Latest / Evolutionary Men / Offensive Love (with Luke Adler)

Transcript

Offensive Love (with Luke Adler) · Evolutionary Men

0:00
Luke Adler: Foreign.
0:06
Jason Lange: Welcome to Evolutionary Men.
0:09
I'm your host, Jason Lang.
0:12
Let's get started.
0:24
All right, and welcome back, everyone.
0:27
So very excited to be back again with another episode in our Heart of Shadow series
0:33
with Dr.
0:33
Luke Adler here, my co facilitator in the Heart of Shadow program.
0:38
And
0:40
we're here to talk about
0:42
a certain phrase that more and more we're seeing as a way of life and a way to
0:47
engage with this work that is something we actually
0:52
explored and kind of emerged in our shadow work group about a year ago.
0:58
And it's this kind of funny, simple, but I think really
1:02
potent term of offensive love.
1:07
And what I love about this term is, yes, offense.
1:10
Luke Adler: There's.
1:11
Jason Lange: There's that thing we can all think of, of what it means to go on offense, but also
1:16
offensive.
1:17
Offensive meaning like in your face, surprising, outside of
1:23
the norm.
1:24
And we often think of offensive.
1:26
I think, at least I do, in like a negative way.
1:29
But there's a connotation here where what we're being offensive toward is
1:35
sleepiness,
1:38
the status quo, closure,
1:41
habitual shadow, habit and conditioning.
1:46
And so this idea of offensive love is what does it mean for us men
1:53
to go on the offense with our love, to not just wait,
1:59
but to actually come forward in vulnerable ways in our intimate relationships
2:04
with our relationships with other men, with our families, with our kids, you name
2:09
it.
2:10
And so here we're just going to talk a little bit about what we think.
2:13
This is why we think it's such a cool term, how it showed up in our lives, and why
2:20
you should care as a man out there.
2:23
Luke Adler: There's two things that are
2:26
surrounding this term offensive love.
2:28
And you mentioned,
2:30
you mentioned them both.
2:32
One is this experience of shock
2:35
in the sense of
2:37
the word offensive.
2:38
And shock, again, like you said, is
2:42
normally looked at as
2:44
not a great thing, not good for you, not healthy for you.
2:49
And it's interesting to highlight that, because what would keep us from being on the
2:54
offense or
2:57
offensive and bringing our love and our heartfulness into the world is that we've
3:02
experienced some kind of shock around our heart.
3:05
We've experienced
3:08
that
3:10
negative sense of surprise,
3:12
and
3:13
we wall up, we get protective and we sit back because
3:19
that's an experience.
3:20
We instinctually,
3:22
reflexively don't want to have it.
3:25
It's
3:27
usually hurtful when we experience shock, something that we didn't expect happens,
3:33
that we didn't want to happen,
3:37
and
3:39
we just naturally begin to set up
3:42
not so much boundaries, but barriers to avoid that experience.
3:47
And so it keeps us from wanting to be on the offense.
3:50
And to, God forbid, be offensive and bringing our heart really forward.
3:56
But you just mentioned something that's really great and not commonly associated
3:59
with shock, and that's the shock of being blown open in a positive way when someone
4:05
brings a blast or a burst of enthusiasm and love and
4:11
really seeing
4:12
you for who you are.
4:14
And there's a transmission of energy right to the heart, right to the
4:21
brain, where you get woken up to what's good and what's possible
4:27
and beautiful and wonderful.
4:29
And that kind of shock is something
4:32
that we welcome and is part of this
4:35
skill, more advanced skill of offensive love.
4:39
There's being on the offense and then there's being offensive.
4:43
There's.
4:43
There's bringing it into someone's field with a, with a.
4:47
The intention to wake them up.
4:51
So I'll, I'll set it down there just for a moment that you run with it.
4:56
Jason Lange: Wakefulness, I think, is a great way to put this.
4:58
And right when we're talking about offensiveness,
5:01
it's important to name what we're pointing to is offensive towards a certain kind of
5:07
culture or way of being or sleepiness.
5:11
That, yes, exists at a societal level, but also, you know, as both
5:17
of us are in long term relationships can exist and emerge in an intimate
5:22
relationship where there's kind of this patterning, default way of being.
5:28
You know, what we often call in couples work, like our dance, oh, you do this, I do
5:34
this, you do this, I do this.
