Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
72 Adam Gornall: Killing Peter Pan: Ending the Eternal-Boy Epidemic
What does it take to guide a boy into healthy manhood? In this profound conversation, Adam Gornow returns to explore the challenges facing teenage boys and the crucial role fathers play in their development.
Adam begins by highlighting perhaps the most overlooked yet powerful tool in parenting: genuine attention. "One of the best things we can do for our sons is just pay attention," he explains, describing how truly listening creates space for authentic connection in a world demanding constant speed and immediate responses. This simple practice—slowing down, pausing before answering, being fully present—lays the foundation for meaningful relationship.
We dive deep into how modern society has abandoned the "village concept" critical to raising well-rounded children. Historically, boys weren't raised solely by parents but by a community of adults providing diverse examples of healthy masculinity. Without this structure, parents face unrealistic expectations while boys lack clear guidance on the transition to manhood.
The conversation explores the hero's journey as a universal pattern for healthy masculine development across cultures. Traditional rites of passage separated boys from the known world, guided them through challenges, and returned them to society as recognized men. Modern substitutes like military training provide partial initiation but fail to develop the complete masculine archetype, leaving many men trapped in what Adam calls "the Peter Pan effect"—emotionally immature and avoiding responsibility.
Adam offers practical insights for fathers wanting to create meaningful challenges for their sons—pushing them to the edge of comfort zones while maintaining safety. He emphasizes this cannot be done by individual parents alone but requires collective effort.
Whether you're raising sons, working with young men, or simply interested in the psychology of healthy masculinity, this conversation offers powerful guidance for nurturing the next generation of integrated, responsible men.
Connect with Adam on LinkedIn or through his organisation Save A Warrior
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Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Welcome back to Forging Resilience. Today we're joined once again. I have the privilege of sitting with my friend, adam, adam Gornow, a man deeply committed to guiding others through their own hero's journey. Adam heads up Save a Warrior UK, which supports veterans and first responders facing complex post-traumatic stress, as well as several other ventures and businesses, as well as coaching. Today, in this episode, we're going to look at the challenges teenage boys face and especially how, as parents specifically fathers we can show up for ourselves so that we can show up for our kids and our boys. Adam, welcome back, buddy.
Speaker 2:Hey, good to be here, mate.
Speaker 1:Season two eh season two, episode three, with you, my friend awesome, awesome, well done.
Speaker 2:Congratulations as well. By the way, sticking through all of that is, uh, it's definitely achievement. You're in the top five percent, or one percent, of those that managed to get this far, so, uh, amazing yeah, thanks, mate.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I've got a another 30 or so to go and we'll do a recalculation, as in I said, I'll do 100 and see what happens. So we're on the way, mate, um, but I think you know, we've had some really interesting conversations, you and I, and we've had some really interesting guests, mate, and I feel compelled to talk to you about, yeah, teenage boys and, yeah, fatherhood. How might we start showing up as fathers for our boys?
Speaker 2:So it's funny.
Speaker 2:On the way here I was listening to a podcast and Jordan Peterson, of all people, and he said something really interesting that caught my attention. And he said podcasts whether it be podcasts, whether it be talking on stage, whether it be stand-up comedians, whatever it is, or whether it be a husband or a father. He said one of the best things we could all of us, any of us do is pay attention. The best things we can all of us, any of us do is pay attention. And he said I go on stage unscripted and we're here in this podcast right now and I got a few ideas of where the conversation might go, but paying attention and presence being present to the question that you've just asked me, I had five possible questions in my head that you may have asked me.
Speaker 2:That was not one of them. And then, because I'm paying attention to what you're saying, I'm like I would say that one of the best things we can do not just for our sons and our daughters, but wives, society, friends is just pay attention. Like so many of us are not listening, like we're hearing things, but we're definitely not listening, and uh, and I think that would be a good start yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:I think it throws up the real question then what, what does that actually mean and look like? And for me I would answer that and it usually comes down to slowing down and having the courage not to have an answer yeah, I mean you, you definitely have.
Speaker 2:Uh, you've walked that talk for quite some time now and I see you as somebody that intentionally slows down inspires me to do so. And when I ask you, how are you? You tend to pause rather than just throwing out, giving a dog a bone, just giving out the old. Yeah, all good, mate, right, as I'm guilty of a lot of the time, and I think that there is what it. That's what it looks like, like having the courage to pause, be in the silence, consider your thoughts, consider your answer, and I think, when it comes out, the value of it is so much more than that throwaway response and you do a really good job of that and I think it's such a simple thing. But I think it's definitely underrated and misunderstood, because, you know, slowing down, as you said, in a world that's demanding speed from us and, uh, anticipation and just it's quite a relentless pace, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Life? Um, I think for our age group in particular, uh, I think the younger generations, maybe in their 20s, their, their, their energy levels are slightly different, but I think, from our perspective, you know we're in our 40s, so so we sort of see both sides of this arc of life right, and I look ahead at the older generation in their you know, 70s, 80s, and I'm like wow, they kind of escaped the need to be fast all the time and they're just looking back at us going you lot are crazy, you know. And I look back at like you lot are crazy, you know. And I look back at like 20-year-olds and they seem pretty comfortable with the pace of things, you know, and it's quite curious for me to sort of observe it from that point of view, and so I have to remind myself to ground every now and then slow down take a breath.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an important piece.
