Modern Wisdom - The New Way Of The Superior Man - David Deida (1st interview in a decade) - #1101

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

David Deida is a spiritual teacher, researcher, speaker, and author. What happens when desire and ambition fade? As we age, the urgency and purpose that once defined us can begin to shift. But when that shift leaves us feeling empty, how do we understand it, and how do we build meaning again when the old sources no longer drive us? Expect to learn what a Man of Zero is, if the man of zero is the next stage of the superior man, what happens to ambition and motivation as a man ages, why talking about intimacy is hard for men, what the core of someone's masculine essence is, if masculinity is built by avoiding emptiness, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠⁠ Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 15% off your first order of my favourite Non-Alcoholic Brew at https://athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:21) What Is a “Man of Zero”? (5:48) The Signs You’re Becoming a “Man of Zero” (11:49) Why Success Starts to Feel Empty (13:33) Does Achievement Lead to Being a “Man of Zero”? (17:49) The Psychological Experience of Hitting Zero (19:34) How to Make Peace With Hitting Zero (25:11) Does Effectiveness Decline Over Time? (29:20) Is Self-Improvement Delaying Your Freedom? (30:30) How Sex Changes At Zero (39:13) Why Do Men Struggle to Talk About Intimacy? (43:14) The Best Ways to Move From Sex to Real Intimacy (50:47) What Comes After Hitting Zero? (57:57) How to Tell If Someone Is Truly Integrated (58:58) The Role of Discipline After Purpose (01:01:26) How Culture Around Men Has Shifted (01:03:32) What’s David’s End Goal? (01:07:51) How to Stay Fulfilled Long-Term (01:19:37) The Top Practices to Maximise Your Development Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's happening people. Before we get into the episode, I wanted to give you a disclaimer. David didn't show his face when we were recording. David's a pretty esoteric guy, decided that he's going to retreat from the world. He's living in a house in the middle of nowhere, in Florida, I think. And even though it might have been nice to have seen his face, it's completely on brand. So we've tried to make it as engaging as possible. I hope you enjoy the episode. What is a man of zero? Well, to me, a man of zero is somebody who has, has come to the point in their life where their motivation has evaporated or isn't there. They feel they still may be very active.

They may be married. They may have children. They may have businesses. They may be creative. But under it all, there's just a feeling like, why am I doing this? And part of me would rather not do anything kind of feeling. And I noticed a lot of men feeling that I was interacting with over the years. And so I wanted to address that.

Is this the next stage after the Superior Man? Is this a spiritual sequel to the way of the Superior Man? It's a kind of sequel, but it's not necessarily a stage progression. So somebody might go into the phase, I'll use the word phase, of a man of Z. and then after a month, a year, a decade, whatever, they may come back to being the superior man. To me, what a superior man is is a man who is motivated by a deep sense of purpose, and that sense of purpose might be to discover their purpose, but they're motivated by a sense of purpose often to serve the world

or to give their gift or to make things right. and when that evaporates or when they no longer feel that, that's the beginning of the phase of the Man of Zero. Now, it may last a very short time, may last a long time, the Man of Zero phase. So they may eventually go back to, oh, a new purpose. For instance, for myself, this book emerged out of nowhere as a kind of, oh, I should write this book, I need to write this book.

So it just came out of nowhere. and then, you know, the discipline of writing a book, of working with publishers and all of that, that takes effort. So that came up. You know, I was working as kind of a superior man phase for a while, and we'll see if I could get through this interview without resting back. If you degenerate into total apathy,

we'll know that you've gone back into a man-of-zero phase. It's not exactly apathy. I'm glad you said that. it's a kind of it's a clarity it's pure presence it's pure awareness it's being absolutely present with the moment but just not having an urge to push and change things like you're deeply content with the way things are but that doesn't stop you from changing things it just means you're not stressed you know most men have a kind of kernel of stress in their gut or their heart or their psiloblexus that moves them to do something, well, the man of zero is what happens when that

stress isn't there? What are you moved to do? Like, how does the universe use you? How does, you know, that deeper thing that's beyond you move through you? Because in the superior man phase, one is motivated mostly by their personal sense of purpose, rather than being used by something or much larger, if size even has meaning. I think it doesn't exactly paint a very flattering picture

of where most people's striving comes from, you know? What doesn't paint a flattering picture? The fact that when you get to this restful, no longer needing to prove yourself, you notice how much of your ambition and your, pushing seems to fall away. What that would suggest is that without some of the drives, needs for validation and recognition, past patterns that are puppeting you, maybe you wouldn't be pushing quite so much. Definitely, but I don't think that's a negative

thing. That's just an evolution, a way of growth. I mean, some of the, some of my favorite music, say, was probably created by artists who were doing it so they could get laid. You know, like there are sometimes people do something for money, but it's really a work of art. It's really a beautiful thing that they're creating. Some people have a sense of lack of self-worth, let's say, that they inherited from their childhood. And yet that lack of self-worth motivates them to create real art, really beauty on earth, real beauty on earth. So it's not necessarily a negative thing that people are motivated. It's just at some point I want to do account for what happens when those motivations are no longer sufficient to move you. I agree. The world is shaped

by people trying to prove themselves to themselves and others. Yes. Much of that motivation is running away from something that you fear, not just towards something that you want. It's trying to disprove your doubters or critics or alchemize that chip on your shoulder. And the world will become fundamentally a better place. But I think when you start to look at it from the perspective of the individual, the one person, it starts to look a little bit different, and it does look like a kind of evolution internally. I guess what are the indicators that you've reached this stage?

Let's say that you were to explain to the avatar of the person that's going through it. How would they know? What are the indicators that you're becoming a man of zero or become one? Well, the first part of the book, The Man of Zero, is several chapters dedicated to this. Basically, you're just no longer motivated like you used to be. You might look at your friends, say, and they seem motivated, they seem okay. They seem like they have a reason to get up in the morning and go forward. why don't you?

There's a kind of, well, you could either call it peace or you could call it lack of stress in your heart or your depth. And many people then, many men then assume that's an issue, that's a problem because they've been motivated, like you say, for many reasons. And suddenly they're just not, it doesn't move, it's not sufficient to move them anymore it feels false it feels like a false life it feels like they're not living true to their deepest self and temporarily their deepest self wants to do nothing

which to me is a portal like if men learn how to do nothing impeccably so not get on their phone or look at pornography or watch movies or whatever people might do when they don't want to do anything, if instead men just took a moment and really were present, totally aware, like crystal clear, not pulling away, not pushing anything, something emerges from that. So when you're able to just sit, or you can do it walking, or it doesn't matter at all, but if you could just be, that being then begins to unfold through your life, through your body and mind. And your body and mind are conditioned.

