Initiation for Men: Awaken Sexual Energy, Purpose & Presence | Gayatri Beegan

In this powerful episode, host James sits down with transformational mentor Gayatri Beegan to explore the deep roots of male shame, confusion, and disconnection—especially around sexuality and identity. Together, they uncover how the lack of meaningful initiation in modern Western culture leaves many men feeling powerless, emotionally disconnected, and confused about their purpose in life and relationships.

Gayatri shares profound insights into how sexual energy is intimately tied to life force, vitality, and creativity, and how most men have never been taught how to harness it consciously. They delve into the damaging influence of pornography, the cultural suppression of male emotions, and how these factors contribute to the breakdown of intimacy and connection between men and women.

This conversation is both a call to action and a compassionate invitation—for men to reclaim their personal power, regulate their emotions, and reconnect with their hearts and bodies. Through emotional presence, self-awareness, and conscious embodiment, men can transform their relationship to sex, intimacy, and purpose.

You’ll learn about:

• The historical and cultural loss of rites of passage for men
• Why porn is often a misguided attempt at self-initiation
• How sexual energy can be cultivated and channeled as fuel for life
• What women really want from men
• Practical steps to begin feeling emotions again, including grief and joy
• The importance of brotherhood and safe spaces for healing

Gayatri also shares details about his upcoming 11-week course, Initiation, offering men a roadmap back to themselves through embodiment, awareness, and sacred sexuality.

This episode is a must-listen for any man ready to awaken his full potential.

This link for INITIATION - https://www.gayatribeegan.com/initiation-autumn25

www.gayatribeegan.com

About Gayatri Beegan:

Since 2012, Gayatri has held transformative spaces for men to awaken the aliveness of their being through erotic awakening. In a world that often shames or suppresses masculinity, Gayatri's work invites men into full-spectrum embodiment, where sexual vitality, emotional depth, and purpose align. At the heart of her work is a single intention: to guide men back to the truth of who they are — so they can stand in their power, lead from the heart, and move through life with clarity.

Transcript

0:01

In this episode, we look at the lack of initiation in men leading confusion, shame, and powerlessness. We talk about the shame around male sexual energy, the role of porn has on modern society. And the connection between sexual energy and life force, which allows us to connect to fatality purpose and creativity to name just a few. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 1:01

I believe that a lack of initiation for men in how to be with their sexual energy is hurting men and deepening the divide between men and women. Good morning, Gare. Can you explain more about this, please?

Gayatri: 1:16

Yeah. Hi James. Thank you for that invitation. So, when I look out in the world right now, I see a lot of challenges for men and a lot of challenges between men and women. There's a kind of really like, um, kind of standard narrative that somehow men are the problem or the problem with men is this. And, um, especially when it comes to intimacy and sexuality. So there's this kind of story, like, men just want sex, men are predators, men are male, sexual energy is dangerous in some way that it needs to be controlled or contained. Um, that if men were just given free reign, that, you know, that chaos would ensue basically. And there's a lot of dissatisfaction between men and women in the, in the field of intimacy and connection. But what I want to bring is that. What these messages are doing. They're only looking at the symptoms of what we're seeing in the world. They're looking at the, the manifestation, the kind of outcomes, and they're not looking at what's at the root of this. And I believe that collectively we need to get a whole lot more curious about what is going on for men right now, where we see so many men struggling, struggling with sexuality, struggling with shame, struggling with feelings of powerlessness, struggling with being lost. And I think we're doing a great disservice to men by not being in an inquiry around what are we doing or not doing collectively that is creating these symptoms in men and masculinity. And can we actually step back enough to look at what is my part in this and what might be needed in order to bring more healthful, rightful relationship back. And I believe that right at the root of this sits a problem around initiation that men are not given an initiation in Western culture into how to be a man, to know that he has become a man. He's no longer a boy. He's moving into adolescence, which is not yet being a man, but it's a, it's a threshold point. And then to mature into himself as a man and to embody mature masculinity. In Western culture, the rites of passage that we have for boys have predominantly disappeared. Uh, women because of their menstrual blood, have a kind of initiation through the body. Now, you could say a lot about that piece, but it's like a woman has a very clear marker of becoming a woman through the menstrual blood. And men, boys don't have that specific marker. And without these markers, without the rites of passage, and without appropriate guidance, boys are being left to create their own markers, their own initiation, their own rites of passage. And they're doing this often in ways that are causing harm to them and lay down patterns that cause harm later in life when it comes into intimacy and connection. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna kinda stop there'cause there's already quite a lot in that piece that we could, we could unpack. But the essence is that boys deserve initiation. They deserve to be supported and guided and given skills in how to be, particularly with their sexual energy, which is a potent, alive force so that they can wield it wisely and not get caught up in the distortions and unhealthy patterns that we're seeing manifest a lot now in society.

James: 5:34

Hmm. Yeah. The, the, the one key word that I picked up from that was ownership. So you're saying about people owning their own stuff and being curious about what is it? That they, what is it that they own in what's happening?

Gayatri: 5:57

Exactly. Exactly. The, the, there is a collective piece around this, and it is not good enough to just, to, to simply judge actually, and to say, well, men are just like that, or men or the problem, which I, I think, I think a lot of women are, you know, are giving these messages overtly and a lot of men feel the shame of that internally. So I think a lot of men are really questioning what is it to be a man? And this is shutting them down from purpose, from connection, and from, yeah, living a vital, vibrant life. So there, I feel, yes, there is a collective piece of ownership to look at, like, what are we doing or not doing that has created this situation, and how do we find generative ways forward with this rather than being in the game of blame and shame.

James: 6:56

What comes to mind when you're talking about that is the fact that probably, I reckon two, 3000 years, I reckon all of Europe and probably a lot of the world were in tribes at that time. Yes. So then there was that initiation. Yes. And I think as they say, progress as kind of civilization started to progress with their society. They, so I think gradually these initiations became less and less potent and so. And also I feel as though as time gone by, through the medieval times and be with Victorian times, more and more people were almost kicked down on the floor by a lot of the people who were higher up. And so then there I felt there's a lack, a lack of self worth, a lack of, um, yeah, a lack of self worth, which then creates this kind of fear based thing around societies and around rejection and around shame. And I think it's stemmed that, that's my feeling into this at the moment. My feeling is it's stemmed down from centuries.

