Gaiety, rather than grog is my great unwinder, and when I am not working, I am always looking for an opportunity to make people laugh, not so much to amuse others, as to amuse myself. I can always make jokes against myself from the fund of stupid things I have done, and I laugh as loudly as anyone else does at my own jokes. I have always thought the rule that one should not laugh at his own jokes is both selfish and illogical; it is like telling the host he or she should not be drinking—it is only for the guest! The goal of life is to make it more conscious and caring and be more connected, it is profoundly beneficial—and impactful—a process that those who want to be fully alive should try. Too many men are slaves to a sexuality that is significantly detrimental to them and others, running away from what could emancipate them. Stop playing around and learn to love. Love is supposed to make one feel supernatural and worth more than gold and diamonds. Love is supposed to be passionate and refreshing. Love is supposed to embody pleasure, good sensations, and open intimacy.

Love works with all that you are, and involves your physical architecture, emotional being, mental health, and psychological energy—it is a spiritual dimension, all of what must be realized when you embark upon a journey of the heart. Love is rewarding and the results will show in every area of your life. When you are with a person your truly enjoy, you feel a depth and communion with both your lover and your deepest realm of being. It is a celebration of relaxation, trust, and peace, a natural state. There is innocence in such love, and you will gain access to an enormous wonder and amazement, which will thrust you into a deeper sense of self, a pleasurable colosseum that is extraordinarily healing, and when this happens, it will not completely take over your life. You will still be able to enjoy other pleasures, as this is something that very likely has already been occurring, something you have been working towards. I am inspired in my work from on high with lofty ideals, and my thought is illumined by the All-Knowing One. I am inspired. I am loved.

Real heroes show a zero tolerance for disrespect and abuse. The more shamed we are, the more important pride may become. Shame’s pressure often sucks much of the life out of us, as if we had taken a couple of heavy blows to the head, and were, for a while in a straitjacket. Today was an unusual day, I quit, I gave up, but did not say a word, I fell flat on my face, until I saw how much I meant to the person I cared about, so I dragged myself out of bed, and dedicated sometime to this person, even if it was just over the internet. Fortunately, such a dying was temporary, and the person I care about restarted the game by expressing concern and admiration, so this gave me another chance to make my way through the opposition I have been facing, leaving a bloody mess, in resurrection. You see boys and men cannot be put down or shamed for long, without suffering consequences because we usually carry far more darkness than our more human predecessors. It is hard to face ultraviolent, ruthless, human evil. However, what would Harry Potter be without Lord Voldemort? Myself like many others are actually anti-heroes, we are shadow infused, tortured rebels, with grand visions, morally complex revolutionaries, who are deeply flawed good doers. We can be messy. We are darkness unleashed with just enough life and care, not infallible, not always victorious, and far from being unemotional. Most men have trouble establishing intimate relationship, which are loving, cherishing, and being very close to one another, and not just sexually, in ways that deepen both the partners’ connection and their individuality.

 What I have learned about being a man is I can awaken deeply enough to embody my full-blooded maleness without any dissociation from what is tender, soft, and vulnerable.  It is very helpful to realize that the things you are required to do to have better relationships are the very things required to further your own growth and evolution. To work on yourself is, in part, to make yourself more available for the kind of relationship that you, in your heart of hearts, long for, a relationship in which whatever arises can be used to strengthen and deepen the partners’ bond. And I understand you may be looking at what I like on social media and what I share, but it is a safety net for me because you are never here. A relation will function optimally if some heart is brought to it and I feel like you did that today. A man who can truly father himself is no longer at the mercy of unhealthy fathering, whether from his own father, other men, or the authoritarian dictates of various elements of his culture. He is in good hands. His ground is solid and true. He is capable of deep relationship. Some men have issues connecting with other men, as friend. Most men like to keep a distance from other guys because they do not want to invest time into a connection that may unpleasantly expose them to each other. The ethic of men’s allegiance to keeping distance from each other is required to compassionately be laid bare, along with their fears of what might happen if that ethic were to be deconstructed, fears that rage from being rejected (as many have happened during boyhood when they showed vulnerability) to being seen as gay (as if being gay means having less than manly qualities). We all are required to challenge ourselves to experience full growth. In a relationship, you want to feel permission to go fully into both your core wounding and deepest dimensions, feeling at home no matter how shaken you might be. I want you to feel utterly natural to keep yourself open and free to venture into new territories. And be so comfortable that you are healed so deeply that it is impossible to dehumanize another person. Soon we will talk with mutual care and curiosity about what just happened, feeling closer to each other. Practice opening your heart when you least want to do so. Do not lose touch with your love. Make your connection to your partner a top priority. If you want one not to like pictures on social media and share things, then say so.