5:36
It's like
5:37
as repetitive as you can imagine.
5:39
Even with all the growth and work, it's like, fuck, I get triggered.
5:42
Then she does this and here we are again, right?
5:45
So what we're talking about is
5:47
offending that saying, you know what?
5:50
No,
5:51
no, I can feel all my protection, all my wounding, all my projection as
5:57
to why it's all your fault.
5:58
And you know what?
5:59
I'm just going to slice through all of that.
6:02
And you know, so many men that come to work with us,
6:06
one of the many things they want to work with us on is becoming better leaders in
6:10
their relationship, right?
6:11
There's so much energy and attention these days and men having healthy masculine and
6:16
being able to lead.
6:17
And this is a big part of it, right?
6:20
It's not just making a plan for what to do with my wife or my partner
6:26
or whatever.
6:27
It's.
6:28
Can I actually lead our relationship into more honesty, vulnerability,
6:34
truth and
6:36
relationality, Meaning actually being present with each other
6:41
right here and now, regardless of all the crap we've accumulated or are afraid of in
6:46
the future, all that patterning in a way and, you know, this term is so great
6:50
because, yeah, right, Offense.
6:53
What's kind of the opposite?
6:54
It's defense.
6:55
And right.
6:56
If we've been shocked before,
6:59
this is what starts to emerge.
7:00
We create some kind of defensive system inside of us, right?
7:03
We're in a mode of protection.
7:07
And so whether that's not stepping towards a partner, not speaking our truth,
7:14
there's these different defensive mechanisms that us men, certainly me, have taken
7:19
on before.
7:20
Where then it's more like I'm waiting,
7:24
right?
7:24
I'm in a defended position, so I'm waiting,
7:28
maybe tracking what's about to happen, but I'm not necessarily moving things forward
7:34
in.
7:35
This is a real theme that came up in our personal group last year of the different
7:39
ways we were each waiting in our relationship.
7:43
And what would it mean to boldly not wait,
7:47
to cut through, to come in, to take the initiative
7:52
and try something else, to go on offense
7:58
with our love.
7:59
And this is not something I was ever trained in.
8:03
I sure as shit never had it modeled for me in my life.
8:07
And it's been something I've really had to
8:11
build capacity for.
8:13
Another way to think about this, right, is
8:17
two ways this really shows up in my relationship is
8:23
just touch, right?
8:25
My whole wiring system with touch, easy for me to go into neglect, to not need
8:30
touch, and then to not touch my partner.
8:32
And if that goes on long enough, bad things happen in our relationship.
8:36
So for me, going on offense has been learning to move toward touch, even
8:42
when it's not my habit.
8:44
And I don't mean sexual touch.
8:45
I just mean get close to my wife, kiss her, embrace her, hold her, make the effort
8:51
to walk across the room when we have that three or four minutes between kid chaos
8:57
and connect.
8:58
Wow.
8:58
Hey, I see you.
8:59
You're important to me.
9:01
I like you.
9:02
Something as simple as that, in some ways communicated with touch.
9:05
That's been a big one for me to learn to go on offense, as is probably the much
9:09
deeper one of tension,
9:13
right?
9:14
Ah, I feel some tension brewing here.
9:18
Something's going on.
9:20
Maybe it has to do with me because, oh, fuck, I said I was going to do that thing.
9:23
I didn't do that thing.
9:24
Or.
9:25
Or, I don't know, I just feel something's up with her.
9:27
And I don't know,
9:28
my old pattern would be, well, I'm just gonna ignore that.
9:32
You know, I would treat it like
9:36
an ache in my body, right?
9:38
I think something's wrong with my.
9:40
With my muscle.
9:42
Just ignore it.
9:42
Luke Adler: Just push through it.
9:43
Jason Lange: It'll handle itself, right?
9:44
Like that's how so many of us men deal with our health.
9:48
And that's how a large part of me dealt with the health of my relationship for a
9:53
while.
9:53
Well, I'll just kind of ignore it.
9:55
Maybe pretend it's not there and then it'll go away.
9:58
Going on offense has been.
10:00
Well, a.
10:01
Yeah, I'm going to go schedule that colonoscopy and just get it done.
10:05
Right.
10:05
I was literally did that this year
10:08
or.
10:09
Okay.