Like your body and mind are trained a certain way. So when that being flows through your body and mind, it'll look different than when that being flows through my body and mind. I'm not sure if that's any sort of your question. It certainly does. It's a kind of stillness indicator would be you're comfortable with peace. But it seems to me that it's almost like it feels like, It feels like a deceleration in striving is one of the sort of core components here,

the need to do, the need to be busy. That's a core component. The sense of seeking for something, whether it's self-validation or peace on Earth, whatever you're seeking, just somehow dissolved. And you're left with just being. So again, most men, they get to that place of just being, and they think it's negative, like, you know, I need to take testosterone or, you know, I need to drink more caffeine or whatever.

They feel like they need to do something to get their mojo back, or in fact, that is their mojo. Their mojo is leading them to relax their body and mind to become transparent to their being, their deepest being. And it could take time. It might not take time. It's not predictable. but once you're living from that place of being, there's a through and through sense of authenticity.

There's not a sense like something's lacking that you're trying to fill or stress that you're trying to release. It's just a fullness of being that's living your life. It's the same, you experience it, the same force, let's say, as growing trees and moving your blood. Your thoughts are just appearing out of,

nowhere nobody knows what they're about to think nobody's actually planning it's just their thoughts come out of nowhere their body comes out of nowhere their experience of everything what they hear what they see is just appearing and when they could stay there because they have no motive to move then that appearance you know you begin to see some principles of those appearances but you're free things are appearing you may act on them but the essential feeling is one of freedom. Yeah, I think what's really interesting here is it feels like the moment when your success stops feeling meaningful and your striving is no longer rewarding you in the same way. And what you're saying is that some men kind of get to there. They get to this escape velocity where they

are in this phase of zero, this man of zero moment. And what they do is because for almost all of their life where they have taken meaning from has been progress, difficulty, hard charging, driving forward, doing things, making shit happen, fulfilling their ambition. And when it's gone, they don't think, oh, wow, I've completed that video game. They think, I need to change my conditions with caffeine or imagined or real enemies or higher testosterone level or a divorce or whatever it might be in an attempt to reignite the heart of this dead star that is supposed to kind have been let to cool for a little while? Yes, exactly.

It's healthy and appropriate for the motivations of your body and mind that it would be in the past to come to stillness and then to discover the truth of what's left. That's so good. So a question on this, why does success eventually feel empty?

Well, it only felt full because you had these thoughts and feelings of lack and goals that you described. There's never... Anyone who succeeded at anything knows that it's... You know, the first thing you discover when you succeeded anything is, uh, okay, you know, I've made zillion dollars,

I've got the beautiful woman, or whatever their thing is, and there they are. They're the same one. They're the same being that they were before. The question, was it? Yeah. Well, it wasn't. I mean, you had to do it. There's no reason to not, like, if you're motivated to make a lot of money or you're motivated to find a partner or to have sex with a lot of people or whatever one's motivation is, you can explore that. I mean, that's what human birth is for,

to explore all the possibilities of being human. But there comes a point if you mature, and it could be at any age. A lot of people due to psychedelics and all kinds of things are coming to this point early in their life, but there comes a point where they're just, it's just empty. It feels empty. The tone is emptiness, meaninglessness. They're just, they're there in their mansion, you know, whatever their situation is. And it's like, nothing really has changed essentially. Things have changed externally, bigger house, whatever, but essentially they're the same. won. And that's disappointing to people. They think there should be some feel differently. Does this mean, therefore, that becoming a man of zero is more common among people, guys,

who have achieved? That in order to realize that success is empty, you need to have achieved some success. If you're lower down the sort of ladder, still striving with more unfulfilled desires and goals and accomplishments that as yet you haven't reached, you're more likely to keep playing that game as opposed to arriving at this position of stillness? I think a large percentage of these men have achieved a modicum of success and have come to that point of meaninglessness. However, I think more and more younger men, before they've flexed their muscles in the world, before they've achieved success, often due to a meditation, experience or I mean people can have these deep experiences now cheaply so they could have a

unearned glimpse of infinity and they could come to a place of why do anything very early in life before success and their practice would be the same as the successful person's practices outlined in the Man of Zero book yeah it's referred to as spiritual bypass by some of my friends that sort of do a lot of psychedelics. People go away to the Amazon rainforest. They sit with the shaman. They have this transcendent experience. They touch the divine.

They feel the infinite. And then they come back and they're the same prick that they were two weeks ago. There's no integration. Nothing changes. They've just had like visited this peak moment, kind of like a tourist going on holiday, to come back and go back to their normal day-to-day life. Yes.

And the key insight in that, and psychedelics altogether is that you said you're like you're the same I don't remember what you said you're the same prick before him something like that the thing to recognize is you are the same one

whatever that is we have to call it a prick but you actually are the same one so no experience changes yourself your being as like let's just call you know it doesn't matter what we could call our deepest being, being, or aware of being. It's what's always there. It's what they were when we were

five or 10 years old. It's what's there now in this moment, in this moment, in this moment. Things keep changing, our experience changes, but that sense of I or being is continuous. So if you could really recognize that, if you could use, say, psychedelics and go, I'm the same being before I psychedelics during the trip and afterwards, then the practice is to rest as that being. So the psychedelics themselves may afford healing of different kinds of the body and mind. It may give you visions of kind of parallel worlds to the one our waking state is used to. Those can be interesting. It could be useful.

But the one who's having those visions is the same one who eats lunch. takes a shirt. This episode is brought to you by Jim Shark. If you're going to spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. GymShark makes the best men's and women's training gear on the planet. And here is something I realized a few years into training. When you actually like what you're wearing in the gym,

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I imagine this gets confused for depression a lot. Definitely. So there are some cases of true clinical depression, for instance, biochemical imbalances that could be addressed through pharmacological means. Or you can go into a kind of depression because you lose someone you love. or fail at something that you've spent years trying to succeed. Sometimes those are what I would call true depression, but what most people experience,

and what I'm trying to describe, is that they come to a point where their actual life is meaningless. There's no more meaning anymore, and so they feel, what do I do now? And then what they add is a sense of collapse. So being, being, just being your deepest self, without collapse, is the man of zero. Being, being, and then collapsing, literally collapsing, contracting in your solar plexus,

punching over, kind of getting in that dark mulling, you know, what am I doing? mulling things over, that's depression. So if you subtract the doing, if you go to true zero, so you're not even doing contraction, you're not doing slouching, you're not doing the mulling of the thoughts, then what's left is B without collapse, and that's the man of zero. How do people distinguish that in the moment? Because I think the fear that's going to come up,

it sounds great. We can rationally identify, Well, the main difference is the collapse, the stillness, the deceleration, becoming comfortable with it. But in the moment, you're not going to be thinking rationally at all. You're going to think, where did all of my drive and ambition go? And you're going to look around at all of your friends who you used to work with or compete with or have a rivalry or a friendship with and go, they're still congruent. They're still aligned. Their thoughts, words, actions, beliefs, direction in life is all moving in the same direction.

