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Shadow Work for Inspiration (with Luke Adler) · Evolutionary Men

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Luke: Jason Lange and I are back.
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Today we're talking about shadow work for inspiration.
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What's the point of all this work we're doing?
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This inner work, the shadow work, meditative work, polarity work?
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Is it to get something?
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What is the thing that we're trying to get to obtain?
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Ultimately, it's to arrive us, arrive us at a place of inspiration, a place of true
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inspiration, not motivation.
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Luke: Where we're motivated to keep pushing and pushing past, but a true anchored space,
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a state, an actual state that's inspired, that moves our lives in the direction of
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not just what's positive, but what's possible and probable with the right support
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structures put in place, which is at the very base of our program, the Heart of
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Shadow, building a support structure for life.
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Luke: That increases positivity and inspiration.
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Now, this isn't something Jason and I talk about often because when we look at the
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shadow, we're looking at things culturally that we often put in the shadow, like
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our grief, our shame, our sexuality, et cetera, and so on.
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But ultimately, at the heart, at the very heart of what we're keeping in the dark,
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is the source place of inspiration.
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And today we're gonna dive deep into that.
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Here we go.
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Jason Lange: Yeah, and this is, you know, different than I think we've talked a lot about and
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people often think about with shadow, because even just in the term, right, we tend
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to associate the dark, the heavy, the the challenging, the disowned.
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But, you know, in our program, we definitely do do some work with the golden parts
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of the shadow, the positivity.
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But I think what you're speaking about here, I think is really important because I
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think we should be clear first off.
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Jason Lange: We're not talking about like spiritual bypass, okay, just gonna go to joy and bliss
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and ignore the realities of of life.
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And we're also not talking about what I call, you know, here in the States, like
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McDonald's American culture.
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Hey Luke, how's it going?
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good, how are you?
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good.
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You know, it's particularly, I'm from the Midwest.
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It's like, it's like a whole fucking thing, right?
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There's just kind of this.
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Jason Lange: It's all, hey, McDonald's, smile.
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Have have a good day.
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Even though your soul's like dead inside, right?
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so it's not that.
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But here's where I'm gonna start where to maybe to paint a bit of a a picture of I
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think what we're talking about here.
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So, you know, we'll do really deep work with guys in our program.
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And particularly when we go on a retreat and we're all in the same room.
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Deep stuff.
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Jason Lange: Will move and be unsurfaced and be uncovered and released in a man.
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Often which does have a lot of pain in it.
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Work on a traditional shadow.
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But so often, when we're right there in the thickest of the heaviest shit, often
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something magical will just release.
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There'll be a joke.
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There'll be laughter.
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Jason Lange: They'll be like crying so hard it turns into some kind of tears, or like there's a
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transmutation that happens and it doesn't negate the pain.
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It actually exists right next to it.
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Of like, wow, now that I'm not being held captive by this deep thing, it's like
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suddenly the dam has burst and something else gets to f flow right back in.
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Jason Lange: And it's it's it's this, I think, that we're talking about here.
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This this inspiration, this hope, this holy shit, I'm feeling and experiencing
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something different right now that maybe I never thought I could, maybe I didn't
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know was possible.
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And that alone, you know, I'm kind of thinking out loud here I as I go, when I have
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felt that movement in my nervous system.
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Jason Lange: It's actually incredibly invigorating.
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It's like, shit, the world is not what I thought it was, and it can be different,
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right?
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And there's actual movement in my nervous system happening here that
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Jason Lange: fills me with, well fuck, if this can start to move, what else can start to move?
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Where else am I inspired?
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What the fuck would happen if everybody got to have an experience like I'm having
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here in the room right now?
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And it in we see it, you know, literally kind of like fill up a room in a group of
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men.
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Luke: There's something that we work on in particularly in the heart of shadow, which is
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looking at where your energy is.
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We use this word kink, like in a hose, a hose that gets kinked up and and blocks
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off the flow of water.
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And we think of it, we think of our state as our state when it's impaired is that
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we're cut off.
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We're we're kinked up around around our source place of of energy, of vitality is
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something.
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Luke: that we we look at a lot, just feeling good, having energy in your body.