Gayatri: 8:15

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And there's real historical context for this and, and also something about our separation from land and the earth and tribal ways of living. So there are still indigenous cultures around the world where at the age of, say, like 13 or so, the boy gets taken from the village, he gets taken from, uh, the care of the mother. Actually, and he's taken out into the wild, into the jungle where he receives an initiation. And often this is an ordeal initiation, right? He's like left in the jungle to fend for himself without food, water protection. Yeah. Uh, he has his dark night of the soul. In that environment, he faces his fears and he comes back to the village, a man. And in what we think is civilization and progress in western culture, we've lost a lot of these traditions. We would look at them and say, well, that's primitive, or that's, that's kind of bad in, in, in some way. But what people don't realize is that the part of us that knew that ritual for thousands of years before the part of us that's waiting and anticipating that rite of passage so that we get recognized by the tribe. As one of theirs, as has growing up, of maturing, of stepping into a next phase of life, there is a part of us that is wired for that experience. And so when it's not given, when it's not guided by the elders, usually of the community around people will create their own rite of passage. They will find their own form of ritual for this. And so when we look at sexuality right now in the western world, for most boys, that rite of passage is watching porn. That is the moment where they are initiating themselves and one another into what sex is and how a man does sex. And because of the way the porn industry has grown, I mean, it's, it's absolutely insane what a multi, multi-billion dollar industry porn industry is. That's based on algorithms that's feeding messages 24 7 about sex and what happens between men and women in sex. And these are not messages that are based on lovemaking, respect, consent, intimacy, joy, playfulness, even pleasure. They're based on what will keep your eyes glued to the screen long enough so that we can keep feeding this habit. Yeah. So this is, this is a place we find ourselves in right now.

James: 11:20

So before we cover porn and men going into their initiations, do you reckon there's the dark night, the soul, because we haven't been shown how to ride their way of emotion, how to hold our own space with our emotions that suddenly we, we hit by this dark night. The soul, everything kick kicks in and all of a sudden we're so overwhelmed that we just don't know what to do.

Gayatri: 11:50

Exactly. Exactly. So we live in a culture, and I, and I'm speaking about everybody in this, we, we live in a culture that preferences comfort over courage. Yeah, it's, it's, we have so many ways that we can slip into unconsciousness that, you know, and the world is a difficult place, right? Life can be challenging. The world's also a beautiful and amazing place. Mm-hmm. But I think what we're seeing, uh, you know, economically in terms of career and work, the levels of insecurity, the pressures of what's going on around the world is like, there's a lot of challenge. And the main way that people are coping with that challenge is by slipping into comfort mechanisms. I'm gonna soothe myself because I can't deal with the pain of my life or of the world. So it's much easier to turn on the Netflix, to smoke a spliff, to scroll on the screen, to open a bottle of wine, or again, to bring it back to porn, to, to masturbate and to release the tension. I feel. Yeah. And avoid, avoid feeling, essentially. So this is like widespread a kind of culture that we're in where we've given ourselves a huge amount of self-soothing mechanisms and they're all normalized, right? It's kind of sanctioned that is perfectly okay and normal and good to do these things. And there might be moments when it is, but I think we need to be really careful of the entropy that is taking us towards where it's basically like we have less and less life available. Yeah. And what I'm really interested in and what I'm deeply, deeply passionate about is how do we live in a way that serves life, that is generative, that brings more aliveness and joy and presence and wonder and beauty. Yeah. Because I believe these are things that we are all seeking and all long for.

13:54

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

James: 13:56

And also I think when you get that sense of aliveness and you meet that right person, uh, or you meet somebody who's in the same wavelength as you, quite often, they're almost, they, they're basically a mirror. They're a trigger. And so what you f what I'm finding is that to certain people, will tr will trigger me easily, but it's actually me showing me what's next.

Gayatri: 14:21

Yeah. Yeah. And absolutely. And I guess when you say trigger, you're talking about the sort of emotional, emotional triggers. Yeah. You know, and it's inevitable when we're in an intimate connection with somebody. And this can be a friend as much as a romantic connection. That the, the, the more we commit to intimacy in the container, the more material can arise within us. It needs to be tended to. And at the same time, I wanna be very careful in saying like, if we're in a trigger fest with somebody where we're always pinging one another, that is not a healthy relationship, that is a relationship based in dysregulation. Yeah. So there's a difference between seeking comfort, which takes us into unconsciousness and being able to regulate ourselves, which is the foundation for conscious relating, which allows us to be generative. Does that make sense, that distinction? Yeah. I think it's just important that we tease these things apart because in a healthy relationship with another being, there might be, there might be an activation. I actually hate the word trigger. I think it gets really overused. But there might be activation, right? There might be something they say, something, they say, oh, that, oh gosh, that hurts. That touches a place in me. But what I don't do is then project it all onto them so that they must, they're blamed for it. They must change their behavior now. But what? But at the same time, it's what's happened between us. So in a generative relationship where we're both regulated enough to be able to step into a conversation, we can each own our part of what is going on, and we can find a way. Through it that brings more love, more closeness, more intimacy, more connection. Because we're allies in the practice of love with one another. We're allies in generating more aliveness and connection. But we don't get into is just like having a right old ney with one another that doesn't actually repair anything. And in fact, just slowly erodes the intimacy of the connection. Mm. And I see that happening a lot to people. Their intimacy gets eroded because they don't have the skills and awareness to be able to be, to rupture healthily. Rupture is inevitable in all connections. And then to be able to repair that rupture, which makes things even stronger.

16:56

Yeah.