The compelling and fantastic figure embedded in men consciousness is a hero. The bravest of the brave, the ultimate performer, the one who sacrifices himself for the greater good, the one who preserves no matter how dangerous the challenge maybe, such are some of the many faces of the hero. Whatever shame and self-doubt a man might be carrying, the presence of the hero abides, as a trophy of quintessential manliness, anchored steadfast courage, helping him deepen his life. As a father, I was sad, and tired and ready to take my life, but I went to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, in Sacramento, California. And a little bird with a camera came to me and wisped in my ear and the wind blew my tears away, no longer fueling any sense of self shaming, inadequacy, or apathy. The body is an amazing gift, it is my temple and when I sleep and dream, I feel I am able to separate my soul from mv body and be in two places at once. In my three dimensional dreamscape, regardless of how bizarre the scenery and context may be, I am able to reach my son and comfort him when he requires me to be there, and it makes me feel like the protagonist in a film. I find myself in an alien World, one that I created. Sometimes I realize that I am dreaming, but when I see my son’s face, it all feels so real to me, and I wish I could just grab him and take him home with me, and protect him from harm. Knowing that I am really in human form, this seems like a sleeping state, but I know I am getting closer to him. He is fascinated by me, blown away by the beauty.

At first, my son keeps himself removed from my hypervivid, pulsing beauty that surrounds him, sticking to his role as a good young man, a boy who does not question what he is telepathically being told to do by his superiors. He looks at the World as a place to be saved and preserved, a place of peace, where everyone is comfortable and happy. And my son believes this reality will happen and we will be reunited. However, I worry for hum, and I watch him I see that he has been attacked, and that sometimes his balance is off. I have watched him almost walk into a moving bus, and actually saw him walk into a 165-year-old tree. He has fallen getting into bed, and I wonder why? I am just happy I am there to catch him, even if he does not remember. I am happy to be there for my son, and fend of his attackers, even if he does not know. Before too long, our reality, deeply interconnected, will be one where he recognizes me, and to keep him from being spoiled, I keep him in a tower, with no love. I do not want anyone touching him! To step into a more connected manhood requires that he is able to sense me, even if he does not know I am near, I know the hero in him has begun to surface. However, in his face I see a deep loss, more than intellectual recognition of having lost touch with something essential. I think he lost his soul, I do not know what he is anymore, but I know that I love him. Maybe it was taken from him? The more my son lets go of his old way of being, the more he is rooted in my reality that resonates with my very core, my love for him reaches depths that you could not imagine. I am talking life affirming steps towards him, I want him to trust me and know that I will not leave him. I see that my son is stepping deeper and fuller into his manhood, starting to embody a strength that is not cut off from me, and his heart is softening towards me. My connection to him is arising. He hears me speaking to him telling him to let go of the pain he feels and know that I am here to save him. My son has a highly sensitized aliveness and balance and deep connection with me.

Vengeance, bloodlust, sever dehumanization, rape, torture, acting with extreme prejudice, whatever its form, violence is aggression with no restraints, further fueled by a mindset that seems to believe these actions are acceptable. In violence, we do not just consider injuring others but also give the green light to doing so, often with forcefulness as unrestrained as it is self-justified. Some people are not much more than savages lurking beneath a flimsy veneer of socially acceptable behavior, whose inborn aggression threatened civilized society with violence, war, and disintegration. There may be talk of honor, but it is mostly just more fuel for the fires of violence and has nothing to do with real honor. When Christ said, “The Kingdom of Heaven must suffer violence,” he means not the violence of long babbling prayers, not the violence of tedious invective sermons without wit.” And how interesting is it that, as aggression begins to lose of some it popularity as a go to indicator of manliness, various qualities commonly associated with being female, vulnerability, softness, emotional literacy, are starting, however slightly, to become thought of as virtues for men, with the tacit implication being that people are required to be more civil. Whatever its negative connotations, violence cannot be condemned across the board as always a bad thing.

