DAVID DEIDA | Primal Power, Boundless Sex, and Freedom Beyond Ambition

Most of us were raised to believe that a man is defined by what he's chasing: the money, the woman, the title, the next goal. And for a big part of life, that's exactly right. You should be hungry, and you should be building. But what happens when you get there? When the goal is hit, the purpose fulfills itself, and you're left standing there asking, "Now what?" A lot of men mistake that moment for depression. My guest today says it might actually be a doorway. David Deida https://www.instagram.com/daviddeida.live/?hl=en wrote The Way of the Superior Man nearly 30 years ago, and it's shaped a generation of men, including me. His new book, The Man of Zero https://www.amazon.com/Man-Zero-Boundless-Freedom-Ambition/dp/1649634692/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.w9MDfvvXy5TbRX9pXxdux7FrLUJR-b8haUGuK3ZiM0iDV-cpj5FKq5GA7lpDdoPApocifaXexLFFAByZfHXEi1RcEjnCBjv9622DNvrm8xa1BFmYSxbVeThzFcV2lZ7pSxdYZfJ8p56KW8eXm2c8YKsVTAeLKqqoBGpFJghygvqSMGFNqOuZBzkEdUZ4yawmypJvkd3_1QgZ-5D8I6MO9luAgkzo5EahluZYeMb4af4.nUQq3frrBtyzg3f2SYlv1yM92Zu7jqN_eErTm6gbEec&dib_tag=se&hvadid=694259785364&hvdev=c&hvexpln=67&hvlocphy=9029924&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=17433352791020322253--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=17433352791020322253&hvtargid=kwd-2461602064962&hydadcr=17258_13457695&keywords=man+of+zero&mcid=818bf55a883f34abbeeab3a41b561b1d&qid=1792843867&sr=8-1, picks up where that one left off. We talk about the difference between living from lack and living from fullness, why surrendering to God isn't weakness but a code bigger than you, how a warrior can do hard things with an open heart, and why the less you chase woman and world, the more they come to you. This one goes deep, gentlemen. Let's get into it. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Episode Introduction 01:30 - From Superior Man to Man of Zero 07:36 - Living Without Goals or Motives 14:52 - Understanding the Deep "I" 21:43 - The Awareness of Animals and Humans 26:10 - Neutralizing Threats from a Place of Love 37:54 - The Three Stages of Men's Development 48:34 - Mastering Sexuality and Integrity 54:57 - Confronting Mammalian and Primal Urges 57:07 - Defining Primal Power and Boundless Sex 01:00:26 - Where to Find David's Work Battle Planners: Pick yours up today! https://store.orderofman.com/products/order-of-man-annual-battle-planner Order Ryan's new book, The Masculinity Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/Masculinity-Manifesto-Establishes-Influence-Credibility/dp/1684513316/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1665048672&sr=8-1. For more information on the Iron Council brotherhood https://orderofman.link/iron-council. Want maximum health, wealth, relationships, and abundance in your life? Sign up for our free course, 30 Days to Battle Ready https://orderofman.link/battle-ready-0

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Most of us were raised to believe that a man is defined by what he chases, the money, the women, the title, the next goal. And for a big part of life, that's exactly right. You should be hungry and you should be building. But what happens when you get there? When the goal is hit, the purpose fulfills itself and you're left standing there asking, now what? Which is a question a lot of men have asked. A lot of these guys also make the mistake and mistake that moment for depression. But my guest today says it actually might be a doorway. David Dieta wrote The Way of the Superior Man nearly 30 years ago, and it's quite literally shaped a generation of men, including me.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  But in his newest book, The Man of Zero, it picks up where that one left off. And today we talk about the difference between living from lack and living from fullness. Why surrendering to God is not weakness, but a code bigger than you. How a warrior can do hard things with an open heart. And why the less you chase women in world, as he calls it, the more they come to you. Guys, this one goes very, very deep. Let's get into it.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Men, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. I am your host and founder, Ryan Mickler. Thank you for tuning in for the first time or for the 100th or 1,000th time. It's the reason we do this work. So I can give you the tools, information, resources. And in this podcast in particular, the knowledge that you need from my over 800 podcast guests at this point, and I've got a great one lined up for you today. A lot of you are very familiar with this man's work and we're going to get into that shortly. But before I do, another thing that you should be familiar with is the work over at Montana Knife Company. Now they're sponsors of ours, but more than that, they're friends of mine. I've broken bread with them. We've trained together.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  I've toured their facilities multiple times. We've hunted together. I mean, you name it, we've done it. And I cannot think of a better knife manufacturer than my good friends over at Montana Knife Company. And one of the best things is they're making all of their knives 100% in America, just outside of Missoula, Montana. So if you're looking for a good quality, durable, strong, American-made knife, maybe you've got a hunt coming up, maybe you are a culinary wizard and you need a good knife to be able to hone those skills in the kitchen, or something that you need for an everyday carry. I would highly, highly check out or suggest that you check out Montana Knife Company. Also suggest you use the code ORDEROFMAN when you check out, because you will save some money when you do.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  All right, montanaknife.com, use the code ORDEROFMAN. Now, let me introduce you to a man who might not need an introduction. David Dieta is one of the most influential and probably provocative teachers on masculinity, intimacy, and spiritual growth for the last three decades now. He has 11 books, including the international bestseller, The Way of the Superior Man, Dear Lover, The Enlightened Sex Manual, and his newest book, which we talk about today, The Man of Zero, A Guide to Primal Power, Boundless Sex, and The Freedom Beyond Ambition. They've been published in more than 35 languages.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  He has been named to Walk In Spiritual 100 List of the World's Most Spiritually Influential Living People for more than 15 years now. But before writing for a general audience, Dieta worked as a researcher in psychobiology, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. He taught and conducted research at UC San Diego School of Medicine, UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State, Boston Lexington Institute, and the Eco Politechnique in Paris. He was also a founding member of the Integral Institute. He's practiced yoga and Tai Chi and meditation since 1975. And guys, he rarely gives interviews and he offers all of his books,