James: 16:56

Yeah. Going back to the, um, comfort, I think you said comfort over courage. Yes. And it's. Yeah. I think modern society has created this thing where within, perhaps if you're lucky, a few hours, you order something online and it arrives through your door, if not next day. Yeah. And this creates this idea that we want this quick, we want this quick kind of way of gratification. Pleasure. Yeah. And so what's the quickest way that men, uh, women or men can go for porn? And it's this feeling that my own experience with porn, um, I've had a porn addiction and I'm working through it at the moment in time. But what I've noticed is that over the years, it almost creates this idea that sees women as a piece of me. Yeah. It sees, it sees this idea that you become numb. You know, you, especially if you use it enough, you become numb to the whole watching the videos and it becomes you. So you look for more and more extreme stuff. Yes. And it beco it's, it's what I've noticed after when I ejaculated is that suddenly, you know, I put at that time and time and effort and suddenly my energy just dwindles. Yeah. There's no, there's no way of being able to collect that energy. So that energy almost disperses out outta us. Yes. And so with doing this stuff already, some of the stuff to do with over queer porn and sexual energy, what I've come to realize, especially when, uh, masturbating or by uh, cell pleasure massage, is that you can build the energy up around Yeah. The penis or vagina, and then you can kind of almost bring the energy all up around you. So then. What I've noticed, rather than ejaculating, I'll just do that and I'll be even, I wouldn't have to, the, the urge would just go away and it would go away for a, a day or two, and I'll be, my energy would be through the roof.

Gayatri: 19:17

Yes. Yeah.

James: 19:19

And so it's that realization that it's not about letting porn have the power over you. It's about you having the power to dictate where your energy goes, where you focus your energy, how you, how you, how you live alive, this kind of thing.

Gayatri: 19:36

Exactly. And so this then comes exactly back to the theme of initiation because most men have not been guided in that they've not been given the awareness of how to be with that energy. They've not been given the, the knowledge or the skills or the practices to be able to cultivate that energy. So the way that I tend to think about our, our sexual engine, particularly for men, and I'm just gonna speak about men for two reasons. One, this is a podcast for men. Um, and also working with men. That's my thing, right? So of course it's not like there isn't stuff going on for women or that this is not relevant to women. It is, but we kind of dilute the conversation when we're trying to speak to everybody. So I'm just gonna speak directly to men in this. So what can be really helpful is think about. Your sexual energy as like a battery essentially. So if you keep like letting a battery drain down, it loses its capacity to hold the charge. Yeah. And in a similar way. And so that would be over ejaculating. If you, you know, are ejaculating multiple times a day, you're actually losing your life force energy. Yeah. And a lot of men think that they're ejaculating a lot because they have a high libido, but generally they're actually just stuck in a cycle of tension and release. And I, we maybe will get to talk a little bit more about that. But at the other end of the spectrum, particularly when it comes to porn use, what's happening for a lot of men is they're edging a lot. So they're, they're not actually letting themselves ejaculate. They keep jumping from image to image, from scene to scene, from window to window. They're seeking that like ultimate peak, ultimate high, the thing that's gonna take them over the edge. As you say, we build up a tolerance to this very quickly. So they're seeking more and more stimulation to create more and more arisal in the body. The thing is, the, the body does have a natural limit to this. You know, unfortunately, high speed internet porn has no limit. You can get anytime, any place, anywhere, infinite variety, perpetual availability, um, multiple possibility, endless novelty, right. Our bodies were not designed for that. And so what happened for a lot of men is it's like they're, it's like they keep charging the battery to full capacity, and that damages the battery as well, right? Then it lo again, it loses power, it loses its capacity. It will dr. It will drop more and more quickly. So the sweet spot is being able to cultivate the energy inside you, but without taking it to the extreme intensity is probably the biggest enemy here to being a right relationship with your body and your sexual energy for a man, because it's actually kind of dropping a notch before that and being able to hold that charge of aliveness in your body that gives you more power. That starts to bring that energy, not just to be in the genitals. So for a lot of men, sex begins and ends at the genitals. But when you learn how to move that energy open to your heart and then up into your consciousness, then you become a being of power and potency. And so a lot of men are actually becoming disempowered through constant ejaculation, and they're losing their erections. They're becoming impotent, they're becoming floppy, and they're saying, whoa, oh, I don't understand what's happening to me. And it's like, well, actually, the body's not designed to do what you're doing to it. Even though they're getting the message that this is very masculine, intense, ho libido and all of that kind of stuff, it is hurting them. It's hurting their bodies and it's hurting their potential for intimacy with a woman with. And um, and before we go any further, I just also really wanna acknowledge you and your journey. And I love the way that you, just so matter of factly have spoken about your own experience. Because I think the problem a lot of men are experiencing is they feel a lot of shame around what's happening. And they feel like they are the only one, they're the only one who has that problem and everybody else kind of knows how to do it or is not getting hooked and or what, whatever story it is for them. And men sharing honestly their stories with other men, but also, and this is what I'm doing about it, this is what I've done, this is what's happened to me. This is one of the ways also that we can break out of this. Like, you know, what's becoming a deeply flame trend programming. This is one of the ways we break the circuit of that. So I just really wanna celebrate you for what you've brought and the journey that you're on.

James: 24:52

Thank you very much. And I, I just admit that for, for many, many, many years I've held shame. Yeah. Over porn and different things. And it's, it's only been the last probably three, four years I've been open about it. And all the other times, you know, people ask or jokingly out in public, oh, you're going to watch porn, and you are like, oh no, no, I'm not. Oh no. Not to get really defensive, but once you start to own it, that same shame no longer has power. Yeah. And. It's then when you're able, then no longer has any power. You get to choose where you put your focus. But one thing I did notice, um, for myself is that one of the key, one of the key things that would instigate porn was boredom. Yeah. Because we are not, we're, as you're saying before, we're used to, we want comfort, boredom. For myself, even now when I get bored, it's, it's an uncomfortable feeling to go into. And it's a sense of like, oh, what to do now? You know what? Watch TV looking, social media, um, watch porn. Whatever, whatever it is. But it's this idea. We need to get into our, into our heads. Everything, whether it's boredom, whether it's joy, happiness, sadness, grief, all these emotions, all this energy in our body is there for us to observe and to to be witness to. And if you're trying to run away from all this, then you gonna, you're gonna struggle. I think people will struggle. I, I would struggle to, to really, to be able to step through this so that I'm able to get to the other side.