Speaker 1:Part of me. I've had this conversation with so many people and you know, the first thing you opened with is the ability to pay attention, of presence, and we've talked about creating that space and even to this day I want to brush past that. I want something that's bigger, sexier, something somebody can see and acknowledge on one side. But the more I talk to people, the more I learn about myself. I recognize that, yeah, being with what is coming up for us or being with what the person is saying in front of us all that situation that is developing in life, there's a real art to that, but it just doesn't happen on day one. It takes such a long time to see the benefit and value of that and so many of us are guilty of overcompli. Yeah, overcompli, oh, that word's going to struggle to come out today, making it more complex than we need to yeah um, yeah, so where, where, where might we start with becoming more present?
Speaker 1:you mentioned listening to a conversation. If we're going to bring it back to us, yeah, yeah, okay, well, look, I'll stay.
Speaker 2:I'll stay with the sort of jordan peterson angle here, because he does reveal a lot and he's he's done a great job in unpacking the bible, for for many of us who have never grown up with the bible or thought the bible useful, or we just looked at it as some ancient artifact that you know wasn't really relevant in the modern day. And so he points at this the burning bush, the story about the burning bush. Now, without going into it too much, the essence of that story is that if you pay enough attention, long enough towards something, what begins to happen is it begins to reveal things to you. Now, if you just glance at it, you'll get the surface level, the surface layer of the thing. If you spend some time on it, genuinely concentrating and paying attention to it, it begins to reveal things to you. Right, and that can be applied to anything. Okay, in this case we're talking about the burning bush, and he says that the more you do that, the more it reveals, until you hit a bottom, and the bottom is God, and God will reveal itself to you. Okay, now to unpack that. What he's saying is that, with our intention to focus and give somebody our full presence, things begin to reveal like the big things, like true gifts, begin to reveal themselves to us.
Speaker 2:Now, the problem with modernity is that we've got such a short time span, we are mostly spending our time concentrating, spending our time concentrating. We're very rarely meditating, but we're definitely not contemplating enough. And it's in that contemplation focused attention, contemplation that the stuff begins to reveal itself, and the real big stuff begins to reveal itself and we get meaning and we get purpose and we get guidance and we get wisdom in those deeper layers. But you know, most people, like I said, I think, are finding themselves in that surface layer. They're having surface conversations with their wives, surface conversation with their kids, surface conversations at work, and I think they just move around in that top layer and there's this sort of hunger for something and some people go, oh, I just need a holiday. Or some people go, I just need a new career. Or, oh, I think I want a divorce, or, you know, this is too hard, I don't want kids, you know. And so they miss such a massive component of what it is to have a rich, fulfilling life, uh, where where that sort of layer of meaning is found, um, and, and it takes hard work. It takes work.
Speaker 2:There's no, there's no bones about it. There's no quick fix to this. There's no one pill that you just take. I mean anything that approximates. That could probably be something like a psychedelic compound, whether it be mushrooms or MDMA that will short circuit you, skyrocket you to those places of meaning and depth and connection and oneness and awe, and you're like, oh my God, but if you don't know how to integrate that, that can split you apart as well. So yeah, the big, showy stuff oftentimes, like you said, I just want this big thing being present is such a small thing. Where are the results? They reveal themselves over time. That's the answer to that. They will and and they become solid ground. You know your foundations for which to then have meaningful relationships with your children, wives and friends, and you know people around you. So, yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:I think it's also about finding those people that you can have those conversations with, because not everybody needs to have the big, long pause before you answer. Maybe they haven't earned it, maybe I don't want to give it, maybe they don't want to hear it. There's lots of assumptions to be had there. I think that's the first thing that comes to me to respond with, but also that, in my own case, my busyness, my lack of willingness to pause, to check in, to go inwards, was because, really, I was avoiding something that I wasn't fully conscious of or aware of and, like you alluded to, it's very uncomfortable. It can be painful, upsetting, yeah, and can take quote unquote a lot of work to be with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I filled up the car with some petrol this morning and the guy was behind the counter. I didn't stare him in the eyes and connected with him and said no, but how are you? No, but really, you know, there was a time factor there, there was a practicality there, there was, uh, unfamiliarity there there was. You know, I'm not going to go to complete stranger and and expect him to come down to the depths of meaning with me in that moment. Right, it's just, it's just a practicality to social, uh coherence. And you know how we sort of bump into each other on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:There's levels to this game, of course, but if you spend your whole life in that surface layer is my point um, I think, I think there'll be an internal yearning for something meaningful, impactful, um, and you know this comes onto the, the idea of the village that I always come back to, particularly when we're talking about parenting, a healthy society. I think kids really biologically, psychologically, historically, I think that healthy children are born in that idea and that concept of a village. If you expect mum and dad to be the only people that bring up that child, I think that we're setting ourselves up to failure. I think that we're setting ourselves up to have these unrealistic expectations of performing as parents, doing a good job as parents. So when you don't have this idea of the village, I think we miss a massive part of the bigger picture. To create a well-rounded citizen, we want our children to be involved, connected, contributing, happy. We want them to have all of those experiences in society and, to your point, you can't have these deep conversation with everyone, no, but you need to find a village, that in which you can have those conversations, because you know men in particular, I think we need that. It can be really isolating for a bloke who's grafting, putting food on the table, doing his best, right just to do that, to then have to be this well-rounded husband and contribute to the house chores and and and be a be an outstanding uh, father. That's a lot, man, that is a lot. And um.
Speaker 2:Now there's all these expectations of how a household must be run and this idea of leveling out the playing field, that men and women are the same and we can interchangeably do different roles, and all of that comes up and for me, I think it's proven now that this doesn't work. You know, men and women are wired differently, we have different roles. Mothers and fathers have different roles within bringing up children. But you don't know all of that, no one teaches you that. And if you take away the village and you've got no place to go to study and learn from your elders, let's say, then you're going to be missing a massive part of the bigger picture.
