Is it my Ego or my Soul talking?

How to Feel Emotions

It’s incredibly common for men to skip over our emotions and jump straight into thinking. We have a tremendous amount of childhood conditioning tied up in our relationship to emotions, which supersedes our sovereignty in the moment. Oftentimes, we’re told to simply “let our emotions out,” but it’s never as simple as that because a …

The 4 Pillars of Healthy Masculinity

I’ve been hearing from a lot of men that they struggle with claiming their power, setting boundaries, and feeling confident in themselves and the world. This had me wondering recently: what is masculine empowerment, and what is it composed of? It seems to me that there are 4 components, and they can be seen to …

How to Deal with Unwanted Emotions

Our emotions can’t be controlled. We can’t decide when we feel sad, or angry, but we can decide how we react to these emotions, and how we let them affect us. Ultimately, we want to get to a place where we feel as though there are no longer “unwanted” emotions. They are all wanted, loved, …

How Men Stay Stuck in Father Wounds

…and How to Get Unstuck The father wound is an emotional scar that results from unhealthy relationships with our fathers. When we feel resentful of our fathers in some way, because they left, or they were abusive, or they just weren’t good at communicating their feelings, we experience our unresolved father wound. As a result, …

When You’re Scared to Quit Your Job or Your Relationship

Plenty of us work in careers that look great on paper and yet we feel stuck.There are too many of us trapped in dead end jobs that feel like they should be a good fit but there’s a lingering sense of emptiness and we don’t know why. We turn up to work each day praying …

4 Beliefs That Keep Us From Discovering Our Purpose

In order to truly live the lives we are meant to live, we must discover our gifts. We are put on this planet to embrace and share our gifts with the world – that is our purpose. The problem is, we are held back by four major limiting beliefs that sabotage our ability to discover …

Men: You’re Not Angry, You’re Scared

Human beings are creatures of emotion. Much of the acts we do in our day-to-day lives pivot around an emotional reaction. As men, we often impair and strain our relationships when we get angry. When this happens it’s often because we have moved from anger into blame, rage and victimhood – not exactly sexy. When …

How Performative Masculinity leads Men to Soul-Death

The masculine narrative is destroying us. Most men adopt the traditional masculine narrative that’s been around since the beginning of human evolution. That is to protect, provide and take on the masculine role that society has constructed. There’s a crisis in the exploration of identity that most men get wrong—a twin tension that we cannot …

Men: Why Putting off Growth Work Only Makes Life More Complicated.

When men feel as though they are headed towards a crisis, or plunging headline into one, we instinctively have the knee-jerk impulse to fix it, numb it, or just get the f out of there– whatever the quickest option is to stop and suppress the issue at hand. This can work quite well for some …

What to Do When You Feel Lost

5 paths to find your way home. Men have a very tough relationship to the world. We understand what it means to be goal oriented, to penetrate and dominate very well, but when we are not able to succeed using this way of being, we can feel lost, disorientated, and unsure of where to go …

4 Tips for Men Struggling With Anxiety

Anxiety is something a lot of men battle with from time to time, whether it’s related to sexual performance, stage fright, social instances where we feel like we need to make a good impression, or new dad anxiety after just having a child. When we feel anxiety come online, it’s the voice of our critic, …

The Problem With Men Chasing Happiness

And 4 ways to successfully experience more happiness in your life. Many men have a strong desire for happiness. They hold it out like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow — constantly chasing. There are numerous talks and even an entire curriculum at Harvard all devoted to the attainment of happiness. …

The Epidemic of Numbness in Men

Many of us numb out to get through life, but with men in particular, this is an epidemic. It’s not just that we were never taught how to feel, but part of our fundamental programming was to numb out — if you fall down and skin your knee, you suck up your tears and rub some …

The 5 Types of Critical Voices in Men

Men are often held back by multiple, mental, critical voices that hijack our reality. We think they are us, when really they are just one part of us. They are not bad. In fact, they’re actually trying desperately to protect us and keep us safe. They come online as we walk through the world, and …

Why Men Who Have Money Crave Meaning

In the world of soul and purpose, the currency isn’t money, it’s meaning Growing up as men in America, we were taught that our value as humans is defined by our ability to control outcomes– through power, money and influence.  But more of us are discovering that living a life based on the ability to dominate …

Interview for KDNK on Initiation, Rites of Passage and Toxic Masculinity

3 Moments that Cracked the Guy Code

I never wanted to be a man. I never wanted anything much beyond the beauty of nature, the silence of my own thoughts, and the privilege to be loved. But this innocence was stripped from me, slowly, in stages that culminated with my forced adoption of at least the presentation of masculinity. It didn’t start …

The Mantrum Survival Guide

Abstract: In this long article, I hope to illustrate how men emotionally collapse (part 1), explain what is happening for a man when this occurs, including the larger historical + cultural context (part 2), examine the external impact of a man’s collapse on the world around him (part 3), reveal 3 ways to deal with a man in …

