:16.360 is what Robert Bly describes in Iron John as moving away from the world of the mother and

00:18:24.460 atonement with the father. It's more than just an idea. It has to take on a drama. It has to be

00:18:32.980 acted out symbolically. Otherwise, it doesn't carry any weight. And if elders and the men and the

00:18:39.440 patriarchs aren't doing it, we end up doing it in a pseudo way as teenagers and stuff. And it's usually

00:18:45.660 unhealthy and it doesn't really create that separation. But what that would typically look

00:18:49.360 like is, you know, boy starts acting like a man, starts feeling himself. Parents, tribe, elders

00:18:56.160 recognize, okay, it's time. Women and men, not just the men, but the women understood, okay, it's time to

00:19:03.620 cut the apron strings. And so they would enact a drama where the men would come in with masks and

00:19:09.840 strip the boy away from his mother. And instantly that would reveal his inner beta, his little inner

00:19:15.360 mama's boy, because he's going to start kicking and screaming, even though he's 14 years old.

00:19:19.460 Oh, no, ma'am. These men are taking me away. The mother would act along in a drama. But it was

00:19:26.480 critical for him to go through that pain, just like a birthing pain, to be cut away from his mother 0.96

00:19:33.860 and being taken out of the society for a time. He needs to be set apart for a time, almost like a

00:19:42.000 boot camp. You can't be in society. You can't be with your mommy. She can't know where you are right 0.61

00:19:47.120 now. And you can't have contact with her while this process is going on. And so in that separation

00:19:53.300 from mother where, you know, I could stop there, but it then creates space for atonement with the

00:19:59.900 world of the father, which is a whole nother story. Well, I'm actually interested in exploring

00:20:05.420 that because you've talked about your desire and need to repent. You're talking about the atonement

00:20:11.460 to the father. So walk me through that a little bit. I imagine that has a lot to do with transitioning

00:20:17.580 into a man to recognize the strength that men who have gone before possess and then striving to be

00:20:24.240 like that to some degree. Yeah. I mean, you nailed it. It shows up in a myriad of different ways.

00:20:29.940 There are a few elements that are always present. Number one is that physical separation.

00:20:35.180 Is that the drama that you're referring to? The drama? Yeah. But the getting away from

00:20:40.800 meaning like you got to get out of here. Like the physical severing of that tie.

00:20:45.020 Yeah. You can't be near your mom. You can't call her and tell her you're all right.

00:20:49.640 Yeah. I mean, that just becomes a crutch at that point, right?

00:20:51.900 Right. You got to get this kid out of here. Okay.

00:20:54.380 And so another part of that is austerity. There was always some form of physical pain. So fasting,

00:21:03.680 which I think is amazing. Being fed is being a consumer. Anything that consumes is feminine. 1.00

00:21:09.900 The feminine is a dark hole that absorbs and it consumes like a vagina. So all consumption needs 1.00

00:21:17.120 to be stopped. So anything comfortable, you know, your favorite drinks, well, food in general,

00:21:22.020 but anything that you were taking for comfort. So there's an austerity measure. The comfort of

00:21:26.280 mommy's not here. You're going to sleep on the floor. Like for example, my younger brother had

00:21:30.800 the blessing of being ritually initiated by Native Americans. And one of the things they had him do 0.76

00:21:38.240 on this partly a vision quest was of course he fasted, but they found a rock somewhere in the

00:21:45.260 wilderness and made him sit on it, just a stone. And they drew a circle around the stone and told

00:21:50.720 him, you cannot move from this stone. You must stay here. He had to stay there for three days.

00:21:56.500 So talk about austerity. There's an austerity. There's a challenge. You need to get uncomfortable

00:22:02.280 for a moment. What is the ultimate objective? Like if somebody's working towards this and we can talk

00:22:09.040 about what that might look like for a grown man, but what is the ultimate objective of engaging in

00:22:15.440 this type of activity or initiation or ritual? Well, you've got to die to your old self. It's a 0.98

00:22:21.840 humbling process. You know, the word humble also has a root word of humiliation. And so it's the death

00:22:28.320 of an ego. You thought you were this. You think you're so fucking tough. You think you belong,

00:22:32.380 but guess what? No. Can you do this? And so it's called a rite of passage because if you can't

00:22:38.140 handle this, if you can't suffer this austerity, well, then you don't get to come back as a man.

00:22:43.060 You just, that's it. You either stay out here or you're a shame to yourself and to your tribe. 0.84

00:22:49.980 You've got to go through this death process and the men would create an opportunity for him to die 0.99

00:22:55.620 to his ego, through this pain. But with that death is a opportunity. And only then is there an

00:23:03.180 opportunity for a rebirth, a new meaning for yourself, a new identity for yourself and a new

00:23:11.000 path for your life when you return to your mother or to the civilization. I talked about return to the 0.96

00:23:20.300 father or atonement with the father. Well, of course it's atonement with the physical father.