Speaker 2:And this idea of I equate health and wellness with this idea of wholesomeness, right, integrated, like all the aspects of life, well-rounded, right, and and you're like a nice well-rounded wheel that sort of smoothly rolls through life rather than jagged edges. And you know, stop, start, stop, start. Frustration, setbacks, um, stuckness, right, that's people get stuck in life and and that's because I think they're missing this wholesome, integrated, well-roundedness and, and that really does come from. You know, having that village concept, uh, at hand, it doesn't mean move into a commune. A lot of people do that, right, uh, and and they and they get, get these concepts so deeply that they're like, oh well, then I'm going to be in a commune, right, I'm going to grow up around people and kids are going to grow up with different adults, and we, the other day, to similar conversations as this, and they were bringing up this idea of what was it.
Speaker 2:There was something in particular. Oh, that was it. It was talking about autism and the rise in autism, and someone just threw out this comment it's like well, go to the. I always forget the name of this, I don't know what they are. Religious group, the Mormons? Yeah, so Mormons don't have any like hardly any autism. But it wasn't the Mormons. It's the ones that don't drive cars and don't have technology.
Speaker 2:I'm afraid I don't know. No, I can't remember Someone's screaming at the podcast right now, but essentially, yeah, they stayed put before the combustion engine came in. So around the 1800s, right as a conscious effort, they were like this is good enough. And if you go there, they've had scientific sort of experiments and not experiments but they've looked at them and studied them and not experiments, but they've looked at them and studied them and there's amazing levels of health and wellness and connection found there. And you know, I'm sure there's all sorts of other shadows as well, but it's just interesting to me that we've lost sight of this idea of the village and that's the topic that you know. Know, maybe we get to cover today as well is the idea of the, the rites of passage, of initiation. How do we initiate?
Speaker 1:our boys, you know yeah, definitely mainly out of curiosity as well. But just to take you back a step, because you mentioned integration twice now, adam and one through the insights of potentially through hallucinogenics, but also through insight or wisdom as well, that comes up. So yeah, from my own understanding mainly, and then maybe that might help to understand the second part, the integration of those things. Talk to me a little bit about that, mate. Integration of, of insight through, yeah, through an experience okay.
Speaker 2:So the idea of integration is that it must therefore follow disintegration, right, a breakdown. That's. That's why integration follows, so okay, so let's backtrack then. Why would we need to be integrated? What's the you know why? Well, I'll use the psychedelic analogy.
Speaker 2:When we take psychedelics, we have a total disintegration of self. That means that our ego boundaries have been established over a lifetime. That makes us understand me, I and it makes us understand boundaries of who I am, where I begin, where I start, and it makes us differentiate ourselves from you know, dave and John. It makes us go well, this is mine, this house is mine, this job title is mine, right? So that's the ego boundary. So we get a disillusion of the ego boundary in the psychedelic experience. What that does is then opens us up so vastly, it disintegrates the ego, and now we're open up and our awareness just completely gets blasted out into the cosmos, and that's why we get the sense of being at one with everything.
Speaker 2:Right Now, that is a cosmic experience, right? That's a pretty out there experience. If you were to stay there, eventually, what would happen is the meat suit would begin to break down because you wouldn't feed it, you wouldn't find shelter. So your survival-based instincts, based on that ego boundary would dissolve, so you would find no need for that, because you'd be like well, I'm not afraid of dying anymore because I'm connected to everything at all times. This idea of God being ever present forever, connected to everything at all times, right? This idea of God being ever present forever, in all places, at all times, right. And so you're connected to that concept. So that's a total disintegration of self.
Speaker 2:Right, at some point you have to land that shit back, because it starts to wear off and the ego boundaries begins to form again. But we have to consciously integrate not just who we are again, physicality and name and place, location, but we have to integrate what it is that we've just seen and experienced. Integrate what it is that we've just seen and experienced. More than seen, sometimes it's just an experience, it's an ineffable meeting with God, whatever that may mean for you, right? It's almost impossible to to talk about it, almost. And so we need to integrate all of that. And so you have to go for a period of integration, meaning that I'm going to put all the pieces together of all this, I'm going to talk about it, and eventually we begin to land the ship on solid ground again and now we can function back within the meat suit with an understanding, because you'll never unsee what you've seen, you'll never unexperienced that.
Speaker 2:Now you have an idea and a concept of this sense of God-like awe while being in the meat suit and doing the shopping. Right, you've got it now. So you've now got wholeness. You're complete, yeah, and there is. You know, the other aspect of that is that if you never have that experience, if you never have that awe, reverence, experience, you are trapped in that meat suit so tightly that you've got no time for that stuff out there and you're also not integrated. You're also not whole in that capacity as well. You're living purely in the survival realm in the meat suit.
Speaker 2:This is who I am, this, this is mine, and so you stay there in that survival space and and and from that space is is where we see conflict, um, you know, wars is is in that collective conscious state. Right, it gets locked in and so, um, integration is is massive. But also it's not just like, it's not just psychedelics, it's, it's. You know, we're soldiers, we go to to do our job and come back from from war, and I'm sure you can vouch to this more than more than me, but the experience of conflict is quite a psychedelic experience. At times it's like you really sort of leave your body. In many ways it's like this is such a weird thing. It's like a liminal space of like this is so weird. I remember us jumping into a truck in Iraq that was just sort of left there and driving down the street with it and thinking it's like a computer game. This is weird.