Boyhood Without Rites of Passage

“If you don’t initiate the young, they will burn down the village to feel the heat.” –African Proverb It was a time of intense contrast. How to make sense of it all? It was almost like the world was getting bigger and clearer – while at the same time getting harder to understand, with more conflict, …

If You’re a Man and You Think a Trans Man Isn’t, You Haven’t Done Enough Men’s Work

I am not perfect. I lead men’s groups, but I come with all kinds of biases. I grew up inside a white, cis-gendered, hetero, middle-class, Saturday-morning cartoons John Wayne “American” version of what is gender, and what is a man. Gender was what’s between your legs. Gender was how you throw a baseball. Gender was …

Excuses Are Like Puppies

“I can’t afford that …” “I was thinking of going to Thailand this winter, so …” “I promise I’ll get clear on my commitment after …” “We’re just slammed at home right now …” “Sorry I’m late …” Excuses are like puppies. Totally attention getting, and not very powerful. When a man gives an excuse, he’s trying …

Eulogy for Edward Scott Van Winkle, 4/15/1943-8/22/2019

I’m here to say a few words about my Dad. Before I do, I want to say a little bit about the way he died. In the weeks before my Dad ended his life, I had been trying to sit down and write him a letter to say goodbye. I knew he was getting ready …

Men’s Work Doesn’t Work

When a man first encounters “men’s” work – does an MKP retreat, reads a David Deida book – there’s a simultaneous tendency to bring more intensity to relating with women. As if the book and the talk and the seminar unleash a latent capacity in him and he feels more powerful, more potent, more present. Which he …

Talk + Workshops in Carbondale

I gave a talk the other night in the Kiva at True Nature Healing Arts in Carbondale, Colorado. It’s sweet for me to feel the relationship with that space and that valley grow. I feel a lovely kind of crush sparking inside me for new people and places, including the Roaring Fork. Even as I …

Following the Soul

Making sense of it all not analytically, but with a downward opening. Feeling in the dark, the next open room of context that makes sense of all the previous. Mostly just feeling right and most most of all feeling particular and specific. Deeply me, not from a long time ago, but honoring all that with the best and …

What is Soul?

From the Soul-Tree Podcast with Ryan Holsapple

Last advice I read

“I remind myself, in order to understand what is happening now, I must be prepared to forget what I have understood before.” Dhyana KJ

My Last Facebook Post

This boy has a beautiful heart. His heart knows how to love. You could even say his heart /knew/ how to love, even before he was born. In the other world (the one we live in before we are born into this one), this boy spent all of his time loving things. Rocks, bugs, trees, …

#dancinginthekitchen

Grief is the space between what you have and what you wish you had

Grief is the space between what you have and what you wish you had. It is a rite of life. Gratitude is the space we make in ourselves in order to receive blessings. Write down what you’re grateful for. Grace is blessing, and the source of blessing. You have no right to it, and yet …

I love the way the night comes on slowly

The deer are already adjusted to it … they have the forest in their bodies … we were coming home from a long walk at dusk … me and the dog … i let her loose, she was eager to be off the leash … in only a moment, she was away, galloping … i …

Your present experience does not contain the full view

Your present experience does not contain the full view of all the prospects of becoming that are available to you in this moment. Like rooms, you see only the door that obscures the realms beyond – shadowy, ecstatic, dull or transformative – no way to know. Therefore, a proper mantra for this life might be …

Artists are lovers

Artists are lovers. They are in love with a kind of reflection of their primal soul that they glimpse when they exert both the capacity and the courage to bridge the distance between longing and longed for. This distance, called pain, is the reason most people aren’t artists, and the reason most artist’s aren’t very …

I know of no happier thing than roasted corn.

There’s this subtle difference between entitlement and gratitude.

GRATITUDE There’s this subtle difference between entitlement and gratitude. Subtle but immense. I think I am working my way out of the one into the other. Like, when good things happen, the meaning I make of it is “Of course it did. That’s the way the universe works.” Conversely, when something doesn’t go my way, …

WOUNDED HEALER

Look at the world and all the ways you are not invited. All the closed doors are churches, and inside, the pain-song of every hungry mouth. As you turn from that coldness into the non-mirrored and ugly portion of your own decay You start to make things from what people think is disgusting and sad …

I feel like I spent my 30s arguing with myself.

I want to write about intimacy. I feel like I spent my 30s arguing with myself. Now, I think I finally have enough awareness to be able to stop decide to allow open presence to listen have a kind of embodied faith in the movements that follow continue to allow embodied presence – soul presence …

Embodying the self – embodying YOUR self, YOUR body – as a priority – is embodying the shadow.

