The True Core of Masculinity: Being a Peaceful Warrior

0:00 Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast. The only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. What is up guys? Thank you so much for joining me on another episode of the UMP. I really, really appreciate it. And this one is going to be a little more philosophical than usual, a little more spiritual than usual. And we're going to talk about the peaceful warrior, really an element of being a man, stepping into your true masculinity by embracing that which is the opposite of masculinity, your femininity.

0:44 So today's episode, the title of it, you may mistake it for the book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which is a brilliant book, but my take on it is slightly different. Although I certainly agree with much of what they say in that book. And as I look at the clock, literally, it's 11-11 right now. And that tells me that I should be doing this podcast, that I'm on purpose. So I'm just going to let it flow. I took absolutely no notes whatsoever. This idea came to me while I was in the shower.

1:11 And I feel too that sometimes when you're in the shower or you're meditating, that's when inspired thought comes to you. So let's just roll with it and see what we come out with. So this concept of being a peaceful warrior is based on the concept that a complete man embraces both the warrior side of himself and the peaceful side of himself, both of which are deep in our hearts and ours to discover. In every ancient text of spirituality, it seems like there's always a war in those texts.

1:40 The Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, even Buddha had his own war against his ego before he reached enlightenment. Before he got to enlightenment, he was tempted by these seductress chicks that raised up out of the ground. And he was tempted by ego and vice and greed and things like drugs and food and money and all these things that get transient sense gratification, the short-term gratification. And in order to overcome that, he had to go to war with it. He had to be a warrior in order to achieve peace.

2:14 Now, flipping that, when you look at the warriors in the line, what is it that gives them their courage? Is it wanting to beat the enemy? Is it because they love the United States? Is it because they're so terrified that they just want to kill everybody so they themselves don't get killed? No, it's the brother next to them. It's the guy on his right. It's the guy on his left. And in the book, Gates of Fire, which in my opinion should be mandatory man reading when it's about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae against the myriads of Persians who were coming to invade Greece.

2:47 Well, in that book, a character named Dianikes asks the question, what is the opposite of fear? Now, throughout the whole book, people are saying, oh, it's fearlessness. And he's like, no, that's not right. That's just a negative version of the word. Oh, it's courage. That's not exactly right. Well, at the end, right when the 300 Spartans are about to be killed by the Persians, they're sitting around a fire. And he says, I found the opposite of fear. And that's love. It's the brother next to you. It's all of us singing a song together as we go into battle.

3:18 All the me's, all the I's, all the us's, they're all myself and I will die for the brother next to me. It's Philadelphia, which in ancient Greek means brotherly love. And that's what happens in battle. So really battle is the ultimate feminine, isn't it? Training to be a warrior is accessing that love. And really training to be a warrior is fighting the enemies within yourself, not fighting an enemy outside yourself. It's fighting the greed, it's fighting the lust, it's fighting all those vices, and it's cultivating discipline and doing so with love, love for your brother.

3:57 Every single person who's been in war, and I certainly haven't, so I can't speak to this with any authority, but from what I've found in my research, everyone who's been in war, all they cared about was the guy next to them. They had the will to die, they had the will to kill, but they didn't want to let their brother down. They said that they get closer to those brothers than they do even their own sons. And that's love. And isn't it interesting that such a feminine, seemingly feminine thing like love is that which bonds men in battle.

4:26 So we see here that this concept of the peaceful warrior is a man who has a balance of both spiritual equanimity as well as hardening the fuck up. Now next month I'm scheduled to get a tattoo of the archangel Michael pulling a sword out of his scabbard. And under it it says in ancient Latin, the meek will inherit the earth. Now why in God's name would I get that tattoo? It's because according to Jordan Peterson, who as you might know is a great modern day philosopher, he says that the original translation of meek means those who know how to use their swords but choose not to.

5:03 Those who can fight but choose peace as their highest virtue. And I think that's such a great tattoo to have on my arm to finish off my entire tattoo, which on the outside of my arm is the god Apollo. He was the protector of Sparta, Apollo far striker. And below him is a Spartan general with the traverse horsehair crest. You can check out that tattoo on my Instagram page if you'd like. Then on the inside of my arm is the Buddha. And underneath that on my wrist, on the inside of my wrist is 11-11.

5:33 Well that's the beginning of an entire sleeve to which on the outside is the warrior and on the inside is peace. And that represents to me being a peaceful warrior, having a balance of that. How is it that I'll do one podcast one day where I'm saying harden the fuck up, I want to choke somebody out, and then the next day I do like chakra clearing, right? Which I actually plan to do here coming up soon. It's because I feel a real man has a balance of these two elements.