Speaker 2:This is so surreal, right, and it was a really like weird out-of-body experience and, um, you know, that's a pleasant experience in the grand scheme of things, but when we start seeing the blood and the gore and the violence and this really extreme aspect of war, well, you have to integrate all of that because if you don't, you're going to be disintegrated and you're going to be then moving into society disintegrated and that's going to cause a wrath of problems yeah.
Speaker 1:So what I'm hearing is we're making, we're making conscious what is subconscious, so the good, the bad and the ugly suddenly becomes known to us. So how might that show up then? If, as fathers, we are stuck in life, we're angry at this, we're frustrated with that, with our wives, with our job, with ourselves, with our kids? What does integration look like there, adam? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you know there's such a richness to life once you've gone through a number of these integrations, because it's not just a case of one and you're done, although if you were going to do one and you're done, it would be an initiation into adulthood. As a young boy I would say that would be the fundamental one. But it doesn't just stop there, there's others be the fundamental one, but it doesn't just stop there, there's, there's others. Um, what it looks like to be integrated with, with our children, is that, beyond presence, it's like you just see the richness of, of, of life, you just see the, you know, you experience gratitude, you know, and you look at the little ones and you're like, oh just, you know you capture these moments.
Speaker 2:But also, when our humanity sort of takes over, in those moments of maybe we're a bit sleep deprived, a bit hungry, kids are just nagging and moaning, especially if you've got a couple of them, you know, sibling rivalry kicking off.
Speaker 2:You know it's just, it's getting you there right, it's frustrating you, you're feeling all the emotions and without the integration, or having gone for an integration and experience of that, and coming back a whole person without that, and you're just in that ego boundary place and that animal instinct. Yeah, we're going to get angry, we're going to snap, we're going to do stuff that we're later going to regret once our nervous system calms back down again. Um, and, and I think, the more we do this work of awareness, we essentially what we create is a response gap for ourselves, and that, and that, I think, is key, because you know before, without going through these practices and these processes, we don't have a response gap, and so what we're doing is reacting all the time, and so there's a reaction to everything, and, with time, developing the response gap is a consequence of having gone through these processes. I would say it's like a, I would call it a symptom of healing. You know, if you have a, response.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I've got loads of examples of that with my kids, but I think the biggest one, without going to the stories, I'm pretty sure I've told it on this podcast four or five times now, but yeah. So when, like, the sibling rivalry is kicking off and I can feel that tension within myself, most of the times I have the awareness to realize this is something about me that's going on, not them. Otherwise, I respond very differently. So it's not that these things don't happen. It's not that I don't feel these things. I'm aware of how to manage my own internal stuff before I deal with them, which is very, very, very different than if it's from a place of anger and frustration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's right, I can see that and look a lot of the times when I'm having these types of conversations for the uninitiated. They'll hear and hear these conversations and, um, they will get this concept of perfection in their minds.
Speaker 1:It's like you're doing all this to be perfect. I think I'll catch that type of the bollocks yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, it's like no, it's progress, not perfection, because we're human beings, we're messy creatures. I always get this image of this transcended Buddha-like figure levitating six inches off the ground, kind of thing, and nothing affects him. It's like no, that's perfection, that's not going to happen. But that's why I say having the response gap, because you're going to have a reaction like you're human, it's animal first. You're going to, but with this response gap, maybe, just maybe, you don't hit them, maybe you don't go to jail, maybe you don't do that impulse buy, maybe you don't say those words yeah, or in my case, the words that come to me is vomit my fear and self-judgment all over my kids to carry for themselves now that's a projection yeah
Speaker 2:yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Love that absolutely, because nobody can make us feel anything like. We're experiencing the emotions as a feeling right. We feel the emotions right, whatever those emotions may be anger, whatever we. That's going on internally for us and there's a whole raft of stories and stuff that's going on in our head that's telling us about what this means and all the rest of it. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just a story, sometimes it's just a limiting belief that we picked up as kids. You know all of that.
Speaker 2:But your ability to go oh, this is mine, take responsibility for it. Oh, this is mine, take responsibility for it. That is a symptom of initiated man and I believe that again, coming back to this rites of passage, these initiations for young boys, is that we know that a healthy masculine archetype at the center of it is full responsibility for one's life, full, and that includes our internal emotional landscape. This is mine. What's going on internally for me right now is mine. And there you go. There you've got awareness, you've got the response gap. You can breathe into it. You can process and alchemize and metabolize the emotion, the energy, emotion, whatever it may be, fear, anger, jealousy, doesn't matter, but you can begin to alchemize it and metabolize. It is a good way of putting it in because it's a very physical thing, and then you can respond to the children. You know, um, but I don't think men people can get there unless they've had this idea of an initiation and gone through a whole process yeah, let's go there then mate.
Speaker 1:So what, what, what, what is initiation?
