CTCPodcast S0105 - Baba Dez V1.3.mp3
Dez: [00:00:01] The biggest the biggest shadows around brotherhood are the conditioned parts of our animals that are in competition, competition for women, competition for resources. These are things that have been programmed for thousands of years. Survival of the fittest and competition. When we become more mature, when we become when we evolved, we have learned how to cooperate and share resources. But often time that primal fear will get triggered, consciously or unconsciously.
Gareth: [00:00:34] Welcome to the podcast. For men who are ready to lead their most expansive and courageous lives.
Matt: [00:00:40] Thank you for joining us on this adventure where we'll be questioning old. Paradigms and architecting new ways to live, laugh. And love. I'm Gareth Pickering, and i'm matt dahse, we believe that your story could contain. The key that unlocks someone else's healing. So we connect with humans from all walks of life as they share their journeys from chaos to courage.
Gareth: [00:01:04] So if you're ready to experience the ease and flow. That come from living an expansive and well crafted life. You're in the right place. This is the Call to Courage podcast. Hello and welcome to Episode five. I'm Gareth Pickering and today we are talking to Bubba Dez Nicholls. This podcast was created inside our founder's circle of Fathers, Sons, Brothers, which was a group of eight men that went through a four week experience that met and curated as we went through the evolution of our brand from Livermore Perfect Days to Fathers, Sons, Brothers, and the Call to Courage podcast that you're not listening to. At times you'll hear me asking questions directly to the men inside the circle if they have anything that they'd like to ask this. And I just wanted to give you that back story so that it made sense when you got to that area of the podcast to recognize that this conversation took place over probably two weeks, going backwards and forwards, asking questions as he shared some of his knowledge about a whole range of topics around sexuality, porn, vasectomy and sex magic. Over the last few days. As I was editing this podcast, I wondered what a version of Gareth from eight years ago. Would feel like as I listen to some of the subject matter and topics that Des and I get into in this conversation, and I realized that I would probably be pretty triggered. And when I asked myself why I would be triggered, it's mostly because some of the subject matter we get into here, although it's probably some of the most natural conversations we should be having. We didn't really have these conversations in a safe space for men to be able to share some of the. Emotion. Secrecy, shame, guilt around some of the subject matter that we get into as we have this conversation. And so as you're listening to this podcast, the invitation for you is to fill into where some of the subject matter here may make you feel uncomfortable. And just be curious as to why it is that we're not having these conversations more openly. And that's really what we're aiming to do with the Call to Courage podcast is to be able to create spaces to bring some topics like the ones that we get into inside this conversation into the light so that we can integrate some of the things. That definitely kept me stuck in my experience for a very long time, specifically when it comes to intimacy and intimately relating with other people. So with that out of the way, let's get into today's episode with Bubba Dez Nichols. Hello and welcome to week two of our Digital Men's Retreat. Fathers, Sons and Brothers. This week, the topic on the main stage is the love, sex and intimacy.
Gareth: [00:04:09] And it gives me great pleasure to welcome to the stage. A dear brother and friend. Baba Des Nickels is an internationally renowned speaker, a teacher, a Dacca, an author, a singer songwriter, and a transformational God. He's famous for his contribution to the healing arts and evolving human consciousness. He's a global networker and leader of Loving Freedom, who teaches the sacred temple arts to share, inspire and support others in the activation and integration of life force energy. He's also the founder of the International School of Temple Arts, also known as Easter, as well as the annual sexuality and consciousness festivals. His passion is supporting other educators, therapists, counselors and gods to deepen their skill, presence and mastery in the areas of healthy living relationships and sexuality. Thank you so much for joining us. Fathers, sons, brothers. I am really excited about this conversation and perhaps we could kick off in just a reflection of your role as a father, son and brother. Which of those archetypes have you? Embodied and what's your journey been like with those with those roles? And then perhaps give us a little feedback on your journey into your work around sacred sexuality and touch on the topics of what sacred sexuality is for those that haven't heard about it, as well as what is it that many people may not have heard that? And yeah, something for you to perhaps share as you unfold your journey about how you came to do this important work.
Dez: [00:05:55] Warm welcome, Gareth, and it's a pleasure to be here sharing with you all, sharing with this men's group. And let's see the format. I included my profile here. So if anybody wants to look at us, my profile on the is the page, a little bit of bio there and some of the things I offer and there's a lot of information on this, the website as well. Just if you haven't checked it out, please peruse that and a lot of videos and other things too. But I want to get right to answering the questions. What is sacred sexuality? Sacred sexuality is bringing our consciousness and our love to. Our sexuality and to start bringing into awareness who we are as human beings and how we interact in all ways and in particularly sexually, and how that's so foundational and so important.
Dez: [00:06:54] And we'll be getting into that more as we continue the discussion. And I came into doing this work, this important work, because there's so much guilt, shame and fear culturally. And I feel collectively on the planet around our sexual energy. And that's something that's really come in, in the last 2 to 4000 years that a lot of cultural guilt, shame and fear has come in through religions and empires as a way of controlling people and controlling the population. And if you control, control people's sexuality, then you can control them in many ways. And so I feel like that's that's something that we're waking up to and coming back into our power and regaining our sovereignty. And our sexual sovereignty is very important to becoming a powerful manifester on the planet. We'll also jump into that first question. Which archetype do I identify with? I'm a I am a father. I'm a son and a brother. I have two older brothers that I grew up with. I have two younger sisters, a family of five kids. I'm the kid in the middle with two older brothers, two younger sisters. And also I have a son who's 38 years old, amazing man living in Sedona, Arizona. And it's been a very amazing journey. As I walk the walk, the walk through his life and parenthood, him and imparted as much as I could to support him to be an extraordinary human being and and gratitude for my father. I realized in a lot of ways, I was very blessed to have the father I had. He wasn't perfect. He had his own cultural conditioning. However, he was a good man, a loving man. He he had compared to most men of that time growing up in the sixties and seventies as a kid, he was intimate. He held his children. And he I remember him holding me when I was upset or crying. And so we had a lot of physical intimacy in our family and his energy was clean. He didn't want anything from me energetically or physically. He just he was really there as a very comforting.
Dez: [00:09:19] And that was really beautiful in my life. And I until I started doing men's work, I didn't realize and working with people, I didn't realize how many fathers didn't really hold their children or lie down with their children. And just having giving that reference point of falling asleep in the safety of one's father's arms and how beautiful it is to fall asleep, fall asleep in the safety of your brother's arms or your father's arms. So. Yeah. So we'll also go into a little more depth around what sacred sexuality is, and I'll start off with what it is for a man. I think for a man, sacred sexuality is being in touch with our anatomy, being touch with our animal nature, being in touch with our hearts. What does it mean to have the heart of a man? What does it mean to have and feel our souls, which is actually beyond gender? Same with heart. Heart and soul. And also to be aware of our own conditioning and our own traumas in our lives. And to start bringing our own consciousness to those places so that we're not being run unconsciously by the trauma that that we've grown up in, whatever that may look like. And everyone's dealing with trauma and abuse on some level, even if it's just, you know, cultural conditioning in a way that is an optimum and sacred sexuality. When I talk about anatomy, it means understanding how our bodies work as men and how our our animals program of procreation and survival is really at the core of our beings and our physical beings. And and so understanding who we are as animals and how our bodies function and that biological imperative to reproduce and to impregnate and how that can really run us. And as we start to waken up love and wake up consciousness, then we have a responsibility and we have a power to move beyond just being animals and to integrate love in and to actually contact with the deeper part of ourselves. I feel that we have souls and on a soul level, who we are and why we're here on the planet and what we've come to do that that soul connection is something that's very important as well.