and I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. I don't want to get up. I'm not driven by the same things anymore. This feels like depression. This must be what depression is. So how would you advise someone in the moment to have faith that this is an evolution, not a devolution, progress, not regression? One way, there are several ways, but one way would be to, so let's take this moment now.

if you're thinking thoughts in this moment, let's say those thoughts were my friends are succeeding or my friends, you know, everything that you just said, those are thoughts that are going about. If you can see those thoughts or witness those thoughts, you see them come and go. Like there's a beginning of a thought, there's a thought, it's over, now is another thought. So there's these thoughts that are moving. and it's not that difficult to see that you're still there. The thoughts are changing, you are not.

You are experiencing those thoughts. The experience changes, the thoughts change, but you are not. And so it's hard to put words on, but you sink into that being, or you rest as that being, or you relax as that being. And then those thoughts may or may not continue. you. But if you buy into those thoughts, that's what contracts you. So if you start getting lost in the thoughts or lost in anything, lost in a sexual relationship, lost in your work, but when you get lost in those thoughts, you feel suffering because you're not yourself,

true self. You're lost in the stream of thoughts. So the checking is, are you free, even if thoughts are moving. Are you free as they move? Are you the awareness or the space of awareness, how do you want to say it, in which those thoughts are moving? And if you can stay there, just rest, relax there, it's effortless. It's just what you always are. So if you feel that effort coming up, you know you're missing the mark. It's interesting that so much of what I think a lot of men do is hide away from the fleeting thoughts, the scary fleeting thoughts, and the patterns that only come up in moments of stillness and quiet by staying busy. So this must be, it's almost like a perfect storm.

The drive that kept you busy is no longer there. and as the busyness falls away because you're less driven, the quiet fleeting thoughts come up, which you've been hiding away from for a long time, which is even scarier. And that then gives you more to contend with, which incentivizes you even more, to push away the phase of zero

and go back into the drive and the pursuit. It's kind of worse than that. Brilliant. Because we've suppressed a lot. So let's say you, told a lie to somebody. This is just one example. Let's say you told a lie to a business partner or to your wife or whoever or maybe just to yourself, but you've told a lie. And then for some gain, personal gain, you know, so you told a lie and now that moment is past, but you know

you've told the lie. That creates a kind of contraction or tension in your body in mind. and when you come to this place of zero, all of those tensions from your entire life, all the ways you've lied to yourself and others, come back to the surface. So you'll be sitting there and a memory of this person you lied to will come up. It could even be deeper than that. So we have a genetic past and an epigenetic past and an unsexual past

and an ancestral past. And so just even at the mammalian level, we have mammals, we're mammals. And mammals fight and fuck and run. And so you'll be sitting there and mammalian urges to kill and fuck and they'll arise. And the moments you've lied to people and hurt them, those moments will arise.

And they're arising to your awareness to be released. It's a kind of purification. Like you said, they've been stuffing them down. So it is, it's quite the ride. It's not like a vanilla. You know, so you have to be, that's why I wrote the book because I want men to understand that and be able to tolerate that unfolding.

Does real world effectiveness become less for a while? I would say the interest becomes less, but if you've become effective, that stays there. Your skills are diminished. So your skills... What's the judgment by which we're saying effective is or is not here?

If it's playing a game that you've now liberated yourself from, then yeah, you're less effective at playing the game, but you've also transcended it. Yeah, I'm not even sure you're less effective at playing the game.

You're just less moved to, but if the game is kind of put on you, you might even be more skilled because you're less wound up in your own issues. Yeah, that's fun. That is fun. So, I mean, what's so cool about this? I've been doing this live show. I went to Australia, New Zealand, and Bali. I just got back from that. And on stage, I was trying to thread a needle that was potentially really unpopular and also really hard to do. And it was basically warning people of the hollowness of arriving. And it really feels like there's something there in the ether that you've definitely touched with. this and I think I was trying to get to as well. One of the challenges I think when it comes to people learning this stuff is if you haven't yet got there, if you haven't yet got to the point where

you've felt enough success and achievement to peer over the top of it and see that it might not be all that you thought or you hope that it was going to be, if someone who appears to have already made it to the top of the mountain is telling you that the view from the top is not that good. What it feels like to you is someone sucking the oxygen out of your fuel tank. People respond to this with an awful lot of distaste. Oh, like what a luxurious position to be in or some other version of. Well, if I'd got there, that would fix my internal need, my desire for validation. That would be solved by the 10,000 square foot home or the supermodel girlfriend or the Ferrari or the thousand monthly paying subscribers on my app or whatever it might be. And

I think it's a rare person who is able to face this and go, huh, maybe the things that I'm pursuing at some point in future will be hollow, as opposed to just, they just need to push harder. They just need to man up and go through it. If they feel they need to man up and go through it, they should. I mean, that's a true phase. So if somebody really feels that, I would recommend that they man up and go through. it. To others, I would say, it's not so much like when you reach the top, like you arrive and then

you see it's empty. Right now, in this moment, whoever is listening, I mean, this very moment, feel what's happening. Notice what's happening. There's something happening. You're hearing my voice and your voice. There's a visual perception they're having, but none of that is changing them. They're the same one listening that they were yesterday or 10 years ago or 10 years from now. And so in this very moment, they can relax or notice that one. And instantly in that noticing, all the stuff they're doing and thinking becomes empty. Not in a negative way. It's just stuff that's happens like watching a river, watching the clouds,

it's still happening, but it's flowing through you. So there's no need to feel like when I achieve or when I'm on have arrived. Right now you're in that condition. But you may also have motivation. So right now, everyone is in the condition of being aware. To some people, that is sufficient. to other people, they need to add stress and seeking.

In that way, do you think self-improvement and the pursuit of self-improvement can sort of delay real freedom, making us believe that were the unfinished article until, even if that's not true, the belief in it means that we put off asking the deeper questions or sitting with the stillness? I don't think, if somebody wants to self-improve, they should, as we said earlier. I mean, that's what makes the world go around. So people who are moved to self-improve or improve the world, which tend to go hand in hand, they should. There's no reason not to.