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And the the shadow is essentially this
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Luke: energetic and physiological part of our being where we just stuff things into our
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body and of course they block they block the flow of of what what is that that's
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being blocked and that's your life force and your life force when it's open and
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it's dilated has certain characteristics one is that there's energy two is that
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there's a direction to that energy and that the nature of the direction and the
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energy together
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Luke: Is inspirational.
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It's it has an intelligence that wants to move your unique life force, your unique
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being, your personhood towards something that it's meant to move towards.
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And that's what shadow work is for ultimately.
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It's for inspiration, vitality, and directionality.
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And inspiration is something that, like you're describing, Jason, when you move,
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remove a block.
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Luke: When you unkink the hose of your mind body, there's this like joy, this laughter,
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this goofiness, this tears that turns into laughter and gratitude, not as a
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practice, but as a state that that's the nature of who you are.
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You are a being that is grateful to be here.
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Now, are you experiencing that?
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Luke: No, not all the time, but there's a reason why you're not.
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It's because there are things in the way.
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There are things that are blocking it.
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And that's really the the skill and the technology of the of shadow work and then
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the program that we put around it.
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How do you remove these blockages?
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How do you clear the pipe, unkink the hose in a way that allows for inspiration?
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The the good news is that that inspiration.
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Luke: And that vitality.
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That's who you are.
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That's your nature.
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That's the core of your being.
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You don't have to pretend to be that or act as if you are that to create that.
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That can be helpful as a mindset, but ultimately, until the hose is unkinked, we
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are putting on a pretense of how we might like to be.
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That depression in the background, that
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Luke: anxiety in the foreground.
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That has to be dealt with.
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And if we turn our attention upon that kink, upon that blockage, with enough care
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and attunement, the blockage starts to move.
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And that's the
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Luke: It's not really I to say magic, but it's not.
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It's the culture that we've created around The Heart of Shadow, where you bring a
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group of men together within these specific parameters that allows them to, to, to
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experience the culture, their innate culture, their inborn culture that's different
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from how they've been acculturated.
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To be tough, we talk about inspiration and joy, to be humble, to have false
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humility, to, you know, not.
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Luke: not talk about what's good in your life.
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I notice this sometimes in my own men's group, Jason, you and I are are in the in a
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men's group, that sometimes I'm like, actually there's a lot that's good in my life.
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And I'm like, I don't, I won't talk about that.
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Let me look for the thing that's like more kind of like laden with grief or like
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anger or like some kind of s sex sexuality thing that just, you know, we become so
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attuned at looking at
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Luke: The parts of shadow that kind of cultural culture deems as not okay to bring
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forward.
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But it's also, it's also at a certain level of the work, like, is it okay to talk
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about what's like really working and good and important without seeming boastful or
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grand grandiose?
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Right.
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And this is like a whole nother skill set that unkinks the host.
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Look at what's good and realize sometimes insuring what's good.
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Luke: In the same way that sharing something about deep grief can it can be triggering
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for another human being to hear like, wow, you're you're doing really good
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financially and your relationship's going good.
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I'm so happy for you.
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And that contrasts with like my relationship's not going so well.
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And like, you know, sometimes we we practice this empathic reversal where we're
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actually trying to protect people around us.
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We don't want them to feel pain.
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Luke: Because of what's good in our lives, right?
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It's this incredible dynamic.
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It's kind of codependent meshment that actually keeps the shadow lodged, lodged and
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stuck in a system.
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So it's very fascinating.
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Jason Lange: And it's it's it's a common experience guys in our groups have, right?
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Of what you just named, this kind of fear of, well, I I know other people are
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struggling, so I don't want to celebrate too much because then I'm gonna like make
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them feel bad.
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And I shit you not.
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When it actually happens, guys are grateful to hear someone else is crushing it.
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And if something moves in them, you know, I was in I I have a local men's group
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too, and
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Jason Lange: I revealed something in the group that yeah, I've noticed this thing.
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Sometimes when a few guys come in and they're crushing it, it does kind of get
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something moving in me in terms of like, I'm a little jealous.
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I'm a little da-da-da.
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But that was just work for me to do.
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And even just revealing that brought me more into the group.
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And I actually quite like hearing their celebrations.
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It's fucking awesome.
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It's inspiring.
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It just makes it would just sometimes put the lens on me, like you said, of where
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am I not feeling that?
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Jason Lange: And you know, inspiration, I think, in a lot of ways is how I would frame it is
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just the flow of love and consciousness.