Dez: [00:11:48] So as we bring our attention to our animals, it's about being careful not to shame our animal natures and to put our animals down for wanting what our animals want. However, we don't want our animals to run the show, and that's very important so that our animal nature isn't taking over and overriding our consciousness. One of the themes that I'm going to continue to share with you is about this theme of total integration. And when I mentioned total integration, I'm talking about the integration of our animals nature, our animal selves, our hearts, our souls, our emotional bodies and our minds, our consciousness. So those are those. That's what I'm talking about. When I talk about total integration, I'm also talking about that's more of a vertical, vertical integration. I'm also talking about a horizontal integration, which is the integration of our masculine and our feminine energies and natures. And so I'll get more into those details. But this theme of total integration is very important, and so that there's inner harmony, because if we don't have harmony between, let's say, our animal and our consciousness or our hearts and our consciousness or our bodies and our hearts, then there becomes an inner disturbance and we're not able to be at peace within ourselves because there's actually a battle or a fight going on inside of ourselves. Same thing with the masculine and feminine. If we don't really, truly understand our masculine and our feminine nature and we create peace within ourselves, we're not going to be able to have a healthy relationship with other people, especially, let's say, women, if you're embodied as a man. So it's really important to create peace with our own inner aspects so that when that happens on the inside, it can happen on the outside and reflected back to us. So back to the questions, what is the darker? And a darker is actually a reference to the masculine embodiment of what a deity is and a domine is the feminine. So what a darker Domine does is this is a person we're actually talking this is a Sanskrit term, comes from India. And what it is, is actually a temple priest or priestess. And it's a person who is a guide, someone who facilitates change and transformation with people like a priest or priest.
Dez: [00:14:39] This does, however, the there is a little more to it than that as a doctor or a doctor, actually, and perhaps a guide. Or a priest or priest is actually channels and embodies divine energies. And so there's that implication, too. And so, you know, what that means is getting out of the way and letting love speak through you and embody that love to serve and support others in their healing and their transformation. So that's kind of what a DOCA does practically. What that looks like is working with men and women and couples doing private sessions. Sessions usually lasts anywhere from an hour to 3 hours, and there is usually an exchange or financial exchange for that service. And so, yeah, people bring their bring their concerns or their, their trauma or whatever they're aware of. And sometimes people come to have come to me not knowing what they want or need, but they just feel that they need to work with me. So, so that's that's what a DOCA does. Typically in our culture, there's a lot more call for deities or female sexual healers because it seems to be that power dynamic where men have the money and they're also wanting more intimacy and more physical attention. But again, I'm generalizing. There are plenty of women out there who need a lot of love and support to heal trauma that's happened to them as well as men we love and to support to heal trauma. A lot of the wounding in our culture, one of the biggest wounds is the father wound that young men, girls and young boys and young girls and women never really got a chance to bond and really feel the safety and the presence and the support and the love and intimacy with their fathers in a healthy way. So that's that's one of the big one that's healing. And one of the main things that DOCA does, amongst many other things. So I think I've answered all the questions and I hope, I hope this has been sufficient. From what I understand, this will be reviewed and discussed. If you amongst you if you have any further questions collectively or individually, please ask and I will expand or give more details or answer any questions you have.
Dez: [00:17:22] I'm enjoying this format. It feels really spacious and I hope it serves you as well. So thank you, Gareth, for putting this together. And I will also include a link to some articles I have written on, on a format called Medium, where there's a lot more information that could be helpful for you, for your journey guys, and lots of love and blessing to you. Looking forward to sharing more and and answering your questions.
Gareth: [00:17:54] Thanks, Dez. That was a great introduction and thanks also for sharing links to your writing. You touched on some of the shame and guilt that is put on our sexuality. I guess this is for for men and women. I'd love you to unpack a little bit more about religion, sex and shame, perhaps directly speaking to where you see it being used to hold us back and where your work is and help people to expand out of that and let go of some of the guilt and shame around sexuality and what what sort of results come as a function of letting go of some of that. Maybe touching on some of the bullshit that we learn in school and the toxic imprints that we receive collectively. So I think those questions are probably linked. And then the second is something we've been touching on inside this men's circle, and that is self love and the expansion of self love. The question is, do you see a link between soul or divine and sexuality and how it relates to expanding self love?
Dez: [00:18:54] Right. So some of the ways that religions and institutions program that guilt, shame and fear around sexuality religions would instil this fear that somehow an institutions would say that somehow sex is bad or sex is wrong or sex is dirty and or it's dangerous. So, you know, some of that is the responsibility around our sexuality, of course, creating unwanted pregnancies and bringing children into the world when you're not there and that kind of thing. But then just the fact that as young men and young women were not taught that our sexuality is beautiful, our sexuality sacred, we are not taught to. Cultivate our sexual energy, that self pleasuring is something that is powerful and can be cultivated, that we can initiate ourselves sexually and how to do that, for instance, in schools. Or our parents would sit us down and just say, Hey, your sexual energy is beautiful. It's beautiful to touch yourself to do that with consciousness and presence, to be aware of how we can cultivate our sexual energy and circulate that in our bodies. And when I say circulate in our bodies to take that sexual energy and breathe it up to our power, breathe it up to our hearts, breathe it up to our consciousness, and start to learn how to direct our sexual energy within ourselves. The default is we end up seeing imagery or because of our anatomy in our in our biological drive, we we, of course, are attracted to, let's say, the feminine outside of ourselves. And if you're a woman, the masculine outside of ourselves. And so we end up projecting that desire outside, rather than cultivating it inside of ourselves for our own pleasure, rather than trying to get pleasure from a woman or get pleasure from a man, that we would be taught that this pleasure is for us and how to cultivate that inside of ourselves and become masterful at directing that sexual energy and celebrating that sexual energy as opposed to something that we would do in in secret and be shamed about when we are self pleasuring. And some of us were actually told, oh, it's not okay, it's not good, it's not nice. And so we would hide it and we would maybe self pleasure or masturbate very quickly just to kind of get over it and release the physical charge around our desire rather than treating it as something really beautiful that we can cultivate and really enjoy.
Dez: [00:21:58] And and our parents would say, hey, it's really beautiful. You know, you you have your private time in the morning at night to to dance with this energy and play with this energy within yourself. And it's beautiful and natural, and we celebrate it as opposed to having to hide it. So that's that's just one of one of that. That's an example of that that guilt and shame around our sexuality, that it's something that is not your bad. And to reprogram that and reframe that for ourselves and for our children.
Gareth: [00:22:30] A few years ago, I read a book called The Ethical Sluts and. The title grabbed me, but somebody recommended it to me and the main. The idea that I took from the book was that the frames and labels that we choose to give to relationships really has little to do. Then the people inside are involved in those relationships, and for many of us, we've been handed a relating frame that looks like pretty much a monogamous heterosexual container. And that's the that's normal and that's how it's supposed to look. And then I did this to a few years ago, and I think it's your work that spoke about the three sacred paths, and maybe it's something you could speak into as a way for relating those three various paths. And I realize that they sort of expand out and there's not just really three there's almost an unlimited number of paths in terms of how you can relate. But if you can speak to those and perhaps give your experience, I know you've spent time exploring all of those relational styles and maybe speak to some of the expansive areas of spending time in those, as well as the potential shadows where we stop growing in a when we spend time in a specific relating style.