I don't see it as a block to this. I think sooner or later, most men come to a point of however active they are, however improved they are or not, of feeling its emptiness. Like in, again, in this moment, most men would be able to feel that spacious emptiness, that awareness. It's aware. There's an is-ness. It's hard to put words on this, obviously, but a lot of men have experienced it.

What changes around sex? Well, a third of the book is about sex of the book, The Man of Zero, because a lot could change, because a lot of our sex is based on... our past, our mammalian past, as I said, our psychological past, the way our parents treated us, our first sexual relationships. As we rest at zero more and more, more stable, more frequently, those no longer motivate you.

So what men often feel, as they approach this phase with a man of zero, is less actual desire for sex, but more sexual fantasies coming out of those depths that I described earlier, like that we stuffed down. So they might be sitting there and they may have all kinds of weird sexual fantasies and thoughts, but when it comes to actually having sex and having a relationship, all they know is what they see in their friends or what they did in the past, which is based on these conditionings from their past,

their mammalian conditioning, their personal past, their childhood traumas. And those just are no longer an interesting way to have sex. So a lot of men go, you know, I'm losing my sexual desire. I need to get it back. Whereas, as I describe in the book, there's what turned you on now is not as much, you know, what turned you on before, lingerie and porn or whatever. But a partner, I'll say woman, it could be any sex, but a partner's actual love.

her devotion, her surrender. So when you feel someone's devotion to love or surrender, opening their body to love, that brings a part of you to the fore that could become sex from zero. Like you're rested at zero. You're not pushing. But from that place comes a polarity or sexual attraction. There's a lot in the book about that. We can unpack it more now if you want.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think the role of sexual polarity, obviously, massive part of your first book, and then to see it, you might think that the amount of stillness would kill the polarity, but you're suggesting that that's not the case. Stillness is one side of the polarity. The other side is fullness or energy, and that's, you know, I use the word masculine and feminine. It's problematic for some people, but the way I'm using that word is that the masculine is that unchanging sense. stillness that we can all experience. And the feminine is everything that moves, is life force, is energy, is in fullness to the emptiness. And so as you rest in emptiness through polarity, you tend to attract fullness. So in a heterosexual relationship, you will tend to attract to you women who are very active, they like to talk, they like to socialize, just as you're feeling I don't want to talk, I don't want to social life.

And so it's important to learn to embrace that polarity, but it's still a polarity. And ultimately, the polarity is being the fullness of your depth, of your awareness, and attracting to you a woman who's in her fullness of devotion. That is, her heart is open and full of love that she also wants to share, but she's not driven by a sense of lack. So she loves you but doesn't need you and vice versa. And that's a very strong polarity. Your depth of stillness is in polarity with her radiance, her power.

I see it even coming out as more and more women. I'm sure you know this. You know, there are more girls who graduate high school than boys. There are more women in law school and medical school than men. And I think it's going to keep going to that direction. that over time, women will be much and already are, will be more, there'll be more women leaders than men, there'll be more successful women than men. The pendulum will swing. And then men will need to learn how to rest is this man of zero in depth because then they

still have polarity. It's very valuable. When a woman who's very strong and powerful, kind of comes home from work if we want to use that metaphor, like she comes home. from a day of being in the world. And there you are completely present, rooted in the deepest sense of being, absolutely attentive to her without being singing because your awareness is free. She feels that is the greatest gift on earth. So she moves from being attracted to a man who, whatever, makes a lot of money and is socially charismatic, to a man whose polarity matches her at the level of being and doing or emptiness

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but with function, it's $365 a year. That's $1 a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing. And right now, you can get $25 off, bringing it down to $340 bucks. So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save $25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom a checkout. Interesting to think about the masculine essence of, I guess, holding frame would be one way to put it, but just being you, just being. And that even if you're not doing as much doing as the woman in your life, the fact that you're able to be so still and so comfortable with it, commands a kind of masculine power and

respect that kind of means that no matter what happens in the outside world, the protector provider, the socioeconomic balance or imbalance, it's always still you in a position of masculine frameholding. Yes, because awareness is where everything happens. You wouldn't be aware of something unless it happened in awareness and you're that awareness so you are the ultimate frame if you will and this could even apply sexually so let's say you're laying in bed with a lover um in the past you might initiate sex and you know you might be kissing and touching and foreplay and building up tension maybe spanking i you know lovingly being together in all kinds of playful ways but for a man of zero he might be laying there feeling like i i don't want to

anything. I don't want to move. I love her. I love being here with her. I don't want to do anything, no. And I would say to that man, okay, don't do anything. You just lay there in bed, hold her in your arms, but completely feel her, feel her body. Notice the tensions moving through her body, feel her emotions, feel the ongoing yearning in her heart. Just, and in the book I give details, but you learn how to feel into her effortlessly, just in a completely relaxed way. And then she feels your presence. She feels you feeling her. She feels you knowing her.

And that is incredibly valuable even sexually. So now you're just laying there, holding her with her, but she feels you deeply knowing her, probably deeper than if you were pumping her. So she's feeling this deep sense of you being inside

of her. You're still penetrating her, but you're penetrating her with your love, with your stealing awareness. And so sexually, the less you do, the more she feels fucked by you. You said before about how sort of the previous things that men were, would be turned on by in sex. Maybe you could categorize them as a bit more obvious, a little bit more shallow. I can't think of a better word, a little bit more shallow. when you're then talking about sex at zero is much more intimate.

Why do you think talking about intimacy when it comes to sex is hard for men? Talking about sleeping with women is pretty easy, almost sort of bragging about what you got up to last night, if you're in your 20s, but talking about true physical intimacy as a man, a lot of the time I think makes men uncomfortable. Women have a not horrendous archetype for this. You know, the transcendent, deeply desired,

it's making love, not having sex. But for men, true physical intimacy and making love is, I don't know, I don't hear many men talking about it. And when they do, I think that there's a kind of uncomfortableness around it. Well, that's a, as you know, a lot of my work in the past has been on sexuality and spirituality. so we could spend, you know, months unpacking this. Hey, it's your first podcast in 10 years.

I don't know whether you knew, David, but this actually does last for months. So I hope that you've locked in. That's fantastic. Because of the way evolution works, I'm sure you know this, for male bodies, all they need to do is ejaculate in order to create the next generation, whereas women need to raise.

you know, be pregnant, eat enough while they're pregnant, survive pregnancy, raise the child nursing. There's a big difference, if you will, in potential cost, evolutionarily speaking. So men are built to be aroused sexually. So sexual arousal, you know, men are almost always able to be sexually, you know, they're fantasizing about sex a lot. Sexual arousal is easy. So it's easy for them to talk about that part, sex. It's easy for them to say what they like sexually. Intimacy often involves emotional sensitivity, feeling the other person, obviously. And most men during sex, because of their evolutionary past, gets so wrapped up in the physical sensations.