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Like when when we're inspired, love and consciousness are flowing.
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And, you know, I it's one of the things that's so fun about the work we get to do.
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It's actually incredibly creative.
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Right.
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So we get into a room full of guys, and there's
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Jason Lange: Everyone in some way or another has somewhere love isn't flowing.
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Right.
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And then we go through this process and we're doing this thing, and shit just
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emerges, right?
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Scenarios, situations, practices, things that you know, yes, you and I are
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facilitating, but we're something's just coming through us, right?
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It's like a moment comes and it's like, I think this is the energetic move.
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Jason Lange: This guy needs to make, and suddenly, holy shit, love's flowing in his life again,
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right?
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And that kind of creative emergence, I think, is exactly what we're talking about
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with inspiration.
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That when we start to remove the blocks, something starts to self-organize.
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And it's incredibly enlivening to experience, right?
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I've experienced it in our work, I've experienced it.
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Jason Lange: A lot when I was doing film work and you're on set and everybody's doing their shit.
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And then something emerges that nobody planned, where it's like, holy shit, the
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light came through the thing, it hit the thing, radio is saying the thing, and
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like, who the fuck made that?
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You know, like it was more than the sum of everyone's parts.
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And that's part of what we're talking about here.
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And what I think is kind of so radical about it is, you know, you and I, as we were
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even coming into this episode, is
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Jason Lange: It's tough times, right?
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Culturally, globally, we're we're feeling the the death gasps of a lot of ways of
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being, right?
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Ways of organizing culture, economies, relationships that used to work but are no
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longer sophisticated enough to handle all of the complexity of the moment.
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And so it's very easy, you know.
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Jason Lange: People make a lot of money by you go online and they want you to think the world's
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about to end.
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Like, and it's all going shit, and it's all hor horrible, hopeful, blah, blah,
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blah, blah.
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This kind of inspiration is countercultural, I would say.
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In a way that, you know, that kind of first burst of, you know, hippie love was in
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its own way as well, of like, hey, we're missing something here.
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And turns out if you take some acid, you can see that something pretty pretty well.
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and it gives you some clues.
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Jason Lange: But I think we're we're on the edge of something like that right now, where
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frankly, I think it's easy to give up hope and to be a pessimist and too.
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And you and I have had to work that in our own ways as the world and culture and
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our lives have shifted.
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But it's again one of the things I so appreciate about the work we do.
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I say this every time, right, to guys we work with.
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Jason Lange: The way I feel when I leave working with one of our groups, of like, shit.
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I feel hope.
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I feel inspired.
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I know that what happened in the room here today mattered.
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Right?
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What that leads to, I don't know.
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But I know it mattered.
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This was time well spent for every man here.
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And I've seen men move.
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Jason Lange: And love starts to flow again in their nervous systems between other men.
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Then it radiates out into their relationships.
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And like you said, they have a container now for dealing with life.
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And to me, that's just about the most inspiring thing I can experience, right?
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And the the cool thing about I don't know, inspiration and the work we're doing is.
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Jason Lange: You know, yeah, you I think you you named it as well.
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So often, our deepest pain right next to it is incredible gratitude.
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There's something about when we just fully feel and confront what hasn't worked,
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where we've been hurt, what pain we have.
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That when that kink gets unlocked, we get to feel all of the other things we've
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been blind to, of what is going right.
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What what am I grateful for?
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And right there's an
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Jason Lange: Incredible research on the power of gratitude and what that can do, you know, for
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our lives and our disposition.
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And again, it's not like over-indexing on it, but there is something, you know,
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it's it's like that feeling of, you know, you just get into the groove of life and
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then it's fine, whatever.
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You get sick.
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Jason Lange: And then you're like, my God, I cannot wait to not be sick again.
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And the first time you like breathe through your nose, it's like, fuck yeah, this
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is incredible.
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Then in a week you forget and you kind of go back to normal.
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But you know, this is kind of what we're trying to wake up over and over and over
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again.
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That it's okay to celebrate as men.
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It's okay to notice what's working well.
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And it's okay to receive joy, goodness, gratitude, right?
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I do this on some of my retreats.
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Jason Lange: Some of the deepest work I do with men is teaching them to fucking accept a
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compliment.