10:10
I can feel there's some tension here in our relationship.
10:13
So I'm not going to wait for her
10:16
like I would in the past.
10:17
She would have to
10:19
hey, da da da da, da, da, da da da da.
10:21
And then I'd be like, fucking stop nagging me.
10:24
And instead it's like, hey, I'm gonna step in.
10:26
Is something going on?
10:28
Or I noticed we haven't connected or maybe you're mad at me or I'm feeling this and
10:32
instead we turn right towards the tension.
10:34
So it's like going on offense into the fray is this capacity that
10:40
more and more, I think
10:44
men who really want to succeed in intimate relationship and really any relationship
10:50
need to cultivate.
10:52
And
10:53
I'll close here with then what often gets in the way of that is ding, ding, ding, lo
10:57
and behold, surprise, surprise, shadow of shit that hurt us from these previous
11:02
shocks, this previous wounding where we had to build defense mechanisms, where we
11:06
sometimes are conscious or even not conscious of why we don't go on offense.
11:12
Luke Adler: Yeah,
11:14
the stored pain in the shadow in that repository, that storehouse of
11:21
everything I just don't want to deal with and feel.
11:24
It's just there, right?
11:25
It's there and it's not there.
11:26
It's not there at our conscious awareness.
11:29
It's below that.
11:30
And it's acting as a, as a drag or an anchor in a negative sense.
11:35
It's slowing us down.
11:38
And to use the double entendre of the word waiting, like you mentioned, we're
11:43
waiting, waiting it out.
11:45
It's also like we're starting to.
11:48
The more we do that, the more we weigh w a d e we
11:53
in the heavy, soggy waters
11:56
that have been unexamined and unexplored within our.
12:00
Within our body and energetic system.
12:03
And that's the shadow.
12:04
That's.
12:05
That's why you and I have dedicated so much of our, of our healing work towards
12:09
shadow work.
12:10
Because you can function in relationship that way without being offensive.
12:16
But very
12:19
it not.
12:20
Is it insidiously?
12:21
Yeah, insidiously.
12:22
Slowly.
12:24
The, the smoldering kind of
12:29
inflammation of what we've not examined builds and it builds and it builds.
12:34
And then like you said, the relationship starts to feel
12:38
heavy.
12:38
Starts the relationship as a body of, of existence starts to feel
12:44
sluggish and not inspiring and not passionate.
12:48
And then that's where we get into these patterns of like just using sex to like
12:52
discharge all the pain temporarily
12:56
that's stuck in the shadow, which we won't get into the anatomy of that now.
13:01
And
13:02
the relationship doesn't have that spark and passion that hopefully it had in the
13:08
beginning when there wasn't all the baggage and patterning of not looking at
13:14
what was uncomfortable, that we never cultivated the skills to do so, which is what
13:19
we do in
13:20
the shadow work that we facilitate
13:23
together in heart of Shadow program and
13:26
one on ones is we teach men how to feel
13:30
all of those feelings, how to excavate what's been put in the background of their
13:36
being and build the skills to recognize that pattern.
13:40
And like you said so beautifully, that's what I used to do.
13:43
That's what I was taught.
13:45
Now
13:47
I'm doing the gritty work of catching it and moving into offense to set a new groove
13:52
in my brain and a new pattern in my system energetically.
13:57
And it just actually becomes a new way of being.
14:01
I'm on offense.
14:02
I'm detecting, I'm not vigilant, but I'm aware because my priority
14:07
is love and connection
14:10
rather than survival and storing my pain.
14:14
So what that, what that leads to is
14:18
really at the heart of our work, which is this archetype that
14:23
we don't cultivate systematically, but it starts to occur over time, which
14:30
we move from walling up and storing our pain and enduring to the archetype of
14:35
fire tending or
14:38
what I like to call the hearth holder.
14:41
So we're, we're like, we become really skillful at tending all of these
14:46
beautiful fires in our lives with wrapping the hearth of our care around them.
14:53
And the thing about fire is, of course, if it burns too hot, it burns out.
14:57
There's.
14:58
There needs to be some containment to fire.
15:01
And then if it's just, you know,
15:03
embers and it's not really flaming enough, it's not warm.
15:08
So in offensive love and
15:12
you know, being, being offensive and being on offense, we're looking to,
15:18
we're looking first and foremost at what we care about.