• 4:35Speaker 00

  his audio teachings, free, chapter by chapter. And you can find that over at dieta.info. Men, enjoy this special conversation.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  David, what an honor to have you on, man. I'm so excited to talk with you. And as I told you before we hit record, I was so excited when I saw your team reach out and definitely wanted to make this work. So thanks for joining me today.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, Ryan. Happy to be here.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  I wanted to start, because you've got a new book. It's called Man of Zero. And I think a lot of the guys listening to this podcast are probably very familiar with your previous work, because I've talked about it a lot. Way of the Superior Man is the one that immediately comes to mind. But I'm very curious how, over the past three decades, your perception and your views on masculinity have maybe stayed the same? And maybe how they've changed between the two works that you have out right now that we're talking about?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Well, I wrote The Way of the Superior Man roughly 30 years ago, as you said. And The Man of Zero is just recently released this year. I think what happened during that time is my understanding just deepened. My practices deepened. I write about what I practice. I write about what I live. I'm not a theorist. I'm not prescribing men like how they should live. I am suggesting a set of experiments to men to live, to try these experiments and see how they turn out, if it's in the direction that they want to go. In The Way of the Superior Man, decades ago, I was mostly working,

• 6:11Speaker 02

  both in my own life and in other men's lives, with becoming the best man possible, the best version of themselves. That's what I meant by superior man, not of course, superior to other people or superior to women or anything like that, but just their own superior self, their best version. And that involved knowing their purpose, being clear on their purpose, how to live their purpose, how to relate to women from a place of love and relaxation, rather than defensiveness and trauma. It was a kind of description of ways to experiment living and to see how it turned out in life, such that your life got better. So you were earning a living, doing what you love to do,

• 6:55Speaker 02

  or earning a living so you could do what you love to do. But in any case, you were living your love. You were living what you really were here to do. You had a deep sense of purpose and direction. And you were aware, if you wavered from that, I mean, all men have a certain degree of fear that we inherit and accumulate. So when we feel that fear, it might tilt us away from our true purpose. So part of the book was about how to work with fear, how to kind of lean just beyond the fear, but not too much, that it's, we can't handle it and we collapsed.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  So it was a very practical book about working with women, working with the world, working with your purpose, earning a living. 30 years later now, I wrote The Man of Zero, because I've worked with a lot of those men and myself over those 30 years. And what I found is that if you live your purpose long enough, the purpose dissolves. Whether you succeed or fail, you outgrow the purpose. So you might outgrow a sequence of purposes. You might have a, you know, you might want to make a lot of money and then you make a lot of money and then you go, okay, now what? So then maybe you say, I want to create a family or I want to create an organization that helps people. And then you do that.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  And maybe after 10 or 15 years, or maybe right away, you do that and you feel like, okay, now what? And so what happens is if you live your depth, if you embody the deepest truth that you can embody, the way you're expressing it fulfills itself and dissolves. And you're left over and over again with a sense, I call it zero. It's just, it's just being without a motive. It's being even without hope. And so I noticed that a lot of men confuse that with depression. So because they were so identified with their purpose, when that purpose dissolved, they felt like, now what?

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Who am I? And they collapsed in depression. And what I realized in my life and others is that you don't have to collapse. You could stay without a purpose. You can relax without collapsing. You can simply be.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Being or who you are at your deepest place, there's different words for that that people might use. And being that, your life takes a complete shift. So instead of then being motivated motivated by a sense of purpose, like accomplishment, goals and so forth, you're living more spontaneously from a kind of ongoing creativity, that that being is creative. The whole world is being created from that. Every thought you have is coming from that being, you know, nobody knows what they're about to think. Nobody knows what's going to happen next in the world. We live in a really honestly, in a state of, I don't know. And coming from that place of unknowing, if we

• 10:02Speaker 02

  don't collapse, if we don't contract our solar plexus, if we don't collapse our breath, if we don't, you know, just watch TV and use drugs and, you know, collapse our life, then what happens is we spontaneously find ourselves creating something that we may never have planned, that we don't even know. And that spontaneous creation, rather than goal driven motivation, becomes a different way of living. I call it the way of zero and the man who lives that way is the man of zero. And so this new book, The Man of Zero is four men who have come to the place where they realize, maybe

• 10:44Speaker 02

  they once were highly motivated, maybe they were very successful. But now, even if they have a family that is, you know, beautiful family that they love, good relationships with, say, their wife and kids and their friends, and maybe they've been very successful or creative in the world and done what they've wanted to, they are still, it's like they're alive, but with no motive, they're alive without their duty free, they've done their duty. Now, there's, I'm not talking about the day to day duties of, you know, eating right and exercising and making money and treating people well. I'm talking about a deep sense, like you feel like, okay, I'm, I've done it, I'm done. And

• 11:28Speaker 02

  that sense of being done, and I call it done with woman and world in the book. I just use that phrase, woman and world, since that's what men tend to feel they're doing. So when they're done in that sense with women and world, but not collapsing, so they're careful not to collapse in depression, they just simply be the being they are when they're done, that spontaneously then begins to be a creative life from that place of being that's very spontaneous and unpredictable. Again, it's not spontaneous in the sense of being a hippie or a street person or something like that. It's spontaneous in the sense that you're not targeting a goal, you're finding out how the

• 12:13Speaker 02

  universe wants to live through you as it happens. Like, wow, you know, this is what's happening. So that's how I would describe the way the superior man and the man of zero.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Do you, do you feel like, so you talk about maybe not so much goal driven. It's interesting when I hear guys say, older gentlemen typically will say things like, oh, you know, I, I should have taken more time for my family. I should have, I should have, you know, done these things instead of work so hard. And my knee jerk reaction is, well, that's easy for you to say now, because you might be financially successful, you might have achieved the goals that you're talking about. And so, yeah, when I'm, when I'm 60 years old, I hope that I can say that too. But in the moment, it's like, well, yeah, I do have to work. I do have to pursue ambitions. Of course, I want to take care of my people, my family, my friends, my clients. Do you find that when you talk about

• 13:08Speaker 00

  a state of being, is it a maturity based thing? Or I also think that if you, if you say to yourself, what I want to be a good man, let's say, that can also be goal driven, right? What does a good man look like? And how does he show up? And what does he do? And how does he perform? And what does he help other people with?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  That is goal driven, I would say, yes, to be a good, to try to be a good man, or to have even an ideal or a vision of what a good man is. That is what I call the way the superior man. The being I'm talking about in the way of zero, you no longer are motivated to be a good man or a bad man. You just have no, you just are, you find yourself merely being, I don't know how to put words on it, you know, that's why I wrote a book about it. So

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Do you feel like when, when you move into that stage of just being who you are, neither good nor bad, does that, you talked about something interesting, you said a series of experiments, and I wish more men knew that, because barring brain surgery, or, you know, some life or death altercation, there's not really, especially in our modern times, a whole lot of dire circumstances if you mess up because you started a business, let's say, for example. I guess what I'm asking is, do you feel like pursuing those things is going to be a detriment based on what you're talking

• 14:38Speaker 00

  about with man of zero?

• 14:40Speaker 02

  No, no, not at all.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  And driven that way, or?