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Someone says something nice to you, let it land.
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Jason Lange: So I like I I had to work so hard with this.
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no, no, no, dad it like the deferral.
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I'm not now you what you don't realize is I could have done it a lot better.
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I'm actually a piece of shit.
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You just don't understand.
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So don't compliment me too much, right?
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This is like default for men, or I don't want to seem like an egotistical prick,
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right?
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But learning, you know part part of the the engine of all this is learning that
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wow, every time I did that, I was actually robbing someone.
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Jason Lange: The person offering me the compliment, I was denying them the gift of reflecting
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positivity to me and seeing me receive it.
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And as I learned to receive it, I can see it actually impacts the person giving it
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more when you can just breathe and say, Yeah, thank you.
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I've worked really hard on that.
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Appreciate you seeing it.
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And it it just becomes this engine.
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Jason Lange: Of giving and receiving love and inspiration.
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Luke: I love what you're saying.
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And and I remember when you're you're and my, you and I started a men's group
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10-ish years ago.
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And it was so inspiring.
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Just being together was so incredibly inspiring, invigorating, enlivening.
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I just always looked forward to getting together.
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And I remember feeling anxiety when our training was over, you know, after two
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years of like this official training that we were a part of.
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Luke: because there was a freedom and peace and joy that I had felt when we were
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together, this group of men, and of course I was afraid of it going away.
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Luke: What took me another several years to realize is that it was a culture that we
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created.
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We created a culture where we could experience this state and that it wasn't going
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away because it it wasn't a memory and it wasn't just a shared experience.
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It was a state of consciousness that we created together that over time actually
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just became a stage of being.
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Luke: That's settled.
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And as our group has stayed together, there's just this elevated, what was once
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elevated has become a normal state of inspiration and support that we live with and
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that we're sourced by.
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And that there are three primary characteristics to why this works and why it works
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every time.
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And why at this point in our work, we don't we don't necessarily like have to have
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faith, like, is it gonna work?
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Like, no, we know it works.
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Luke: Because there's there's a there's a place that we share, there's a space that we
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make available.
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And the three characteristics, particularly in shadow work, that we set up at the
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beginning of every group, we always say this: for the work to work requires you to
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be vulnerable, transparent, to be willing to reveal what's there for you.
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And we're less.
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Luke: concerned with the actual content of like what happened when, and we're more
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focused on how and where the energy is stuck in your body.
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So the first principle that releases the inspiration is the truth.
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Tell the truth.
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Share the truth.
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Now this doesn't mean like saying everything with every detail.
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It means make contact with what's what's
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Luke: Stuck in the body that's impeding this flow of consciousness.
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And that the nature of that consciousness is is joy and bliss and happiness and and
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inspiration.
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And in this, in this manner, we know that if we create the right circumstance for
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that kind of vulnerability and revelation, and for it to go beyond just telling of
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a story.
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Luke: And into this the somatics.
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This is really interesting.
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The root of the word somatic is soma.
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Soma is a Sanskrit word that means nectar.
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What?
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What's that mean?
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It means that when you when you get in top get in touch with your body's energy
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field and you get it to move, it feels good.
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It feels it feels it's something you enjoy.
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It's like
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Luke: Drinking the nectar of a guava or a mango.
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You're like, wow, that's delicious, you know?
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And it feels that way.
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What's radical about this particular work that's different from the inspiration you
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might feel in a prayerful state or a long meditation retreat where you're
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experiencing a kind of peace and bliss that's related more to consciousness itself
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is that this is an embodied relational context.
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Luke: Where you're experiencing these states, which is to say that it's possible to have
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relationships that are inspiring, joyful, and enlivening, not as a mindset, but as
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a state of relationality.
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And that's what occurs in the heart of shadow.
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As you learn to create relationships like that, what's radical, even more radical
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about it, is we're learning to do that with other men, which is.
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Luke: The place where a lot of pain is built culturally around what we define as
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masculinity, which to a large degree is about stuffing, blocking, and kinking up
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your innate inspiration.
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So we shift that culturally, and then the the program moves from being a program
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into a prolonged experience of relational freedom where you get the
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Luke: play out all of the kinks and blocks that you've been taught and and kind of
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inundated with by your family of origin and culture at large.
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So here's the thing.
