Men Aren't Broken. We're Under-Initiated.

Men Aren't Broken. We're Under-Initiated.

Society desperately wants mature, grounded, responsible men and completely resists the process that actually creates them.

We want men who can hold pressure without collapsing. Who can lead without dominating. Who can feel without losing themselves. Who can take responsibility without resentment.

But the moment you start talking about men facing adversity on purpose  the conversation shuts down.

We've removed every hard thing from a boy's life and called it progress. And then we wonder why so many men feel lost, reactive, hollow. Why there are more midlife crises than ever. Why anxiety in men is at an all-time high.

That's what happens when we avoid the conversation of initiation.

In this first episode, José Alejandro introduces The Initiated Path™, not as a brand, but as a world built through his own initiations, losses, heartbreak and devotion. He shares his own story of running from shame beneath the surface of success, the moment life forced him to face himself, and what he found when he finally stopped running and walked into the fire.

He breaks down what initiation actually means, and what it doesn't. Why it's not a single event, a ceremony, or a rite of passage in the desert. Why it's a path. A lifelong choice to meet your life's fire consciously rather than wait for crisis to force your hand.

And he makes the case that until we're willing to have this conversation honestly, we're going to keep wondering why men aren't showing up, for their families, their partners, their communities, their own lives.

In this episode:

• Why men aren't broken but under-initiated
• What "initiated" actually means and what it doesn't
• Why modern culture gives men more responsibility without more maturity
• What happens when healthy initiation disappears and what men seek instead
• Why initiation is a path and a choice, not a single event
• The threshold that is already in front of you

This episode is for you if:

• You feel the gap between who you are and who your life requires
• You're successful on the outside and hollow on the inside
• You keep hitting the same ceiling no matter what you try
• Something is pulling you toward deeper work and you're finally ready to follow it

"You don't become initiated by accident. You become initiated by choice."