00:23:26.360 It's the men, the men in the tribe. There needs to be a level of trust and understanding for survival

00:23:32.360 and for a myriad of different reasons, but the men needed to come together as men and were different

00:23:37.140 than the women. And here's why. And it's that why and the how that was important. And one of the

00:23:43.000 things with the father would instill in the boy is the sense of belonging to a long lineage of

00:23:50.540 fathers. It's so befitting in the movie Lion King when the young lion cub is in the wilderness. So

00:23:57.440 symbolic. He's lost his father, but the elder finds him, the old monkey, and brings him up to the

00:24:03.520 mountaintop and points to the sky and says, look, you've got a responsibility here, kid, and you're not

00:24:08.920 alone. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your tribe. But look, you owe it to all of the fathers

00:24:14.780 that came before you, your father, your grandfather, your great, great grandfather. And it's so funny

00:24:20.960 because, you know, these are spiritual ideas. Those fathers are long gone. They are ancestors. And all

00:24:28.220 that resides, all that's left is their pattern, which is where the word paternity comes from. You are a

00:24:36.820 physical expression of that eternal pattern or father paternity. So there is a deep sense of

00:24:45.160 belonging, a deep sense of meaning, and a renewed sense of responsibility. Oftentimes with a new name,

00:24:54.680 they would come back with a new look, you know, sometimes a scar or a tattoo. You're no longer even

00:25:02.520 recognizable or recognized as that childish version of yourself. You're new and you not only come with

00:25:09.280 your newness, but you bring the strength of the fathers. I mean, this is really powerful. I could

00:25:14.220 geek out on this stuff all day long. I'm sure you could as well. I also think about the patriarch,

00:25:18.540 which has that root word pattern, right? This seems to be shifting as well culturally is that that is

00:25:23.660 somehow inherently bad or wrong. But I think, man, without the patriarchy, without the fathers and the

00:25:29.540 grandfathers and the men who have gone before, we won't know what kind of men to pattern. And we're

00:25:34.020 left with this masculine energy that we frankly just don't know how to harness. And then it ends up

00:25:39.940 manifesting itself in destructive ways rather than constructive ways, which is what our fathers should

00:25:45.540 be teaching us. Yes. That's where we are today. So how does a guy who maybe never had either a formal

00:25:52.880 rite of passage or ritual like you're talking about, or even informal to some degree,

00:25:57.580 because I think about competitive sports that has a sense of ritual and patterns and rites of

00:26:02.960 passages. I think about the military also has things that are very, very similar. How does a man who

00:26:08.600 hasn't experienced any of that now who might be 40, 45, 50 years old, begin to create some of that for

00:26:15.000 himself in a way? And then even how does he pass that on to his sons? Very good question. And it's a

00:26:22.920 shame that with the secularization of the Western world and our rejection of ritual, sacred space,

00:26:30.980 and ceremony, we threw out religion and we threw out these rites of passage. With all of our cleverness

00:26:39.440 and scientificness, these things that our ancestors understood, these rituals that our ancestors

00:26:45.980 understood were super necessary for civilization just got thrown away and turned into pseudo-initiation.

00:26:55.140 So of course, you know, military or a fraternity, drinking buddies, shows up in gangs. It shows up with

00:27:04.040 these ridiculous affiliations with sports teams or an over-identification with politics. Inappropriate 0.90

00:27:11.960 relationship to what I'm just going to call beta religion. I'm not saying all Christianity,

00:27:17.400 but a lot of what we see in the West is a watered-down, feminized, beta version of the

00:27:22.400 original church. Well, I definitely think that's why we see enrollment numbers for men declining in

00:27:28.620 religious institutions is because it is overly feminized. And frankly, no man wants to be preached 0.99

00:27:33.740 at. He wants to engage in something that's meaningful and significant. And to your point earlier,

00:27:39.280 has an element of suffering and pain involved as well.

00:27:43.080 Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It's fascinating. Recently, I've been really interested in Orthodox Christianity.

00:27:49.280 And Eastern Orthodox is the original church. This is where the original followers of Christ came

00:27:55.060 together in order to perpetuate his message. And theirs is a religion, from what I understand,

00:28:00.860 that theirs is a religion that is not separate from the body. To be a religious man is to endure

00:28:07.020 austerities. I mean, they fast a lot. Right now, it's Lent. You know, people do all kinds of BS for

00:28:13.000 Lent. Oh, yeah, I gave up soda for Lent. I'm like, yeah.

00:28:17.500 Congratulations. Something you shouldn't have been consuming anyways.

00:28:20.420 Right. I don't get it. Well, you know, how about, like, I just finished a 10-day water fast.

00:28:26.880 They would just stop eating. And then they would spend all their days praying. So,

00:28:32.160 there's this sense of stripping one's ego self down and committing oneself to physical prayer. Physical

00:28:40.340 prayer is fasting. You know, I'm so fascinated to read this in a book. I just read this this morning

00:28:45.660 anyway. And we see prayer so much as a metaphysical thing. You sit there and you think about God. Or we

00:28:54.340 see oftentimes these really eloquent guys who get up and they love to show their eloquence through how

00:28:59.080 great they pray. And everybody thinks, oh, wow, that's so cool what they do. Well, the way our

00:29:03.460 ancestors would pray or Christian ancestors would pray is you get down on your knees, first of all.