Dez: [00:23:43] So I want to share a little bit about the different relational types as you ask. Gareth, the three main relational types are celibacy, monogamy and multiple partners. And the first sacred path that we would learn to walk when we are growing as young men and young women is the sacred path of celibacy. And I talked about that in the recording before, how we would cultivate our sexual energy, we would be self initiating. And to continue to be masterful at running our sexual energy, directing our sexual energy, cultivating our sexual energy, celebrating it. In my own personal experience, I from the years 2820 930. I was. For three years, I consciously chose celibacy. And when I say celibacy, it's not the kind of celibacy where I'm suppressing sexual energy or the kind of celibacy that some religions teach. It's about activating our sexual energy and not sharing it with anyone but ourselves. So once again, it's doing those powerful rituals and meditations with ourselves. And there's a lot to be said about how to do those rituals and meditations. But I just want to celebrate and mention the sacred path of. Celibacy and how that's a real beautiful path to walk. And it can be very powerful and appropriate at times to walk that path with consciousness. The next path is the path of monogamy, and that's where we choose to share our sexual energy with one other person, that we expand the container of ourselves to include another person. And it's another beautiful, sacred path. I personally walked that path for almost well over ten years with one partner for over nine years. And it's a beautiful, powerful container. And it's for me, something that it wasn't, something I set out to do. It just happened. And I realized that I was with this person, person year after year, and I really didn't desire to be with anyone else. And it was the appropriate, the path to walk at that time. So I think a lot of people choose monogamy as a way of control. It's it's having a relationship based out of fear that if I don't make love with anyone, you won't make any love with anyone else, and then we'll be safe.
Dez: [00:26:18] And we don't have to feel that fear. And that's not love. That's fear. So what I'm talking about is monogamy based on love, where my partner could choose at any moment to be with someone else and. And I would celebrate that. And an important thing about monogamy is it's not something you have to do with someone else. You choose to choose choose to circulate your sexual energy with one other person. The person you are being monogamous with does not need to be monogamous back with you. In other words, they could have multiple partners and you could still be monogamous with them. So again, these are these are personal paths. And I feel like our culture and society has kind of messed that one up and created this thing. Well, if you are monogamous, then somebody else has to be monogamous. Back with me. That's that's a that's a real confusing thing to teach. That's not what the sacred path of monogamy is about. And I've walked that path. I've been monogamous with one person. I've had lovers in my life be monogamous with me. And I celebrated their monogamy and it was their personal choice to to do that. So we've talked about celibacy. We've talked about monogamy. I'd like to talk about this sacred sexual path of multiple lovers and and the challenges and rewards of that as well that you. It stretches our hearts and our bodies and our souls to love more than one person at a time. I've had people say that it's too hard to have a successful relationship with one person. How can you do that with multiple people? Well, it's because I changed the framing around and for me, it's really beautiful to when I'm in relationship or relationships don't drain power, they bring me power. So the more lovers I have, the more love and support and beauty and and and power I get, rather than it being a power drain. And once again. It's not about some people say with having multiple lovers that you're not able to go deep. Well, that's another misconception. You can go as deep as you can with yourself. You can go deep with another person and you can go deep with multiple people.
Dez: [00:28:45] I know a lot of people in monogamous relationships that maintain very shallow monogamous relationships and they don't really go deep with their partners. So it's not about that. If you just don't assume that just because you're monogamous means you're going to go deep with one person. You can go deep with multiple people, you go deep with one person, you can go deep with yourself. So that's a brief outline of those three different relational paths. And the fourth one is the path of no path, which is just not putting yourself in any boxes or containers and just choosing what you choose and being how you be and being in the moment. So my apologies for that last one. It was a little bit long, over 5 minutes, but I wanted to touch just a little bit more on the sacred path of monogamy, sharing and circulating your sexual energy of one other person. That that can be a container where you can go really deep with one person or you can keep it really shallow with one person because you're afraid of depth. And and sometimes that's the shallow part that if you had more lovers, you'd be challenged to open up. But because you're with choosing someone who doesn't challenge you there to go deep, then you can stay shallow. So that's a shallow aspect there. And of course, the shallow side of having multiple lovers is you just stay shallow and you just move from one to the other and you never really go deep with anyone. And and as soon as this starts to go deep, you just move on to another lover. That's the shallow side of having multiple lovers. Some of the shallow sides. And finally, the last question was about what's the link between our soul, divine and self love? Well, you know, once again, that relates to that total integration piece. And to go deep in yourself and this is where the the celibate path can support a real deep dive into your own soul and your own heart and your own body and your own emotional body and consciousness. And to really cultivate a connection with who you are as a soul on a soul's level, to really feel the call of your soul and and it is self loving to know all aspects of yourself.
Dez: [00:31:07] So when you want to know your body, when you want to know the shape of your heart, when you want to feel the authentic call of your soul and why you're here on the planet. And also to feel into what your emotional body is holding, either from your past or from your family tree or whatever. There are emotional things that we're holding on a cellular level that can create disturbances in that total integration process. So self love is becoming a fully, totally integrated being. It's knowing yourself all the way and honoring yourself all the way and being able to share that other with other beings. Being transparent about who you are, your body, your heart, your soul, your dreams and desires. And and you can only do that if you know that part of yourself in yourself. So loving yourself and being able to share yourself self love and we can only love someone else as much as we love ourselves. So to know ourselves and love ourselves in every aspect and to create communion and flow so that there is no inner battle. That's a beautiful thing. And that beautiful, centered ease and presence by knowing yourself as something that you then can bring in relationship. And that's a gift to be a realized. Being in relationship with another being can support their own realization, and you can support each other's realization.
Gareth.: [00:32:38] Right. Thank you so much, brother. It's. It's such a joy listening to your messages. And yeah, it feels genuinely like being in circle with you. And I just want to honor you again for the work that you've done and for sharing your time here with these brothers. And one of the things I'd like you to unpack, which has been so powerful for me, having been through it, is the container was the, the two parts of the first part owning your know and the second part of being able to own your desire. It's something that is part of the level one training that you created and that has been so fucking liberating for me. And I'd love you to just talk about exactly what the importance of those are and perhaps how they relate to authenticity, because it's something we've spoken about in our circle directly about the power of authenticity. But for me that never really landed until I understood the importance of being able to truly own my desires and to be able to own my notes. So perhaps you could talk a little bit to that because I feel it's really, really powerful.
Dez: [00:33:43] So the question is who? Who am I authentically? And oftentimes when we start asking this question, it's through the filters of all the things we think we should be, all the things we are conditioned to be. And in an ideal environment, we would be we would be supported from the very beginning to know ourselves and move with ourselves and merge with ourselves to know our hearts, know our souls, know the unique expression of who we are and what we want, what we like, what we don't like. A lot of us were really moulded quite strongly to be something for our parents or something for the culture. So this is why it's important to own the yeses and to own the nos and feel comfortable with them and and start to develop a sense of self that oftentimes many of us didn't weren't able to develop in our neurological journey through childhood. So there's a reclamation here. And and and there's a there's a thing there's a piece of self discovery. So every as I mentioned earlier, every relationship is based on our internal relationship. So once again, if your heart is wanting something but your mind is is telling you another story or your body is wanting something, and you have guilt or fear and shame around it, or even your heart or your soul is here for a particular purpose on the planet. And and that soul journey is not in alignment with, with the cultural program or your parents agenda or something like that. You're going to need to start giving yourself permission to find your way and to boldly stand up for yourself. And again, this is this reflects the dance of the inner masculine and feminine, having enough structure and having enough freedom to be able to really feel into your authentic truth. And so it's a journey and it's an exploration. And the more you're able to listen to those parts of yourself, because if you say no when you mean yes, you're going to feel some contraction because you're disappointing yourself. And if you say yes when you we know, then you're going to find that. Oh, well, actually, that didn't feel so good. I'm going to change my no to a yes or my yes to or no.