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Luke: I entirely reject the surface wave that says, we're fucked, everything's falling
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apart.
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It's like, yeah, I get that.
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I get that.
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I see that.
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I watch the news.
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It's like from the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times,
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it's utterly depressing.
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And that's not the entirety of reality.
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We've proven that with this cultural wave.
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And so the most with with the Heart of Shadow.
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Luke: The most important thing what we could all be doing right now is bringing in more
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inspiration and power to our immediate relationships with our family, children, our
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friends, and our local communities.
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And it starts with shifting culture in those relationships.
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Luke: In and towards a manner and a place that is truly inspirational.
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It's not very far either.
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It's not far off.
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It's not, it's not like this distant future.
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It's a choice that you can make.
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And it requires a little bit of effort.
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It requires taking this leap, this leap towards sharing what's real.
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And you can't just do it from learning our podcast.
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You have to come and train.
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Luke: Listen to what we're saying and kind of take it on.
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But to experience it and to build it into culture, you need a practicing ground, a
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training ground where you can make contact with what's inspiring, because the
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surface wave of culture is negative.
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The surface
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Jason Lange: Mm.
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Luke: wave of culture is critical.
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Meaning it critiques, it it's criticizing of everyone.
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It's it's about comparison.
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It's about
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Luke: Naming what's good and what's better.
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And it's not something that lifts you up, it pushes you down and it diminishes you.
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We reject that because it's not something that engenders health and wellness and
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well-being.
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And deep shadow, integral shadow work that includes all that you are: your mind,
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body, your soul, your essence, your history, your culture, your aspirations, your
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finances, your sexuality.
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Luke: It's a complete reformation of what we've been taught.
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What we've been taught is to be against others, to be above them, or to be below
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them.
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That's not, that's not the actual basis of reality.
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It's not.
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It's just something we've all been taught.
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So in our work, it's about entirely about inspiration.
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Entirely about inspiration.
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We invite you to come check it out.
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If it's something that's interesting to you, I guarantee you'll experience it.
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It's not something like maybe it'll happen.
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No.
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Luke: It will happen.
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Promise you.
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Jason Lange: Yeah, I think there's just there's something I wanna name there too around
26:29
inspiration and the cultural moment.
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Right.
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When we think of, that was inspired, right?
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Inspired like that kind of creative emergence I was talking about.
26:40
Jason Lange: It has a forward-facing energy to it, right?
26:44
Something that had never been put together in this way or seen or whatever has now
26:51
emerged.
26:52
Right.
26:52
There's there's something new to it.
26:56
And I think you know what you started to say is is a great marker of the people
27:03
leading us right now are not inspired.
27:07
It's not about a vision of something new.
27:11
Jason Lange: Right.
27:11
It's about looking back, back, back.
27:14
And oftentimes in our culture, the cultural forces, the people that leave the
27:19
biggest legacy, they they were connected to some kind of divine inspiration.
27:25
You could you know, whatever framework you want to put around that, a vision of a
27:31
new way of relating and being in the world.
27:34
You know, whether it's the you know, the music of the Beatles or
27:39
Jason Lange: Martin Luther King, or for me growing up, it was fucking Jim Henson, right?
27:43
Like when you when you really get the transmission of what they were trying to do
27:48
with Sesame Street, with the Muppets, with Mr.
27:51
like that whole thing was a new way of being of like, hey, fucking A.
27:55
What if we treated kids with humanity?
27:58
Right?
27:58
What would that do?
27:59
And, you know, I think it's something we're we're both passionate about.
28:03
But this is the thing.
28:05
We're we're what what we're saying here is.
28:08
Jason Lange: As a man stepping into something like The Heart of Shadow, where you can experience
28:14
inspiration of like, wow, something is emerging here or shifting or now possible in
28:21
my life I didn't see before.
28:24
That is an energetic that is contagious.
28:27
Right?
28:28
When we're around people who are feeling inspired, it's inspiring.
28:33
Like, holy shit, they're not just riding the tide.
28:38
Jason Lange: Right.
28:38
This is this is rowing towards something.
28:40
and we need that kind of I need that kind of inspiration, you know, to this day.
28:45
And the the the power here, I think, of what we're talking about, right?
28:50
I I've I've I've I've framed this in my work from kind of developmental psychology,
28:55
but it's all related here.