00:29:09.240 There's no prayer unless you are physically bended knee. And if you look at the Muslims, they do this 1.00

00:29:14.760 great. They get down and they put their head on the ground. It is a physical prayer. You've got to feel 0.98

00:29:21.660 the prayer. That's masculine prayer, meaning it's very embodied. It's a doing. The warrior quality,

00:29:29.920 very masculine, is about doing something. So, it's a doing spirituality.

00:29:35.260 Can I give another perspective on that? And I'd be really interested in your thoughts here because

00:29:39.220 you say that it's masculine. And yet, I think, and I think a lot of people would look at this from the

00:29:44.260 outside. I'm not saying if they knew it intimately, but from the outside would look at the

00:29:48.400 act of submitting yourself to a higher authority is not masculine at all. How would you respond to

00:29:54.940 that? It is the most masculine thing. One of the things that is very different between men and women 0.99

00:30:00.500 is that I said this the other day on a post and people didn't understand it. It's a concept,

00:30:04.820 but women work in circles. The circle is almost like the vagina is a circle and women have sewing 1.00

00:30:11.460 circles. Men work in lines. We work in a, like if you think about the penis or the phallic symbol, 0.92

00:30:20.220 or even like the many phallic symbols in our country, like the national monument. It's a hierarchy.

00:30:25.780 There's a totem pole. There's below and then there's above. And it has to be that way in order

00:30:31.940 for us because as men, we are a clean slate and require a pattern. We require a mentor. We require

00:30:40.980 something to look up to. Because if we're looking down or we're looking left and right, we're looking

00:30:46.260 at the sensual world. We're looking at the Maya. You know, it's interesting. The cross is a symbol

00:30:52.540 that represents the masculine and the feminine in that the vertical is the connection between the

00:30:59.680 earthly self, the lowly self, the down self, the heavy self, and the light self, the enlightened

00:31:07.700 self, the God self, the patterned self. So that's movement upwards is masculine. I mean, it sounds

00:31:14.980 funny saying these things, but like the penis moves upwards. It ejaculates upwards. Men are, we work in 0.99

00:31:22.180 hierarchies. Women or that lateral line is about the lateral world we live in. We live on a flat, 1.00

00:31:30.700 yeah, I'm going to say we live on a flat world, flat earth, although maybe we do.

00:31:33.740 I don't know, man. We may have to have an entirely different conversation if we go down that path.

00:31:39.940 But you know, what's indicative of the flatness of the world that we live in that sets men apart

00:31:45.140 is that most animals or quadrupeds, their spines are aligned with the earth. Only man goes vertical.

00:31:54.820 And so earth has always been associated with femininity. You know, I like to say that because 0.98

00:31:59.900 pattern is paternity, well, matter is maternity. So the world of matter, which the Hindus would call 0.99

00:32:06.740 the Maya, is the lateral world. And so to acknowledge a higher power is to acknowledge 0.86

00:32:14.100 your masculinity. Women don't create religion. There's not a single religion that was created 1.00

00:32:20.020 by a woman because their religion is earth. Women are attracted to things like Wicca and paganism 0.98

00:32:26.220 because it's earthbound, it's earthly, it's sensual, it's intuitive, but not men. Our religions,

00:32:33.620 be it Abrahamic or Hindu or Taoist, are upward. We look to the heavens, we look to the skies and

00:32:41.940 the cosmos and the patterns. But wouldn't you say that women also have these aspirational 1.00

00:32:47.180 goals and ambitions? And if so, is that then them tapping into their masculinity? Because we all possess

00:32:53.800 varying degrees of energy, whether it's masculine or feminine, right?

00:32:57.340 Yes, absolutely. It's so interesting because bowing down is a physical leveling of oneself,

00:33:05.460 which is, we could say feminine, but it has a very spiritual gesture to it. So you are doing a

00:33:11.820 feminine thing, but it's a spiritual gesture. And in the same way, it can go vice versa. So yes,

00:33:17.880 women have a, as a neo-jungian would say, an inner animas. Another way that a Jungian would say is that 0.96

00:33:24.580 inside every man is a woman and inside every woman is a man. We're different as different can be on the

00:33:32.120 physical plane. But when you rise above into the metaphysical, we're all one thing. To live in 3D

00:33:39.640 is to live in separation. And we can't transcend separation as long as we have flesh. So this

00:33:46.040 whole idea that men and women are the same is stupid when you live in a body. But when you transcend, 0.99

00:33:51.900 this is why a lot of, you'll see depictions of Jesus where he almost looks feminine. And the

00:33:57.260 Hindus do this really well. You know, you look at like Krishna and Shiva, you know, a lot of these

00:34:01.660 guys, they look like women. In the spiritual world, we transcend the, you know, penis and vagina. 0.99

00:34:09.920 So what do you feel then is the danger in attempting to make men and women the same? And I think there's 0.80

00:34:16.660 a very clear agenda to make that a reality. We live in a physical world that is guided by

00:34:23.680 metaphysical truths, right? And to walk in physical truth is to honor metaphysical truth. And physical

00:34:32.560 truth can't be transcended just because it's a good idea. So for example, you could say that you're a

00:34:40.040 spiritual being. And a lot of people take it to the degree that I'm a spiritual being. But if I take

00:34:45.480 a sledgehammer to your foot, you're going to fucking cry. No doubt. We're spiritual, which 1.00

00:34:50.580 means we're light. And being light means that we're as light as air. Light travels through air.