Embodying the self – embodying YOUR self, YOUR body – as a priority – is embodying the shadow. However you were abused, abandoned or rejected, the message to the body-psyche was: not safe to be you. Not here. Not now. Not ok! Today, all the people that trigger you are holding pockets of this original …

A powerful realization that finally landed for me in 2017

A powerful realization that finally landed for me in 2017: I no longer chase people. I used to chase people So badly wanted to be liked wanted to be seen I felt CONVINCED if they only knew me saw my brilliance they would realize they were making a mistake! in not liking me Anyway this …

AMATEUR PROBLEMS

AMATEUR PROBLEMS His only problems are the three devils in his coffee: critic, craver and crowd-pleaser trained like vipers on his craft. If they can’t get him to eat a cookie he’ll eat his own work he’ll not work at all even or offer up swill as fine ale to the bar crowd. Any of …

FORM

We are in the dark about how this works Or even what this is or what works even is Yet with each rotation the vessel comes into view I can feel you and me are making a bigger thing Even though half of me and half of you Is behind the skin feeling too clumsy …

TRUST

TRUST I trust you To follow your love Ply right from wrong To listen I trust you To feel hurt When something Cuts below the tightness I trust you To bring your longing To the cup at the edge Of the world After all you’ve seen Who wouldn’t Trust you With pain? Even so To …

Reflections After Depression Post

I made a really personal post the other day. One part of me is embarassed about it. It generated so much care towards me. A lot more than I imagined it would. I really appreciated this unexpected stream of good will. But I thought the hard part was pressing post. It turns out, the hard …

NOT TO RE-LITIGATE 2017, BUT TO BE CLEAR GOING FORWARD

NOT TO RE-LITIGATE 2017, BUT TO BE CLEAR GOING FORWARD To those of you Republican and Democrat Libertarian and Green Who tell yourselves It’s OK because with Hillary We’d already be at war She is a lot of things Disingenuous, ambitious And yes, a woman But if the bombs fall On Pyongyang and Tehran And …

IF YOU WOULD BE SEED

IF YOU WOULD BE SEED do not rush your fruit you were not planted for markets or profits and not for parades when your time does come and it will let your outer part soften, rot and leather around you eventually the stem will give like a child running off to play with the others …

Depression Post from Facebook

[[ UPDATE: To those people reading this now and feeling concern + care, thank you! I am so blessed to be connected to so many good people. Even just posting this was healing – in some invisible way – and, in the hours and days since, I have availed myself of numerous coffees, walks and …

ADVICE FOR THE NEW

Be now a student of light and learn from crafty masters: How to pull on the thread of being and so glitter as a story everyone knows How to let your relaxation become a hidden engine that invites magic to roost nearby How to regard your shelves of old misidentifications as a library exploding with …

Today I want to give myself love, ease, patience and the knowing that it’s really all OK.

Today I want to give myself love, ease, patience and the knowing that it’s really all OK. Can there just be a Saturday? Even in the evolution of my soul, even in the revolution of the world? Can there just be this breathing, and my belonging to it, as a shell on the beach? For …

Self Knowledge

The more I step into my power lately, the more I have the experience where I find myself realizing – remembering – seemingly for the 1000th time…

I only ever really learn a lesson or “get over something” once I take complete responsibility for the ways I was off in the situation. Once I am able to “give away” my hurt and bear the easy weight of self-responsibility, there’s a fluidness and a sense of rightness that (I am sure) feels a thousand times better than winning at being a victim.

My inner critic runs on psychological fuel made of un-tended

2 quick realizations: 1) I defend my right to be a victim. How hilarious is that?!?! 2) My inner critic runs on psychological fuel made of un-tended, rising emotion. The more I self-parent, negotiate my inner needs, and find emotional expression, the less of a need he has to come out and defend me. When …

The world really is waiting for what you alone know

The world really is waiting for what you alone know and all the ways that you know it. Trying to think will only make the Gods lose interest. You always try to impress people when what’s real has way more nutrition than whatever you can invent. Your only true virtue lies hidden like a geode …

God: You think a lot but you rarely speak to me DIRECTLY.

God: You think a lot but you rarely speak to me DIRECTLY. Me: I know. I should pray more. God: I only speak in prayer. Me: But it scares me, to go on this journey. To make space in my life for true sacred prayer and speech. God: You will go on this journey or …

ADVICE FOR THE WICKED

Give up delicacy Eat hardship This is what will make you strong Decide to face what is dark, wet and strange in your life Deal with what you find on its terms All things have a truth you should know Take comfort in decay Take shelter in story Reside in the harsh stockade of public …

Today I learned that if I want to live my soul awakening …

I feel silly admitting this. Today I learned that if I want to live my soul awakening … … while simultaneously writing about my learning … I actually have to learn and grow every day. It’s funny, this is news to some large part of me. This must be that thing they call humble pie. …

Your only true legacy…

That’s How the Light Gets In

The place we know we are lost or blind is the place we will heal the world through the doorway of our own bitter, lamented poverty, for in that poverty is a kind of blessed innocence and compassion that comes out the other side and into others as divine honey – a sliver of God …

Shine light on everything.