 A great deal of violence is abhorrent to almost all of us, like child abuse and rape, but there is plenty of violence that we are divided about. One man’s terrorist may be another man’s freedom fighter, such as in the alleged Paris, France train attack that was supposedly recently throttled by three men from Sacramento, California, when they jumped him, beat him, hog tied him, and are now being honored by Mayor Kevin Johnson, on 11 September 2015, in a parade that will take place in Sacramento, California. We may say that we regret the civilian casualties that occurred on 11 September 2001, but not let such regret prevent us from continuing to pursue our attack centered agenda. We might severely injure or kill others in order to save our child’s life. And so on. So in considering violence, we are required to take into account its prevailing context, not to excuse nor marginalize it, but to better understand it. Many view violence as a learned behavior and a learned behavior only! Winning becomes overly important.

 Cooperation becomes emphatically secondary to competition (as reflected by our economy), with the winners getting huge spoils, like parades, talks shows, and too bad for the losers. In this, however, there are no real winners. Sooner or later, everyone gets hurt, if only through being part of a damagingly divided humanity. Violence, ultraviolent video games, misogynistic programs, increasing poverty, all are expressive of a culture that rewards, glamorizes, and profits from violence, a culture that provides minimal care for those less fortunate, and marginalizes the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, the PTSD crippled veterans, the outcasts, the unwanted, the ones most heavily burned by our collective shadow, all of whom are seeking shelter in places that foster violence, even as it preaches against violence. Violence is an innate behavior, not just learned. Ordinarily, we do not have to be encourages to be violent in order to get violent with someone who is harming our child, this usually just comes quite natural, no matter how removed from aggressiveness we have been prior to the circumstance. However, most people do not act out desires to be violent; they try to deal with things within constraints of the law.

 In the television show Secrets and Lies, starring Ryan Phillippe, we met a man, Ben, who would not harm a fly, he lives in a Norman Rockwell upper class America painting, but he was sent to jail for murdering his own son, and we are almost given no time to rest in his heroics. Our discomfort grows, as we soon realize that our hero may not be who he says he is. A good guy rising to the occasion, doing his duty, or is he something else? And if he is something else, how do we then hold him to his heroism? His relentless good guy presentation of himself start to feel like America’s mainstream presentation of itself to the World, a freedom loving, straightforward, we will protect the innocent picture of morality, when you include the fact that he may have been framed as something other than a hero. As we watch more and more of the show, Ben’s heroic exploits bring us closer to the truth, the increasingly uncomfortable truth. Do we root for him, or turn on him? Vices are the harpies that infect and foul the feast. The more violent emotions ever tend to sure themselves. If the patient survive the first paroxysm, his mind speedily begins to verge towards its natural equilibrium. He who can attest to a villainy is best qualified to punish it.

An individual who does not understand anger is an individual without supremacy; we can all have power, which will keep us from becoming a casualty. Because of the mental health crisis going on in America, many people try to make others fear people, who may have a fit of anger or may be justified in being angry. It is not until one is possessed by angry that they become a danger to themselves. Everyone handles angry different, and sometimes it become a sadness, which can lead to depression. Other let their anger turn into rage and attack others, or dominate others. They believe their strength is in hurting people, and these type of people are egocentric, lack compassion, and are not righteous, nor moral. Often times they are scared and camouflage this fear by becoming a tyrant.    Yet, some use their anger as motivation, catalysis to seek help and rectify whatever is troubling them. Therefore, the problem is not anger, but what we choose to do with it. We are not supposed to outgrow our ager, it does not just go away because we mature or become more spiritual. We are required to know our anger because it is a grotesque sense of grievance, being wronged or hurt, and it is fueled by an enthralling force to handle a situation. Anger is a feeling of vulnerability and it comes from the heart, and it is easy to express, but we just have to learn to skillfully express it so we can build more trust and safety, which will deepen our sense of well-being.