00:34:55.780 Don't try to jump out of a building. You're transcending physical laws. You live here,

00:35:01.100 dude. And so as long as we live here, and I got a penis, and you got a vagina, I'm a man. And I live 1.00

00:35:08.900 as a man, I behave as a man, I operate as a man, I think like a man, and you're woo man. 0.51

00:35:17.900 Man, let me just hit the pause button real quick. It has been said that the only thing constant

00:35:22.140 is change. And if you're anything like me, change is not easy for you.

00:35:26.780 Even if we know it'll be good for us, it seems that most men resist change. But if it's inevitable,

00:35:31.800 and in a lot of ways, constructive in our lives, we need to understand how to deal with it,

00:35:36.480 and how to actually embrace it in our lives. And that's why inside of our exclusive brotherhood,

00:35:41.320 the Iron Council, we're talking all about change and how to harness it for a force of good in our

00:35:46.760 lives and in the lives of those we have a responsibility for. We're going to be breaking

00:35:51.060 it down weekly with understanding the nature of our relationship with change, how to take action

00:35:56.660 when we are faced with an evolving set of circumstances, and how to effectively lead the

00:36:01.860 people that we care about through that change. So if you're ready to learn how to embrace change in

00:36:06.400 your life and have some powerful discussions about it and be challenged to take deliberate

00:36:10.760 and intentional action towards growing and evolving, then I invite you to band with us

00:36:16.380 inside of our brotherhood, the Iron Council. If you head to orderofman.com slash Iron Council,

00:36:21.900 you can learn more and lock in your spot and your seat at the table. Again, orderofman.com

00:36:27.180 slash Iron Council. Do that after the show. For now, let me get back to the conversation with Elliot.

00:36:31.900 It is fascinating to me that both men and women attempt to change reality when if they just step

00:36:40.180 more fully into what reality was, as opposed to trying to change it, I think they'd find some real

00:36:46.540 power in stepping fully into what it means to be a man and conversely, stepping fully into what it

00:36:52.140 means to be a woman. It's just more powerful way to operate. It's the natural state, I believe. 0.97

00:36:56.320 It's the only place. That's where our power resides. And that's why there's this evil agenda

00:37:03.480 to destroy it, is to destroy our power. The core of our physical power is sexual. And we're clearly

00:37:11.860 living at the end times. The pendulum has swung as far as it possibly can because we are trying to,

00:37:19.680 I don't say we are, but there's an agenda to ursup God's power on this planet by corrupting

00:37:26.420 the sexes. It's the fundamental basic building blocks of God's kingdom on earth. 1.00

00:37:32.780 And you believe this is Satan's agenda?

00:37:35.620 I believe there are evil entities at work in our physical world. Yes.

00:37:42.460 And then how does it manifest itself in the physical world? And I say it too,

00:37:46.100 I'm guilty of it as well. I say society or they, but I think it's important we identify

00:37:51.460 who quote unquote society is and who they are. Well, it depends on who you ask. There are those

00:38:00.100 who they describe as the Illuminati and secret societies. I've learned a lot about Zionism. 0.96

00:38:09.360 I mean, it really depends on who you ask and what their agenda is. There's a lot of evidence pointing

00:38:14.800 to various factions or groups of people. Some would even say that they are not actually people,

00:38:22.460 that they're extraterrestrials. People would use terms like reptilians and things like that.

00:38:27.900 So I'm not going there saying that that's what it is, but there are people, there are physical

00:38:34.340 entities that are guided by metaphysical forces that are evil or dark in nature. And they're here

00:38:41.840 and we see them and they're strong and they're powerful and they want nothing more than to destroy

00:38:47.520 us and earth of our power. Just like, you know, in the matrix, they use our sexual energy to fuel 0.97

00:38:53.840 their greed and their fear and their ambitions. And so there is a hierarchy on earth. There are those

00:39:01.000 who are in power. There are those who have been disempowered. I can get kind of weird in a lot of

00:39:07.100 these things, but it's worth looking into and considering nothing's off the table for me.