Speaker 2:so some of you probably familiar with the hero's journey, okay, and then the hero's journey is a uh, a meta myth. This is the, the human myth. Particularly men, um, women, have their own hero heroine's journey, which is slightly different, but the principle is kind of the same. But the hero's journey was something that was observed by Joseph Campbell to be this phenomena that emerged in societies around the world that were often, you know, not even nowhere near each other. They weren't connected to each other in any way. Uh, which gave him this idea of this collective consciousness occurring around the globe, really, that this, this phenomena, kind of emerges naturally in human populations. Um, that was all backed up by joseph campbell's study into the collective archetypes as well, archetypesetypes just being these symbols and these ideas that collect a list of properties and features into a lump that then we give it a name that we all relate to and can identify, right. So if I say the good mother, for example, that's a grand archetype of the good mother, that is, it represents unconditional love, nurturing, right, compassion, right. That that's the good mother, okay, um, uh, the good father, the one that says I love you, son, but you can do better, right? So the good mother will say I love you no matter what. And the good father will say I love you, but I know you can do better. And so the good mother will say I love you no matter what. And the good father will say I love you, but I know you can do better. And I'm going to push you and show you, and show you the ropes, because life's hard and you know you got to meet it right and um. So each of those roles and archetypes are, they're in this sort of like layer of consciousness that permeates the entire human species all the time, and we draw down from them inspiration inspirito, that's where that word comes from so the spirit within to inspire. So we draw down from these archetypal energies they're literally energies that sort of live around us in this ether of consciousness right, ether of consciousness right and that society, and they are not mollycoddled to their mothers into their 20s and they're not afraid to take full responsibility and they're not lying and cheating, they're not murdering, they're not taking what isn't theirs, uh, and they're, and they're basically, you know, gone, going through these processes, initiations, because it was to the benefit of the whole right. So it's, there's almost a sacrifice of the individual whims and desires for something greater and that puts us psychologically, as men, in a really strong place.
Speaker 2:So an initiation, a rite of passage, in its very simplest form, goes from answering the call to adventure is where it all starts, and what that means is that something is occurring and inviting you, something's going on in your life. At that stage in your life there's a draw, there's a pull, there's an urge that is demanding of you to step out of the known world. The familiar, in the case of a young boy in a village, let's say it would be the known world is mommy and daddy. Um, I have all of my needs met. They feed me, they clothe me, you know, I don't have to worry about anything, money, nothing. I'm taken care of as we should be when we're children.
Speaker 2:Right, the call to adventure comes where you get this internal psychological urge to it's called the death urge where we literally get a psychological urge to kill off the child psychology. It has to die off, okay, in order for us to step into masculinity fully embodied, healthy masculinity. Healthy masculinity. Now, that death urge back in the day it's hard to pinpoint when, but definitely before the dawn of massive civilizations, I would say this was tribal. This was within the village. This was a custom that was integral to a healthy, vibrant community and I believe it wasn't really necessarily a conscious thought about no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Why do we not see that continue in modern society if it's so impactful and beneficial potentially?
Speaker 2:I think, because what happened at the dawn of massive civilizations? Humans had to sort of begin to learn to coexist with strangers and I think in doing so, the idea and the concept of the village really took a backseat, but it never went away. I still believe it to be a part of the human experience that this concept and idea of the village I look at it now in modernity, like everyone's like focused on building community. And you know, if you want to sell a program, you first got to build a community. Give value to your community, community, community, it's all the, it's all the thing. Where's that coming from? Why? What's the point? Well, because it's an emergent property of the human experience.
Speaker 2:We are built for two things, are designed for two things connection and struggle. As human beings Connection and struggle we love to struggle with something, a problem, grapple with it, how to build a bridge. It's innate in us, but connection is that key part there, and so we are always going to be craving a sense of connection, okay, to ourselves, to our partners, but to the village, and I think that modernity in particular, but yeah, the dawning of these massive civilizations, where, you know, we go past this sort of idea of the Dunbar number, which is a concept that's been challenged a little bit, but this idea that once you get beyond, say, 300 people in a particular village, you start to lose sight of names. You start to lose sight of birthdays or important dates or kids' names or whatever, and so you begin to sort of dissolve that connection. But because the numbers just carried on going, we as a, as a collective, had to figure out a way to coexist that was again beneficial for the all right.
Speaker 2:And I think we've evolved over the years to the point where we are now, where you know, before it was, it was kings and queens, and then it was empires and now it's countries. Now each country has its own way of governing, it has its boundaries and borders and all the rest of it. But I think those are all things that have been layered on top of an existing base that we can't avoid, we can't escape, that is, we are animals first, we are tribal animals, we're social animals and we're built for connection and struggle. And that I've got this sort of. I don't think I'm important enough to be cancelled. But if I, if I was known, I don't think I'm important enough to be cancelled, but if I was known. This would definitely cancel me, but I believe the idea of this concept phenomena of racism can be traced back to our ancestors in those tribal times where we where, we where we getting cancelled already, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I know, look at it do not say it, no, where, as a tribe, we would have certain germs and uh disease prevention mechanisms in our biology? Uh, that would allow us to eat the foods and drink the water around our particular village, right, but that if you had a another village 100 miles away, they would have their own ecosystem as well, their own germs, their own, you know, same thing going on. But when the two mixed, we wouldn't have the antibodies to protect ourselves from the germs that they had, and vice versa. And so there was this, um, it's called the disgust reflex, is is biologically wired, hardwired into into us in our uh and our ancestors. And so we have this risk discuss response to the other as a survival-based mechanism. Right, that is what is what I think is the dawning of racism in the sense, and I think you could probably trace it all the way back to when there were multiple human races. And the two shall not mix, because if you start to sort of crossbreed, you know what kind of things would come out of it and all the rest of it. So, homo sapiens, homo erectus, you know Neanderthalus, these were all humans, and that was probably when racism in its purest form existed, because they were against another race, another human race. Now there's just one, homo sapiens. Here. We are all collectively together trying to get along, but we've still got these animal-based tribal instincts inside of us, this sort of knee-jerk reaction to the other, and so that's why you get these concepts coming in. But we all have to coexist, larger and larger numbers, and so I think it's just a lag and a process by which we're doing that. But I think there are still some fundamentals that don't leave us, and I believe one of them is this idea of initiating our boys into adults. We need essentially I sort of we went off on a tangent, so I'll bring it back to the hero's journey After receiving that urge, that call to adventure, to go on the initiation of the hero's journey, we have to experience a psychological shock and we have to cross a threshold.