• 14:44Speaker 02

  I think those goals and drives are completely appropriate for much of a man's life. Basically, as long as you feel you have a goal, or you wish you have a goal, you should live on those goals, you should live on those purpose. I'm talking about a state that's not desirable nor non desirable, it's just what ends up when you have fully lived your purpose. Now, it could be in other ways, you could come to zero, for instance, these days, people come to zero, I would say, maybe prematurely, sometimes from taking psychedelics or something like that. They may have a, they may be young, they may be 20 or something, and take psychedelics and come to

• 15:28Speaker 02

  realize that reality itself is like a dream. It's hard, it's, you know, brain function, however you want to describe it, it's not a, it's not a solid thing they thought that it was. And therefore, they might say, so now what? What do I do? There's nothing, this isn't even real in a way. And they could come to a premature place of, I have no motive, because what is all of this anyways? It's nothing really, it's a figment. And again, in the book,

• 16:00Speaker 00

  That sounds more like pessimism to me than,

• 16:03Speaker 02

  It could be.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  I think it's a general disdain of the world. I think there's a lot of young men who are just mad at the world. And there's reasons why I would understand that. But I think there's a lot of young men who are just generally mad, but that's not what you're talking about. You're talking

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Definitely not.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  satisfying and whole, almost is what I'm hearing you say.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Well, your heart is at peace. It's certainly not mad. So if your heart is mad, if you're mad at the world, that would be a very different thing. That's what I'm talking about at zero.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  But, but there are young men or, you know, people who have come to a place, it could be through psychedelics, as I mentioned, it could be through meditation, it could be just through chance, it could be through whatever, seeing AI is better than them at doing almost everything. So people could come to the place of, okay, now what? Like, what's left? I think in the Bible and Ecclesiastes is like vanity of vanities, like with some meaningless, like there's, you could come to that place through religion, you could come to that place through prayer, you could come to that place through all kinds of things. What the man of zero is about is how to live from that place

• 17:13Speaker 02

  without falling into, as you just said, traps such as pessimism, nihilism, depression. Those are not what I'm talking about. And in the book, I take great pains to try to differentiate those states from the way of being that I'm trying to describe. It's very easy to conflate that. It's very easy to think that because I have no personal motive anymore, life sucks, or I'm angry, I'm left this way, or whatever. And that is, as you said, is not what I'm hoping to indicate in the book.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  It is interesting, because I've, I've had this experience, and it might come with a little bit more gray in my beard and a little less hair on top. But I've, I've, I've thought to myself, I just want to say yes to more things. If somebody comes to me, if, for example, you invited me, and you said, hey, Ryan, why don't we go dive with sharks next month? Like, yes, I want to do that. Absolutely. But I think so many men, young men and old men alike, cut themselves off to opportunities because they are pursuing this, this goal, this dream, they're relentless. And I,

• 18:31Speaker 00

  and I appreciate that, I respect that. But it leaves no room for nuance, it leaves no room for excitement or opportunity that they didn't see before. And that's kind of what I'm hearing you say. Am I, am I understanding that correctly?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  I believe so. I'll give a try at describing it and tell me if we are on the same page here or something.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  So to me, there's a part of you, and whatever we call that part is fine. We could call it being, we could call it your soul, we could call it your depth of awareness. We could call it your deep self. We could, there's different words we could use to refer to that. None of them are adequate, they're all misleading in their own way. But I will say like you, the deepest part of rhyme, that your deep self, whatever again, we want to call that, that's there whether you're diving with sharks or mountain climbing or sitting on a couch at home or eating food, you know, it's always there. It's what you call I, or what I would call you. You know, that sense of being is continuous through all experience.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  So for any human right now, all they have to feel is that their experiences, what they're seeing, what they're hearing, what they're thinking, you know, the experience of swimming with sharks, the experiences of making love, the experiences of raising a family, they all come and go. They come and go second by second, but they also come and go throughout a life. And the sense of I remains through that. You say, I raised a family, I swam with sharks, I. So that deeper sense of I is a continuous or permanent. And when you feel into it, it's actually non, it's not in time, it's always there. So we could call it eternal if we wanted, but so that sense of I is always there.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  It's always here, you know, when we say I. And then our experience fluctuates. In fact, we could fall asleep and go into dreams and there's even an I in the dream.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  No doubt.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Eyes in the dream, and if we're really sensitive, there's a kind of experience less I in deep sleep. But there's no time there because there's no experience. That might be a little esoteric for people, but it's easy to again, experiment and find out. But that sense of eyes continues through all experience. You could be on a heavy psychedelics, you could be dreaming, you could be conked on the head and that sense of I. Like when in deep sleep, even if the alarm goes off, suddenly you, I hear it. Well, who, who's hearing it? Something's there. You might not be aware it's there when you're sleeping because there's no experience. But as soon as something like the alarm clock or maybe your child crying

• 21:18Speaker 02

  or your dog sniffing you or something, you know, you wake up and because you were there or you couldn't have been aware of anything, you wouldn't have been aware of the alarm clock. So that awareness is always, it's the only part of any experience that's always there. You can gain and lose money, you could gain and lose a family, you could gain and lose pain and pleasure and houses and cars. But what's always there is that deep sense of I. Well, what the man of zero is, is relaxing into or even as that deep sense of I. So even as experience is fluttering by, swimming with sharks, you're making love,