Dez: [00:36:17] And so we start trying on different things and having different experiences so that we get to know what our authentic truth is. And it's important to be supported in that and to have the freedom to change our minds and to feel into what we want so that that we can be clearer. And oftentimes what we want changes as well. So so again, it's giving ourselves and each other the freedom to do that dance relationally and to find a place of ease and joy within ourselves, that ultimately when we're in alignment and we're doing the things we truly want to do, we find joy and ease. And if they're if they're just programmed things and and were kind of doing things to make our minds happy, we have to listen and feel deeper into our bodies and our hearts and our souls and our emotional bodies. Because because that's where the ultimate truth lives. And our minds are only there to serve that truth. Oc.
Gareth.: [00:37:25] A question here from one of the men in our circle was It seems that one of the challenges in relating is keeping the fire of curiosity and exploration alive in a partnership. When the illusion of knowing the other offering them into a role in your life sets in. This can be where it could be expansiveness stops. So the question is, can you speak into this and have you? What have you found to be effective ways in continually connecting in an intimate way?
Dez: [00:37:50] Ok. So how do you keep the fires alive? And this is really great because it actually points to, to another question which we're going to talk about is the self activation. But again, these are, these are internal relationships that we bring to our external relationships. And how do we keep our own fires alive? How do we keep our own lives interesting and fun? Where are we playful? Where do we take the time to stop and play? Where do we take the time to love? And so I'm going to actually, you know, I'm going to comment on this, but it really moves into the self activation question that you're also asking. And, and keeping those fires alive is keeping your own life alive and bringing that to your own life and then sharing that with your partner is really beautiful. And to remember that that we're a lover, we're a lover to ourselves first we're a lover to our lovers next and and being playful and keeping the curiosity going and keeping the fun in the play happening and really finding finding joy in ourselves and joy with our mates and our friends and our lovers. And, and again, it's, it's it's it's it's it's it's a habit. It's a healthy habit to play and to, to, to make sure that we have a healthy inner relationship. And when we do that, it'll spill over. And oftentimes in our lives, we get so busy and so distracted with all of the adult things to do and and the the pressures of duties and responsibilities. And it's important to blow those things off and and and stay yummy.
Gareth: [00:39:43] Dez. I'd love you to speak into your opinions on porn and its current role that it plays in our society. I feel this can be quite a charged topic and unfortunately I haven't had personally much addiction to pornography, but I know people that suffer with it quite a bit, meaning they leak a lot of energy and they put a lot of guilt and shame on themselves for consuming pornography. And I'd love to just get your feedback on this. I don't have a direct question. I just want to get a sense of what your readers of the role of pornography in our society and how you see it. That narrative being held collectively and yeah, was a healthy part that pornography can play in a relationship and where do we make pornography better and at the same time give it even more energy. So I'd love you just to give some feedback on pornography.
Dez: [00:40:40] Yes. The big subject of porn. And you know, the thing about porn and this is true for a lot of people, people in our generation and previous generations, part of part of our nature is is this imagery. And some for some of us, it's more prevalent than others. And seeing the beauty anywhere, whether it be in a sunset or in nature. And of course, because part of our conditioning is projecting and I mentioned this earlier, as a man, we're projecting our inner feminine outside of ourselves. So the image of the feminine side of ourselves is going to be very alluring and we can reverse that around for women as well. So the thing is, what's our relationship with our own inner feminine and are we supported to cultivate that? As a young man, I was. And so I was fascinated with the image outside of myself, and I didn't cultivate it inside. And so as I started to come into my spiritual or my sexual awakening as a young man, the imagery was very, very alluring. And and again, the belief that it's outside of me continued and reinforce the external projection that coupled with without a healthy sexual practice, then came self pleasuring or masturbating while looking at images. Later on the internet came and then porn. And and the interesting thing is that I feel like so much of porn is is it reflects the it reflects a lot of the relationships of society and the places where a lot of the shadow stuff around dominance and control and manipulation. And I don't think there's anything wrong with porn per se, except that it reflects a very unhealthy internal relationship. And and so if I were to look at porn and I have done a lot of research into porn and and use porn myself and sometimes feel good about it and sometimes it didn't. And that's really the thing, what feels good and what doesn't feel good. And for me, the reality is if I look at porn, I would say that over 90% of it really doesn't feel all the way good to every aspect of my being over 90%, maybe even 95%, that there's something about it that just feels off and that off.
Dez: [00:43:17] I want to honor and and what I would love to see is I'd love to see more porn that's really beautiful. That really transmit a transmits a deep connection and love and respect of each other and inspires us to be better lovers rather than so much of the obsession and and the repression and the immature imagery and an immature relating to each other. So I think part of it is that that we just need healthier porn. And the other part of it is, is, is if we're watching porn, it takes us away from physical connection with another person. That's the sad part. The time we should be spending in intimacy and cultivating our sexual energy on our own. We start to have relationships with with a screen. We start to have relationships with a computer rather than an actual person. And and and again, that combined with just the release and pressure of desire, not a healthy self pleasuring practice, it becomes an addictive cycle. So again, I can go on longer about this, but I've almost got 4 minutes answered here. So that's kind of the themes are the main points are the type of porn and also the fact that it takes us away from actual human physical connection with another being. And, and it often reflects our own frustration and relationship and control and manipulations in porn rather than sweet and loving connections being role models.
Gareth: [00:44:58] You mentioned earlier to be self activating. Can you expand what you mean by that? What is the actual process for self activation and what are the reasons that you would want to be self activated?
Dez: [00:45:09] Okay. Yes, the in an earlier question you asked about there was about I was mentioning self activation and I was mentioning the self initiation. And the self activation is rather than being activated externally by an external stimulus that we actually we actually activate ourselves. So in other words, if we're going to develop a healthy if. Develop a healthy, self pleasuring practice. What we want to do is we want to take the time every day to actually activate ourselves and love ourselves. So that means when we wake up in the morning and or we're going to sleep at night, that we take the time to connect with ourselves to not just sexually, but to put our hands on our body, connect with our breath, connect with our own inner aspects, and ask ourselves, Hey, Des, how's your heart today? How is how are you feeling today? Body. What? What are you feeling? What came up in your dreams? Again, it's like bringing the attention back to self. So when we're self activating, we are we are consciously activating our sexual energy in our bodies. And for a lot of people, a lot of women are looking for a man that turns them on or a lot of men are looking for a woman that turns them on. Well, I actually turn myself on. I don't need a woman to turn me on. And especially if I'm coming, like, let's say, for instance, to to be with somebody or I'm coming or I'm coming with my partner to share sexually. It's not their job to turn me on to make love. I want to come to them already activated and turned on and the same thing, you know, it's like my, my, my partners, if they want to make love and that oftentimes women are conditioned to, to, to be aroused and turned on by a man. And again, it's like if they have their own inner masculine intact and the idea is to come together and to share intimately and sexually, it's not my job to turn them on. It's their job to turn themselves on and to get activated and open and juicy. And it's my job to come interested in presence and activated and hard and juicy.