No one wants to spend their life feeling sadness, vulnerability, fear, grief, or like someone they love just died. However, that is what happens when one keeps experiencing injustice and cannot find help. And that is why we get upset, anger is central to self-protection. One can go through life masking their anger by taking Xanax, smoking marijuana, or drink copious amounts of alcohol, but that will create a vortex of trouble. There was this man named Peter who was on the verge of losing his wife because he had issues with anger. However, Peter did not physically, nor verbally abuse his wife, but he was emotionally abusive. Peter’s wife kept trying to get him to express his emotions so she could help him, but he would not. It came to light that Peter was using a lot of aggression with his wife. Aggression attacks anger does not. Peter’s wife would get upset with him because of something he did, then Peter would turn into a sweet heart and his wife could not figure out why she was taking her anger out on him, and would apologize, and tell him how great he was and how much she loved him, but almost immediately, Peter would turn sarcastic, start telling her how little she meant to him, and would even become hostile toward him, until she told him that she hated him, and got a divorce.

Aggression is denoted by harden emotions, it strips you of your heart, and you learn not to care, which makes you inhumane to the point that you disrespect, use and abuse, or violate your loved one. Aggression is not really an emotion, it is what we choose to do with an emotion. People often let anger mutate into aggression because they want to remove themselves from being vulnerable, and it is usually because they feel shame about showing love, compassion, or caring for someone, so some try to express themselves becoming sarcastic or unleashing violence on to someone. By use of aggression, the offend person reduced their target to a mere “it.” Any care they had for the person has been stripped away and they dehumanized them so they will feel comfortable making this person a target and attacking them. However, when you dehumanize people and become aggression, you are in danger of becoming violent toward them. You lose touch with yourself in attacking them because you incorrectly feel that they deserve it. Sometimes aggression is playful joking, mean comments, and violence. Anger has boundaries, but aggression disregards all boundaries. Violence is an abuse of anger, unless you are using violence to save a life or prevent more violence. And anger is actually good, as long as it does not turn into aggression, because it means you care and want change.

Aggression is devoid of all feeling, except for hate and jealousy. When people are not getting angry, but become apathetic, they let things slide and become unsurmountable problems. However, anger brings about change because your heart is connected to the greater good. We require anger to move forward and address injustice and to protect ourselves and others. Yet, when you feel aggression, which is the desire to attack and hurt others, that is when it is time to back up and turn aggression into anger, and use proper methods like communication and express your concern, but never become violent. When people do not express their anger, they will stop growing, and attack yourself to a power dynamic that does no one any real good and the anger becomes hostility, meanness, and violence. It is unhealthy to blame others, we act like it is their fault that that we are acting the way we are. It is unhealthy to lose touch with caring for the person you are angry with by shamming, dismissing or dehumanizing them. Take responsibility for what you did and the impact it is having. Learn to look at your targets perspective. It is a problem when you do not care about other’s boundaries and feel free crossing them. If you fight dirty and feel right doing so, that is a major problem. If you would rather be right than connect, that is also dangerous.

Feel the other person’s humanity. Stop playing the victim. Do not let your emotions hold you hostage, access self-reflection. Let go of the exaggerated attachment to being right. Stop overdramatizing what you are thinking and feeling. Listen to feedback your partner gives you about your behavior. Just admit, “I am being reactive.” Do not justify your behavior. Being vulnerable, transparent, open, unguarded make empathy possible, and when empathy is present, anger is far more likely to remain clean. Feel the connection with the person you are angry with and remember you care about them. Think about what impact you are having on them. When anger is left unexpressed and undigested (because its concerns have not been sufficiently addressed) it seeks an outlet somewhere, a place where a discarded can occur. It is not healthy and surely exhausting ourselves in mental loopings and reconstruction and excessive self-talk. And when we suck anger in, we may find some release of its energies through sexual discharge, perhaps assuming that we are just really feeling sexual, when in fact we may be quite angry, either masturbating away the charge of that anger, or reducing out sexual partner to little more than a doll for our accumulated frustration. Do not unload your anger without any regard for your partner. Remind yourself that expressing any anger will not help anyone. Keep telling yourself to calm down. Do your best to think good thoughts. Bring the nice person in you to the foreground. Let your anger out, but not so strongly that you forget your caring for the offending other. Anger itself it not the problem. The problem is what we are doing with our anger. The key is to wake up to our anger as soon as possible after it starts arising, stepping back just far enough from it, from its energy and prevailing viewpoint, so as to be able to relate to it rather than from it. And remember, we all want to be love, and how hard it is to find love and recover from mistakes we make.