Have an erection. I'm going to ejaculate. look at her breast, look at her ass, like they're in this evolutionary churn that most men know. We all know that. So it makes it easy for them to talk about sexuality, but because they're deeply identified with nothingness,

so at the depth of men of the masculine is this emptiness, this nothingness, and the emotions are anything but empty, they're filled the emptiness. Most men, because they don't really realize how much they love the nothingness, they don't like filling it with emotion. So often a woman will ask a man like, what are you feeling?

And he'll go, well, nothing. And he's not lying. Or, you know, what do you feel about this? And he might say, I don't have any feelings about it. Often they're not lying. They're really feeling this kind of sense of emptiness, or not in a negative way, just it's a nothing, it's aware nothingness, and they're not feeling an emotion.

And so the woman will feel like he's not sharing with me, and the man will feel like, why is she doing it? Why is she creating a problem when there is none? So there's a big difference between the way, typically the masculine feminine communicate and why that difference is. What is your advice for a guy who wants to move from just having sex to proper intimacy?

when one is in the man of zero phase one of the obvious things is that that beingness or awareness being aware is in all beings like you could look into a dog's eye and see their awareness you could look into you know you're feeling that awareness in all beings including your lover so feeling like loving the love in your lover or being aware of the awareness in your lover so she's aware of you

you're aware of her you're aware of her being aware of you that mutual awareness is love or that mutual we are the same being it's not a thought like that it's just a feeling again you could feel it with an animal you could feel it with a plant but that being that i am the same as you at depth we're different at our surface. Our minds are different, our bodies are different. But at depth, when you look and say, look into the eyes of a dog even, you can feel love. You could feel them connecting with you. There's a being there. And that recognition of shared being, which we could call love, might manifest as, you know, wanting to be physically intimate in the case of polarity. Unless, you know, you don't necessarily have polarity with a dog,

but if you're with a human or a plant, although some people do, you know. So, but if you have that polarity with a human and you're in your nothingness, that means you will attract somebody in their fullness. And that connection is love, even though you're playing the opposite poles. So one feels that love and is still and silent,

and is not in the mood to communicate emotions. They're not in any mood. There is no mood. And the other is flowing with feeling, bursting with emotions, and highly responsive to life. And those tend to make a good parent in terms of polarity. So you recognize the unity of heart, I am you at depth, but then you recognize the reciprocity in body and mind.

She's radiant. I'm still. You know, she loves to dance. I love to watch her dance. Let's say that there's someone, let's say that there's a man who hasn't yet hit the man of zero thing, that sex at zero also not there. Are there some practices that you think help to push someone who isn't already in stillness,

a man that isn't already in stillness, toward sex being a vehicle for experiencing deeper intimacy and then also perhaps moving through some of the patterns that he has to work through in order to get to that man of zero point? Yes. Again, my previous ten books were focused on this. Congratulations on 11, by the way. Thank you. You know, men shouldn't push their stage or phase.

Like, you should live it fully. The best way to grow out of it is to grow through it. Yeah, I agree. And so, if you really are motivated to just have physical sex, you know, Wham-Bam, thank you man, just quick, you know, then if that's where you're at, do it until it becomes obsolete for you. When a man begins to become ready, there are all kinds of practices he could do. I mean, I'll say some of them, but again, there's a lot of them.

One thing is for him to learn to take his attention off himself, off his own body, and onto his partner's body, even in sex and not in sex. So let's talk about sex. So to feel your partner's body more than you feel your own, to feel the tensions and relaxation, in your partner's body, to feel the breath moving in and out of your partner's body, to feel the emotions moving through your partner, rather than your attention locked into your own sexual sensations.

So one would just be to learn to liberate their attention to at least feel her more than yourself. Another thing to do is to create a kind of resonance so often breathing with your partner, sexually. So when she exhales, you inhale, and she exhales, you exhale. And then, of course, you might need to catch up breaths because you don't have the same metabolism as your partner. But creating a kind of resonance

of breath helps deepen sex beyond the merely physical. Going deeper in the body. So, you know, some men only play on the surface of the woman's body. They kiss her lips. David, I'm going as deep as I can.

I'm really trying. I've been trying for my entire sexual life to go as deep as I can. Congratulations. Sorry. Sorry, I had to. Go on. Was that, do you want me to comment on that? No, no, no, no, no. That was just, sorry, I just, the thought arose in my mind, and I couldn't not make a deep joke. So, you were saying, yeah. Well, that's actually true. I mean, a lot of men, just at the physical level, have it. an impulse to go deep. They want to press, you know, in terms of actual sex, they want to press

their sexual organ deep inside a woman. The feeling of going deep is the essential masculine urge, going deep into her, going deep into self, going deep into being. So that sense of wanting to go deep is a kind of native expression of the masculine. Jared, you ever consider that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of athletic brewing co last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem?

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Right now, get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom using the code, modern wisdom, a checkout. That's athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom at checkout. Nearbya, terms and conditions apply athletic brewing company fit for all times. Bottoms up. So things change and drop away. Ambitions, drives that we used to have may, they're just not there in the same way anymore. They feel hollow.

You're not driven to do the same things. You may be more skillful because you're not pushing in the same sort of a way. But the drive to do the thing that you're skillful at may be diminished or entirely. absent. There's not a collapse because the collapse would be depression, but there is a kind of emptiness and sitting with that in stillness is important. Also, the way that you show up and the way that you feel around sex may go from shallow to deep. It may feel significantly more intimate, less physical, more bound together. How does this get integrated? What do you do next? over, it takes quite a while for the stability of your being

to infiltrate through the patterns of your body mind. So we have all kinds of patterns of our body mind. We have traumas. We might feel aggressive because of the way whatever, our father treated us. We might feel aggressive because we're mammals and we've inherited a certain degree of aggression. Well, as we rest as being more and more,

as we become stable as recognizing ourselves as that simple awareness or presence, those patterns become integrated naturally, if you will, because tension isn't being added to them. You're not rewinding them tighter and tighter. You're letting them uncoil in the space of your awareness. Now, some people might have such a tight knot in their body or mind that they need a form of therapy. So they may need a, you know, whatever form of somatic therapy