Connect with José: josealejandro.co

Newsletter: josealejandro.co/newsletter 

Free Resources: josealejandro.co/resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So here's what I find crazy. Society desperately wants mature, grounded, responsible men and completely resist the process that actually creates them. We want men who can hold pressure without collapsing. We want men who can lead but not dominate. We want men who can feel but not lose themselves. We want men who can take responsibility without resentment. But the moment you start talking about men facing adversity, the moment you start talking about men sitting with discomfort intentionally, the moment you start talking about them being challenged, confronted, taken to their edge, the moment people see men experiencing processing emotion or doing things that sometimes are cathartic or sometimes feel out of the ordinary, we start to criticize them. We start to shut down the conversation, we start to get scared, and reasonably so. But we have removed, literally removed every hard thing from a boy's life and called it progress. And then we are incredibly confused why so many men feel lost, they feel reactive, they feel hollow, why there's more midlife crises than ever, why anxiety in men is at an all-time high, why shit that's going on in the world is going on, and we're all affected by it. And that is what happens when we avoid the conversation of initiation. My name is José Alejandro, and this is the initiated path. So I've been wanting to do this for a very long time, honestly, probably over a year or two. I've felt the nudge, I've felt the call, felt I've had the mic, I've had the setup, I've had the ideas. I obviously create a lot of content on social media, but I just didn't move forward towards the podcast. And even that is an initiation because this podcast is me stepping into something that I've been resisting, it's me crossing a threshold that I've known was there, it's me saying yes to a deeper level of expression, of responsibility, and of leadership. So this first episode is not going to be overproduced, it's not polished, but it is intentional. And this is me stepping into the next stage, and I want you guys to come along with me. So, what is the initiated path? And where did this world come from? So the initiated path is more than a brand or a niche or a content strategy. It is the world that I built through my own initiations, my losses, my lessons, my heartbreak, my devotion, my skills, my experience, my knowledge, my talent, my relationships, my values, all the things that life handed to me and that I chose to step into. And really starts from being a kid. So I was always the curious kid who questioned everything. But earlier on, I learned that negotiating my truth helped me keep the peace. So I became a people pleaser. I chased knowledge and understanding as a substitute for self-worth. I got a BA in psychology, thinking that knowing everything about the mind was going to solve all my problems, thinking I could fix my parents, thinking I could fix all the childhood uh challenges that I was experiencing. I read every book that I could find in order to be the best entrepreneur and the best at my job that I could possibly be, make the most money possible. I got a corporate job and reached close to six figures pretty early on in my 20s. I had the relationship, I created the vision for my life and the life that I wanted by the time I would be 30. And from the outside, it looked like I had it all together. But here's the truth: my knowledge was conceptual, my success fell hollow, my nervous system was running on anxiety, and my integrity was built on everyone else's expectations but my own. And I was hungry for growth, but mostly just running away from shame. And that's when things really started to crack. So back in 2016, my parents divorced, uh, childhood wounds I didn't know, I was caring, started to come up to the surface everywhere. My relationships and my work and my health. I was dealing with a chronic kidney disorder I had been diagnosed with at the age of 17, but I was still in denial about for years, and life was presenting me with initiations I kept avoiding. So I finally went to work on myself. That was the catalyst. I went to therapy, I dove into men's work, my first men's group, somatic practices, immersive retreats. I spent some time in other countries, I did work that brought healing into the body, not just the mind, and also built a deeper spiritual relationship and a relationship with God. And something started to shift, not because I found the right information, but because I finally stopped running from the fire and I walked my ass into it. And I'm not the man who has it all figured out. I'm the man sitting here creating this podcast episode who's had to face himself when everything fell apart, who's had to learn slowly, who, even after doing the work, has had moments, challenges, and situations that tested if tested the practice of everything I had learned and am learning, who had to learn slowly in community through initiation, how to lead himself before he could lead anything else. And I am not the man who's done the work, I am a man who continues to do it, and that journey is what became this world. So, why do we need initiation now more than ever? Besides all the wild shit that's going on in the world, initiation helps men really become their most authentic selves. Less than 24 hours before recording this podcast, I literally stumbled across news that's now all over social media about forums showing men how to drug, rape, and sexually assault their wives and their girlfriends being exposed. Okay, and more than 62 million men visiting this website in February alone. All right. Now, the 62 million figure shared referred to the total visits to a website, not necessarily actively engaging the specific group that did this, but that doesn't make it any less serious. The amount of men who were participating in this is a reflection of the lack of initiation in the world. The wars are a lack of initiation in the world. Are politicians, uh CEOs of organizations taking advantage of Mother Earth, taking advantage of natural resources, taking advantage of indigenous communities, taking advantage of those with the inabil with an inability to protect themselves. All of this is a reflection of a lack of initiation. And this isn't an anomaly. So this is what happens when wounds go unhealed, when shadow goes unowned, when power has no integrity behind it. Because a boy uses power to take, and a man uses power to protect. And the difference between the two isn't age, it is whether a man has ever been called to face himself, aka gone through initiation. Now I want to make a very specific point. This podcast and what I'm sharing right now is not a masculinity is toxic conversation. Masculinity isn't the actual problem. And I'm gonna save that for another podcast. Men who have never been challenged to grow beyond their wounds are the problem. If anything, we need more men who are actually owning their power so they don't end up abusing and taking advantage of others from a place of insecurity or overcompensation for a lack of self-awareness or understanding of their power or insecurity around their power. Men who are initiated protect. Men who are initiated take responsibility. Men who are initiated call each other forward. They're not afraid of naming what's wrong. Why? Because they faced what's wounded within themselves first. Which leads me to the history of initiation. So for most of human history, initiation was structured. It was held, it was a process, it was a series of ordeals, of mirrors, and of integration that refined a man's power and oriented it towards service. It was literally a matter of survival for communities to understand that a boy does not become a man simply by getting older. It was literally a matter of survival for communities to initiate their young boys from adolescence into adulthood. They understood that young boys, young men needed to be guided through a threshold, needed to be witnessed, and needed to be challenged and held at the same time. And today that structure is literally gone. So modern culture gives men more responsibility without space to mature, without containers to mature, without healthy role models, male role models to support them, father them into