• 22:00Speaker 02

  you're hiking a mountain, you're sitting on your butt, you're, you know, all of these things are happening. And that deep sense of I never changes. It's always, we could call it pure awareness if we wanted to. It's aware of what's happening, it's aware if nothing's happening. It's just an awareness kind of there. Now, at first, when we're identified with our mind, which is something we're aware of, it's our thoughts and perceptions and so forth. At first, when that goes to zero, it feels kind of boring. It feels like, okay, I'm just be, you know, I'm just the I, nothing's happening. But you, if you give it a little time, if you just relax as that I, you begin to realize that everything's emerging from that depth, everything.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  It's the most potent creative thing or non thing that there is, that sense of that deep I. So what the man of zero is about is resting as that deep I or being that deep I or abiding as that deep I and then finding out how experience emerges from that, which is a very different kind of life than ignoring that deep I and being lost in experience. You know, I'm making love now and now I'm getting up and going to work and now I'm taking care of the kids. It's one thing after another. And eventually, it could be very suddenly or gradually, that kind of becomes tedious.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  You begin to feel like, okay, you know, night day, night day, night day, night day, you know, earned money, go to sleep, make love, earn money, you know, just you, you're going, all of this is happening. And under it, there is this deep I, but most people tend to ignore it. And even though it's their most essential self, it's the only thing you can't take away without losing you. It's the deepest you. So the man of zero is for men who have come to the place where following their attention or following experience or even any experience is not as interesting as that deep I.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Now, the experiences continue, but you, your home base is the, the deep, open, endless, creative I.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  All right, guys, I'm going to step away from the conversation very quickly. In the discussion that David and I are having, he's talked about living from, from fullness instead of from lack. But you can't really get there alone and you can't really get there frankly, by just reading about it. You get there by doing work week in and week out with men who will call you on your crap and also stand by you when things get hard, as life has a tendency of doing sometimes. And that's what the Iron Council is. It's our brotherhood of men who refuse to drift in life. When you join, you'll be placed on a battle team with other men who are serious about them getting better and helping you get better. You'll build a battle plan for your health and your relationships and your work and your legacy.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  And you'll also be held accountable to it. No fluff, no hype, no rah rah, no cheering, just, just hundreds and hundreds of men doing real work inside of the council, challenging each other to step up and do better, be better fathers, husbands, business owners, community, community leaders, et cetera. So now we're, we, we only open the door, excuse me, let me say it this way. We are going to close the doors, October 31st. Yes, October 31st. So that gives you to the end of the week because right now we're open, but we close Friday again, October 31st. And when they do, those doors are going to stay closed until the next enrollment, which is likely going to be the end of the year.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  So if you've been on the fence and you've wondered how you might make the best quarter of your life and rolling into 2027, the best year ever, head to orderofman.com/ironcouncil. It's orderofman.com/ironcouncil. You can get signed up and join us and I will see you inside for the best finish to a year ever.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  I've got a lot of questions, so there, there's two in particular that come to mind and we, and I want to wrestle with both of them. So one is, is the I, when you're, when you're describing it, what, what I hear or how I would define it would be my soul. That's how I would define it.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  You know, for, so for example, I'm, I'm a hunter. And when I sit in a tree stand and I watch deer at 40 yards below me, I don't know that they had, I, I do know, they do not have the same I that we're talking about. They're based on instinct, they're based on survival. I don't think they have a, a level of, of depth that we have. They don't have awareness of themselves, they have awareness of the environment, sure, but not awareness of themselves. And I think that's what differentiates us. So I, I kind of want to talk on that a little bit. And then my, the other thing I want to ask about, and I'm saying this with all due respect to you and your work,

• 27:01Speaker 00

  is the man of zero a luxury reserved for mature men who have their, let's say, financial needs taken care of?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Which question do you want to work with first? I'm game.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Let's go, let's, awesome, let's go to, let's go to the soul conversation first.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  There's no way to know, a lot of this for me is an, I don't know. It's, it's just, you know, we could do our best. But given that, like as the baseline of sharing with you, that really none of us could know. So when we, when we look into a deer's eyes, so I, I, I don't hunt much, but I fish a lot. I've grown up fishing, my father took me fishing and I, there, there's a period of time where I would fish a river, it was freshwater river and catch bass. And I would, some of these bass, I could just, you know, I did catch and release and I would catch them.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  I would look into their eyes and clearly, as you say, they didn't think like me. They weren't, you know, their mind clearly was a bass mind, not like my mind. But they were aware, they looked at me. If I moved my hand toward them, they, they would move like, they were aware. And that awareness is what I'm talking about. The very awareness that is shared with all beings that I'm aware of. Again, there's an, I don't know, like, I don't know how far that extends. There are lots of experiments that show that plants are aware of their surroundings, that they react. If you put a pole next to a plant to grow on, it'll start growing toward the pole.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  So how does it know where the pole is?

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Even words. I've even heard that the, the positive and negative words will impact how a plant grows, which is pretty wild to me, actually.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Well, that gets into your question. I mean, so I agree that there's a, a human soul that's unique or whatever we want to call that. I would call it mind, but, but there's a human aspect that's uniquely human. But that doesn't mean that all of these living beings don't have some aspect of awareness. In fact, I would say that most science shows that.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Even the most rudimentary, single cell organism learns, you could be conditioned to behave a certain way, it has memory. So I would say that awareness itself finds its way through different structures and those structures have different levels of complexity. Humans, at this point, might be the most complex. Maybe AI is going to supersede us because AI is going to include all the humans holding on to their iPhones or whatever exists then. And it's going to be much bigger than any single human. So

• 29:59Speaker 00

  It's very, it's almost like, I mean, everything's a cyborg, right? There's, there's technology and biology mixed together. I mean, even, even I'm a cy, I mean, I've got my watch on, my Garmin watch, I've got my phone in my pocket, we're conversing through this digital device, which is my digital eyeballs. Like, it's pretty incredible.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. So that's awareness, if you will, running through all of that. We're aware, you and I are aware of each other through this technology right now. So that, I would say that what I'm talking about as being zero is that depth of awareness. So you could, and I have or do, commune with non-humans. I mean, sometimes people have deeper communion with their animal friends. I know many people who have a closer relationship to their dogs, or cats, or horses, or something than they do with any human. So I do think it's possible to notice the oneness with, or commune with, I mean, if we want to use a different word, we could call that love,

• 31:02Speaker 02

  that feeling, that awareness in another. It doesn't mean you're namby-pamby. In good martial arts, you love your opponent and you neutralize them. You know, you could love, somebody could be coming to attack you and your family, let's say, you know, and your life or your family's life is literally threatened, you know, they could die. And you could look into the eyes of this attacker and feel their awareness, like I am you, we are this awareness, and I need to kill you, and I need to neutralize you because you're going to kill my family. So there's not a problem in taking strong action with other beings, just because we share that depth of being.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  I would go so far as to say, we share that depth of being with everyone, maybe even everything. But that doesn't mean we don't protect ourselves, or act offensively at times, you know, in the offense, I mean, you know, take first strike. So there's lots of ways of living. So you could love your opponent. I would say that good martial arts teach that, like to combine yourself with an opponent, to love them, to feel them, to be them, and then to neutralize their body to, to, so I, we might just be using these words slightly different, like soul. So I would totally agree that the human, whatever we want to call it, soul or mind, is different than a plant, obviously,

• 32:27Speaker 02

  or an animal. But I also think that there's a kind of awareness, if you look into the eyes of an animal, for instance, that is clearly there. And it's different when the animal dies, it's not there. And so there's a there, there, and that is what I'm calling being. Again, now, most people skip over that, or the changing stuff, the perceptions, the sensations of life. But if you just take a moment and pause and feel that depth of being, it's very potent. In fact, it is the source of everything you're experiencing right now. Right now, you are being that. You