to unknot their body. Or they may need a form of cognitive therapy to help them unnot their mind or release a trauma. They might want to do trauma therapy. But all of that is just for to help loosen that relaxation in the openness of their presence. So over time, it slowly becomes, integrator and it's slow. Another thing that people don't really understand is, you know,

you could have this kind of recognition of being and yet your body and mind continue with the patterns they have before and your body is the last to change. Your mind may change first, but you find your body doing things your mind doesn't want to anymore. So you have to have patience and compassion for yourself and others as these patterns. and your body mind continue to unfold. You might find yourself lying even though you don't want to lie. You might find yourself hurting someone even though you don't want to hurt them. So you compassionately allow these past contractions

that you stored in your body and mind to open in the spaciousness of your present being. And that takes years. I mean, there are all kinds of stories, as you know, of people of supposed spiritual depth who act in, you know, not integrist ways. Pretty much every leader of some spiritual movement or yoga cult for the last, like, three decades is basically, or like 50 decades perhaps has done that. Pretty much because it's universal.

I mean, it just doesn't change. It's a false hope, I guess, for it to change. So there are some highly integrated people who are not. that deep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Some are deep, some are not that deep. But there are also very deep

people who are not very integrated. They may have, they may be alcoholics, they may be cheating, you know, they may have sex with all of their students or, and those, that doesn't mean they're not, they don't recognize the nature of

their being. It just means that their pattern has yet to unfold. And you need to be careful. I mean, you could put structure so that pattern doesn't hurt people or you could make amends as those patterns inevitably hurt people. But that's the usual. That's not the exception, as you say. People have a kind of recognition that they can share with others.

And yet, it's just like being an artist. How many artists can essentially create, let's take a musician, they could make divine music and yet they themselves in their personal life are pretty messed up. I wonder, this is why I said about real world effect right that so much of the best analyses the best philosophy there's this great line if you if you marry well you will become happy but if you marry wrong you will become a philosopher and i i think what that's sort of speaking to is when you're pushing up against the grain of life

when it feels like you're swimming into the stream when it's stuff's just not quite cohesing in the right way or you you you still have these patterns to work against these resentments from your past this bitterness this sort of unalchemized untranscended and included problem you because things aren't going easily because things aren't going well you tend to look at your your world and yourself with so much more dexterity and resolution and obsession that's where the art seems to come from. You know, how many songs have been made that are wonderful and unbelievably deep about everything's going well and my wife's happy and healthy and I've got these new kids and the field outside is really bright today and the weather's going. No, so much of what birth's great creative

insight and that desire to make things at a level that would be unreasonable otherwise is the fact that you're brushing up against the grain of life. And that's, I think, what I was trying to get at that as this stuff drops away, maybe your, if your ability to be effective includes your drive to do the thing, your output may change. The outputs that you get may diminish. First of all, I agree with you that suffering is the trigger for a lot of depth and a lot of art, which to me are the same thing. Good art comes from depth. So I agree with you. I agree with you. you and that's why I don't think people should rush through these phases and also I don't think people should assume someone has that means they're an integrated character. I would say

that a lack of integration often creates art more than an integrated human. Can you highlight the difference between somebody who is, how do we identify somebody that is integrated and isn't? The way I'm using that word is that they're socially skilled, they're, they're, they're act with deep morality, people who are good people, a man, you know, someone who you could trust. A lot of these teachers you wouldn't trust, or a lot of these musicians or artists or whatever form they take, you might trust their art, but you wouldn't trust them whatever with your wife or with your bank account or with, you have to use your discrimination. And luckily, that's,

doesn't stop, as I said, even when you're rested at zero, those patterns continue. And they continue to cause trouble. And so the source of art that you're referring to doesn't cease. Their access to depth becomes more stable. What role does discipline play after purpose ends? Well, the body and mind continue to require discipline. You know, if you want to become stronger, you lift weights regularly. If you want to think about something more clearly, you may read books.

So you may say that X hours a day, I'm going to lift weights or read books. So there's still a sense for your body and mind to train how you're, you know, to learn to golf takes discipline, repetition. So your body and mind still require discipline, but the discipline is no longer to be what you are. You recognize you are what you are, so it's effortless. So the being depth is effortless. If you're doing something, you're missing it.

So in this moment, if you're trying to be being, then you're trying. you're not being. So effortlessness is the key to knowing that in this moment you're just being. But that doesn't mean that within that effortless being, you might still decide, you know, I want to paint something,

or my kid needs to be picked up from school, or, you know, I want to build a business. And all of those things require repetitive action or discipline. It's a very different sort of drive to get there, right? Different from what? What's different from? Well, in order to do this, it seems like there's kind of bottom-up motivation,

which is less conscious, and it's driven by need for recognition, it's driven by past patterns. This is much more dictated. Like, I don't need to paint, but I'm going to, I want to paint. I don't need to go to the gym, and need to go to the gym is because if my body is better, then I will look good to the person that I love and she will find me attract and that da-da-da-da, as opposed to just, I'm doing this because I want to. Yes. No, I agree with that.

You've been thinking about, how long have you been writing about men and women? 40-some years. Okay. We are, you mentioned it earlier on, at least at what feels like a bit of a transitionary period, especially for men, for women too, but especially for men. I think women had a big transitionary period about 50, 60 years ago. What do you see or what are you hopeful for and worried about with the current culture around men?

I wouldn't say I'm worried about anything, but I would say that as women take over the functions that men once had, men will have to find the deeper reason for being. And that deeper reason is what we've been talking about this whole time, to frame everything, to hold everything, to be presence, to be depth. So whatever somebody's doing, your presence deepens them. So they're doing becomes deeper. And that involves a different form of self-worth, if you will.

Like you're not measuring yourself on how much money you have, for how much weight you could lift, you're kind of measuring yourself on, if you want to use that word, on your stability be what you are, and rather than getting lost in thoughts or in activities. What's the core of masculine essence, in your opinion? Well, the way I use that term is identifying more

with the emptiness aspect of being than the fullness aspect of being. So the feminine is all into growth and change and flowering and fullness and eyeing. And the masculine is more oriented to timelessness and peace and being. So there are two different orientations, emptiness and fullness or presence and radiance. There's different ways of saying. It feels to me like you've lived 30 different lives. I did a little bit of research.

Apparently you instructed in artificial intelligence, research neuroscience, developed yoga techniques for intimate relationships, wrote PhDs that got a award from the French government, published academic papers, studied spirituality, and then wrote 11 books as well. I'm sure I'm missing an awful lot. But what's the through line with this?