00:39:11.640 Well, that's why I want to have this conversation because frankly, we've never had a conversation

00:39:16.060 like this. And I knew that by having you come in and have this type of conversation, we would get

00:39:21.940 a unique perspective that would at a minimum cause people to think differently about what it is that we

00:39:28.560 see and how we're interacting. Yeah. And like I said, nothing's off the table. And that's why I'm

00:39:33.880 willing to explore. And one of the things that I found in my exploration is this idea. We have

00:39:40.060 a portion of DNA, a very small portion that scientists understand how it works, certain

00:39:45.500 chromosomes. They're like, okay, we know how this works. And then there's something like 60 or 80%

00:39:52.460 of it that they just don't know what it does. And they call it junk DNA. There's this concept that I've

00:39:59.240 come across in my studies that indicate that our, we have been physically changed. Our DNA has been

00:40:05.820 shut off. Parts of our ability to make contact with our higher intelligent have been physically

00:40:12.160 thwarted. And we have been genetically modified to be disempowered, to be robotic, to be slaves,

00:40:19.260 to be easily manipulated. A lot of this is coming forth in terms of our capacity to tap into our

00:40:26.600 intuition through our pineal gland. And we know for a fact that we're being poisoned. And a lot of

00:40:33.680 what is in our food and our environment, we're clearly designed with the intent to destroy our,

00:40:43.220 what in many religions call your third eye, your intuitive eye. So I'm talking about the physical

00:40:49.440 degradation of the human species or the manipulation and degradation of the human species, 0.94

00:40:54.640 because we're being degraded by the foods we eat. They're spraying all kinds of shit in the sky. 0.99

00:41:00.200 Our water is polluted. So we're being shut down. If you imagine a finely tuned Ferrari or, you know, 1.00

00:41:07.980 a machine, and you start taking out important parts of it, or you take out some of the software

00:41:14.000 that it needs to operate well, you start dumping junk in it, that machine's not going to operate really

00:41:19.060 well. And being the open system, much more than just a machine, a human being, we then become

00:41:27.060 susceptible to all kinds of manipulation in very insidious ways.

00:41:35.340 So as you've then explored this path, and maybe even to a degree, implemented a lot of this stuff

00:41:41.100 into your life, in clearing up these systems and avoiding the poisons that you're talking about,

00:41:46.700 and how has your life changed? What do you feel like you've accessed or opened up? Or how have you

00:41:52.500 evolved over that period of transformation?

00:41:56.200 I'll go back as far as being a child. My parents are from Belize, which is in Central America. My dad

00:42:04.700 basically grew up in the jungle barefoot. He had no formal education. He ate off the land. So I come from

00:42:11.700 very pure stock in that way. Both of my parents are very hardy people. They're very strong.

00:42:17.440 They grew up with fresh air and clean water. And so coming from parents of that nature and stock and

00:42:25.040 experience into America, where things are very different, not just physically, the foods that we eat, air

00:42:30.900 that we breathe, but the psychosocial manipulation and conditioning that's associated. My dad didn't go to

00:42:36.400 school. He did not go to school. He didn't go to grade school. Nobody told him what to do. Nobody told him

00:42:40.920 sit down and how to behave. My dad knows how to be who he is. And he's the most alpha man I know

00:42:46.580 by the law of the jungle, by just being out there.

00:42:50.040 Was his father in his life?

00:42:51.740 No, which is interesting also too. He had lots of older brothers and he grew up around like a band

00:42:57.540 of boys. It was like, you ever see that movie or read the book Lord of the Flies?

00:43:01.040 Lord of the Flies, man. I was just going to say that. You learn pretty quickly, right? What's

00:43:04.340 acceptable and what isn't.

00:43:05.920 He had a dad and his dad is a good man. It was a good man, but he had 12 children and

00:43:12.540 in order to be able to feed his children, he worked as a logger. So he drove a truck

00:43:18.880 and was never, ever, ever home. He'd come home, have sex with his wife. She'd pop out 1.00

00:43:23.360 a baby and he'd be on his way.

00:43:24.900 Yeah, right.

00:43:25.460 It was just the way it was. You didn't know he even had a dad until he was 14 years old,

00:43:29.520 but it didn't seem to be an issue because he grew up around a band of boys with lots

00:43:34.700 of older men and it was okay. And whatever he needed to learn, he learned through experience

00:43:39.320 and he was not beta-fied at all because he didn't go to a school system where there was

00:43:44.380 no beta conditioning. And his mother was, she was like a cow. She made babies, fed them 1.00

00:43:51.480 and got them out of the way so she could make another one. So there was no like deep, dark,

00:43:56.480 weird, Freudian relationship with his parents. The Oedipal complex, he didn't have that shit 1.00

00:44:03.400 because he didn't grow up with a mommy doting over him and a beta dad or like many of the 0.99

00:44:09.120 dads that we have here. So coming from that and then going into a school system and the

00:44:14.240 point that I wanted to get to was that they began medicating me almost immediately. I have

00:44:20.320 a lot of energy, I have a lot of vitality, and it was just too much for my school teachers

00:44:25.140 to handle. My mother, my parents doing the best that they thought they knew how to do

00:44:30.500 coming to America and, you know, wanting the best for their children.

00:44:33.440 Were you born in America?

00:44:34.560 Yeah, I was born in America.

00:44:35.820 Okay.

00:44:36.380 And they put me on Ritalin and on medication. You know, when you ask like, what have I done

00:44:41.540 or, you know, choices I've made in my life to purge myself of a lot of this deep conditioning,

00:44:49.380 I, from the very beginning, you know, when my mother started taking me to the quote unquote

00:44:53.580 doctor to find out, well, is there something wrong with my son? Because the teachers keep

00:44:57.920 complaining about him. They put me on medication. I grew a deep seated resentment towards the

00:45:05.320 medical profession and to medical authority. So from very early on in my career, I rejected

00:45:14.020 all doctors and medication. In fact, like anybody wearing a white coat, anybody offering that kind

00:45:21.180 of like establishment advice. So I became very anti-establishment very early on and started

00:45:27.140 rejecting anything that smelled like establishment.