Speaker 2:And there are many ceremonial ways of initiating that, and you know we have it at Saber Warrior, don't we? Just before we go into the container, there's a threshold moment and we stop you there and we have a conversation with you and I tell you that's the known world, and what we're about to step into is the unknown world. Okay, we're going to go somewhere. That's going to be scary. All right, it's real. But we're going there and I, and it prepares you, and and when you cross that moment, you are now in the unknown world, your psychology, all of a sudden it's just gone. What the hell's going on here? Yeah, yeah, here, yeah, yeah, all your challenges are going to come up, and so we have to instigate that shock to the psyche to prepare for the. Um, what I would say is is really the death of an aspect of our psyche.
Speaker 1:It will has to die off so if I, if I, if I go back to programs that I may have seen when, when I was younger, on on tribal initiations, etc. From my understanding, then once boys reach a certain age, they're sent off to survive on their own or to to complete a certain feat or challenge, on the understanding that when they return they've they've earned their place back in that village because they've completed it. Um, where am I going with that question?
Speaker 1:yeah, well you sort of yeah, mapping out the, the hero's journey a little bit there so so I'm guessing then, in terms of, because you may have not have lived this experience as well, but in the marines we get initiated as well, which is probably another reason to get cancelled, but but I'm not going to talk about now. So what's the difference between that initiation ceremony if we can imagine things and something that really does have a benefit and serves us and our society or village?
Speaker 2:It's a great question and I've pondered this for a long time and the best that I can do at the moment is to say that the military is a pseudo-initiation. It's got some elements of it and it does a really good job at shocking people and dissolving the identity of prior to joining to. Now you're in this thing, we have ceremony around it, have swear of a swear of allegiance in there, but imagine as well the shock of the psyche is to momentarily dissolve the ego boundaries. Remember that. That's why an initiation into with psychedelics is so profound, because it does it really effectively.
Speaker 2:So when you join the Marines, we all rock up on the train station with bloody ironing boards under our arms, wearing suits. You know what I mean. We've all got our own little hairstyles, we've got our names and all the rest of it, and then we get held in a line just before we go through that little gate and the sergeant there, the drill sergeant's there, right or corporal, and he's telling us you're about to step into the unknown right. Look around you, look at all the civilian suits that you're wearing. All of that's about to be destroyed and, just you know, taken off you and, sure enough, before you know it an hour or two later, you're having your head shaved. You all look the same. You've got a number now. So you don't even have a name, just a number, right, and you're now all wearing this same uniform. You're now uniform, right? You're now melding into a collective. There's no sense of identity of individual, like it's not about you anymore, mate, it's about the bloke next to you. So you're now. You're like hold on a minute, responsibility is coming into this, right.
Speaker 2:So it's got so many elements of an initiation, a right, a right of passage. It really is, uh, but I'm still trying to unpick. What are the? What are the positive and the negatives? What are the ones that get right and what are the ones that they? They don't get so right and and that's a that's an ongoing conversation, but in terms of modernity, it's a bloody good one.
Speaker 2:If that's all we have, then maybe that's a that's good enough right now. However, all we have, then maybe that's a that's good enough right now. Um, however, I believe what really happens is where a right, a rites of passage for a boy is to initiate him into being a man, a wholesome man. A rites of passage for the military is to initiate them into being a military warrior, a warrior, so he's still not complete. He's just been initiated into the warrior archetype, which is great, but it's not the end of the story. He still has to be king, warrior, magician, lover. So he's got three other archetypes that he still has to be initiated in and that's, I think, the fundamental place where I think that initiation falls short for men.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What I wonder then is, as you say, that if there's certain shadows that aren't explored or revealed, oh, absolutely, yeah, In the military initiation.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure, For sure, because it's all Mars, it the mars energy it's, it's the warrior archetype, it's, it's. You know, we're tapping into ideas and concepts of survivability, but beast mode and death and killing, and um, putting aside sensitivities, right, um, it's also about the process of dehumanizing the other even more right, because if you have any kind of sense of humanity for that person, you're about to drop 300 meters away. If you have any kind of remorse in that space, space you're going to suffer immensely in that, in that archetype of the warrior. So I think the biggest failings of the military machine, let's say, is its inability or lack of know-how how to move people from one archetype through the other yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you know? What leaps out of me is? There's a failure to integrate them back into society after they've yeah, yeah, gone through that. That's right, that's right yeah, you're.
Speaker 2:You're disembodied, you're completely fractured out into the archetype of the warrior and and integrating them back into themselves and in a healthy way is is lacking yeah, so what might an initiation for a teenage boy or young man look like in in your mind's eye, adam?
Speaker 2:so I think you cannot. The process of initiation cannot begin until that person has experienced the gift which is accessing the gold, which is also known as the insight, which is also known as the aha moment, which is basically, and that revelation cannot happen until he's gone through the trials phase, trials and tribulations, trials, tribulations and temptations. So he goes from status quo, normal everyday life. He gets invited to go on this journey of initiation. Uh, if it's done in a healthy way, in the village, you kind of expect it and you're like, oh, it's happening, it's that time for me it's come. You know, it's a big thing, so it has even more psychological impact. Then he's taken from the village out into the wilderness, normally right out into the wilderness, into into terrains that he's never been before, ideally close to a mountain, right. So he's elevated above the, the milieu of everyday life, uh, and he's taken to this, to this mythical place limston is a mythical place on top of a mound, right, for example, right, and you're going up that hill just, oh god, the gut-wrenching thing there, right. So, like I said, it's got many elements of, of a good initiation and so he goes into that place, he goes into the unknown world and typically he's greeted there by a wizard, right, somebody that's traversed this terrain many times and gives you special guidance, supernatural guidance and whatnot. And so he then will be faced with a number of trials. He'll be given tools, for example, luke Skywalker. He gets given the lightsaber and there's a scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi says right, son, you're coming on this journey. He initially refuses it. His auntie and uncle get killed and then he's like I have to do it now. So he goes on the journey and he crosses into the unknown world, goes out to space. He literally leaves the planet and goes up into space on a spaceship.