28:57
so just geek out with me for a moment, right?
29:00
Because I I tie it like all things to to Pearl Dream, my favorite band.
29:04
And right, they got this song Do the Evolution, right?
29:07
And
29:08
Jason Lange: I I have an episode on this somewhere of what that really is and what we see in our
29:13
work that starts in a man and it happens in a group, and our our conjecture is, and
29:19
then what happens in the group starts to radiate out into culture, community, and
29:24
family.
29:25
Is that in developmental psychology, right?
29:28
They they they talk about subject-object relations, right?
29:32
And it's basically there's what is seeing and what is seen.
29:36
That's it.
29:37
Jason Lange: Right?
29:37
There's what is seeing and what is seeing.
29:40
So if you're the fish and your whole life has been in the fish tank, you don't
29:46
fucking know you're swimming in water.
29:48
That's just that's it.
29:50
This is the way the world is.
29:52
Until someone picks you up out of the bowl and says, Hey, look at that fucking fish
29:58
bowl you've been swimming in.
30:00
And suddenly what was the subject of your being becomes an object.
30:05
Whoa, I can see that.
30:07
Jason Lange: Now I can see this thing, which means me, I'm taking a bigger perspective.
30:12
I am identified with something greater.
30:15
Shadow work, that's all we're fucking doing.
30:19
We're taking what has been fused a subject and we're making it an object, which
30:25
allows us to see it and then consciously choose something else.
30:30
And that moment, when it happens.
30:33
Jason Lange: You know, you could call it Shakti, you could call it awakening, you could call you
30:38
call it core level awakening in your work.
30:40
It is radical in a sense because it's it's taking the red pill, right?
30:45
It's the magic, it's the matrix moment.
30:47
It's seeing the thing that I was embedded in before.
30:51
And inspiration is that, right?
30:53
I can see something that I couldn't see before.
30:56
There's a new object in front of me, which now means I can relate to it in a
31:00
different way.
31:01
And
31:02
Jason Lange: It's radical.
31:03
It's radical to experience.
31:05
And it's not, let me how to f how to phrase this.
31:09
it's not safe.
31:10
What I mean by safe is it's disruptive, right?
31:14
When we start to get inspired in these ways, it's disruptive in a good way.
31:21
It disrupts the the stuckness, the the grindiness of our life or our relationships,
31:28
or the way we're not setting boundaries or
31:32
Jason Lange: The way we're treating ourselves in terms of our health, when we really see it,
31:37
like, fuck, wow, every time I do that, I'm hurting myself.
31:40
And I can see it now.
31:42
That's when the behavior often starts to change.
31:45
And that's the thing, you and I, you know, work really hard in a program like this.
31:50
You know, we've we've worked, you know, thousands of hours with men at this point.
31:55
And you know, you get to start to get some embodied senses of kind of what's going
32:01
on.
32:01
It's like, well, I could tell you this.
32:04
Jason Lange: And then you would do with it whatever, but it's a whole different experience where
32:09
it's actually what's more important is to create the conditions where you can have
32:15
the insight and see it, right?
32:17
And own it completely.
32:18
Because then it changes you in a different way.
32:22
It's not coming from the outside, it's an inner experience of awakening where you
32:27
can now see something you couldn't see before.
32:30
And not only is that inspiring.
32:33
Jason Lange: It's so fucking empowering, right?
32:36
It's like, I am not at the whim of my habits, behavior, trauma patterning.
32:43
There's ways for me to actually work all this and ride this current of love and
32:52
consciousness.
32:53
And you know, as far as you and I, I think can so far tell and experience.
33:01
Jason Lange: This is the best vehicle we found that we're hanging our hats on of we gotta get
33:05
some fucking men inspired in this world to charge the hill with love.
33:09
And I think this is it.
33:11
Luke: Yeah.
33:11
Yeah, it it's clear that it's not, you know, this is this isn't like come try Luke
33:17
and Jason's 10-step approach to freedom.
33:20
You know, it's it's it's not a it's not a paint by numbers thing because it's it's
33:26
really beyond method and technology.
33:29
We're we're tapping into principles of con consciousness, which you named, use the
33:35
word emp empower.
33:36
And truly what you what you begin to make contact with in
33:41
Luke: In this state, because it's it's really not just work, it's a it's a state of
33:46
being, is you you get in contact with power, the source of power, and a euphemism
33:53
for that, which is the title of this episode, is inspiration.