00:45:30.860 Yeah, I can see why that would be the case. What would you say would have been the more

00:45:34.900 appropriate response to your energy and vitality as a child?

00:45:40.520 I think school, contemporary, compulsory public education is inhumane.

00:45:46.440 And what I would have liked to have done is grown up like my dad in the jungle.

00:45:50.460 Yeah. I mean, there's value in that, no doubt.

00:45:52.980 Yeah. King of the boys. My gifts are physical and vitality. And so I did really well in phys ed.

00:46:00.380 And I'm not regretful. I'm just, you know, you're bringing up these hypotheticals. So I'm having fun

00:46:04.800 with it here in fake belief.

00:46:06.960 Well, and I think it's a great way to think about how we might raise our children. That's why I bring that

00:46:11.960 up.

00:46:12.360 Yeah. And one of the things boys is known, that's the difference between boys and girls.

00:46:17.460 Girls learn by talking. You can talk to a girl and they'll learn. They're receptive, 1.00

00:46:24.020 like a vagina. I'd always imagine, and I say that the sex organs tell you a lot about the character 0.99

00:46:29.720 of the sexes.

00:46:30.820 Oh, I believe that. I mean, receiving and giving and everything else. I subscribe to that as well.

00:46:35.100 Yeah. The vagina is passive. It receives, it takes in. The penis is active. It must be stimulated 1.00

00:46:42.020 and it moves outward. It's a doing organ. So boys need to do stuff to learn properly.

00:46:50.320 School systems and, you know, modes of education for boys have to be physical. They got to be

00:46:55.700 outdoors. You got to be working with your hands.

00:46:58.260 This makes sense. I mean, I see it. I've got four kids, you know, I've got three boys and a girl and

00:47:02.400 it's not socially constructed the way they behave. They're all slightly different, of course,

00:47:06.660 but generally speaking, my boys are rougher. They're louder. They have a tendency of being

00:47:11.080 more destructive. My second son, the other day, he came home with a cut above his eye. I said,

00:47:16.020 what happened? He's like, oh, I got hit with a rock. And I'm like, well, how'd that happen?

00:47:19.280 He's like, oh, we were having a rock fight. Yeah, that'll do it. And my daughter naturally

00:47:24.900 is playing house. And she asked if I'd build her a dollhouse with her bed on top of it,

00:47:29.660 which I did. And she wants to make the home and take the resources, right? And turn that into 1.00

00:47:34.100 something that we can utilize. That's what she does. I didn't teach her that. And I didn't teach

00:47:38.200 my boys to go out and have a rock fight. And yet that's what they do. Amazing.

00:47:42.240 I want to pivot and shift gears. I know we're maybe bumping up against time a little bit,

00:47:46.600 and this has taken a different turn in this conversation, but I think it's been valuable.

00:47:49.620 I just know we're going to have to have parts like B and C, and we can do those down the road if

00:47:53.960 you're willing to do that. But I do want to pivot and switch gears and talk about something you brought

00:47:59.000 up earlier, which is the red pill movement. You didn't say MGTOW, but talk about that as well,

00:48:04.300 ROLO, of course. I'd like to get your perspective on that, where you see that fitting in, maybe some

00:48:09.000 of the pros, if you see cons in that, and just really explore that conversation.

00:48:13.740 Oh, man. I think it's amazing. I first heard of MGTOW along with NOFAP basically a year ago 0.94

00:48:20.740 is when a lot of this stuff came across my screen. And it was, of course, came from questions that

00:48:27.060 were being asked by the young men who follow me on YouTube and look up to me. And when I looked into

00:48:32.460 it, it resonated with me immediately. Now, mind you, I'm not judging the concepts by the people

00:48:39.660 who practice them or promote them. People have all kinds of judgments about the guys in MGTOW,

00:48:45.300 which, you know, I think a lot of them are great.

00:48:47.900 And we all interpret information differently, right? And some of this ultimately can be taken

00:48:52.220 to the extreme. And I've certainly seen that. I've seen elements of it that are valuable. And

00:48:56.640 I've seen other elements that are, quite frankly, I believe destructive, but it's all in how it's

00:49:01.500 interpreted and then implemented.

00:49:03.620 All I needed to do is hear the term men going their own way for the green light or the flag to

00:49:12.200 go off in my mind and say, yes, this is appropriate. This is exactly what's needed. Because it reminded me

00:49:17.700 of the fact that in order for a man to be a man, he must go his own way. He must be separate from

00:49:25.420 his environment, like I spoke about in terms of initiation. No man will be initiated into manhood

00:49:32.740 until he goes his own way. He must go his own way. And so, you know, we're approaching,

00:49:39.380 I like to believe, is the pendulum beginning to swing back the other way. So you're going to start

00:49:44.420 seeing these kinds of movements. The very first step in initiation for an individual man is for

00:49:51.160 him to go his own way. He has to go his own way. And I see MGTOW as the first step in the initiation 0.97

00:49:57.920 of the collective masculine to be initiated into the new patriarchy or the mature masculine by men going

00:50:07.200 their own way. So it's absolutely 100% appropriate.