• 33:08Speaker 02

  are aware, right? Or you wouldn't be able to have this conversation. So you are that awareness now, but we forget it. And when we forget that we are also that depth of being or awareness, then we get lost in events, or I call it woman and world in the Man of Zero book. And we get lost in that ongoing, ever-changing this and that, and of life, of events. And most men at some point go, okay, is this it? Is this all there is? Like, one thing after another? And I'm, in the book, I'm suggesting, like, well, that one thing after another continues, and you meet

• 33:48Speaker 02

  it with impactability, you know, you meet it with integrity. But you also are sourced in that being, that is the same being that you could see in a deer's eyes, or in a bass's eyes, or, if you're sensitive, perhaps walking in a forest, feeling it in the plants. So that depth of being is kind of universal, whereas your unique expression of that is unique. It's your fingerprint of life. It's your unique contribution. It's your specific gift. I'm not sure if we're getting to what you were asking about or talking about relative to soul. I'm just riffing on it with you.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  No, it's good. And I'm actually just curious, but I'm actually, I'm glad you brought it up, because as you were talking about it, I was like, wait, well, wait a second. And I'm reminded of one experience that I've had, that I had, this was years ago. I shot a deer, and I was in Hawaii, I was on the island of Molokai, and I shot a deer with my bow. And I made, I didn't make a great shot, but I did hit her. And I hit her pretty far back. And I ended up, I could tell, I ended up either hitting her spine or hips, but she was paralyzed at that point, but still alive. And I waited, and I thought, well, maybe she'll die. And I just waited a little while, and clearly that wasn't happening, and she was suffering. So I got out of my position,

• 35:07Speaker 00

  and I walked up 50 yards, and she, this is, this is kind of brutal and graphic, but I think it illustrates the point that I didn't consider until you talked about this. She was, she was crawling with her front legs away from me. And I walked up to her, and I felt so horrible, because I had to put her out of her misery. And right before I did, she looked up at me, and she made this horrible noise. And she looked right into my soul. And at the same time, I was doing the right thing. And I appreciate you saying that. We can have humanity, we can, we can have empathy and understanding, and realize and embrace the humanity of everything

• 35:51Speaker 00

  we're going through, and also do our job. And it was, so I, I didn't think about that till you said it. And that gives me a different perspective. That's interesting. I don't have a question. It was just, it's just something that came up when you were talking about that.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's beautiful. I think as we become more sensitive to that depth, we feel that more and more. We feel that in all beings, in all creatures, in all people, whether we hate them or love them, whether we have to protect ourselves from them, or neutralize them, whether we choose to live with them, or they're enemies, we can still feel that. And that adds a dimension of being. Then, even though we may, as you say, do our, have to do our job, we do our job with love, or we do our job with integrity. There's a kind of natural integrity, like in that moment of looking in the deer's eyes, there's a kind of natural integrity, and almost an obligation to life. I don't know, I mean, still, you have to say, you know, you

• 36:51Speaker 02

  have to put it out of its misery. But you're not doing it from an asshole point of view. You know, you're not just like, kill the fucking thing. It's more of a heart-to-heart, you know, I mean, I'm putting weird words on it, but it's kind of like, I love you, and now I need to kill you for everybody's sake, for your sake, for my sake. And so you, it's a soft-hearted act, even though it is a life-ending act for the deer. So I think that those are very compatible. And I think at a human level, our relationships would shift if we lived that more. Our wars would shift, I mean, it would shift at many levels. We would still have to protect ourselves, we would still

• 37:32Speaker 02

  have to defend our families and all of that, no doubt about it. I mean, there are people who are distorted people, who have very destructive tendencies, who are genetically destructive, who are politically destructive, who have beliefs about killing other people. So we may have to do our job, as you say, relative to those destructive tendencies in others, but that doesn't mean we can't also love them while we're doing our job.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  I think we actually, it's, it's, I'm glad that you're putting words to this, because I think a lot of men experience this without being able to articulate it. And I'll take a couple of examples. And these are highly fictionalized characters, so I want to throw that disclaimer out there. But you take William Wallace in the movie Braveheart, or you take Maximus in, in the movie Gladiator. These are men who are warriors. They're, they're deadly, they're extremely capable, and yet they're driven. William Wallace, depicted in, in the movie Braveheart, is, is driven by an eternal love for, for the woman that he loves. Maximus

• 38:40Speaker 00

  is the exact same thing, driven by an eternal love for his family, his wife and his young son. And yet, they're still doing what needs to be done, but they're doing it from a different position. And we, as men, are inspired. But why are we inspired by that? Because it resides in us.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. I would, that's exactly what I was going to say, that those are great examples of what we're talking about, and they resonate with us because of that. Like, they're not asshole dudes, they're not superficial dudes, just yippy, you know, like creating destruction for the sake of destruction. They're very deep men, who are motivated by love. And that does not mean they're less of a warrior at all. So

• 39:22Speaker 02

  I would say that those are, you know, examples, if you will, of a kind of man of zero. Now, he's their living purpose in the world. They each had their own contexts, political contexts and so forth that they were working with. But they were coming from that place of love. And I, that's what I call the man of zero. So instead of coming from a place of pure purpose, like I want to make a bunch of money, or I want four children and a big house, or, you know, instead of that, they're, the love inside of them, love for their family, for their wife, for life itself, but people, most artists are motivated by love, you know, they're, they're painting or making music from love, if you can use that word, you know, that's what makes them great artists.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  We listen to the music and it resonates with us. Or we watch these movies of these great men who are coming from depth. They're, they're deep men. They're not fighting for superficial personal reasons. And that is what I call the way of zero in the man of zero. So those are, I love those examples and I'm glad you brought them up.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  I'm interested in, and I, I do want to get the, the other question that I, I posed earlier, but this concept of woman and world, what's interesting in my experience and either just personally, anecdotally, what I've seen of other men, when we chase those things, those thing, if I'm out in the woods and I'm chasing a deer, a deer's going to run away from me, like it's just, that's what's going to happen. And I think what happens with woman and world, and I'm, I'm curious to go into the depth of this, but when we chase and pursue those things, sometimes they run from us. But I found it, it's ironic and it's interesting that the more that I become aware of myself,