Speaker 2:Right, so he's in an unknown world and he gets given a mentor which is Skywalker. Right, so he's in the london world and he gets given a mentor which is luke skywalker uh, obi-wan kenobi and a lightsaber. He goes, there's some tools, like we got given weapons, we got given roll mats. Right, we've got given all this stuff. It's like, right, go and camp out in the woods. Like what, what's this, you know? So, again, we get. We get to that point, but to that point. But you will have to face trials and tribulations. You have have to. You have to reach a wall, psychologically, physically and punch through it right. There's a for teenagers. Some of the old ones that they used to do would be fire watch for 24 hours, right Throughout the night, basically On your own, keep the fire going right.
Speaker 2:Sounds simple, but that kid is in the woods on his own in the dark, nothing but this fire to keep him warm and to keep the wolves away. Um, you know, we have uh brought into public awareness through the, the movie 300, the agogi, which is a seven years old that's when that started. And then their final trials. Trial is to go and kill a beast in some mountain and come back with his head or wherever. It may be something shocking, something scary. There will be a cut involved. For us, the cut is the haircut. That's what initiates the trials period.
Speaker 2:For some, it's literally chopping your foreskin off. In some Africanan tribes they do it in a real savage way, on the log. I don't know if you've seen it to this day. It's horrendous, um, uh, which you know, infections and all that. The rest of it is. It's a nightmare. And then modernity comes in and says, oh, you gotta stop doing that. Um, but you know, there's a point to all of it, uh, and we, and we don't understand it and we don't know what we're throwing out with the bath water. And so go through those trials. If you go through that, you're going to learn something about yourself, you're going to learn something about life, you're going to learn about self. You know your, your abilities to self-sustain and to survive and you're going to go. Do you know what? I respect myself because I went through that.
Speaker 2:I've got this yeah selfief right, and so that's what the gifts tends to be. It's like this illumination of like oh, I can take care of myself and others. Hmm, I am a good person. You know. All of these qualities get revealed only, though, after you've gone through the trials and tribulations. You can't learn it in a book. You know, you have to put your body on the line.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the line, so yeah, and it's really interesting, as you speak to me, that I've got a vision of my young boy as he's just turned 10 now and starting to give him the slight reign of freedom to yeah, I guess, explore the world on his own in, and it's down like I see this as my role then is to to be grounded enough and courageous enough to let him go within reason, but also present enough to to be able to teach him and guide him. So the the classic example would be um, he wants to walk to school on his own. Well, not quite yet, because there's a couple of big roads that he has to cross, but 100 meters ahead of me, no problem, and I'm walk his younger sister behind those type of things as he gets closer to that mountain and gets exposed to the bigger boys on the way to school on his own. Um, those challenges, but what's, what's the next step then? If we do start to let them go? What might that look like for somebody in western society?
Speaker 2:adam, an initiation listen, this, all of this doesn't matter. If you're doing it on your own, by the way, this doesn't work. If you're doing it on your own, by the way, this doesn't work. Us individually trying to figure this out for our boys, I'm telling you now it won't work. I truly believe this still has to be done as a collective. This still has to be such intentionality about the container of initiation. It has to be done as a group, as a collective.
Speaker 2:I believe that the antidote to this is to have a coordinated, nationwide organization of elders, initiated men and then a conveyor belt of boys coming through right, whereby we essentially have this well thought out containment, initiation, test them, because what you want to do is, you know, and in those initiation initiated men, among them will be the parents of those boys going through. Ideally, like ideally now, they won't be leading them. There'll be other men leading these, these, these boys, but they'll be there amongst it, they'll be involved in some capacity. But the idea is to create a psychological shock within the confines of safety and unfortunately society has fallen in love with this idea of comfort and safety, right Like it's some sort of birthright, like that's. The epitome of a well-evolved human being is that they're always safe and they're always comfortable, and that, unfortunately, is a poison that's destroying many people, their health and their ideas of what life is and all the rest of it. And so you know it's uncomfortable, it's challenging, it's testing within the confines of what's reasonable and we have to push them right up to the edge.
Speaker 2:I want them essentially to think bloody hell, I might die here. But two steps back behind them is an adult that knows they won't die. Does that make sense? So you're saying 100 meters behind him. He's out there, he feels vulnerable. He's like 100 meters for a kid walking about on his own looking around now because you're not right next to him, so he has to now look around. That's wonderful because you're really extending and pushing him out to the bound. But you know 100 meters sprint for you is nothing, and if you had to, you would get there and you would prevent whatever's happening and your head's going to be on a swivel.
Speaker 1:Of course you're going to be looking ahead and it's not the center of barcelona, living as well you know. So, yeah, it's a suburb.