Dez: [00:47:42] And then as we self activate, we can then choose to engage with each other. So that's what I mean about self activation. It's letting go of that thing where we put a projected outside of ourselves and make it the man's job to turn on women, or we make it the women's job to turn on their guy or turn a guy on. Let's let's come to our relating and to our intimacy. Already activated, self activated. And then. Then share. Want to put a footnote in here that that as I'm commenting on self activation in the ways that we bring each other into duties and responsibilities as lovers, and we assume that it's someone else's job to turn us on or something like that. Again, you know, there's going to be attraction, there's going to be desire, there is going to be interplay, and there's going to be, you know, seduction and playfulness between people. However, if my whole point here is if if we have a healthy relationship with our own ability to activate ourselves, then we're not reliant on someone else activating us. And that's what's mostly missing, is that capacity to be self activating and self initiating. And instead of using other people to fill the holes in our souls and in our intimacy, we have deep self intimacy and a real mastery around our own self activation and self pleasuring and self fulfillment. And when we share with somebody else, we come to them full rather than needing to be filled.
Matt: [00:49:32] You have questions you'd like to ask our guests?
Matt: [00:49:35] Well, now you can.
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Gareth: [00:49:57] Thanks, Dez. It's so good to hear you speak about topics that for many of us carry such weight and heavy energy sometimes. And to hear you articulating and unpacking intimacy, pornography, self pleasure in such a relaxed and naturally embodied way. It's it really is an honor to have you sharing this this message with us. And yeah, the work that you've done through Ester and directly with clients over the years is really, really powerful. And just just honoring that part that you've chosen to take. One of the things that I want to underline that you mentioned with regards to to pornography, and I think it relates to everything in our lives and that is just the tuning into our emotions. All of our desires can be sacred as long as we keep them as sacred and we don't approach them or activate them or own them with any guilt or shame. And pornography can be the same as long as you're not consuming porn and feeling guilty about it, or getting to a place where the pornography is controlling you is really the dance and that can be done with anything. So that was a really, really powerful piece of that last transmission which stood out for me. One of the things I'd like to just share around the self activation practice was for me, in addition to the good body touch, genital touch, self pleasuring, one of the things that stood out for me that came through once I started to understand the importance of self pleasure, was that self pleasure is pleasure with your self, obviously, but that also includes not running any movies or sexual fantasies in your head in order to get yourself activated or juicy or whatever it is that you need. Because I had a pretty regular self practice, self pleasuring practice in the past, but it was always fueled by some fantasies, some past lovers, somebody that I hadn't yet been with, the fantasies that I wasn't able to live out in the world.
Gareth: [00:52:01] And when you do that, although you're by yourself, you're not self activating because you're running movies that make you dependent on that fantasy in order to get you turned on. And so that was a really, really important piece that landed for me. That was the self activation is really self. You're there with your self touching, your self tuning into what feels good for you and not running the stories and fantasies of things that you need in order to get you to be aroused. And you did mention it in keeping the fire alive. The question there. But the self activating practice is a really important piece of a healthy relationship. Even if you have a regular lover or in a container where you are regularly being intimate, that the self activating practice is an important part of that process. So you don't arrive to your lover, as they said, needing them to fulfill what it is that that you're looking for in your intimacy so, so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing those, brother. I'd like to ask you a question around semen retention. This was something super new for me that came into my world probably only in the last few years. Perhaps you can touch on ejaculatory control the separation of orgasm from ejaculation. Why would you want to do it and how do you practice it? How do you actually go about doing that? And some of the benefits, how it supported you in your in your intimate journey over the years.
Dez: [00:53:35] Okay. Ejaculatory control. I think the first thing I want to share is that ejaculatory control. It's not really a great thing to call it. I like to call it ejaculatory choice because any kind of control creates stress. And I don't I don't like the the wording of control. Control implies a lot of things that to be interfere with the flow of love partners of feeling that tension that comes with control. I am a strong believer in ease, so I like to call it a ejaculatory choice. And it's not that I would never ejaculate, it's just that when I do, it's with intention and it's a conscious choice, not something that happens accidentally. And sometimes we get close to the edge and we spill over. But learning how to practice ejaculatory choice is a very important thing and it takes practice. It took years and years for me to get master mastery at ejaculatory choice to get masterful. And yet this is something that we want to cultivate. And we ideally would start calling this cultivating this skill as a young man. So ejaculatory choice is important because it takes back our power. And also I feel that as a man, as an empowered being, we know what's going on with our bodies. If we really connect with the process and we stay conscious with our arousal or excitement and we learn to what we call surf the orgasmic edge, then we can we cannot spill. We can choose when we spill over into ejaculation. And the other thing I want to communicate is that there is a difference between ejaculation and orgasm, that it is possible to isolate your orgasms from ejaculation and I can make love and I know many men make love for hours and we do not ejaculate. We just ride the orgasmic waves and have multiple orgasms similar to what a lot of women experience. And of course, women have ejaculations, too. So so this is this is all a lot of different information on why we would practice ejaculatory choice so we can prevent unwanted pregnancy. We can have more awareness around orgasmic energy. And it's honoring one of the things I teach men is that you never ejaculate in or on a woman without her consent, that it's a way of honoring our lovers in our life.
Dez: [00:56:26] And if they if they want our seed and they request our seed and they want it inside or on them, then that's something that we have a clear agreement about. And it's very honoring to do that. So ejaculatory choice is also really good for the health. You can circulate that orgasmic energy. I talked about that earlier and self pleasuring. That's where we would practice this mastery in walking our orgasmic edge and every time we self pleasure. I know as a young man I didn't know that that was the choice in my ejaculation had had a lot of power over me and it's spilling my seed. And one of the things I love is I, I love being able to make love and make love and whether it's on my own or with someone else. And after I'm done making love, I still have all that energy and I carry it with me. And it feels really good to be turned on and hold that energy and circulate that energy. A lot of men experience a lot of discomfort because the energy or the or the that intensity is very centralized in the genital region. And so one of the things you want to do is you want to circulate the energy so it doesn't become stagnant right there in the genital region. That's why we learn how to breathe the energy up through the different energy centers and chakras. And we learn to breathe the energy down into the earth. And we move that energy so that it doesn't create blue balls or uncomfortability. And and it takes practice and it takes mastery. And it is possible. Not only have I discovered that, but many men who are on the tantric path have also discovered that as well. So it's very good for our health to not be ejaculating all the time. And it's also really beautiful because we're constantly in our desire and it's a beautiful way. Our lovers feel that and it's a beautiful way to honor them and honor ourselves. So that's a little bit about ejaculatory choice.
Gareth: [00:58:34] This is the first version of Fathers, Sons, Brothers that we're doing. And I'm seeing the potency of creating safe spaces for men to be able to come together and share their journey and share their challenges and support one another to move into the world with more integration and more power and more authenticity. I also believe that some of the challenges that we see in the world at the moment come from sort of an immature, masculine, the part of the masculine that is always in competition, that has a profit above all else. It's in competition with nature, is in competition with one another, and doesn't share power very well. And I feel like this could be some of the challenges and shadows that we see inside of the Brotherhood. I know you've also built an organization inside ISTA that has not looked at. Organizational building in the way that traditional organizations have been built with a managing director at the top and scaling down from there. And almost like a hierarchical structure, you've built a sort of a power sharing organization. I'd like you to speak into some of the shadows of the Brotherhood so we are aware of what they are, how to navigate them properly, and some of the challenges you still see in regards to men or the masculine being in competition, not being able to share power. And yeah, just give us a bit of a framework of how we can navigate some of these potential challenges or shadows inside the Brotherhood.