33:57
It's inspiration.
33:59
You also use another phrase that it's disruptive and maybe destructive at times,
34:05
because like a river or like anything in the natural world, it doesn't abide.
34:11
Luke: By its borders the season before, right?
34:14
Rivers change boundaries and banks every season as the water rises.
34:19
And this is the nature of your being.
34:21
Your being is a river of consciousness and a river of care and love.
34:27
And it just wants to keep evolving and moving and changing agreements and
34:32
renegotiating the boundaries, the borders of what's moving through your life.
34:38
And it's disruptive.
34:40
Luke: And it is destructive at it at times, but it is disruptive and destructive in in a
34:47
positive direction.
34:48
The source of life isn't to stay static, although the mind wants to keep things the
34:55
same.
34:56
It wants that kind of safety.
34:58
It's like you said, to do the evolution, to keep evolving, to keep moving not only
35:05
towards, but aligned with something that's truly inspiring.
35:11
Luke: And when we're not aligned with something that's inspiring, the state that takes
35:17
over for all of us is fatigue, which turns into depression.
35:21
And depending on your nervous system, gets sprinkled with a bit of anxiety or a lot
35:28
of anxiety, and then left entirely unchecked, turns into something that's truly
35:34
pathological, that's diagnosable, that's really moves into a state of.
35:40
Luke: Concretized disease.
35:42
What is that?
35:43
Ultimately it's a lack of inspiration.
35:48
It's a lack of true vitality.
35:52
Luke: And shadow work as we offer it, inspired by many teachers, one of them in
35:57
particular, Robert Augustus Masters, who we did some training with, was very much
36:04
about this idea.
36:05
Not this idea, but this arriving.
36:07
He talked about the context.
36:10
He had this very technical language, but he was talking about a a place, a state of
36:16
being.
36:17
And he taught us, he taught us how to navigate it.
36:21
And this is
36:22
Luke: One of the things you and I have evolved it in many, many ways and continue to, but
36:28
it's how to guide people into this space of inspiration and to live there, to live
36:34
there relationally.
36:35
And what's so beautiful about The Heart of Shadow is that you learn to do that with
36:41
other men.
36:42
And then in some of our other programs, you have pillars and I have some other
36:47
programs, we learn to do that with women.
36:51
Luke: So you learn to do that it with polarity.
36:54
And it it's really exciting.
36:56
But really, the basis of moving beyond that is to do it with other men first.
37:01
So much of our wounding has occurred in the with the masculine current.
37:07
And so we need to heal there.
37:09
We need to do a lot of healing there.
37:12
And the heart of shadow men's groups are
37:15
Luke: places where that happens is all of the groups we've started are still together in
37:20
some formation, which is just so inspiring.
37:23
And it's just because they've all tapped that state and they live it and they they
37:28
tend it because not out of obligation, but because they're all tasting inspiration.
37:33
So they keep meeting.
37:35
It's self generative because there's fuel in it.
37:38
And as they get better at relating to other men, they bring women into that and
37:43
they learn to do that with
37:45
Luke: Polarity and it's just it's really beautiful.
37:48
So if you're suffering out there, you don't have to be.
37:52
You don't, you don't have to keep riding that surface wave of rejection and
37:57
approval and hoping to get something or dominating other people.
38:02
There's another path, and it's it's sourced within you, sourced within your own
38:08
being.
38:08
And to activate it, you need others, you need community.
38:13
Jason Lange: Inspiration.
38:13
I mean, I think it's something we all could always use a little bit more of in life.
38:20
And like you said, particularly if you're a man who's feels stuck or struggling or
38:27
lost, you know, this is a place you can come to for inspiration.
38:32
If nothing else, seeing other men transform is about as inspiring as it gets.
38:39
We see this every fucking time.
38:41
And you know,
38:43
Jason Lange: I'll just start to close here with the other thing.
38:46
You know, what's so great about inspiration is it's just another word for aliveness
38:53
as well, right?
38:54
And one thing I've learned about my life, and you know, I I would conject many
39:00
other people may have had this experience, is sometimes our most alive moments in
39:07
life happen when things don't go the way we plan them to.
39:11
But here's the key.