00:50:10.520 So you bring up an interesting point because you said that's the first step. Then that alludes to

00:50:15.000 the fact that there's another step to it. Because ultimately, if we just said men going their own

00:50:20.220 way and ended it there, it would be difficult for guys like you and I to reconcile the fact that

00:50:24.840 we're married and at times turn to our feminine partners for support or mutually beneficial

00:50:31.720 relationships. So what is that second step or that next step after you go your own way?

00:50:36.320 Everything in life, all anabolic processes and you know, people who follow me are into lifting.

00:50:41.960 So I use it this way. You're going to build muscle, you're going to get huge, you got to break down,

00:50:46.840 but then the obvious next part of the cycle is build up. We've got to disintegrate before we

00:50:52.920 integrate. Life always works that way because it's a spiral. I said before that it's feminine to go in 1.00

00:50:59.000 circles. Well, life works in circles, but it's also masculine to move forward and a spiral moves forward.

00:51:04.140 So I see life as a spiraling forward. And so there are phases and you'll see this in every aspect of

00:51:10.540 life from, you know, the anabolic and catabolic cycle to the cycles of the sun and moon of breakdown

00:51:16.840 or moving away from or destruction and then rebuilding. It is only natural, normal and natural

00:51:25.240 and appropriate that once there's a disintegration or a movement away from there, then is a concomitant

00:51:32.500 moving towards. But just like the spiral, it's not coming back in the same way. It is an evolving,

00:51:41.680 moving, ascending spiral back to the woman. In a long-winded way, that answers my question.

00:51:48.900 The answer to your question is, yeah, we do need to move away. But then the reaction to that is we

00:51:54.320 move back together.

00:51:55.380 This is interesting. I've never really considered it like this, but as you're talking about this and

00:52:00.320 the guys who listen to the podcast are well aware of my separation nearly 10 years ago with my wife,

00:52:05.940 and I felt like that was in a way me going my own way and discovering for myself and my own power how

00:52:13.540 to stand on my own two feet. But I couldn't do that with her and I couldn't do that if my mother was

00:52:18.140 around. I had to do that for myself. And now that you're speaking about this as a spiral, I'm

00:52:22.960 considering my own situation. And yes, we reconciled and we came back together, but I came

00:52:29.340 back a completely different man, somebody who was more capable, more sure of himself,

00:52:37.640 more ready and mature to be in that relationship and eventually to be able to serve better,

00:52:45.040 right? To grow together and to serve her and to serve my kids and do it in a way that's

00:52:49.720 significant for everybody involved. That's an interesting thought. I'd never considered it

00:52:53.500 like that. Yep.

00:52:54.460 Very cool. Well, Elliot, I know we're bumping up against time here, man. I want to be respectful

00:52:58.420 of the time that I committed to you and talked about, but I'm really interested in this idea of

00:53:04.020 healing your wounded feminine. So maybe we can address that. And the idea of the inner lover as well,

00:53:10.060 because we're taught that we need to love others, right? As we would love ourselves. And I think what a lot

00:53:15.660 of people overlook is the fact that that actually alludes to the fact that we need to love ourselves

00:53:19.900 and fix ourselves and be confident in who we are. I think most people think that's about serving

00:53:24.840 other people. I think there's an element of that, but it's also about serving yourself.

00:53:28.900 But I think that could be another conversation that we could really, really have something powerful

00:53:33.400 put together. Yeah, I agree.

00:53:35.240 Well, cool. Well, hey, man, as we wind down, let me ask you a couple of additional questions. And we've

00:53:39.200 been dancing around the first one here for a while now, but what does it mean to be a man?

00:53:42.920 I talked about the rites of passage, of initiation. I think it's significant that our ancestors

00:53:49.200 understood that there needed to be a breaking down of and a cleaning of the slate in order for a new

00:53:55.940 pattern to emerge in a man. And it may sound strange for me to say this, but I see men as a clean slate.

00:54:03.420 Masculinity is an opportunity. And whether or not we're inscribed upon consciously, unconsciously,

00:54:10.600 with malice or with honor, it's the mere fact that a man is potential, is a clean slate that

00:54:18.280 makes him a man. A woman's nature is inscribed upon her. A man's nature needs to be taught. 0.99

00:54:26.000 I agree. I mean, I think that's a big part, Elliot, of what you're doing, teaching men. I think that's

00:54:30.880 a big part of what we're doing here. And it's always fascinating to me when I hear guys say things

00:54:35.780 like, a real man doesn't care about what another man says or doesn't need another man to tell him

00:54:40.640 how to be a man. And I just think to myself, that is the furthest thing from the truth.

00:54:45.040 A real man needs to learn how to be a real man from another real man who has some of these things

00:54:50.480 figured out. Yeah.