Dez: [01:00:14] I think the biggest the biggest shadows around brotherhood are the conditioned parts of our animals that are in competition, competition for women, competition for resources. These are things that have been programmed for thousands of years. Survival of the fittest and competition. When we become more mature, when we become when we evolved, we have learned how to cooperate and share resources. But oftentimes that primal fear will get triggered, consciously or unconsciously, when someone starts sniffing around our lovers or, you know, the envy, the jealousy, the fear, the competition, the comparing. All of these things are are very primal. And if we're conscious of them, then we can start talking to our animal selves and start to reprogram them and start to really have these conversations with our brothers and and talk about that, that fear and and talk about the fear and the tenderness and and how vulnerable it is to share lovers and and the tenderness that comes up. And the fears of maybe some other guy is a better lover and our lover might leave us or whatever a leg that is. So what that results in is control, trying to control our lovers, not to be with anyone else. And it also goes into subconsciously and unconsciously controlling men and discouraging them. And and if you if you start liking my woman, I will distance myself from you, or I will attack you, or I will start shaming you or undermining you. And again, these things aren't even conscious. Often they play out in the shadows and it's quite subtle. These games that we play and I've had some big lessons around this one and men that I really love and trust and really do love and trust me. But boy, as soon as it comes to, there's that primal thing of envy and jealousy and competition and not just not just for lovers, but also for resources and the whole competitive game. Who's the bigger lover? Who's the better man? Who's the bigger man? You know, and and these things play out unconsciously all the time. So make them transparent. And if you feel you have a brother and this stuff's playing in the shadows, you start getting hints of it and feelings about it.
Dez: [01:02:43] Be transparent, talk about it. I feel in my past I didn't do that enough of the men I loved and that stuff went unchecked and it started to erode our relationships. So I really support being transparent and having these conversations with the men that were very close with. And for me, there's nothing more beautiful than sharing resources and sharing abundance, sharing life with the men I love and sharing lovers with the men I love. It's a real beautiful thing. There's a lot of trust and respect and I know for me, when I've been invited into many relationships with the brothers I love with their beloveds in them to share intimately. It's a deep honor and there is nothing I would do to undermine or compromise my brother's relationship with his partner. And if they invite me into their love and we move into sharing in a triangle, either, you know, just as a fluke thing or even an ongoing thing, it's a tremendous honor to be invited in and to share with consciousness and respect. And it's my intention when I come into a relationship between a man and a couple that invites me in, that I add to the depth and quality and I add to the beauty and I add to the fun and I add to the joy and I add to their experience. And rather than take away or do any kind of undermining. So I've got to really clean up that competition piece to do that.
Gareth: [01:04:17] Dez I'd love you. Also to tackle the topic of sex magic. What is the process for using sex in the manifestation process? I know you've shared some amazing stories of how you've used this in the past to grow your business and bring physical manifestation into your world. But if you could touch on what sex magic is, how it can be used, and the power of sex magic in the manifestation process.
Dez: [01:04:44] Okay. Sex magic. Sex magic is about it's really about prayer. And one of the things I like to share and teach and share with my lovers is that our lovemaking is probably the most is the most powerful form of prayer there is. It's the most beautiful form of prayer there is. Because we're taking our life force energy and taking that energy that is so powerful that we could create life with it. And and if we want to intend to create a child, then that's a beautiful thing. But we can also intend to manifest other things with that intense sexual energy that we can birth other things into our lives and just state other things and plant seeds for other things in our lives. And you can do that for just about anything. And if what we're intending in our lovemaking, and especially if we're in sync with our partners and we have a conversation about that, it creates a beautiful ritual about what we want to manifest together or what you want to manifest on your own. If you're self pleasuring and say a little prayer, I want to manifest more health in my body. I want to manifest more consciousness and my being. I want to manifest more loving and deeper relationships. I want to manifest a new job. I want to manifest a new place to live. I want to manifest a beautiful vacation or I want you can use it for anything. And if your desire is aligned in your in your being, in your body, in your heart, in your emotional body, and with your soul, and if it's aligned with the Earth, and if it's aligned with with the common good of all humanity, then you have all that energy and alignment and it really supports manifestation. So that's the simple thing of sex magic. And I would recommend, please to to get a copy of my book, Sacred Sexual Healing The Shaman Method of Sex Magic. I go into a lot of detail not only about this, but just about everything I've shared with you. And that book is available on Amazon. On Baba Testicles, Kamala Devi Mercure, my co author. And so pick up a copy of Sacred Sexual Healing on Amazon and you can read more about sex, magic and all the steps and how powerful that is when you come into alignment with your lover or lovers to manifest your dreams and desires and to manifest change on the planet and to manifest all kinds of beautiful things.
Dez: [01:07:17] And this next part is how it's done. Part of the practice is, first of all, learning how to self-pleasure and to, like I said before, walk that orgasmic edge. And let's say one is is slightly aroused and ten is spilling over into ejaculation. And what you want to do is you want to self pleasure and you want to notice for the energy gets up to five or six or seven and then bring it down to five again and maybe go up to eight. Often times I feel like if I get to eight, then here comes the nine and ten very quickly. So seven is a great point of awareness in your arousal state because oftentimes it's real easy to spill over into ejaculation and you just want to get masterful at raising the energy and lowering the energy on your own. And then of course, also also practicing that with your lovers and then let them know what you're doing and have a conversation about it. The other thing is about telepathic agreements. Some some men feel that the sex is in bed without ejaculation. And I will tell you that after practicing it ejaculatory choice for many years, it feels wonderful not to ejaculate. It feels really empowering and feels really good to hold that energy. It's just something that we're not used to. And most of us, through our early childhood, we never learned another path. And so we're actually very much addicted to ejaculation and we feel like it's virtually impossible that I want to tell you that it's not. The other thing in checking in with your partners is that there is a belief oftentimes our lovers have a belief that if we don't ejaculate, that they're not good lovers. And the other thing is for a woman to be aware of the her biological program, which is to pull the seed and to become pregnant, if they can become aware of that energy, whether they're using birth control or not, they can consciously not pull on your seed. And women I've taught lovers and women how to actually push the energy back in a way or not pull on the man's seed. So this is also true for a lot of men that are experiencing premature ejaculation.
Speaker1: [01:09:43] And it's not all the man's thing. If a real powerful woman wants her seed and she's pulling on you, it makes it real hard not to ejaculate. So have a conversation in clear agreements with your lovers so they're not pulling on your seed, unconsciously or subconsciously. And so like, let's get back to how it's done. How it's done is to is to raise that energy, learn how to dance that energy, be very masterful with it. And when you do ejaculate, do it with a prayer, do it with consciousness, do it with intention. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute when you talk about sex magic, but our ejaculate is very powerful and it's a precious gift. And so don't squander it. The other thing I want to talk about, which relates to a few things, not just the competition piece, but also just our power is a lot of men and women will have surgery. Vasectomies for men that basically because they don't practice ejaculatory mastery and they don't trust their bodies and they don't have a good relationship with their animal as part of themselves. Their, their fear of pregnancy is so big that they are not or unwanted children that they'll go ahead and get a vasectomy. And what I'm wanting to share with you is that that's not necessary. If you practice or ejaculatory choice, you don't need a vasectomy. And in a way it undermines your relationship, your internal relationship with your animals, saying, I don't trust you, I'm going to cut you. And it's a big betrayal and it creates the inner conflict, I feel. So I just wanted to share that because it's, it's, it's, it's an abdication of our power and it's abdication of where we can cultivate mastery. And instead of that, we go ahead and and cut ourselves and mutilate ourselves. And I don't think that's healthy in a lot of ways. And there's more to say on that. But that's that's that's the essence of it.