• 41:07Speaker 00

  the more I become whole, the more I try to live within my principles and, and lean towards my relationship with God, and the less that I worry about woman and world, to use that term, the more attractive I am to women in the world, which is kind of a cruel irony, you know what I mean?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Well, it's a principle. It's not an irony. I mean, that's the whole subject of the man of zero, that the, it's true in hunting. I've hunted a little, not much like you, but just be, the best way to hunt is not to be putting out a lot of energy, but to actually relax in your being and let them come to you. Let, and that's true in, in everyday life also, that women in world, in a sense, if we want to anthropomorphize it, it's they're attracted to that depth of truth, or that depth of peace in your heart, or that depth of love that you're, that you are.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  So yes, the, the more you can abide as being and still function, the more things go effortlessly. The sign of the man of zero is they live much more effortlessly with, they live with less effort than the man of zero, than the superior man phase. And the superior man phase, you're busting ass, you're getting up early, you're exercising, you're going to work, you start shrinking, you push yourself, you have goals, you have benchmarks, you're measuring yourself against benchmarks. And that's incredibly useful for that period of life. In fact, it's the only way to do it. You have to go, you know, this week I want to accomplish this, you know, but in the next two hours I want to accomplish this.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  It's a very useful way to live as a superior man. But for the man of zero, it's how deeply can I relax and effortful, effortlessness while staying functional? So you don't like put away the gun, you're sitting in the hide or wherever you are and you're relaxing as you're, but you're ready. It's like that state I talked about in deep sleep, where as soon as the alarm goes off, you hear it, you respond to it, yet the moment before it went off, you were hardly there. There was no experience. So it's that effortless being or effortless awareness, which you always are. The, the beauty of it is that it is effortless. Even now, as we're sitting here talking, you are aware, I'm aware that there, there's

• 43:36Speaker 02

  this awareness that's always there and things are happening, our voices are happening, but we don't have to do anything to be aware. That awareness is what is. And so you relax as what is, and as you say, that becomes attractive. That is, I would say, the most attractive thing. Now, I talk about men's developments in terms of stages. And in the first stage, you're trying to get more and more of something, like more money, more power, more success. And the second stage, you're trying to get better. So like make yourself a better man, the superior man, make the world a better place, make your house a better place to live, make your country better, like you live to, to better.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  But what I call the third stage is probably what you call your relationship to God, but it's living as a vessel, it's living as a surrendered sacrifice to something larger than you that comes through you. You're no longer trying to get more and more, you're no longer merely trying to better things, you, but you open yourself to become a kind of living vessel for whatever you want to call it. God is a great word for it, but some people don't like it. So we could say the universe coming through you, but it is God, it's, it's the un, unspeakable coming through you, it's the unquantifiable, it's that which is alive as all of us. And so we open ourselves and we're lived by that.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  And that being lived by that is a much more feeling of a kind of surrender to a power than it is a, I'm in charge, these are my goals, I'm going to push to gain them. So that's a big shift from wanting more and more to wanting better and better, to just giving yourself over to be used, if you will, to be inhabited by a higher power, by the depth of being or by love, you know, the, I'm using these words interchangeably and I know different men would call it different things, which is fine. So yeah, I would say that we develop stage by stage that way. And a lot of people who are, I looked at your podcast to prepare for this a little

• 45:44Speaker 02

  bit, and I think that you're teaching a lot of how to become a better man, how to live like a better man. And I, so I would say probably a lot of the men who listen to this are in the stages between being a better and better man, and then also surrendering themselves to be lived by a higher power. So they're not, it's not so much trying to be better, but maybe you could say trying to be a better vessel, but it's, it's just, it's really a matter of trusting or something deeper than your typical mind and your typical thoughts and being moved by that. And I think that the more we as a whole, as species are moved by that, the, the more love will rule the earth, if you will.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  And again, I don't mean mamby pamby kind of woo woo love, I just mean knowing that you and I and everyone we know at heart are the same love, the same awareness, that God, if you will, can dwell in all of our hearts. But that doesn't mean that our bodies don't need to be worked a certain way, to be exercised a certain way, or maybe other bodies need to be neutralized because of their destructive patterns that they've inherited from maybe their parents or, or their past. So, um, yeah, so that development from more to better to a kind of surrender. But again, not a weak, passive surrender, it's more of a surrender to a power to take over you, it's more power rather than less.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting when guys, because guys do often say, or, or express or have this idea that surrendering to God, so to speak, we'll use that language, just, we all know it's interchangeable maybe for certain people, but a surrender to God is some form of weakness. But if I were to say, live by a code, they'd be like, yes, exactly. I'm like, well, that's what I'm saying. Like surrender to God is synonymous with live by a code, but depending on the verbiage you use, it resonates differently with men.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yes, I agree completely. And but, but live by a code usually means a personal code, whereas surrendering to God is non, it's not you that you're surrendering to, it's not your personal code, it's a code larger than you. So it's still, but the process is the same. Yes, it's an eternal code. Yes, that's a nice.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Do you feel like, David, do you feel like the sooner that, I, I, I don't know how you feel about if this, if this comes across as manipulation or gaming or whatever term you want to use, but do you feel like the sooner or the younger a man moves to this third stage that you're talking about, where it's a surrender to God, that's the verbiage we're using, do you think that he will be better off? Or is there a time and place where it's, I'm going to go out and get it, second phase, I'm going to improve, third phase, I'm surrendering? Or should we all be, regardless of where we are in our lives, be moving towards that third stage?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Well, I think we all are, but I think that that pacing varies from human to human. And it, to me, it's a mystery why some people get to that place very early in their life and some people require, let's say, a lot of suffering before they can get to that place.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  So that's me, like I'm dense and stupid, so that's me.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's a lot of people, you know, we're all in the same journey here. So yeah, I, I don't think it's specified by an age, but I do think that, you know, it could happen at any time. As I mentioned earlier, it could happen through meditation, it could happen through prayer, it can happen through psychedelic, it could happen through great grief, you could lose people you love and you're just on your knees and there's nothing left for you and suddenly you're inhabited by this greater being or higher power, whatever. So you, you could come to that place of, as we're talking, surrendering to God or surrendering to let God move you at any point. And so I don't think you push it, I don't think it's useful to push it because then

• 49:44Speaker 02

  you tend to fake it. Like there's probably more people faking that surrender to God than really, and it gives it a bad name, like they're, yeah. So I, I wouldn't push it too hard, but I think that when someone's ready, it's the only way to live. When someone's ready, you know, when, when we grow to that place of surrender.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Is that just a feeling that people experience? Is it like, I mean, you talked about earlier, how, you know, you, you, you kind of move through these stages, you get to these stages, you get to the point where you think, okay, well, something in my life has to change, or I have to evolve. How do you know that you're ready to move into that stage of surrender, or, or becoming a man of zero?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Because you have no choice, because you've done everything that you could do, and it has not led to happiness, it has not led to peace in your heart. There's still a kind of stress in your heart of what, what, you know, I'm missing something here, something's missing, I'm feeling a sense of lack. The difference between the second stage of better and better and the third stage of surrender is that sense of lack, that there's, there's no sense of lack in the third stage or in that surrender. You are filled, or you are fullness itself overflowing, that overflowing becomes your actions. But in the second stage, there's still a sense of lack, there's a sense