Gayatri: 26:40

Yeah. So I, I could offer a little, I'd love to unpack the word boredom in fact, and or the sense of what boredom is. And, uh, it might feel a little bit pokey. That's alright. I'm just gonna presence that in my experience. True Bordeaux is seldom accomplished in our current culture, right? Where we have so much stimulation going on. I think you'd probably have to be on a desert island with no other human being, no device and no screen for about three months to get truly bored perhaps, right? So when somebody says boredom, to me, what I see is clash between something arising in the body, which is usually an emotion, a feeling, and the willingness to meet it in the body. So that's like bringing our con. So some something's moving up, it feels from emotion, but we don't wanna take our consciousness down to it. And so we get stuck in that place and we call it bored. But there's like often an agitation under it, which then drives us. I must do something. Is that agitation that we need to get under the skin of? Because basically, and again, like I'm, I'm really unpacking stuff like this. When I, when I speak about what I see going on for men, I am in no way blaming men. This is the culture we live in. This is the conditioning that we give to men. So what happens for many men is when they're boys, when they're young, they are discouraged out of a healthy expression of emotion, right? So little boys are still giving the message. Boys don't cry, don't be a sissy. Uh, all of that kinda stuff, you know, whether it's said overtly or just through the approval or disapproval. Boys get the message. Don't show emotion. Yeah. And it's also, it can also be the wilder fierce emotion, their anger, their rage. You know, it's like, don't upset mommy. Don't, don't make a scene, all of that stuff. And when you are very little, the only way that you can manage your emotions is by tensing your body, by literally controlling your body and stuffing that emotion down. But where does it go? You know, it doesn't just disappear. If we're not healthily bringing out, we cannot metabolize the emotion. Yeah. So it just gets stuck somewhere inside the body. Now as boys are growing into men, and particularly in adolescence, and when hormones kick in, this is also a very emotional time for young men. It's like they're starting to get interested in sex. They're starting to notice attraction. Their bodies are changing, their voices are changing. It can be very confusing, it can be embarrassing. Erections are happening when you don't want them to. Erections are not happening when you don't want them to. Your parents are starting to treat you like some kind of wild beast, and they, they don't hug you anymore. They don't say, I love you anymore. So there's a subtle rejection and shaming that comes in. Right? So this is a like an emotional overwhelm for the adolescent boy. And what's really interesting is our emotional center energetically in the body sits very, very close to a sexual center. So what I see is literally for men, those wires often get crossed. There's an emotion that needs processing. Oh, it feels like arousal. Any sensation in the body feels like arousal because it's the only frame of reference most men have to something happening in their bodies. And so the way that the meat, that sensation arising is often through ejaculation, right? So again, it's like, and this is. Totally understandable. Adaptation to the circumstance that you find yourself in when you've not been given any guidance around it, and when you're constricted in how to manage what is moving in your body. So what I see for a lot of men is like there's very little space between sensation arising and, and needing to do something about it in a sexual context, right? And, and again, we sanction this as well. That's just what men are like, but it's like, no, the aperture of aliveness that men are allowed to experience has been made so, so small that often it is only through sex or something sexual expression, that he is allowed to feel. And the other place is of course, violence. So you're allowed to get into a punch up that's masculine as well, but there's not very much else in between.

James: 32:15

Yeah. That's, um, powerful and, and then realizing that something so deep can cause so much harm. What, from your perspective, what do men really, really want

Gayatri: 32:32

to love and be loved? Which curiously enough is exactly what women want as well.

32:40

Yeah,

Gayatri: 32:42

it's like I, I, I feel, you know, and this can to be my bias, but you know, I've also worked with men for 12 years and I usually, when we get right down to it, what I hear from men is like, I wanna be loved as I am. I wanna, I wanna share my love with somebody else. And I think most fundamentally, every human being we are here for that to love and to be loved, and anything else is a distortion. And we see a lot of distortion in the world right now because we've got so far away from this essence of love, which is who we truly are.

James: 33:29

So how can, how can, we'll, we'll come back to some ways in which we can start to pro, move some this motion through, but I'm interested how can men start to work their way through the outer feelings and what they really want and really get to the very crook, to the very core of love and be loved.

Gayatri: 33:56

Okay, let me sit with that for a moment. So your question is like, in what way do we get down?

34:03

Yeah.

Gayatri: 34:04

Get down to when, if we're caught up in, in, in what the world tells us we want.

James: 34:11

Yeah. How can we, how can we remove those layers? Mm.

Gayatri: 34:21

So, you know what I, what I'm just gonna say is, is perhaps it's just feels what what is most true right now, which is that most people will not do that. They won't turn into it a until they have a crisis. And crisis is its own kind of initiation. And so what I actually see from it, and partly I'm saying this because then you can men, men listening to this, you can decide for yourself if you wanna wait for this moment or not. But in my experience, the men I know and the men I've worked with, they have needed a huge wake up call to come in their life before they start moving away from what the world tells you you want and start to work out what you want. And for most men that's come through the end of relationship and particularly divorce, where they've suddenly realized that the thing that they had been working towards, the thing that they thought they had created, the thing that they thought they were often doing really, really well. Because it ticks all the boxes of what society says is good. Right. When they, when that falls apart, they often go into a complete dissolution of who they thought they were. Um, that's sometimes, you know, certainly, um, it can be quite drastic what that spiral looks like often going into alcoholism, addiction, um, and challenge. But the key within it is actually being able to feel the feelings of what happened and specifically to be able to meet the grief that is within that moment, because I think. Feeling of grief underpins the lives of most men, and yet they have no access to it on an everyday level because they've been told how to be a man and how to be a man is, don't show any weakness, don't show any vulnerability, don't show any emotions, just man up and get on with it. And so men don't get the time and the space and the holding even to be able to process what happens to them in life. And this tends to accumulate inside them. It also affects sexual function, by the way. And it's usually only at a point when something really, really big happens that they, that they go, oh, well right now I'm gonna do something about this.'cause I never wanna be here again.

James: 37:10

Do you know, do you know what them words that you said? Um, the SAT words I used after my breakup 10 years ago. Right. So yeah, it was, um, I, I basically, when it came up my first big breakup and then realized that I never wanted to be at that lowest point ever again. And it was then I made the commitment to go on this personal and spiritual development journey. Yeah. Um, yeah. So you mentioned because,

Gayatri: 37:42

because it's an initi life is initiating you into that. Yeah. And I think it's important to acknowledge that life is initiating you into that.