Speaker2: [01:11:54] Oh, Dez, thank you so much for. That share around vasectomy and. Just put a level of awareness to something that really wasn't even in my field. I chose to go for a vasectomy, probably like 18 months ago, and. Yeah. Not understanding exactly how much ejaculatory control a person can have the ability to be able to get to a place where ejaculatory choice is something that is a choice every single time. And that you are. Connected enough to your body to be able to know exactly when side is coming and how to be able to hold that back and to be that in tune with your lover, that she's not pulling on that seat and she understands that in a way that is being set up is yeah. As you determine it's mastery and takes it takes some practice and. I made the choice with my partner Araminta and that. Kids wasn't part of our journey. We felt like we were on a really deep adventure together. And it's been an amazing and. Our conscious choice was not to not to have children and rather to invest our time and our intention into our lives and building our container together, as well as birthing other projects into the world. And so. Without my own mastery of my ability to be able to control that seed. It always felt like there were some there was some concern at certain times of the month. There were certain things that we needed to do differently. And yeah, I actually didn't even consider. The effect of a vasectomy on my animal and. It wasn't pleasant. I soldiered through it and. I did it with the right intention and. I didn't I didn't have a frame of reference to really understand that. But there could be another way that there was that level of control, that the physical procedure that I went through. Didn't have to. Didn't have to be that and. It's like it's like every day is a school day. You get to learn something new every single day. And I wish we we were taught this knowledge in school, and I. Yeah. I feel like I've been on a really important journey with my body over the last few years around.
Speaker2: [01:14:27] Many things alcohol, drugs, eating and intimacy is a huge one for me and I feel like I've done so much work there. And then, yeah, get a transmission like that about vasectomy and just have it land in a way that's like, wow. Yeah. In some ways I've bought into a story around Western medicine which. Yeah. It doesn't always look at the body and nature in the most. Harmonious way. We sort of live in conflict to our bodies sometimes and we don't listen to the animal like this says, and you just end up doing things because I thought that's what we did. And. Yeah. That's been really powerful. And I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you so much. Brothers. As we draw into the final 48 hours of our conversation with Dez, please feel free to ask any questions that you have regarding any of the topics that we've covered so far. If you need some expansion, if it's brought up any more questions for you as well as anything that hasn't been covered. This is a wealth of knowledge on a range of subjects regarding empowered communication and intimacy, topics of sexuality, all that nature. So feel free to to post any questions inside the group chat and I'll pass them on to Dez on the main stage here. A question from the circle. Can you speak on the area of consent, safety, conscious communication and acting on natural spontaneous urge?
Speaker1: [01:16:11] That's an interesting question, you know, because, I mean, the natural urge to just impregnate, you know, and and consent is, hey, do you want that or not? So this is the this is the ongoing predicament and the ongoing question. And so to sit down with your partner or someone you're going to share with and say, hey, you know, you know, where are you at with these things? And have some idea because you may go ahead and move on your natural urge and that person may feel really like they love it and they may love it in the moment. But then it's like, Oh my God, what did I do? Or, you know, that doesn't feel really feel honoring, you know, and it just builds. Here's the thing. We want to build. We want to build respect. We want to build trust. And what I found is that in my partners and the women that I've interacted with, they really appreciate the care and they really appreciate the. The conversation that create consent. And, you know, you meet somebody, you're in bed, you don't have the conversation. It's just spontaneous. This is the part about bringing consciousness and even the slow down, you know, have some passion, get it going, but have enough presence and awareness to go, Hey, let's breathe for a second. Let's just rest here for mindless pause. You know, I really want to tune in with you, you know, because the animal urge is just to fucking take and ravish. And somebody may love it when you flip them over and give it to them in the ass or something. But you know, the other, the other part may not love it, you know, and. You know. So we're reading all these cues and we're reading all these. All these. Body signs and language, but to bring it into presence and to actually verbalize it or do the best you can anyway, you don't want to ruin spontaneity and spontaneity. It's fun and exciting, but at the same time it doesn't give us permission in the in the, in the for the, for the sake of spontaneity that you're going to ruin spontaneity because now you're going to bring it into consciousness and and consent.
Dez: [01:18:41] So you're walking an edge there. And I've always I'm especially because of who I am, I've had to err on the side of slowing down and really making sure I have consent to because it's come up and it created problems. So anyway, I guess it depends on a lot of things. I don't know if I'm really answering the question, but what I would say is go for it, slow it down, get the consent and have the check in. Gareth knows about the BDSM talk before you engage with someone sexually, before the energy gets going and and to to presence. What are your desires? What are your are BDSM? What are the what're what's your relationship status? What are your boundaries? What's your sexual health? What are your desires and what's the meaning? What what is what is this connection mean for you? You make love with someone woman and it's like, oh, totally cool and no attachment. Make love with another woman and it means you're supposed to get married. So it's good to talk about these things beforehand so you don't have all these difficult things afterwards. So Gareth can expand on that. Our. All right. Blessings.
Gareth: [01:20:07] Thank you so much for that feedback. The BDSM tool is something I learned in the last few years, and I think it would have made my intimate relationships for my entire life up until I learnt that too. A lot clearer and a whole lot more simple. So it's a powerful tool and I've shared a link to a video that I made about that or BDSM communication framework. Thank you also for unpacking that that line between our primal urges and consent and how do you dance with that? For me, there's. There's nothing sexier than clarity. And I know that may sound pretty unsexy, but I feel like once you're in a connection with someone where you have gone through the process of creating a space where both of you are clear and both of you feel safe, or all three of you over me are relating, but you've created that, that framework for clarity. Then there's space for spontaneity, there's space for the primal, there's space for consent, the space for everybody involved to be able to say, okay, can we slow down here? Give me more of that. It feels amazing. And I think a lot of that comes with the BDSM tool and getting clear up front. One last question for this conversation. What are some of the attributes or characteristics that you think an integrated man should aim towards or strive for? As a way for him to be able to show up fully in challenging times.
Dez: [01:21:47] Thanks, Gareth. I feel that more than just the question really isn't about an integrated man or what? How does an integrated woman show up? It's really about how an integrated person shows up. And I feel like that's part of what it's all about, is dissolving the separation. There are differences, of course, between men and women. There's differences between ages. There's differences between races and creeds and colours and all that. But it's when you're integrated, the differences don't create any separation. And we don't need to qualify to any. We don't need to qualify anything. It's almost like, you know, if we're talking to people, it's like, well, as a woman, here's how I feel. And it's like as a man, here's how I feel as a black person here, how I feel. Or it's like you don't need to qualify it. How I just as a being of love, as an integrated person, as someone who cares, this is how I feel. This is how I be, this is how I live. This is how I interact with human beings. It doesn't it doesn't give you any more to comment on something as something that you can't identify as being difference doesn't give it any more credence. And I wish people had have enough awareness to stop that. Yeah. So I just wanted to comment on that and all the attributes of a positive, loving, integrated person, the patient's presence, willingness, ferociousness, gentleness, sweetness, kindness, cunning, you know, all the all the different, all the different things can just go on and on and keep stretching ourselves to embody all those qualities. I hope that answers that question.