00:54:51.940 Very cool, man. Well, Elliot, how do we connect with you? I know you've got grounding camp coming up here

00:54:56.220 in the near future. You've got so many other things going on. How can the guys find out more about

00:55:00.880 you and connect with you? Well, as far as grounding camp is concerned, this is my attempt,

00:55:06.740 and we're doing it, to reestablish the initiation process, the ritual initiation process that all men 0.83

00:55:15.020 go through at various stages in their life. The only thing is that if it's not honored,

00:55:20.760 it often ends up looking like a crisis, either a crisis of self when a boy is becoming a man and

00:55:26.680 doesn't know how, doesn't even know that it's happening. Or when a man's going from adulthood

00:55:31.840 into middle adulthood, we're constantly being initiated. Life is initiating us into new phases.

00:55:38.500 And with each phase, there is a requirement for honoring that person during that phase. There's

00:55:45.440 also a requirement for a separation for that person to have time and space in order for them

00:55:51.680 to go through that process. So separate ourselves from the world, we go out into the wilderness,

00:55:58.400 we have time away from the world. And then there's a process. And I mentioned austerity,

00:56:03.060 there's challenge in grounding camp, you're physically, emotionally and mentally challenged.

00:56:08.660 And then finally, what Mercier Eliade would describe as communitas, where this is all available

00:56:15.680 only in the community of other men. So what we have is a powerful community of men growing stronger

00:56:22.640 together in this way. And I've been doing grounding camp since 2016. I do it about three or four times

00:56:28.360 a year. And this year, we have one coming up in June. If anybody's interested in learning more about

00:56:33.240 that and wanting to attend, it is groundingcamp.com. And then if you're just interested in things that I

00:56:39.940 like to talk about, which being a fan of Ryan's podcast here, you clearly are, you'd love to

00:56:45.740 subscribe to my YouTube channel, Elliot Hulse, our strength camp, and also my Instagram at Elliot

00:56:51.860 Hulse.

00:56:52.680 Right on, man. We'll sync it all up. I know that you and I are very much in alignment. I think that we

00:56:58.140 diverge in some ways in some places, which is why I wanted to have this conversation. But I think

00:57:03.180 overall, our mission and our purpose is very much in alignment. And man, just so excited to be able to

00:57:08.940 have this conversation. And I really appreciate you taking some time to share some of this in a

00:57:13.700 way that quite honestly, I didn't expect it to go, but I think it was very, very powerful.

00:57:19.120 And I think it's a conversation that frankly, we just haven't had on the podcast before. So I

00:57:23.040 appreciate you for bringing that to us.

00:57:25.960 Great. And I appreciate you for doing the work that you're doing, man. Keep up the awesome work.

00:57:31.420 Gentlemen, there it is. My conversation with the one and only Elliot Hulse. I told you this one was

00:57:35.320 going to be interesting. I told you it's different than we've done in the past. And I hope you

00:57:38.520 enjoyed the conversation. Maybe you agreed with it. Maybe you agreed with some of it. Maybe you

00:57:42.060 didn't agree with any of it, but either way, this conversation is sure to spark some additional

00:57:46.920 conversation and some additional thoughts into what it means to be a man. And I thought that was

00:57:51.960 the reason we should do it is that we should open ourselves up to new ideas and insights and

00:57:56.980 perspectives that we may not have considered in the past. So guys, I would encourage you to connect

00:58:01.620 with Elliot, connect with me on, both of us are very, very active on Instagram. I'm at Ryan

00:58:07.440 Michler and you can find Elliot at Elliot Hulse. Connect with us there, connect with us on Twitter

00:58:13.200 and wherever we're doing the social media thing and wherever you are on social media and let us

00:58:18.440 know, let us know what you thought about the show. Let us know what you'll be implementing in your life

00:58:21.760 based on the conversation that we had. We always love getting that feedback and hearing from you

00:58:26.020 about what you enjoyed about the conversation. So that's it guys. That's all I've got. Remember

00:58:30.840 our friends and show sponsors origin main, and make sure you use the code order at checkout.

00:58:35.700 Also remember if you're wanting to learn how to embrace change a little more effectively,

00:58:40.400 then head to order of man.com slash iron council. So that's it guys. That's all I've got for you

00:58:46.460 today. I hope you enjoyed again, the conversation today. I appreciate you being on this journey. We

00:58:50.860 couldn't do it without you. And it's amazing to continue to see the download numbers, continue to

00:58:55.240 see you guys connecting with me on Instagram and Twitter and everywhere else. We're doing the social

00:58:59.340 media thing. It's nice to know that this movement is growing. It needs to grow. It needs to expand.

00:59:04.900 It needs to reach more men because I honestly, and truly believe that the more men that we reach,

00:59:10.100 the better off society will be. So I appreciate you doing your part by sharing, by subscribing,

00:59:15.400 and also by leaving a rating and review. All right, guys, that's all I've got for you until tomorrow

00:59:21.080 for our ask me anything, go out there, take action, become the man you are meant to be.

00:59:27.240 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

00:59:31.900 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - April 02, 2019

Return to Masculinity ｜ ELLIOTT HULSE

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