maturity. We have birthdays, we have promotions, we have weddings, we have graduations, but we don't have thresholds. We don't have structured moments where someone looks a man in the eye and says, You cannot bring that old version of yourself into this next chapter. So what ends up happening? The boy grows older, but not deeper. And here's what no one wants to say out loud. When initiation disappears, men still seek it. They always have and they always will. Men will always find ways to seek their edge, they will always find ways to test themselves, they will always find ways of belonging through a shared ordeal. But without healthy containers, uninitiated men end up initiating other men. And that's where you get gangs, that's where you get fraternities that are built on hazing, that's where you get the hyper-masculine culture, like the red pill culture, where it's really just built on domination improving. And men will follow the most confident person in the room, even if that confidence is just pain in a louder voice. And that is not initiation. That's simply boys hazing other boys and calling it brotherhood, calling it um growth. But real initiation looks completely different. Now, obviously, we don't have these thresholds, but it doesn't mean that we can't take responsibility for our own process of initiation and we can't man it forward and be healthy role models for other men that are going through a similar process. Real initiation is about being guided by men who have crossed that specific threshold themselves. It's about being held by men who are integrated enough to hold space for you without flinching. It's about allowing yourself to be fathered by other men and to father other men around those gaps and those voids that maybe they couldn't receive and can't receive from one father figure. It's about having men who call you forward without shaming you. It's about having men who call to hold you to a higher standard without judgment. It's about having men who can create a container for you for what you've been avoiding. That is what actually matures a man. It's not hardship for the sake of hardship. It is purposeful adversity held by other initiated men who know where they're taking it. You cannot have mature men without initiation. There's no information, no motivation, no podcast, no self-help book, no course that can replace the process of initiation. Real initiation is required to transition a man from adolescence into integrated manhood, into responsible leadership, into the man his life actually requires. And until we're willing to have this conversation, honestly, we're going to keep wondering why men aren't showing up. The way that their families need them to, the way that their partners need them to, the way that their communities need them to, the way that their health needs them to, the way that everything in their life needs them to. Now, rites of passages are one expression of initiation. They're ancient, they've existed virtually in every culture across human history for exactly this reason, because communities understood that boys don't become men automatically. They need a container, a threshold, a before and an after. And they still exist today. So I went through one six years ago, four days and four nights alone in the California desert, no phone, no food, no distraction, no company, except for the integration piece after and the preparation piece before. But it was just me, the land, and everything I had been avoiding. And that experience literally marked something real in me. And eventually it led me to train as a wilderness rite of passage guide myself because I saw what structured initiation could do for a man when it's properly held. But I want to be clear about something. So even though I'm talking about these uh rites of passages and how our uh you know ancestors practice coming of age rituals, you don't need to go to the desert to be initiated, which is what this podcast is about. The desert, the wilderness is one doorway, but there are many. The real question is whether you are willing to cross the threshold that is already in front of you. The hard conversation that you've been avoiding, the pattern that you've been repeating, the version of yourself you keep protecting that no longer serves you. That is your threshold. And like I said earlier, it's something that we choose every single day. Crossing it consciously with support and intention every single day, every single time that you come up on a line in the sand between where you're at and where you're going, what you need to leave behind and allow to die, and what you need to embody and be in the practice of. That is initiation. And that is why I call this podcast the initiated path. It's not a program, it's not a methodology, it's a way of moving through life. It is the choice of stop stop to stop outrunning your initiations and start walking towards them. It is the choice to stop performing and start becoming. It is the choice to stop waiting for the crisis, to start doing the work before the crisis forces you to do so. The initiated man is not the man who has it all figured out. He is the man who keeps showing up to the fire, who keeps doing the work when it's uncomfortable, who keeps choosing depth over comfort, truth over performance, devotion over motivation. Initiation is not a destination that you arrive at, it is something that deepens because every threshold crossed reveals the next one. Every death makes room for a deeper becoming. That is the path. And this podcast, this is me walking it out loud in public with you. And the initiated path is also the lens behind everything that I do. My men's circles and community, where men get a real space to heal and raise the standard in brotherhood, my one-on-one coaching for men embodying the leadership their mission requires, my programs where men initiate the next evolution of their impact, their income, their intimacy through embodied identity shifts, my men's retreats and immersions that create felt shifts in men's bodies, minds, and hearts, and threshold, our modern leaders wilderness rite of passage that's rooted in the bridge between ancestral initiation, men's work, and leadership development. And it is a growing body of work where initiation doesn't end, it deepens. So every week I'm gonna be going deep on what it actually means to walk the initiated path in today's world because leadership is initiation, love and relationship is a mirror, emotional maturity is a practice, nervous system capacity is the foundation beneath everything else. So I'm gonna be talking about all of those things, and some episodes will crack something open, some will be teaching, some might just be me processing something real in real time, some of it might be coaching sessions, so I might be bringing men on anonymously and doing some coaching sessions. Either way, I'll be honest, because devotion is a replacement for motivation, and this podcast is about devotion. So I don't want you to aim for perfection, I don't want you to take anything that I share as something to shame yourself with. There's an opportunity for you to be devoted to this path, knowing that there's always something to improve and that you get to live your life as you heal. So it's gonna be at least one episode per week, one transmission, going deep, not surface level, not hype, but real. So if you're in it right now, in the gap between who you are and who you know you can be, the exhaustion of holding up a version of yourself that no longer fits, the quiet sense that something is missing and you can't name it. I know that place. I didn't read about it, I continue to live it, and there is a way through. You don't stumble onto a podcast called The Initiated Path by Accident. Something in you is ready. You're not broken, you're not late, you're in the journey. You're already an initiated man, you're already on the initiated path. And if you like what you heard, you can also join my newsletter at josealejandro.co slash newsletter. There's also some free resources on my website, josealejandro.co. And if you're here feeling this, like and subscribe. We're building a community here, we're building a world, men on the initiated path. So wherever you are right now, that's the threshold. You don't become initiated by accident, you become initiated by choice. See you on the next one. Peace.