39:13
Jason Lange: Something inspires us to roll with it.
39:15
Right?
39:16
To just, okay, I had this fucking plan and fuck it's raining now.
39:20
Let's take off our clothes.
39:22
And suddenly we have this like, you know, who knows?
39:26
Wild moment in the rain or something that we never planned for.
39:30
We learn to roll with it in a way.
39:33
So instead of fighting it or resisting it.
39:36
Jason Lange: You know, we do that Akido move of okay, how can I work with this momentum,
39:40
whatever it is, and I have no idea where it's gonna take me, and it certainly
39:45
wasn't fucking part of my plan.
39:47
That gets so much easier with a group.
39:50
We've just seen it.
39:51
I've seen it in our group, I've seen it in the groups we've led.
39:55
If we have our best laid plans as men with our goals and the things we want to
40:00
achieve, and shit's always gonna happen to just shake things up.
40:05
Jason Lange: The group can help you ride that wave wherever it takes you and actually turn
40:10
whatever that thing is into an inspired moment of wow, that never would have
40:16
occurred to me or happened that way.
40:18
If I could do it again, I don't know if I'd change it because here's where it's led
40:25
me, and here's where these men helped helped me navigate.
40:29
And I think just this whole posture of
40:32
Jason Lange: You know, our groups and the work we do is essentially everything is workable.
40:37
Right?
40:37
Whatever your shadow, whatever your pain, wherever you feel the most stuck, it's
40:43
all workable in the right container where you feel safe and there's love present.
40:48
And that radiates out into life.
40:50
It doesn't mean life's not going to be full of real fucking challenges, but the one
40:56
choice we always have is how do I want to meet it?
41:00
Do you right?
41:01
Jason Lange: And I've had to make this choice many times.
41:03
Do I want to meet it as the pessimistic kind of collapsed fuck it all?
41:08
I'm just gonna withdraw from life and the world?
41:11
Or do I want to meet it with, hey, this fucking sucks.
41:14
Maybe we could do something better.
41:16
You know, who who wants to come to this dance?
41:19
Sometimes people show up, sometimes they don't.
41:22
I know it feels better for me if I've at least tried the latter.
41:27
Jason Lange: Hey, fuck.
41:27
Hey, man.
41:28
And sometimes, you know, you just come out of with one other buddy, and you're
41:32
like, fuck yeah, man.
41:34
This is great.
41:34
so it it's radical, right?
41:36
Shadow work gets, I mean, it's hot online right now, you know, in a lot of ways.
41:41
I'm seeing other things on the IGs and the shadow work for da-da-da-da.
41:45
and it's not all about pain, it can be about pleasure, it can be about joy, it can
41:50
be about inspiration, it can be about that current, you know.
41:54
Jason Lange: Kind of my original teacher in a lot of ways, Ken Wilbur, right?
41:59
He had always had this thing he'd write about of like this evolutionary impulse,
42:05
right?
42:06
In some ways, of like something, something made dirt get up and write poetry.
42:12
What the fuck is that about?
42:15
Right?
42:15
Like, like really, and you feel it, and whatever that current is, is one that.
42:22
Jason Lange: We can tap into, and you can definitely tap into in a group like the Heart of
42:28
Shadow, and it makes life feel so different to trust that, even with all the horror
42:35
and the pain that's going to come no matter what.
42:39
But that wow, something is moving towards something, right?
42:44
And when we remove the blocks, when we remove our
42:49
Jason Lange: grandiosities and our nice guys and all that shit, it tends to emerge clearer.
42:54
So our job is like, okay, fuck.
42:56
How can I just clear all the kinks and see what's being transmitted?
43:01
Luke: HeartofShadow.com, you can find out about our next cohort starting in late
43:06
Luke: September.
43:06
Our retreat is in Austin, Texas, September, October, late October.
43:11
And we would love to have you.
43:13
If you feel called, if you feel a pull, you can book a call with us.
43:19
We're happy to talk to you about it.
43:21
But really, it's a it's a small investment in a in a lifetime experience that will
43:28
serve you and support you.
43:30
Luke: In a way that I can say like nothing else will.
43:33
So many men have said that that have done our program.
43:37
It's way beyond you know, just a nine week container.
43:40
It can be a a lifetime of support.
43:43
So check us out.
43:44
We'd love to work with you.