You know, you're kind of a, especially now with not showing your video, living in the middle of nowhere, and God knows where with trees that are blocking your internet signal. You're almost sort of this esoteric masculinity wizard. Working on this stuff for so long, like what's the through line? What do you want your career to be about? and be remembered about. I don't really think of it in those terms,

but there's definitely a through line. For whatever reasons, this desire to understand reality or who I am or who we are has started very, very early in my life, very early. I mean, I remember being in the crib, I remember being diapered and feeling like, ooh, you know, like there's...

I remember learning what perspective is, or crawling on the carpet in my grandparents' house and realizing what size meant, like some things were bigger than others. Like I, it's just something I've been interested in all of my life. And so at some point in my life, that led me to mathematics. I developed the Indicational Calculus, which is a calculus of distinctions,

how distinctions arise in consciousness, published papers and that. That also, that became bioculars. biology and immunology. I worked in labs. I worked in a sleep lab to study sleep and dreams. These were all unfoldings to me of the same thing. And during all of that, my main interest is just like, what is this? Like, what is the nature of being, of reality, of me, of the world? Like, why are we here? What is the meaning? And not in an intellectual sense, but to be able to do it, to write a computer that could think back then I was working on early artificial intelligence. or in the immune system I was working as how does the immune system recognize self from other you know so I was always motivated by that and through that I was also meditating and doing yoga like you said I had a yoga school but all of those to me were the same thing they were different ways just that my personality or manifested this discovery manifested this exploration and still

So for the last couple of decades, I've been, it just naturally came. I've been living in mostly silence and a kind of retreat like life. But not because I'm avoiding anything. It's just I succeeded at everything. You know, I accomplished what I needed to accomplish. And it came to a point of being of rest. And that's where this book came from because the man I was seeing were struggling with that transition.

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Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below. I'm heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash bottom wisdom. What is it that you attribute your ability to stay in touch with what you're truly interested in? too. I never had an option. I don't know how to say it. It hurt me too much. For instance, I went to, when I went to college at 16 years old, I entered a program that was a combination of medical school and undergraduate school at a very young age. So I was going to medical school

very early and studying science and all of these things. And at one point, I remember just sitting there in the libraries, studying. I, you know, I was dissecting brains and labs. I was, in it deep and suddenly it was just like I can't do this anymore like the I've outgrown this or it's become obsolete for me as much as I loved it until yesterday today it's done and I for some reason I was able I mean I didn't just quit you know I let things go in an easy way in a responsible way but it became clear to me that that phase had ended and usually I don't know what the next space is i spent a year living under a tarp on a beach on a deserted part of hawaii with no money at all and that out of that year came my first book so i didn't know that i just thought i'm done i'm

going to just live under a tarp cheap as possible so i did and then it just started writing i didn't plan on it and I began to realize that if I could surrender to that process and not be lazy to really put in the work as things arose for me that what I created from that place of depth was worth something to people so I learned to make a living doing what I love I don't know if that's answering your questions it does I think it might be difficult for you to see why waking up one day and feeling like your work in the lab is no longer fulfilling you in the way that it used to, but not continuing because of sunk-cost fallacy or loss aversion or fear of what people will say or not being able to beat your previous career or whatever, it seems like that comes pretty

naturally to you because the pain of being out of alignment is greater than the pain of change. But I don't think that that's the case I don't think that's the case for most people I think most people are pretty ridden by that stuff Yes I would say that the pain of Living an untrue life for me Exceeded the fear of what might happen if I do

Yes, yes So you know I was willing to risk everything Because I just didn't have a choice Like it hurts so much Literally hurt like my body hurt every you know going to do these things to do um i don't know how to describe just the pain itself suffering like you say is the root of a lot of exploration and creation and art and the suffering just became so intense that you know when i ended a phase that i had no

choice but to allow the new authenticity to find a way to express itself I did a retreat. Do you know who Joe Hudson is by any chance? Are you familiar with him? I don't. So Joe is a spiritual teacher makes him sound it's far too two dimensional for what he does. But Eastern, Western, lots of therapeutic modalities, does retreats.

He's also head of human culture at Open AI. He's Sam Altman's coach. He's also my coach. And he is a wonderful, wonderful man. And I did a retreat. It was my first sort of deep, Emotions boot camp

retreat and I did it on a flower farm in Santa Rosa in California last year I did it in September and I haven't done

Hoffman process I haven't done IFS this is the first thing of its kind that I've done and you know by day

four of seven you're pretty cracked open by day three of seven you're getting them by day four of seven you're pretty cracked open 12 hours a day working on anger

working on grief working on sadness, working on upright communication and apologies. And it's what you said earlier on about the pain of when you tell a lie, sort of it comes back to get you when you get to this phase of zero, because that was kind of like speed running to zero, but without the psychedelics. And what I found when I got out was all of the ways that my patterns and incongruence and like just all of the things that I did in the world,

the conversations that I would have with my staff and the small ways that I might lie because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I didn't want to say something that might make them uncomfortable, so I didn't say what was just true or my truth, or the way that I might deal with a friend who was late for dinner, or an interaction with somebody that I just met or whatever.

All of these different ways, there was this, and you used the word, constriction, which is the perfect word for it, there was this sort of tightening. And it feels like, it feels like a wet rag. If you imagine a wet rag that sort of goes from the back of your mouth to the middle of your stomach. And it feels like someone's sort of twisting like this. And I'd never had, I mean, I always, I try not to lie as best I can. And I'd always known that it was something that didn't make me feel great. I'm a horrendous lie. I'm a really. really unsophisticated liar.

And this extra level of sensitivity, you know, this attunement that I had from stripping away, opening my heart, doing all of this work for, you know, a full week, just meant that that level of sensitivity to the, the rag being being squeezed inside of me was so, it was so fucking hypersensitized. it was insane. And I kind of imagine, I just have to assume that this is, this is maybe what it's like to be David Data,

that that level of sensitivity to the pain, the pain of misalignment, I was having a conversation yesterday about why, why I'm glad that I get such bad hangovers, which is the cost benefit analysis or the reward punishment balance for me, for drinking alcohol,

is just way off. It was never great. now I'm in my 30s and it's gotten even worse. I'm kind of glad because what that means is the likelihood of me ever becoming an alcoholic is super low because the pain, I wouldn't even be able to get to the point of dependency because I'd be so miserable after day three or four. I cannot fucking do this anymore. What you have here is maybe, and if you do the work, the opening, the freeing, the attunement,

that's kind of the same thing. it's a very high level of pain when you do something that you shouldn't be doing. And that, whether it's through training or just a, you know, fortune gift that you've been given, means that when you start to do stuff that's out of alignment, you feel it very harshly. And that has pushed you through what to me, from the outside. It looks like, again, 30 different lives that you've lived. But to you just feels like, well, I was just, I was following what I was interested in. I wanted to understand myself and the world around me, and I kept going.