15:21
What in our lives do we really care about?
15:23
What's the most important thing?
15:25
And then tending that, well, not too much, not too little, but kind of having our,
15:30
having our attention on it.
15:32
And
15:33
that's the ultimate skill that we build in the Work that, that we teach.
15:40
Jason Lange: Yeah.
15:40
And it.
15:40
It.
15:41
You know, what's so great about this
15:44
kind of phrase and way of being is,
15:47
you know, we're talking about it specifically relationally here, but this is also
15:53
just another metaphor for the work itself.
15:56
So part of the heart of shadow and
16:00
the shift men make when they step into this kind of shadow work and container is
16:05
this whole idea of the power of turning toward
16:10
our pain.
16:10
So we spend most of our lives, particularly as men,
16:14
being taught
16:16
and trying to get away
16:19
from our pain, away from our shame, away from our grief, away from our fear,
16:25
insecurity for some of us, away from our anger.
16:29
Right.
16:30
And that has all kinds of downstream effects, right?
16:33
Because like you said,
16:35
when we're
16:37
turning away from it,
16:40
essentially we are kind of, in all the ways you just said, we're waiting,
16:45
right?
16:45
We're waiting for that pain to just handle itself, and then we're waiting in the
16:50
stagnancy of that water and then it's weighing us down over time.
16:55
Right.
16:55
I mean, there's so many ways we can rock that out now that I see it,
17:00
but the turning towards that's going on offense, it's right.
17:05
Okay.
17:05
I'm actually,
17:07
what would it mean for me to
17:10
consciously,
17:12
responsibly
17:14
and at the right pace, turn towards this pain so I can feel it and metabolize
17:20
it and not be run by it and free myself from it?
17:24
So it's not just something we're doing relationally, but offensive love is something
17:28
we bring to ourselves too, right.
17:30
Of, wow.
17:31
This thing
17:33
that's been sitting inside of me, right.
17:36
And almost every man we work with, whether they've done a lot of work or not,
17:42
this is what surprises, I think, a lot of people is we often have an intuitive sense
17:48
of what's in there.
17:50
We might not know how to get to it.
17:52
We might not exactly know how to label it, but yeah, there's something in there for
17:57
me, right.
17:58
And I've been afraid to go there and not known how to go there, been frustrated
18:01
because I haven't been able to go there.
18:03
And going on offense means, okay, I'm going to get support, get
18:09
coaches, get a group.
18:11
I'm going to get into the necessary space and conditions where I can go right at
18:16
this thing so it stops controlling me in a sense so I can free myself from it and
18:21
build a different kind of relationship with it.
18:23
And that's going on offense.
18:24
And the thing about offense, right.
18:27
Even though in a lot of ways it's often glorified of to be offensive Lineman or on
18:32
the team or whatnot.
18:33
There's a way offense comes with a unique kind of vulnerability
18:39
because we can kind of
18:41
be in defense for a long time and not open ourselves up, right?
18:45
I can just wait in a defended position.
18:48
But to go on offense means I'm actually moving the ball forward, literally and
18:54
metaphorically here, right?
18:55
Which means there's a risk something else could happen,
18:59
right?
19:00
I might get another shock, I might get rejected, I might get hurt.
19:03
It's just the nature of what it means to be vulnerable, to open ourselves up to
19:08
something when it's scary and unknown and uncertain.
19:12
And it's also, though, what makes this so powerful is a kind of leadership that men
19:17
and men we work with are continuing more and more to step into of.
19:22
Oh yeah, there is leadership in vulnerability,
19:27
in going first in speaking to the truth of what I'm actually feeling or seeing in
19:32
the system with my wife or in her or with a friend or with a co worker with a kid
19:38
going on offense.
19:39
In that way, it is vulnerable because what we're saying is I'm willing to take a
19:44
risk here with whatever is playing out in service of something
19:49
deeper.
19:51
I don't know if it's going to work.
19:53
This is what makes it so vulnerable, right?
19:56
When maybe see a partner or a wife and they're kind of in their thing and it's like,
20:01
oh, my God, I can feel how this whole day is going to play out, right?
20:05
Like beat by beat, I know what happens.
20:08
And okay, fuck it, I'm gonna walk over there, I'm gonna pick her up, I'm gonna twirl
20:12
her and I'm gonna say, I fucking love you.