James: 37:53

Definitely. That's, I think that leads us perfectly onto this, actually, we didn't really cover it earlier on what is an an initiation.

Gayatri: 38:04

So an initiation. Excuse me, sipped a bit of my tea there and then I got excited about answering the question and it's sort of sitting in the back of my throat. So lemme just, so an initiation is, uh, a sequence of activities or events usually within a sacred context, guided by somebody further down the line or who holds wisdom in this area that takes you beyond who you think you are into a new level of your personal evolution and that, and, and it often has benefit to the community that you have. Stepped through that threshold.

James: 39:07

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Going back quickly to the, what you're mentioning about men, what men really wanted it, when you said loved love and be loved, it suddenly was like, boom. That's it, that's it. I was having a conversation with somebody this morning and she asked, um, what, what do I want? And for ages, I was tiptoeing around this question. I was tiptoeing, literally just avoiding at all costs because I, I suppose I didn't really know, but the more that I delved a little bit deeper, I came to the realization that I, I want to somebody where I can be seen, where I can be heard, where I can be vulnerable in a safe space, where I'm able to really be, become, become me, true me become, you know, step by step, become deeper into who I really am and. If I was to to a next level it's love or be loved.

Gayatri: 40:09

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and that's part of the reason why, why I speak it in, in those words is like, because we need to be given the permission that we are allowed to want, that we're allowed to meet that longing. The infra is so fundamental to our human experience, and I think. The word love. It has become so charged, so weaponized. You know, for many men, the word love can, uh, register as control, right? I love you there. Therefore, now you have to do all these things for me, or, or you won't get approved. You know, it's like, it's, it's fucked up. Basically. It's fucked up how, how we've come to that kind of place. But there is, there's a purity that is underneath that, that is a place that our, our soul knows. And at that place is actually very, very simple. We are all seeking to love and be loved. And I believe if we can actually like, like sit in that and allow ourselves to hold that as the absolute truth of, of. Experience. It can shift things. It shifts things out of like this personality that kind of needs things to be a particular way or the ego that's trying to assert itself in order to stay in control or just like the myriad of ways that people can, um, you know, misunderstand, misrepresent, mistake, mistake one another. Yeah. Because we've forgotten that underneath it all, we are all seeking an experience to love and be loved. Yeah,

James: 42:06

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned earlier the word grief and having no access to it. I, I've, I've struggled to cry. I don't know how to, well, I actually, I, look, I probably do know how to cry, but I feel as though griefs one emotion that has been. I release it in other ways, the crying. Mm-hmm. But I also feel like if I was to allow myself to cry, it would also release a flood grief. Mm-hmm. And so how can, if we've, if we don't have access to it Yes. Or should actually, that's, that's rephrase that question because that sounds a bit like we can't, if we are limited to the accessing it, how can we actually get our foot into the door so that we can allow this to come in a little bit at a time?

Gayatri: 42:59

Mm. Yeah. Beautiful. So there's a couple of different, you know, gateways to, to this. And, um, yeah, I think we spoke, we spoke about grief the last time I was here.'cause it's, you know, for me, such a, such an important theme and grief and ero really go hand in hand. You will never have ecstatic enlivening transcendent sects if you can't feel grief. Well, yeah, they, they actually go together. So the first thing, you know what you mentioned that, that you said you have different ways of being with that grief and this is a good place to start because grief, in fact is not just one emotion, it's a kind of smorgasbord of emotions that arise. Um, and, and, you know, and different people can have a different gateway to it. So. Anger is also an aspect, an expression of, of grief. Not the anger that points at you. You are at fault. You are to blame. You are the cause of my thing. But anger of, of this kind of sense of almost like, why, why? Why is this happening? Why is this like this? This can be a kind of rightful rage as we, as we surrender ourselves to the kind of enormity of what is in life. Yeah. So anger is one emotion, sadness is another. This is a place that men of don't often have as much access to, but sometimes men need to go through anger to then feel the sadness that's underneath. Yeah. So if you're doing this in a way where it's kind of held and guided again, you are more likely to be able to get underneath it rather than just acting out on the surface. Um, another aspect of grief is numbness. It's like there's so much fear that I don't, I don't know how to meet it, and so I'm closing down. And in fact, you know, we're seeing a huge amount of depression in, in our society, and particularly for men. Mm-hmm. And again, I feel, for me, there's a direct correlation between the capacity to feel the feelings and the suppression of that capacity, which then pushes down and feels like depression is like, there's no joy for life. There's no juice for life. I can't engage with life because if I did, it would be really overwhelming for me. So it's like if you find yourself in that kind of place. One of the best things to do is like, go and get support from other people is very difficult to grieve on your own because grieving requires a kind of holding and tending in here. And if you're trying to hold and tend and care for yourself, and you've probably never really known what that looks or feels like anyway, you can't do that and drop into the grief. It's like you need somebody else to be able to support you in it. And you know, so for men who are really like starting like want wanting to know like, how can I be a better man? How can I be a better lover? How can I start meeting some of this stuff? Actually being in some kind of group with other men is a really valued, um, val valuable and valid way of doing it because you're gonna need some kind of support. Yeah.

James: 46:40

Mm-hmm.

Gayatri: 46:41

It's very difficult to do on your own.

James: 46:45

This leaves on quite nicely what we're talking about earlier with regards to the emotion flowing through the body. Mm-hmm. What are some of the ways that men can, so obviously my, my feeling on all this is that the rea we're going through quite a turbulent time at this moment, in, at this moment, and I feel as though there's a lot hell of a lot of emotion flying through us. How can we, what kind, what kind of things can we do to allow this emotion to flow through us, rather than almost seeing this emotion or this stuckness as ours And it's like, oh, kind of thing.