I was trying to keep that rag unplisted. Yeah. That you described the wet rag. So, you know, you did a process, a week long, whatever process, to feel that, which is great. But you can also feel that at any time. So right now, you can feel the extent to which area of your body from your throat down, which is the typical place people feel it. I talk about that in the book a lot,

the Man of Zero book. So that contraction in the front of the body from your throat, down your solar plexus and down even deeper, that's a signal for you and many mem that they're out of line. Now, if there are mechanisms, like their need for self-worth, is so intense, it could push them to ignore that for years and years, and then you'd have to do it.

You have to go to a training and have it unpacked, which is very useful. I've done those kind of things. So you could do it in an intensive kind of way, or and you can learn to feel that tension, constriction, contraction as it's happening. And you're reading that. It's like a meter. It's like flying an airplane by instruments. You're feeling the tightening of that. And you're going, okay, you might not be aware of why it's happening, but right now I'm living

off the mark. I'm not living on point. And then they accumulate less. But it doesn't matter how you come to that place, like you said. I mean, you could do it through a process which you did, which is great. You could do it through some people feel it through psychedelics. Some people just feel it through the school

of hard knocks. Just the pain in their life. But yes, that contraction, specifically in that part of the body, the front, the solar plexus, the belly, the chest, is a sign that you're not relaxed as your depth. It's a sign that your depth is living you. Something's living you that's not your depth. Yeah, that's the lead indicator. And the lagging indicator is that you end up in a life that you're not supposed to be in. But I think it's going to be difficult

for you to get to the life that you're not supposed to be in if you haven't denied the wet rag being twisted for quite a long time. Yeah, I don't know how long, but yes, they go hand in hand. if you ignore that twisted rag. That's just, it's the constriction, it's the tightening, it's the tensing, and it's different for different people, right? Mine sits right in my stomach, right? The sort of just below my solar plexes, it sits right there, and it just feels like someone's twisting it, but sometimes it moves up to my throat and sometimes it moves down.

Yeah, I get, yeah, that contraction is the main sign, and different men, as you say, not only feel it in different places in their body. Usually they feel it where you feel it in the front of their body, that kind of near their solar plexes, but they may not feel it in their body. Some men have that contraction in their emotional body, so they become emotionally unwell, not just physically twisted or, but emotionally twisted. Some men experience it in their, if you will, mental body or intellectual body. So they start thinking strange. thoughts are all twisted up intellectually, mentally. So there's different dimensions that men can feel that contraction in,

and different men feel it primarily in different dimensions, and that's the dimension they should focus their work on. That's interesting. Speaking of that, I know, and I appreciate you, not encouraging people to growth hack or speed run their way through phases that they're not yet in, right? That kind of you'll get there when you need to get there and the dose that you need to take

in order to get to your next level of development sort of arrives at the pace that you're moving through life and maybe trying to speed run that is actually not a great idea. But across all of the modalities that you've tried, all of the different techniques that you've employed, what are the ones that you attribute the most amount of, I don't want to use the word progress because that sounds like more speed running.

But the most amount of development, too, what are the ones that you come back to the most? Are the ones that looking back, you go, wow, like those things that I did were very worthwhile, and I'm glad that I did them. Well, again, this is different from man to man, so I wouldn't want any man to model me or you or, you know, every man has to discover this for themselves. But for me, I would say one intimate relationship. So I've been in long intimate relationship. And having a partner, so you described that part of your body twisting,

but it could be your partner twisting. It could be your partner contracting as a reflection of you being off. And it's harder to bypass your partner's complaints, your partner's contractions. And so I would say that the wisdom of my intimate partners, just in their natural reflection and depth and love, has probably informed me one of the most. And then together with that, I would say working with a teacher. And I've worked with just a few teachers, long-term teachers, I don't mean just a learning

guitar or something. So long-term teachers usually could reflect to me areas that I can't see myself or that I'm not willing to and lovingly continue reflecting that to me until I pick it up. So I would say that my relationship with, you know, a loved one, an intimate partner, and a relationship with a teacher, more than a specific technique, although, you know, as I said, you know, I had a yoga, I've done a lot of things like Hatha Yoga and Tai Chi and Shigung. And moving energy through my body, you can also feel those contractions as you can't.

So feeling that contraction in the front of the body, learning how to open that, feeling what's forming that. But for me, the love, my partner's love and my teacher's love would probably be the most effective ways that I, I know what you mean, using the word effectiveness. Yes, those would be the modalities. Yeah, if you marry wrong, you'll become a philosopher, but if you marry well, you'll become a yoga teacher. Is that your...

David, let's leave it there, mate. You're wonderful, your work over the last, you know, however many decades has just been so great. It's great to speak to you. You know, you didn't need to do this. I really appreciate you giving me your time. If you give, what's this, an hour and a half, if you do 90 minutes a decade of podcasting,

I hope that this one was worthwhile. Well, you seem authentically and genuinely. committed to truth. That's pretty rare. You're good at what you do. You know, you have this podcast. You've been highly motivated to create this thing, but you're also, your heart is in it.

And so I felt moved to connect with you like this, mostly because I agree with your heart. I resonate with your heart. I appreciate you. I appreciate you, too. This podcast is a thinly veiled autobiography, masquerading as a conversation with you'll be episode 1,100 maybe over the last eight years

so yeah this is the vehicle that I've chosen at least for now and I'm trying to find out what's true I'm trying to understand myself and the world around me and I'm asking people who I think have got at least a few of the answers and if I can hold on to 1% of all of the stuff that I've learned then I, you know, you said about teachers, I guess I'm just cycling through. I'm serially monogamous with 1,100 world experts on a variety of different topics. And we'll see what sort of horrendous Frankenstein's monster gets constructed out of this by the time that I finish.

Fantastic. We'll trust your heart in the midst of all of it. You'll go the right. Beautiful. David, you're wonderful. And let's keep in touch. I'd really love to keep in touch with you. Appreciate you, mate.

Me too. Thanks, Chris. The Madamy Holmes Bike for Brain Health supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum. Join thousands of cyclists as we take over the DVP and Gardner Expressway in support of dementia research and brain health. Riders of all abilities are welcome and both regular bikes and e-bikes can participate. Bring your friends, family, or corporate team, and make an impact. Register today at bikeforbrainhealth.ca.