20:16
We can do this.
20:19
She might slap me in the face, right?
20:21
And be like, ah, no, you know, I don't know any of it's possible, but is it worth
20:26
the risk?
20:27
Yes.
20:28
Because maybe in that 30 seconds, we cut through to something deeper
20:34
that changes the course of our day, week, month, even year.
20:38
But it's that willingness to kind of go on offense
20:42
for the sake of depth and love and consciousness and transparency and vulnerability.
20:48
You know, things we teach in our program
20:51
that I think is so meaningful.
20:52
And, you know,
20:54
I'll just share that.
20:55
This isn't just with romantic partners we're talking about here.
21:00
Like I've said, right?
21:01
We've seen it in recently in our groups of what it means to cut through the bullshit
21:06
of how we're supposed to relate as men.
21:09
And a man you've maybe never even met before, you can say, I love you.
21:13
And it's a real thing.
21:15
It's not like fake.
21:16
It's, holy shit.
21:17
In going this deep and revealing and being transparent.
21:21
You know, I was just doing my Labor Day retreat, saw it there as well.
21:24
Like, there's a way we can cut right through that.
21:28
And it is a shock
21:31
to the system of, like, wait, no, this can't be real, or I don't know, right?
21:35
And then it's like, well, no, fuck, this is as real as it gets, actually, because
21:40
we're really two human beings and we're here with each other and we're open and
21:44
we're transparent and we're not hiding.
21:47
And that, turns out, often opens us to, you know, in some ways, I think what is
21:53
one of our default states, which is care, compassion and love.
21:57
Luke Adler: Like you mentioned,
22:00
all of this starts within, right?
22:02
We're waiting because
22:04
there's a voice inside that says to wait.
22:07
There's a voice that says, be careful.
22:10
Don't
22:11
watch what she's doing.
22:15
Wait, see what's happening over there, and then calculate my move.
22:20
And if you're hearing this pod and thinking, wow, this sounds great, I'm just going
22:24
to try it, or, wow, that sounds really scary to just.
22:28
Just go on offense.
22:29
I'm getting.
22:30
I'm pretty damn good at defense.
22:32
You know, I'm like the Alabama, or, you know, Alabama under Nick Saban defense.
22:38
So.
22:40
But really, what we're talking about is winning.
22:42
You know, we want to win.
22:43
We want to win the game.
22:44
We want to win the championship.
22:45
We want.
22:46
The game of life is about love and connection.
22:48
That's what it's about.
22:50
That's what we think.
22:52
It's not about
22:53
eking by and
22:55
hoping for a sliver or a crumb of goodness and joy, right?
22:59
No, it's not.
23:00
That's actually not what it's about, to be frank.
23:04
So how do you do it?
23:06
Well, yeah, you gotta bring that
23:10
offensive love to yourself first.
23:12
The care, the
23:14
warm, the warmth that you didn't get in your nervous system growing up.
23:19
And,
23:20
you know, I've noticed recently
23:25
within myself,
23:27
I
23:28
am really good at bringing warmth and love to people.
23:32
But there's a flavor of it that doesn't actually come natural to me.
23:37
My mom was incredibly steady and loving and enthusiastic and supportive
23:44
in her feelings, you know, in.
23:46
In the way she smiled and looked at me and touched me and Right.
23:49
Held me.
23:51
But I don't have memories of, like, of that from my father.
23:55
I don't have memories of him coming towards me.
23:58
I don't have memories of him,
24:00
like, looking at me Eye to eye with a hand and saying, you know, great job, son, or
24:06
I see you
24:07
or I love you.
24:08
And the times that I did hear that,
24:11
they were.
24:12
They weren't warm, you know, they were.
24:15
They were.
24:19
They weren't clear.
24:21
They were
24:24
not necessarily sarcastic, but I guess a little cool.
24:27
I wouldn't say cold, but more matter of fact.
24:32
So there's.
24:33
There's.
24:33
There's kind of two flavors of offense.
24:35
There's.
24:36
There's.
24:36
And I don't necessarily want to say masculine, feminine, but there's a kind of.
24:41
There's the love and care you feel from a father, where you feel, like, protected
24:44
and seen, and then there's the love and care you feel from a mother, which is, like,
24:49
you know, warm and held.