Gayatri: 47:25

Mm. So I'm gonna offer two, two different ways. And they're quite, they're quite distinct, but I think it's good. Like some,'cause sometimes we need one thing and sometimes we need another. Um, first I like for anybody, I always encourage, do some physical activity. Like do something that lets you be in the body. It almost doesn't matter what it is, but do something that allow that, that kind of, that stretches you, right? So again, we've become very, um, sort of sedated. You know, we're sitting in our chairs, we're at our screens for a lot of the day. We are missing the kind of physical activity that our ancestors would've naturally had just by being alive, right? So it, it's like, get outside, walk in nature, take up some kind of sport, go to the gym, dance, do something that moves your. Body, because when you are not doing that, you are blocking your energy all the time. You're stifling your aliveness and you're limiting your capacity to be engaged with life. Right? So that is my first thing to my, is like, just move, moving some way and ideally something that stretches you, something that where you break out a bit of a sweat because then you're gonna know that you've done something with your body. Yeah. The second thing is like, it's almost like the other end of the spectrum, but this is a gentle or gentle practice. Just taking moments in the day where you actually stop, you put your hand on your heart. And that might feel unusual even in itself, to take that time just to touch your own body. That's not your cock, that's not trying to stimulate you, that's not trying to get anywhere. Just actually putting your hand on your heart and asking yourself, yeah, how are you feeling? And then wait, like, wait for the answer to come from the body might feel from the heart, it might feel from somewhere else. It's like, don't try to think about the answer with your head. Let the answer come through from this place of contact. Yeah. And if, how are you feeling? Feels too much, you can, you could just also ask what is here, what is here? And see if you can give yourself that space to notice. Because we live in a world which preferences the mind so much is filtered through the mind. And for men, this tends to be even more strong than women, that they're living from here up and they're not aware of what's happening from head through the neck down, essentially. And again, it's like when, if you want to move into pleasure and joy and intimacy and connection, if you can't feel anything in your body and you're not in touch with sensation, how do you think it's going to respond whenever you like, try to take it into action If you've just been up in your head the entire time. There's like so many men, you know, they tell me, oh, like I don't really feel much pleasure, or, or I, like, I can't feel sensation or I struggle to receive. There's a very common thing I hear from men, like I struggle to, to receive, and it's because they've not cultivated the capacity to actually notice what's going on in their body. That's often the first step for them. And part of that lack of cultivation is because usually when we do stop and we tune in, we find something that feels challenging. Grief, sadness, shame.

James: 51:24

Mm-hmm.

Gayatri: 51:26

Loss. Yeah. And we don't wanna go there, so it's like, let's sugar back up in the head.

James: 51:34

And I think a key thing is to breathe properly. Breathe. Yeah. It's, it's so, so simple, and I've mentioned it so many times, but breathing, like even I, I notice when I'm doing a podcast, there's times when I'm present and then there's times when I notice I, I slip back into being unconscious kind of thing. But the simple practice of breathing can drop us from our head into our body in moments. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so let's, let's move on to section energy. Mm-hmm. You're saying about it being life force, how can people start to utilize their section energy in a really healthy way?

Gayatri: 52:19

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So for men, what's really helpful to hold in mind is a sense of how male kind of sexual energy, um, moves. One of the easiest ways to think about male sexual energy is to think of it like a fire. Yeah, so the, it ignites it, the genitals, it's like you've set your little, your little campfire and there's a spark, you know, and you, the spark then builds up the flames and Of course, so heat rises. Yeah. And the journey for many men is how to tend to their fire so that that heat gets to build without just burning out straight away. Yeah. So you might have a really strong blaze going, but if you don't tend to it, if you don't stoke that far, if you don't know how to manage the flames masterfully, then it just burns out straight

James: 53:21

away. Mm-hmm.

Gayatri: 53:22

And so this is what happens for a lot of men is that they, it just, everything begins and ends in the genitals, and they don't get to feel that fire coming through their body. Oh, they don't get to speed is now. They don't get to enjoy the aliveness and the warmth and even the passion and potency that's within it. And when they don't get to enjoy it in themselves, they don't get to offer it to a woman as a gift of her to her sexual energy. And so just to, just to show like what happens on, on the female side, A really valuable way to think about female sexual energy is that a woman is like water. So her sexual energy tends to go from the outside and goes in and down. So a man is from the inside and goes up and out, and the woman from the outside goes down and in. Yeah. Now water starts cold. Yeah. And it can take longer to heat water up, but when water is hot, it stays hot for a long time. Yeah, this is wisdom from the Daoist masters. Yeah. So we might say, well, oh God, if a man's like wa like firing a woman's like water, you know, why, why are we these opposites? But the idea is not that we're, that we're, we're opposite, but complimentary forces. So the man tends his fire to bring the water up to heat, but when the water's hot, she keeps them in the realm of pleasure and bliss and enlivenment for a long time. The problem we see a lot in the culture we live in is everything's about fire. The passion, the intensity, the like, and the fire burns out before it's got a chance to heat the water. And for us to really luxuriate and enjoy that space.

James: 55:28

Mm-hmm.

Gayatri: 55:29

And again, this looks like normal people think that's what sex is. That's how you do it. That's what's passionate and every uh, you know, kind of sex scene in a movie shows a fire version of lovemaking. Yeah. That, and it doesn't show what does longevity of lovemaking look like. So, you know, coming back to your original question for, for many men, if, if sexual energy only begins and ends in the genitals, they don't get to experience this warmth. And part of what blocks that then is the places in the body where we're split off from ourselves. And for many men, this is particularly around the heart. Yeah. So men are blocked in their heart through life, through, through the, through the conditioning that told them don't feel anything. You know, through the upbringing that didn't allow the tenderness of boys to be expressed, the affection even to be taken away. And so loving feelings have often been cultivated out of boys and that hurts. That hurts. So when something hurts, what are we gonna do? We're gonna shut it down, we're gonna block off. We're gonna say, no thank you. I don't want that Again, it's a perfectly understandable adaptation to a situation where you didn't have the skills, knowledge, or awareness to do anything different, right? Yeah. But this blockage of the part then is one of the key things that prevent men from being able to operate on a fuller spectrum of erotic aliveness and to meet women in the space of intimacy that women are most yearning to be met in.