6:00 And in fact, each one contributes to the other. We as men are not looking to fight. But we train to fight. Because if that wolf comes knocking on our door, we are going to be a sheepdog that protects the sheep. We are going to go to war willingly. We are going to harden ourselves up. We are going to train our bodies. We are going to train our minds. We are going to work out. We are going to train jiu-jitsu. We are going to train with firearms.

6:25 But then in the same day, we're going to meditate and listen to enlightening texts and put love as our highest virtue. And in my opinion, God realization, being in the present moment, being peaceful is the highest virtue. It stands above that. But in my opinion as well, training to be a warrior gives you the edge to go through the inevitable fight that we're all going to face. All of us eventually, in my opinion, are going to wake up. We're all going to become, quote unquote, enlightened.

6:56 And when that happens, we have a war to fight. And in order to win that war, we have to cultivate discipline. And how do we cultivate discipline? The best way is to go to war. To train for war. And whether that means physically lifting weights, or even sitting down on the meditation pillow and fighting the war against your own thoughts, it's always a war. And as men, as silverbacks, it's our job to go into that war willingly. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

7:28 The storm that's chasing you can only be overcome by facing it directly. Fear hides your peace. So to round out this episode, I want to talk about how each of us is in a war right now. Coming into this world, it is impossible to avoid calamity. It is impossible to avoid pain. It is impossible to avoid problems. But we can avoid suffering because of how we perceive it. Now in my opinion, the whole purpose of problems, the whole purpose of ego, even the whole purpose of evil, is to have a contrast to that which is love, to that which is what we truly are, and that which we're truly trying to wake up to by going through that which is opposite of it.

8:13 You cannot have a picture that is fully white. If I hand you a picture that's fully white, it's going to look like a blank piece of paper. But if it has black in it, then finally we have black and white. We have the opposites. And the blackness represents the challenges, represents the struggle. I have so many clients tell me, man, I just wish I was born good with women. Why? You getting better with women is increasing yourself as a man. You're stepping into what you truly are, your true nature, your true greatness, by the challenge of not getting good with girls.

8:45 If you were good with girls, would you be listening to this? Would you be training yourself? Would you be self-improving yourself? No. You wouldn't have a war to fight. You are a warrior without a war to fight. What fun is that? Sitting back in the barracks with your hand on your dick doing nothing. No. Every man wants a war to fight. And your war to fight is those calamities that are brought to you. Either you're short, you're fat, you're not good looking, you have a high voice, you're not good with women.

9:14 Good. Fight. Make that your battle. And in battling it, you cultivate that all-important self-discipline so that when you try to obtain peace by meditating, being in the present moment, you've cultivated the discipline to control your thoughts. You've cultivated the discipline to live a clean lifestyle, sit down on the meditation mat, and go towards that which is highest within you, deep in your heart, which is peace. Furthermore, when you look at any motivation you have as a man, if you look at the motivation behind the motivation, you'll find that it almost always ends with the desire for peace.

9:53 Ask yourself, why do I want that Ferrari? Because I want people to think I'm cool. Why do you want people to think you're cool? Because I want a sense of being accepted. Why do you want to be accepted? Because that'll make me fulfilled. Why do you want to be fulfilled? So I can, you know, not stress about things. Why do you want to not stress about things? Because I want peace. It always goes down to peace. Peace, freedom, love. These are all core motivators. And in my opinion, they're all core motivators in your heart as well.

10:25 And eventually, inevitably, invariably, you're going to go for that. And the only way to achieve it is through the cultivation of being a warrior. Thus, we step now into being a peaceful warrior, training ourselves, going into the hard stuff. The way to reach your potential is to go into pain willingly. Choose pain voluntarily to avoid involuntary pain. When you choose pain voluntarily, you cultivate that warrior mindset. You fight the enemies within yourself. And then you can more easily step into that which you truly are, which is love.

11:00 You are the white part of that black and white picture. And you realize that black was just an illusion. And you have full control over it because you step into love. And that black represents fear. And yes, love is the opposite of fear. All right, guys. And finally, I want to give a quote from my favorite book, Gates of Fire. And here's how it goes. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods, and coin their gold as money for whores.

11:38 This is a man. This is his nature. As all the poets attest. Fortunately, God, in his mercy, has provided a counterpoise to our species' innate depravity. That gift, my young friend, is war. War, in preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. All right, my dude, thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. I hope you got some gems out of this one.

12:15 I know I certainly did. If you could please go to any of the podcast apps that you're listening to this on and leave me a review, I will get your name tattooed on my neck. And then, like I said, I'll get a decal of your face slapped on the hood of my car. All right, thank you so much again, and I will see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.