Dez: [01:23:55] It's just wanting to say thank you so much on behalf of myself and the other brothers inside the circle, just really honor you for taking the time out to share your gifts and your experience and the knowledge that you have accrued in the work that you've brought into the world over the last few years. It's been an honor having you as part of this conversation and yeah, just wanted to say thank you. If somebody wants to continue to deepen on this journey and continue down this path of sacred sexuality, empowered communication, life force, mastery, what do you suggest as a path for them to follow? Where do they start? How do they continue on this journey?
Dez: [01:24:38] Well, it seems like everyone in this circle is already showing up. Carrying enough. Increasing the quality of your life. Opening yourself to vulnerability and reflections as much as you can. What does it mean to listen to each other, support each other as brothers and sisters, to have each other's backs, to hold each other accountable? All these things are really important, really valuable to listen and to feel the feel deeply, to cultivate our sensitivity and see that as an asset rather than something that's shamed or misinterpreted as weakness. It's really quite powerful. And and that's a lifelong journey. We just keep improving as human beings and we never end. We just keep evolving and to find joy in the evolution. And rather than trying to make a goal, as I'm trying to get somewhere to be, enjoy, live life and and enjoy the journey and support each other to enjoy the journey, all of us as human beings. Next steps. Well, obviously, if you haven't done Easter the week long is the training. I would make that a priority in my life. I of course, I feel that way about every human being on the planet. If you're 16, 17 years old and you're you're becoming a stepping into your full adulthood. It's something that should be a requirement. I feel that people will be equipped to navigate life in a healthy, empowered way if they do the level one training. And so don't wait. If we get myself to one of those trainings and realize that we have total choice and when we when we surrender to love, we have no choice at all but to follow love. And that's that paradox again. So thank you for caring and thank you for the invitation, Gareth, and thank you guys for coming together and thank you for caring enough to keep evolving and growing in your life, becoming beautiful and beautiful brothers that you are, and showing up for the amazing women on this planet that really are looking for beautiful brothers and. And that we're all looking for each other. You know, there's a. There's there's there's all the kinds of steps follow your heart's. There's lots of teachers out there teaching wonderful things about sexuality, shamanism, personal growth and development. Just notice who resonates with you, who you feel is credible, who you feel, who you feel embodies the things you want to learn and continue to pursue those beings and learn from them. And when when the student has outgrown the teacher, find the next person. So don't get stuck in any ruts. Don't get stuck in any cliques or any groups. Follow your heart, stay free, stay empowered and be with the people you love. Aloha.
Gareth: [01:28:12] Dez just wanting to say thank you so much for showing up this week and for unpacking and sharing your wisdom. On some of these topics that have got so many layers of energy and guilt and shame and awkwardness almost inherently built into them that. I know that for many people listening to this, they may have heard something in this conversation that may trigger some uncomfortability in themselves. That would have definitely been true for me a couple of years ago. The invitation is really just to be with whatever comes up. Notice what comes up when you hear something that that feels like it doesn't have a place in your world. And just notice what that looks like for you. It's definitely something that has become easier for me to understand the more I have become. More comfortable with my own desires, more comfortable with other people having whatever desires they have. And just the idea that relating doesn't have to look the way that it was handed to us by our culture, society, religions, school, our parents, many of them doing the best they can with the information that they have available to them. And that doesn't mean that we need to hold on to outdated stories with regards to what our intimacy or sexual partners or sexual relating needs to look like. And so. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for the graceful and open hearted way in which you tackle these topics. And as you suggested, and I recommend as well, that is the level one training. They're available all over the world. The website is called ISTA ist a Dot Live and they have trainings happening all around the world. It's the stuff we should have learnt in school with regards to understanding our own desires, owning our own boundaries, lifeforce mastery, getting rid of the guilt and shame around intimacy. It's really, really a powerful week long training that anybody should do. Whether you're in a in a marriage or single or you're currently dating someone. It's this there's so much value in going through this to level one for me, and it's helped thousands of people around the world. So that would definitely be the next step for anybody wanting to follow on in this path.
Gareth: [01:30:39] Also wanting to just share a little bit about my reflection that I shared of the disease, transmission and vasectomy. When I went back and listen to it, I realized that there was still a lot of active energy in me that took me a couple of days to process. And. Yeah. Really just be with what came up when I heard that and perhaps just unpacking a little bit more detail what that journey was like for me. Just what what came up when I, when I received that transmission from Dez around vasectomy about 18 months ago, Araminta and I made the decision that I was going to go for a vasectomy because yeah, I think I, as I explained earlier, it was just something that was true for us and something that we decided that we were going to do. It was a beautiful journey of me getting some information from my brother in the weeks leading up to it. He had been for a vasectomy already and yeah, he assured me that it wasn't a problem. It's just, you know, a small incision, no pain, it's a local anesthetic. And you're out within, you know, half an hour, an hour of being there and you just take it easy for the weekend. And so I went here in Guatemala to a clinic. There was about ten, ten brothers, all getting ready to to have the procedure. And we all got into our gowns. They showed us some like a couple of pamphlets of exactly what was going to happen. And as I lay down on the table with my legs up in the air, sort of similar sort of style to about to give birth, deliver a baby. I, I've always been a little bit squeamish. When I see my own blood, I sometimes feel a bit faint. And I actually passed out on the on the table. It would have only been for a couple of seconds. But I think the idea of somebody creating an incision in that sensitive part of my body just was a lot for my body to handle. And my soul left my body at that time. And so anyway, I came back and it was fine. There was that normal, disorientating feeling of having.
Gareth: [01:32:47] Fainted. That that feeling of that Tom just sort of tends to expand in that moment. And when I came back to my body, I was like, Whoa, what happened? How long have I been gone? Anyway, they finish up the procedure, I go home, there's no real pain. But the disorientation or that came from having fainted on the table stayed with me. And I think I never really properly gave myself permission to process that. And I think when I heard the download of days around the the vasectomy and I think there was a part of me that almost raised its head and said, See, I told you, this is what I was trying to tell you. And it was like there was this moment of internal conversation with myself, which yeah, just brought up a lot of emotion for me and it just made me realize, you know, you often make decisions in life with as much information as you have available and you make the best decision that you can. And afterwards new information arrives. And perhaps with that information, in my mind now may have made a different decision. And yeah, there's nothing that you can do having made this decision, but I'm glad that it's these sorts of topics are coming up in conversation and it's been an honour to have unpacked this rich subject with someone as as skilled and as dedicated so much of their life to to this work. And just thanks once again, Des, for your time here and for all the questions we received from our circle. Much appreciated. Till next time, chow. Well done. You made it to the end of the show. Thank you so much for listening. This podcast is a Father Sons, Brothers Production. Do you want to participate in shaping these conversations? This show is produced from a live conversation that takes place inside our Private Telegram channel. To hear the conversation in real time, contribute your voice and to ask questions of our guests. Go to call to courage, love and request an invite to access the group. Inside this community, you will receive additional behind the scenes content as well as exclusive access to our upcoming Call to Courage Live workshop.
Gareth: [01:34:56] Got a calltocourage.live. And we'll see you on the inside.