James: 57:20

Yeah, that's, that's powerful. So with regards to really my own experience is, especially'cause what I find is that when the fire starts to build up. Especially when you having intercourse, it's very easy for a man to get carried away in the heat of the moment. Yes. And to ejaculate. But what I've come to find, um, is that it's changing the pace. Yes. So you might be, um, thrashing at it. I don't know. And then suddenly it's, you find yourself almost about to ejaculate. It's almost allowing yourself to, in the moment to pull back. Yes. Allow yourself to slow down. Yeah. And slow the pace down. And then you can speed it up. You can, I think I've done different ways of playing with self plasm, massage, touching yourself and that kind of stuff, and just feeling and sensations. Because we don't do enough of that. We, we see the, the p the penis, sexual sex and the vagina as I suppose we see it as probably disgusting at school. We taught in schools. It's disgusting. We have a little bit such education. And then suddenly, you know, we see sex as something you perhaps do after you get married. You get ingrained in auto, all that kind of stuff. And it's almost seen as just, it's just something to make a baby and that's it. And a bit, a bit of pleasure and a bit of, um, making babies and that's it. But it's more, I've come to realize more than that. It's more, it's that connection to that person. It's the, the, the eye contact, the uh, deep sense of the, the energy of the body's connecting the sensations, um, around the body. The being able to move that energy from your gens and put your focus into where your body's movements. And yeah, I think when we're able to start to utilize it in that way, it's a game changer.

Gayatri: 59:22

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, to come back to kind of what the starting point that you had of this around, you know, like when, when heat is on, I think you put, you know, something like that. It's like wwe a presence in that moment as well. It's like for so many men that, so dog is just like, she's like crashing about Ryan, me, trying to get my attention. I'm doing my best to stay focused here. Um, for many men, what is also in the mix at that point is fear of losing their erection. Right. Or fear around ejaculation, is it too, is it gonna be too fast or is it gonna be too slow? And all of these things, in fact, take men out of the present moment. And the present moment is where pleasure arises.

James: 1:00:11

Mm-hmm.

Gayatri: 1:00:12

So a lot of men find they're in their heads, you know, worrying about performance basically, because the standard story of sex says men do sex like this. Yeah. There's arousal, the stimulation, the, there's erection that leads to, you know, fast, friction based and you ejaculate. And this is how we know sex has happened basically. And as you see that, that version of sex, which ends in ejaculation, that makes sense from a biological perspective. If we wanna make a baby, we require ejaculation. But if we're not wanting to make a baby, which actually most people are doing most of the time that they want to have sex, why are we following this biological model of sex? And why don't we focus instead on what feels good to us in this moment? Mm-hmm.

James: 1:01:06

cause that's an

Gayatri: 1:01:07

entirely different experience. What would actually feel good in this moment? For you, for me, between us, rather than chasing this outcome that it's not even relevant Most of the time when people are in sex, it's a script that people are running to about what sex is, and that script causes so much disappointment, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, and, and even dysfunction. Yeah.

1:01:37

Yeah.

Gayatri: 1:01:38

In itself. So, but you know, one of the, the keys, the keys that's here. For everybody, but I'm particularly again gonna speak to men, is to learn how to relax into sensation, to relax into the energy that's moving through. Because when you let yourself get hijacked by hormones, then that just takes over and you have no choice in that moment. When you learn how to relax into greater and greater capacity for sensation, you get to relax and expand into greater and greater pleasure and enlivenment. And then this is when we start moving to towards an experience of sex and love making that becomes transcendent when we move into an altered state of consciousness. Yeah, and, and I feel like. Every human being that I've ever spoken to, horrendous they might not have experienced, but some part of them knows it's possible because I have yet to have a conversation with somebody where they didn't say some version of, there must be more to it than this. Mm. Yeah. I think most people know there must be more to it than than this. And there is. There absolutely is. But if you keep following the standard story of sex, you are not gonna get there because you are going down the wrong path completely.

James: 1:03:10

Before we talk about your course, there's just, um, something quickly. We've had the discussion before, don't we? And you said there's some ideas you've got. So just to give, I'll just quickly read it through. So just to give you a bit of clarity, I've been to a best of all, uh, recently, and there was two people having a discussion. There was a, a man and a and a woman. I'm gonna, that, I'm gonna call him friend A and friend B. So the conversation's basically based on men are raised as protector and provider in a traditional sense, so materialistic, so the house, the car, the money, and B protector being the male strength now friend a's view is that women fail to see the pressure of what pressure that men put themselves under to protect and provide. He believes it's very exhausting and Friend B's answer was that men have it wrong. Basically, all women want is, first and foremost is emotional presence. A man who is well connected to himself and emotionally and attuned to others, and she obviously then dictates there is a lot of evidence to show that men are exhausted and that kind of stuff, but all women want is for men who are able to feel or are able to talk about their feelings and be able to hold space for their own emotions. Mm. Now there's a sense of a thing of friend A might, may have been rejected in some response. That's what's come from the conversation. Now the question, the bit I've got here now is, does that vulnerability, so if it's been rejected by this woman. In the past, does that make their vulnerability any less valuable or does that mean more about the woman's ability to hold space vulnerability? And I suppose the question for, for this part is that how can men start to bridge that gap from the old traditional way of being materialistic and having that sense of protector strength to being able to first and foremost have that emotional presence, that ability where they're connected to themselves, where they can emotionally attuned to others.

Gayatri: 1:05:41

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I really love your question and I, and I will respond to it, but I might meander a bit to get there because I've been on real inquiry around this, um, of late, and there's a, there's a kind of piece here, which feels very emergent for me, that I want, I want to speak. So, you know, in terms of what the guy was saying about what he sees for men and what the woman was saying and what she sees, they are both right and they're both wrong. And what, because they're speaking about things on, on a kind of the, again, the level of symptom and not necessarily getting right down to the root of what is going on. And that's the bit that I wanna speak about here, which is what we're seeing in. Our society. So, you know, I'm speaking about western kind of predominantly white'cause that's, that's the area I know, heterosexual, heteronormative culture. What we're, what we've seen happening in the last a hundred years or so, is that the way gender roles have been assigned in the world has been shifting. Yeah. And I want to orient this conversation around a sense of power. So what men saw in the past was that they derived a lot of their sense of power from their role and their status, which were sanctioned through the systems in which we lived. So that role would have been breadwinner, head of the household father, provider, protector. Yeah. These are roles, uh, you know. Boss, manager, director, what, whatever it was. A lot of the power that men experience, I would say, came through role and status and everybody knew where their place was within that hierarchy. Right? And so it kind of feels like, oh, well it all makes sense. And, you know, many people we could, we wish we could just go back to those days. Thing, thing. Life was simpler in that, but it was a very particular structure that we had in society. And at some point women kind of went, sod this. Like, I feel, I feel imprisoned by the role that I've been given and I, I feel like I don't have a lot of power in this dynamic, or my, my power is not being acknowledged and recognized within this, this structure. So women kind of, um. You know, kind of went in and found themselves and then went out into the world to express themselves in new ways, and they also became breadwinners and directors, and managers and heads of the household and, and, you know, and might feel overwhelmed by trying to do all of those things. I'm not saying it's perfect, but basically underneath role and status power or at the heart of all of that, for every single being, any assistance, every single human being, we have personal power and women have access their personal power in order to break out of the shackles that they experience themselves in, in what we now call kind of traditional householding. I mean, it's not been like that, but that's what we think of it, right?