Speaker 2:It's karma, it's yeah, so maybe center london is 10 meters center of yeah, but you know, but but that's a great con, that's a great point that you bring up there. It's like, how do how do we sort of it's a feel thing. It's like how do we push them out to the edge of that comfort zone? And I think once you do that, once you do a proper initiation as a village, as a collective, as an organized, intentional thing, then after they get the reward and the insight, they have to return. They have to return back to the known world. At that point, a successful initiation is that they become very familiar with the unknown world. They've become very comfortable with this liminal space, with this adventurous edginess, this wild beast kind of space, right, and oftentimes what happens is a flip happens and that is, they don't want to return to the known world. They have this resistance and it's like oh no, I like this here, I like this sense of brotherhood, I like the sense of achievement, I like being pushed and I've survived, I want to do it again. Right, so that's good, you know, you've done the right job right there. Because then they have to return to the known world with everything they've learned, and essentially learn how to wield the sword of truth that they've just uncovered for themselves. That's the whole King Arthur story. I've got all this power of responsibility and self-belief and I have my word. I have my word, that is to say that if I say I'm going to do something, I'll do it and I'll do it. There's such a sense of self-belief, and so that's where self-esteem comes into it. That's really well-grounded, healthy young man who believes in himself. And also he's known the idea of sacrifice. He's experienced being of service to others. He's sacrificed a piece of food for himself, he's given it to his mate, who's colder, hungrier, right. All of that is part of that idea of becoming a man and integrating it back into the known village. He returns ceremoniously as a man and integrating it back into the known village. He returns ceremoniously as a man and he's welcomed by the village as a man and it's like well done, son.
Speaker 2:Now you gotta pay rent. Yeah, for example, you know it's 200 euros a month, please. Well, how, what? How am I going to figure that out? You'll figure it out. I trust you, son.
Speaker 2:Out, you go and mom's like oh no, you can't do that, he's too young. He's like it's okay, he's good, and imagine that. What a lesson that young man's going to have in that moment. Right, he's not going to go back to his same room with, like posters and kiddie, childlike sort of things and it like, no, no, we're now going to redecorate your room. This is your room now, right, this treat, this is like this, this is your space and that you're, you're paying for it, right? So you start to sort of bring them into that. You know, cohesive, adult type, person, responsible, and before you know it, he's going out into the world, which is what you want from your children. Fly the nest, go Go out there. Brave the world. And the mother, she's like the world might kill you, but that's the right thing to do. I'm letting you go. That's the good mother. Let's him go, risking humiliation and death. But trust me, son, staying here, infantilized, connected to me, is much worse for you. Trust me, son, staying here, infantilized, connected to me, is much worse for you.
Speaker 1:Trust me, it's the same over a prolonged period. I think is what comes to me when you paint that picture, and I also can't help reflect it sounds like there's a lot of conversation still to be had because you could understand how this idea seems so far removed and, just like you said, risky and dangerous and, yeah, easy to dismiss. Yeah, um, but yeah, fascinating conversation, mate. A lot of food for thought there, um, so thank you very much for that, adam. Is that? Is there any anything else that you'd like to mention, that that we've not talked about or that's on your heart to mention as we, as we start to close out for today?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I would say that there's a, there's something that is dispelled or or healed, shall we say integrated, by doing an initiation like this for our boys, and that is the, the peter pan effect. So we, the peter pan effect is, as that cartoon movie you know demonstrates, is this uh infantilized adult among children and childish and fantasy thoughts, and you know, infantile, never taking full responsibility for his life. You know, falling in love with tinkerbell, which is essentially porn. Right, which is this? This, this fake, sort of uh fake romance, um, that's not really real and it's fantastical and it's, you know. So we see the, the porn epidemic hitting the young men, you know, uh, not so young men these days. Uh, all of that is because of the Peter Pan effect, that is to say that they refuse to go on the adventure, right, and curiously, in Peter Pan, you look at him, the only adult in that movie is Captain Hook, right, and what he sees?
Speaker 2:Peter Pan looks at Captain Hook and goes I'll never want to be like that, I don't want to be like that. Look at him. What good has it done him? He's got a bloody crocodile that's chasing him with a clock inside of him Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, which represents father time, which means I don't want to die. I don't ever want to grow old and die. Look at him, he's miserable. Why would I want to be like that? So he stays in Peter Pan mode and he goes. I'm going to go over here and stay in this fantastical world and never take responsibility for life and just keep having fun, fun, fun. That's it. That's what life's about. So that's the Peter Pan effect.
Speaker 2:Now, as I describe that, I'm sure everyone can imagine certain men in their lives that are still stuck in that, like they're not taking you. It's like, yeah, I'm with this woman, but I'm not going to sacrifice. You know having sex whenever I want with other people, right? That's the Peter Pan effect. And you know, you can dress it up in a suit, all you want.
Speaker 2:But when I'm around those types of men, I can immediately pick it up and I'm like, oh, I don't trust your word. I don't trust you as a friend. I don't feel your word, I don't trust you as a friend, I don't feel like I can rely on you and I just don't trust you, right? So there's many men like that around. There are stuck in Peter Pan effect. Age 45, you know, just doing weird, inappropriate things, you know, and it can lead to terrible, terrible things down the line. And it can lead to terrible, terrible things down the line. And so I would just say that, really, that what's the point, what's the why of doing an initiation is to avoid the Peter Pan effect.
Speaker 1:Basically, love it, adam. Mate. Thanks again so much for your time, your wisdom, your leadership and your insights. Mate, it's a pleasure to spend time with you and I've been looking forward to this conversation for for a while. So thank you once again, mate, for the work you do. Um, yeah, I love who you've been in this world, brother.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks, mate love you too, and uh, thanks for the amazing questions. I enjoyed it. Look forward to the next one.