• 51:10Speaker 02

  that if I had more discipline, I can achieve this, or if I was, if I could lift more weights, if I was healthier, or if I made more money for my family, there's a sense of lack somehow that's still motivating you, rather than a kind of sense of fullness that's overflowing from you.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  I've got a, I've got a friend, his name's Kip Sorenson, he talks about this, this model of be do have versus have do be. So, most people operate the way he says it, from this have,

• 51:45Speaker 00

  do be mentality. So, if I have a million dollars, then I can do these cool experiences, and then I will be happy. And he says, flip it on its head, be happy, which will create the opportunities, which is the do, you can do what you want to do, and then you will have exactly what you want to have in life. And it's interesting, because I see so many people, and I, I've done it, I do it now, still, it's like, oh, man, I just need more podcast listeners, or I just need another $10,000, or I just, you know, need to go on this vacation. But if we flip it on its head, and I think that's what you're talking about, all of that other stuff starts to fall into place

• 52:30Speaker 00

  when we just decide, hey, I'm gonna be who I am, and I'm gonna have interesting experience, or do interesting experiences, and then I'll have the abundance and prosperity in my life that I want.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Yes. The only refinement I would make in that, I agree with that completely. The only refinement I would make would be that you can't just make that decision, in my experience, in my experience with other men, like, a man could hear-

• 52:54Speaker 00

  To be happy, you mean?

• 52:56Speaker 02

  To start by being happy, because if you're not, if you, if you don't have access to that happiness. So, let me like, make a concrete example. So, let's take sex, because we could use money, but let's use, sex and money are usually the grabbing forces in most, especially young men's lives. So, let's take sex for a moment. If you've never had sex, or you've had very limited sexual experience, you might have a deep fascination, you might be looking at women and girls, if you're young, you know, you're, and you're, you're excited by them, and they're, and you're attracted to them, and you're wondering, like, what are the possibilities here, and you're, you're highly motivated. Most men, at a young age especially, are highly motivated sexually.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  If they, at that point, just said, okay, I'm just gonna be, it would be a lie, because they, they're not just being, they're being horny, you know, they're being, and so, to those men, I would say, live that horniness with integrity. Like, don't deny the horniness to be, to, to, to start with the being. Do, like, date, go out, find women, do what you need to do, but do it from the heart, do it with integrity. Now, after a period of time, they may then say, okay, I've had enough sex, you know, or, or enough women, or however they look at it, what I want now is better. So, they learn how, and I'm describing some of my own past, I really wanted to master

• 54:26Speaker 02

  sexuality when I was younger. So, then you can then begin to go the superior men sexually, like, how do you have sex in a way that opens your partner? How do you open? How do you experience that divine wholeness during sex? So, instead of seeking it, as you said, through sex, seeking it, you're giving it, you're overflowing with it. So, then you go from, you know, wanting more and more sex, or more and more women, to better and better, like, deeper and deeper sex, or, you know, better sex, more refined, like, you become a master of sexuality, if you want to, you could learn those skills. But then, okay, now you can open, you know, depth of blissful communion with

• 55:11Speaker 02

  a woman, or any woman, or your chosen partner. Okay, so, like, and then you come to a place where, wait a second, that being is there whether I have sex or not, it's there before I have sex, it's there during sex, it's there after sex, it's been there all of my life, it's the only thing that's always there. And so, then even sex itself becomes irrelevant. Now, you still may enjoy sex, but if sex doesn't happen, you're enjoying the moment, if you will, as much as if you had sex. So, it becomes one openness of being, one joy, one loving awareness, whether

• 55:52Speaker 02

  you're having sex or not, whether you're having good sex or bad sex, whether you're celibate or polygamist, like you, the sexuality itself just becomes so secondary, even if you've mastered it. And that's true then with all of life, that you can come to a place that really you discover that you've always been there, but you relax in that source of being that you've always been so fully, that all the things of life, woman and world, sex and money, they become very secondary. Now, can you just decide to do that? I don't know, I haven't seen that possible. Like, I, I

• 56:33Speaker 02

  know, I knew that before I could be that, and I, and you just said it out loud, and you talked about your friend who teaches this, or talks about it. It's not like you could just say it, and people will go, okay, now I'm, I'll be happy first.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I believe you.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  You have to go through what you have to go through, you know, and that going through is your path, it's your unique journey, what you have to go through.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  I do like that you said, you were talking about doing it in integrity. I mean, the only thing I would add is honor as well.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:03Speaker 00

  There's, there's a lot of thoughts that I have throughout the day, that I would not want people to know, because I'd look like a horrible human being. But that's not honorable either. So, there is some honor and restraint in our thoughts, even though we might be in integrity, it might still come at the expense of somebody else, and I'm not interested in that. I, I'm not even saying you're suggesting you are saying that.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Right. No, no, I, I was actually using the word integrity in the way you're using the word honor, I believe.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Got it, okay, got it.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  I understand the difference that you're, you're making too.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I, I've just seen, you know, it's, it's, it's like, there's this, I don't know how you feel about this, there, there seems to be a, a growing sentiment of selfishness in society. And I see this with men and women, where it's, you know, I, I gotta go out and get mine, and you have blameless divorce, or faultless divorce, and, and, you know, even with people with kids, they're like, oh, my kids are so annoying, I hate my kids, and I just wish I could go back to whatever else. And everything has just become so selfish, and, and centered around self. Like, I, I think there's a way for us to focus on ourselves that is in alignment with the betterment

• 58:19Speaker 00

  of the people that we're, we have a responsibility for, but it's really disheartening to see how selfish people have become. Would you agree, disagree? Where do you fall on that?