James: 1:09:15

Yeah.

Gayatri: 1:09:15

So women have had to claim their personal power in order to step out in the world. And at the same time, men are experiencing a loss of role and status power. Yeah. And, and so many men at this point are in fact feeling powerless in life, but this is not true because they always have access to their inherent power, the innate dignity of being a human being. And I feel there is a moment here where men, there's an invitation for men to turn into that personal power, to not rely on role and status anymore to give them what they think they want. Because ultimately it is a construct and an illusion, and it can change. Whereas what is not a construct or illusion is your innate beingness. That is something you can always come back to. Whether you feel you have access to it right now or not, that is always available to you. And so I'm, I'm going in this kind of meandering root around, around all of this because when we talk about the feeling of emotion, because being in touch with your feelings is part of what creates personal power. If you are not in touch with your emotions, if you cannot love and accept and embrace and, uh, integrate all the parts of yourself, you are always gonna be a kind of fragile shell.

James: 1:10:54

Fragile.

Gayatri: 1:10:55

Yeah. And this is where we get the phenomena of, of what was called male fragility. It's like the construct of man and masculinity has been quite brittle for a lot of men. Yeah.

James: 1:11:07

Mm-hmm. It

Gayatri: 1:11:07

is not glued because it doesn't encompass emotions. And so when I think women are saying, oh, we want men to, you know, to be in touch with their emotions and so on, we don't mean we want men to be sitting around crying all the time and kind of collapsing overwhelmed by their emotions. But what we, what we, what we want is that when I bring my experience of the world to you, you don't shut me down. You don't diminish me as being too emotional. You don't reject me and you don't try to fix me either. You can actually like sit in the storm of sensation with me and we can meet in that place because that is what power would look like. What I hear behind the call for emotion is actually a call that women are making for men to step into their power.

James: 1:12:03

Mm-hmm. There's recently, well probably a couple months ago I saw a, a, a clip or something on, I think it was on social media, but there was this woman in a, a complete wild side going absolutely nuts. And then the man was just on his knees just holding the space for her to hold, to, just to hold the space for that wild woman, that wild part of the woman to be seen.

Gayatri: 1:12:31

Mm. Yeah.

James: 1:12:32

And I assume that's what you're talking about, but they

Gayatri: 1:12:35

Yeah, exactly. Because what happens a lot for women is that when they bring emotion, and I'm not even talking about going wild, crazy, I'm literally talking about, I, I was, I feel hurt men. Like it's so, it's like most men can't hold the sensation of that in their own body, so they deny, defend, or diminish.

James: 1:12:59

So how can, how can men hold that space? Because it's, it's not, but by, first of all, holding

Gayatri: 1:13:05

space for themselves in their own body, it's like if you can't, if you can't feel that, if you cannot allow that in your body, if you can't befriend it in yourself, you will always reject it in somebody else. Okay. That's just how it works.

James: 1:13:23

Yeah. So, going from there, you, you obviously launching a course on the 1st of September. Am I right?

Gayatri: 1:13:32

I think it might be the seventh. So let's just say the seventh. The beginning of September. The beginning of September.

James: 1:13:38

Can you talk us about your course, please?

Gayatri: 1:13:40

Yeah, so what I'm offering is a program called Initiation, and this is giving men the skills, structure and support they never had before around how to be with the potency of their sexual energy and to move this through the body. So over the journey of 11 weeks, we don't just focus on sexual energy being in the genitals, but we look at all the dimensions that are within us, such as human being. We journey through the energy system known as the chakras. You don't need to know anything about the chakras yet to know about that, but we follow a tantric roadmap that basically invites all of you to come into the mix. Who you are in your power, who you are in your heart, who you are in your expression, and ultimately how all of this connects to consciousness, to something that's even greater than you. Because what I see in the world is a great loss of purpose. In fact, for many men, a great a loss in the sense of I am connected to something that's greater than me, and I'm here to serve something that is greater than me. Yeah. And when we're cut off from that connection, life feels pretty hopeless. Life feels pretty empty. Or perhaps you're just living on kind of black and black and white or, or on mute. So it's like how do you bring every single part of you into this where your sexual energy then becomes the fuel for living? And you get to offer that out into the world as a gift and as a gift to women as well.

James: 1:15:23

So how can people get in contact?

Gayatri: 1:15:26

So the best way is to look at my website, which is www.garebeacon.com, and you'll find initiation on there. It's an 11 week online journey with a group of men. And again, it's like being in a group with other men. It is such a vital part of the experience because when men get together and they get to know, I am not alone in my struggles, and I'm also not alone in celebrating my success and achievement as I move week by week on this journey. Um, I think that just helps really birth us through shame and bring more support and connection and community into men's lives.

James: 1:16:10

Just before we finish, is there anything else that you wanna like to say? Anything that we've missed maybe?

Gayatri: 1:16:18

Mm. I, yeah, I just, I just wanna offer to a message to men that the world really meets you right now and women really need you. We are crying out for you to come and meet us where we are. And I certainly am here in support and celebration of men and masculinity because I believe that we need to rise together. Is it one way together we rise?

James: 1:16:50

Yeah, a hundred percent. Thank you very much, Gerry.

Gayatri: 1:16:54

Thank you, James.

1:16:57

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