24:52
And I guess those are the directions of it.
24:54
It's kind of this.
24:55
This heldness that lifts you up.
24:57
It's a little more masculine, and this.
24:59
This sense of being held, and you can settle down.
25:02
It's more feminine.
25:03
So there's.
25:04
There's these two flavors of it.
25:07
And, you know, in my system, I have a deficit around the.
25:11
The masculine one.
25:13
So
25:14
sometimes I.
25:19
It's actually not familiar for me at all when I see that.
25:23
And when I see it, it's kind of foreign to me.
25:25
I'm like.
25:26
When I hear someone say, oh, I'm proud of you, or, you know, I really want to
25:30
acknowledge you, I'm like, the.
25:32
What do you.
25:33
Like, why do you need that?
25:34
You know what I mean?
25:35
Like, it's like just.
25:37
It's.
25:37
It's a total blind spot.
25:39
So offensive.
25:41
Love is really the landscape of our inner work and how to bring dimensions of love
25:46
to our own being that we then can transmit.
25:50
You know, this is a transmission, like we've been saying, and there are really two
25:55
textures of it.
25:57
And you may have gotten one, not the other.
25:59
You may have gotten neither of them.
26:01
You may have gotten a diluted version of them.
26:04
But what we do know is they can.
26:07
When you tap into them, there's a.
26:10
There is a, you know, a universal current
26:14
that they're both connected to.
26:15
And we could say a spirit, a spirited current.
26:19
And so the more you work on it, the more full and potent they become.
26:25
In other words, you can't pretend, you know, it's like, oh, I want to be on offense.
26:29
It's like, good.
26:30
Bring that to yourself.
26:31
And really, you know, having a group of men you can template that off of practice
26:37
with is
26:39
the dojo, the crucible to build that skill and then bring that into
26:45
your relationships that matter most.
26:48
To you.
26:49
Jason Lange: And having that
26:52
community, that masculine love container we've seen is
26:56
one of the most powerful parts of this.
26:58
So.
26:59
Right.
26:59
You can imagine.
27:00
Yeah.
27:01
Like, again, we love to win, we love football, we love metaphors.
27:05
It's nice to have a team
27:08
at your side.
27:10
Right.
27:10
So when we go out there and take a risk
27:13
in our relationships with our kids, with our loved ones, with our family members,
27:18
having a source of love we can come back to
27:23
is one of the most transformational things you and I have experienced in our men's
27:26
group.
27:27
We've now,
27:29
we've seen in
27:31
already all eight of the heart of shadow groups we've created and many other work,
27:35
types of work and stuff we've done for groups.
27:37
And there is this very unique texture of masculine love that I think is
27:43
undervalued in our society in a lot of ways.
27:46
A lot of people don't even know how to name it, and many people have just frankly
27:49
never discovered it.
27:52
And the amazing thing we see in our groups over and over again is
27:57
it's like
28:00
a fusion nuclear reactor.
28:04
It's almost
28:06
unbelievable
28:08
how powerful it is, how clean burning it is, and how available
28:14
it actually is when we plug into it.
28:17
And time and time again, what we've seen is men who come in, who didn't even know
28:22
what they were missing, and then they experience it.
28:25
And in some ways it can create a little grief where it's like,
28:30
how on earth
28:32
did I survive
28:34
for 30, 40, 50, 60 years without this?
28:39
Because it's like seeing.
28:40
It's like for me, discovering, like, oh, my God, Yeah.
28:43
It's like half of my engine was off my whole life and everything was a little harder
28:48
than it needed to be.
28:49
And then just having this incredible love that's like, I'm here, I'm with you, I see
28:55
you, I want the best for you, and
28:58
I welcome you exactly as you are in this moment.
29:01
I don't need shit from you.
29:03
Right.
29:03
Like, it's this unbelievable
29:07
thing to be in the presence of.
29:09
And the more we get to experience it, the easier it is for us to give to other
29:12
people.
29:13
And it's why it can,
29:15
you know, steep and deepen so fast in a group.
29:18
That makes it so powerful.
29:20
And again,
29:21
that makes it easier to go on offense,
29:24
right?
29:25
Because it's like, ah, if this doesn't go well, where do I have to go back to
29:30
to get resourced?