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Well, I would agree. I think that's what we've been talking about, that we go through these phases from, another way to say the phases is from selfishness, like, I, me, me, me, me, me, to we, you know, like, not just me, but you and me, and then beyond that, to, you know, thou, to God living through us. So, we go from just self-centeredness to we-centeredness, you know, with other people. And then even beyond that, to being lived by something beyond me and we, you know, here, whether me and we are here or not, that's here. So, yes, we grow through those as a kind of sequence, I've noticed, for most people. You know, I just want to mention something

• 59:12Speaker 02

  you brought up in a way, when you're no longer stuck in your patterns, then the patterns that you've stuffed down, or ignored, can arise. And most of us have ignored, like, we come, we're mammals, like, our bodies are animals, we're beyond our bodies, but we have in our bodies encoded all kinds of violence, and sexuality, and sexual violence from our past, from things we've inherited, you know, if you look at apes, or, or other animals that we, that we have these tendencies in us. And when we're no longer afraid to look at them, if we just sit there,

• 59:53Speaker 02

  we may feel all kinds, you know, we may have all these urges arising in us that we would not live out. I mean, if we lived them out, we would just be reduced to our most animalistic, destructive nature. So, what happens, you know, you want to be able to realize, I am the awareness, or the deep being, in which these past patterns, and they could be past in the sense of primate past, you know, or mammalian past, are arising. So, you can be sitting there, or doing something, or, or with a person, and have all kinds of weird, you know, some men I know that you walk down the street, and if they're honest with themselves, as they're walking down a busy street, it's like they're looking at the women going, I'd fuck her, I wouldn't fuck her, I'd

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  fuck her, I wouldn't fuck her. And then the men are like, I'd kill him, I couldn't kill him, I better be, like, they're in this animalistic place, but that doesn't mean to act on that, of course. That means to allow, like, to be aware of these animal pasts, and let them come up and dissolve in that space of love or awareness. And that's why it's so important to feel, what we started talking about earlier, of the heart to heart, or love to love, or knowing the being in a plant, or in an animal, or in a person on the street. Because if you're feeling someone's heart, and in you, the animalistic impulse arises to do something to them nasty, you wouldn't do it, because you're feeling their heart, you're feeling that they are you, you treat others as you would treat yourself, as you are, you treat them as-

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  They were you, they are you at that level of heart. So you, you live from that depth of God, or you live from that depth of love, even though these potentially very destructive tendencies are within all of us. And we have to be willing to let them arise without stuffing them down, but not live them out. And I, maybe that's what you're calling honor. But yes, that's part of the, the way of zero.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I'm also, I appreciate you bringing that up, but I'm also really interested in your subtitle. And I can't, I can't remember exactly, but it alludes to power, sex, and freedom, which could, could be achieved through financial acumen. So it's sex, power, and money, right? But as I'm hearing you talk about this, I think what I'm hearing you say, and you, you tell me, give me some nuance and tell me if I'm wrong, is that you can achieve those things by being maybe more successfully than by chasing or pursuing those things. Is that safe to say? Or did I completely misrepresent the subtitle?

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  No, I think so. So the subtitle is a guide to primal power. So let's unpack it for a moment. The primal power is the power of God. It's the power of the divine living you. It's the power of the higher power. I mean, people use that word, higher power. So that's the power of, that I'm talking about is primal power, not the power you get through accumulating money. I would not call that the primal power. So the primal power is the power of creation is power. So that depth of being is fills effusive with primal power. And then it's a guide to primal power, boundless sex. And by boundless sex, I mean

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  unbound, like you're not in a body driving to ejaculate. That's very bound. It's tension, tension, release. Ah, that felt good. And then again, tension, tension, release. Instead of that, you're with your lover, your hearts are open, you are at one, you are love to love with your partner, and all the sense of separation dissolves. So the sexuality becomes boundless, unbound, unlimited, unconstrained. So a guide to primal power, boundless sex, or another way to say that would be love motivated sex. And then freedom beyond ambition. So what is the freedom beyond ambition? Obviously, that's not money. Money is a form

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  of ambition. That's useful in the early stages of development of most men to, to earn enough money that they feel relatively free, or to learn how to earn it. Some men feel free being a monk. You don't have to earn money to be free. You could choose a kind of monk like lifestyles, another way to, to live that. But what I'm talking about is beyond ambition, that sense of being is free. Like, right now, if you feel the deepest part of yourself, the deepest I you can feel, it is free. It has been there when you've been unhappy. It has been there when you've been happy. It's there right now. It's there now, even though your thoughts have changed. It's there now, even though your thoughts have

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  changed. So you, that depth of being is always already free. So that's the freedom beyond ambition. So primal power, boundless sex, and freedom beyond ambition are all describing just aspects of that, always already here, deep I expressing itself in the world. So yeah, I, I hear what you're saying. You could confuse those with things like what you can gain through money, or power, or fame, or, but you can also just sink into them. You can realize them in your being. And that's what the Man of Zero is about.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  David, I'm really glad, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, this is, uh, yeah, that's, it's, it's obviously a great distinction. And, and I just believe there's more depth to that. And it will lead to a better, more fulfilling life for men. And it'll lead to better results for the people that we care about, which is important to me. And I think most men listening to this. David, will you let the guys know where to connect with you? Obviously, they can pick up a copy of the book, Man of Zero, wherever they want to pick up a copy. But let them know if there's anything else, if there's any direction you want to give them, and how to find more about your work.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Um, well, they can just pick up the book. All of my books are available for free, chapter by chapter, on my website, deida.info, D E I D A dot info. So every week, we update a free chapter. So you don't have to spend anything for, to access any of my books, or audios are also offered for free on my website. So anyone who wants to can access my talks, or my books. And, you know, I, I don't do many interviews, as you probably know, for decades, I didn't do any. I really like my work to speak for me. That's my offering. So it's out there for free, if you wanted, or you can purchase the book if you want. But I would suggest that those are the best ways to, to access my work.

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  I really appreciate it. I do know that you don't do many interviews. You've been on a couple of podcasts of mutual friends, Connor Beaton with Man Talks, and Chris Williamson, the Modern Wisdom Podcast. I love both of, of those guys and the work they're doing. And I, I feel honored that you'd be willing to join us and impart some of that wisdom. So David, thank you for joining me today.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Ryan. I really had a great time. Thank you. You're doing great work.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Thank you. Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with the one and only David Deida. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It was a real treat and honor to have him on the podcast. Like I said, he does not do very many interviews. So I was honored that he and his team wanted to interview with us. So guys, make sure to check out a copy of his latest book. It's called The Man of Zero, A Guide to Primal Power, Boundless Sex, and Freedom Beyond Ambition. And if you haven't already read it, I'd also suggest Way of the Superior Man by David as well. Also, make sure to check out the Iron Council. Again, we're closing the doors, the end of this week, October 31. So if you've been on the fence, and you're wondering, and you've thought about doing it, now's the time. Let's

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  wrap up 2026 strong, and let's roll into 2027 even stronger. Head to orderofman.com/ironcouncil. All right, gentlemen, that's all we've got for you today. We will be back tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything. Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you were meant to be.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You ready to take charge of your life, and be more of the man you were meant to be? We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.