Photo by Robert Bengston + Inspiration Campaign

The Healthy Masculine

The healthy masculine creates a container for growth. The stronger and more clear the container, the wilder and more detailed the flourishing within it. We are in a time of immense growth (feminine) hence there has never been a more pressing need for the healthy masculine. Not to contain it, like it needs to be …

Devotion vs. Enslavement

Men that are trustable get that service is part of the package of being a man, an adult human. They awake to this (initially) bitter truth, and learn to choose a master, proactively, again and again. In everything they do, they are co-creators: of vision, mission, organization, family or community. Their devotion becomes their liberation. …

Praise

My friend died. He had been sick for a while, over a year. It was expected, especially of late. What I didn’t expect was how much I would MISS him. I have been thinking about him every day. Things occur to me, I’ll see something beautiful, a storm cloud, a moth, a blossom, and I’ll …

Bodies

I love bodies. I love curve, curl and crunch. I love breath, and hands, and awakeness, blinking. I love the cool, giving floor along the plain of my foot, finding new terrain in each peach-petal step. I love our heads, our hair, our necks, and the way we extend from here into the beyond here, …

TO WHITE PEOPLE, when a POC points out your privilege, asks you to stop, and you feel hella defensive:

Look, your ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors’ were close to Native American people of 500 years ago in that they were connected to land and a kind of migration/cyclical/seasonal-as-time geo-temporal spirituality, but something happened and they (your ancestors) got hit with a thought that broke their heart and created the concept of time, and the verb “to …

How to Talk to a Republican

I realize this morning that I can be so judgmental. Often times, I size people up in my head early on in a conversation, and, if I determine they are of x category or y disposition, I file them away in various subcategories under the broader phylum of “beneath me.” This sense of superiority keeps …

For

I just had this revelation. I have been so hung up on going “against” things, standing “against” things, thinking that I was doing the world a favor by standing against the things that are “wrong.” Even after years (years) of reflections from the universe about how this strategy fails to generate results, I persisted. I …

White men

We’re going to have us a little chat. You may not want to yet. That’s fine. I’ll start without you. As my friend Brendan says, “it is long past time” for us to begin this dialogue. What’s the subject you ask? Our privilege. Our blind, inherited, skin-tight, culturally-woven, grief-externalizing, woman-suppressing, nature-fearing, don’t-topple-the-apple-cart-of-our-fragile-hold-on-reality, “grab em by …

Learning

Time in New Mexico with a truly amazing teacher. Learning to put in, feed, and help make something bigger than me. Learning to accept, feel, and metabolize the misunderstood grief that always wants to go to violence and stories of separation and blame. Learning to accept myself and others, all the imperfections and janky situations …

Music

Language is the prison Body is the doorway Music is the gatekey

Parts

I’ve been feeling chaotic lately. Driven. Distracted. Fired up. Depressed. Purposeful. Lost. (sometimes all together, although mostly one at a time) Various versions of up and down. Watching the wheels go round and round. Today I pulled out my mandala. My “map” of my psyche, with all the parts, good, bad and ugly represented. It’s …

Bellows

What I desire are the knowledges of deep places. The fast notes of the brass flute, cold and dry. Like tusk and moon, granite and stem, pollen and polyp. Make a hard thing against my skin. If I will not let things go Then show me they are not enough – what I cling to …

Bees

I came home the other day to find that all of these honey bees had gotten inside. They were buzzing up and down the large windows of the kitchen, trying to get out. Someone had left the back door open, and the nearby Hawthorne tree being in full bloom, some of them must have happened …

More

I am sitting outside, in the evening, enjoying a smoke after a long day. My closed-up eye is bugging me (allergic reaction to comfrey – long story). As the tobacco comes on, I look up at the sky and find a single star, and I hear myself ask this star for a message. “Do you …

Running

How do we compete while staying true? How do we keep up without losing our inner narrative? How do we run without running away? How do we stay relevant? It seems to me that most of us are not setting the terms of our overall narrative. Most of us – myself included – are playing …

Routine

I am thinking of the ways we return to, the paths we beat daily with our foot steps. Whether we go for a morning jog, enjoy a cup of coffee by the window or outside the cafe, or spend those first minutes of the morning reading or meditating. These are the things we do that …

Specialness

I have always felt like I’m special. Maybe everyone does. I mean, when we’re little, we’re all special little ones, aren’t we? It’s a beautiful thing. I think I got my specialness from my Dad. He made me feel special in a particular way. He wrote me a long letter telling me how much he …