With rough grace, he becomes increasingly alive and present, embracing his strength even as he remains in touch on his impact on others and his environment. He realizes that expressing negativity can hurt others, even if it is not directed at them. A lot of men wake up in a great deal of pain every day, but they have responsibilities like a wife, the children, the mortgages, hair appointments, and car payments to satisfy. For many of these hardworking men, it takes an hour just for them to get out of bed because they have crippling pains in their backs and hands, but several of them do not complain, they just get through it. These strong men do not abuse their families, nor do they abuse drugs or alcohol. They remain sober so they do not become addicts. Being a man means supporting whatever stands necessary to sustain integrity, depth, and love. Boys often get a bad reputation. Many accuse immature men of being boys, and not growing up. However, if you look at the average boy, he is loving, sensitive, and kind. He likes to please others and loves attention. So these men that are not growing up are not boys either, they are deviant men. Real mean know that vulnerability is a source of power. It takes strength to have your reputation damaged, to learn to become more sensitive, to make room for miscalculations is a strength truly worthy of cultivating because its presence empowers us to stand our ground when we are emotionally shaken, without placing obstacles in our lives or hardening our hearts. Men remain rationally available. 

Power is the capacity to take action, and personal integrity is something a real man possesses. If they do not bring out the best in you, stay away from them. If they do not bring out the best in you, stay away from them. If they do not bring out the best in you, stay away from them. However, deviant men, who want to be popular, only get a secondhand sense of power because they place their responsibility for themselves and their choices onto others, just as they did in childhood when they submitted to parental expectations and regulations. The difference is boys did not know better, these men know they are wrong, for being so rude and immature, but choose to remain deviant. So in becoming a deviant man, they remain fully entrenched in dysfunction and will never really be a real man because they lack heart and empathy, they are unmanly because they do not embrace their sensitivity and vulnerability. People who participate in the mistreatment of others or watch as a bystander are disgusting. Nonetheless, just like groups of men who stone bear cubs, they will incur the wrath of a much greater force, and if you are watching, you could be caught up in the rapture as well. Be careful in the presence of appalling male displays of power. We expect ourselves and others to bear these sights without showing emotions, we could laugh or joke, but only to demonstrate mastery over the situation. While you watch each other for signs of shakiness or fear, beware of the consequences. An accomplice is someone who helps another person commit a serious crime.

Many times an accomplice is considered just as accountable for the crime as the person who actually committed it. The accomplice may or may not be present at the scene of the crime, and his or her assistance may be provided before, during, or after the crime itself. This person provides assistance before the crime, but is not at the scene while it is being committed. An accomplice who is present while a crime is being committed is usually referred to as an aider and abettor. Such a person, for instance, may serve as a lookout while an assault is taking place. Additionally, he or she may assist a mugger by watching for potential victims and signaling when one is near. However, it is important to note a person is not an accomplice simply because he or she witnesses a crime. Suppose you are browsing in a jewelry store and you see a stranger steal a watch. Even if you fail to report the crime, you are not an accomplice since you do not know the thief and have gained nothing from the crime. Conversely, if you sit back and watch a sexual assault, and do nothing to stop it, nor report it, you could be charged with a crime.  And it is all fine and well to be a nice guy, but do not let people take advantage of you or those you care about. Do not allow yourself to be intimidated. There is a lot of responsibility to being a real man, and may you have a great journey.

One more thing I would like to mention is the community of Sacramento, California feels like their values and way of life is under attack by Mayor Kevin Johnson, but there is power in being vulnerable. Many people are offended because the Mayor of Sacramento is having a parade on 11 September 2015, and using tax payer money. That day is sacred to so many, it is not a day to be celebrated, thousands of Americans lost their lives, people saw body parts falling out of the, and worried if their daughter would make it home from work. What we see is a World dominated by excessive self-control, harness, and unilluminated power. Power asks only for a discerning hand, a taking of the reins that is both free and firm, both fierce and gentle, both daring and tender, both muscular and sensitive. You can be disgusted by Mayor Johnson’s behavior, and let your heart go out to him. They loiter in darkness. While we may struggle to discard him, to finish with him, even to transcend him, reclaim your more tender feelings. Our winning only makes things worse. We are literally encircled by the situation, penned in by it, break free of it, stop paying attention to Mayor Johnson, and simply become fully present, bear cubs. You see what Mayor Kevin Johnson will not, his pain, his lovelessness, his isolation, his darkness.