29:32
And that is one of the most amazing things we see in the group where as men get
29:37
resourced, as men get connected
29:40
and build safety and trust,
29:42
it Becomes a lot easier to take risks in life,
29:47
right?
29:47
And not like the crazy kind of self endangering risks, but the risks that are really
29:52
just to go into the vulnerable places we didn't know we could go, to speak our truth
29:57
in the way we never did, to set the boundary we were never able to set before.
30:01
To end a relationship, to start a relationship.
30:04
Oh my God, I'm so afraid of getting lost in something again or picking the wrong
30:08
partner.
30:09
Holy shit.
30:10
I can just go play full out now because I got a team that's tracking me and loving
30:15
me at the same time that can kind of call me forward on all that and
30:21
help me update and course correct along the way.
30:24
And
30:25
I think part of why
30:28
you and I are both inspired in our own lives to do this, and I think certainly at
30:33
the grander cultural level, is
30:35
I firmly believe we need more men on offense right now, from a loving place,
30:41
not just waiting for someone else to clean up the fucking mess of the world we're in
30:47
right now.
30:48
But men who are willing to come forward,
30:51
speak to what's really happening, and cut under it in a shocking way.
30:56
Right?
30:56
I think that's something that's
30:59
a huge opportunity for us men to lead in right now at all the levels from the
31:05
political, the cultural, to the community, to our family, to our romantic
31:10
relationships, and yes, most of all, to each other as other men to cut right
31:15
through.
31:15
Like, dude, I see you, you're being hard on yourself.
31:19
It's okay, I love you, right?
31:21
It can change a man's life when we just cut through that with our love, right?
31:27
That's all we really mean by offense.
31:29
We're cutting through,
31:32
cutting through
31:33
all of that stagnation
31:36
with our love, care, presence, attention, truth.
31:40
And it wakes us up and it wakes everyone else up.
31:45
And then it certainly, if nothing else, feels a lot more alive.
31:51
Luke Adler: Safety is paramount around all this and why we practice in a men's group
31:57
and particularly the way we've designed Heart of Shadow, is we build in that safety
32:01
gradually and then trust grows.
32:03
And then inside of trust, we can practice being offensive.
32:07
And then like you said, you can take risks in your relationship because you have
32:12
this container of trusted
32:16
friends, you know,
32:18
men steeped in this
32:21
practice of depth and vulnerability.
32:24
And then it gets easier to build that resilience to pick yourself up and start
32:28
again.
32:29
You learn to flex that muscle of going on offense and then losing the ball and like,
32:34
oh my, now we're on defense, get the ball again, you know, and so we just learn to
32:39
get better at all sides of the game, so to speak.
32:43
So
32:45
that this is something we have to train.
32:47
We learn.
32:47
You don't just get this because someone tells you it.
32:50
You hear it in a podcast or you read it in a book.
32:53
This requires training,
32:56
and as soon as you start to get the context of it, then it's just a practice that
33:00
gets stronger and you get better and better and better.
33:02
So heartofshadow.com, you'll learn all about our work.
33:05
Our next cohort starts
33:08
in
33:10
January,
33:11
and we will be getting that live here in the next, hopefully the next month or so.
33:17
And we've already got a lot of guys interested, so if you're intrigued by this work,
33:23
you can book a discovery call, and we'd love to talk to you about it.
33:27
This is, you know, this is.
33:31
This is the work that Jason and I care most about.
33:34
And it's also our sense of how we can serve the planet the most.
33:39
Because as Jason said, as Jason and I say often, you know, this, we need
33:45
men who can lead with love.
33:47
Absolutely.
33:48
With.
33:48
With being offensive, with getting on offense, with waking people up to what's
33:54
to who they really are, you know, so join us.
33:57
Join us in our cause if you're feeling called to it.
34:00
It's,
34:02
you know, obviously needed.
34:07
Jason Lange: Yeah.
34:07
And I'll just close with the other thing I've noticed about this spark, this
34:12
wakefulness, this offensive love is.
34:14
It's often contagious.
34:17
So as we bring it forward,
34:19
it enlivens other people who then bring it forward and
34:24
it radiates out.
34:26
So it often impacts even more than just who we're bringing it to in pretty profound
34:31
ways.
34:31
So if you want to go on offense, guys,
34:34
we'd love to have you on your team.
34:36
Our team.
34:37
So reach out and
34:39
till next time,