50:59

50:59

Avatar State: Balancing The 4 Elements (Neurotransmitters)

by Ruwan Meepagala

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talks

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Meditation

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Many ancient traditions and mythologies speak of the "4 Elements" which represent four neurotransmitters: Fire - Dopamine, Serotonin - Water, Acetylcholine - Air, GABA - Earth. Understanding this balance allows you to express your gifts, but also find internal balance, and play better with others.

Emotional Balance Elements Emotional Expression Kabbalah Sexual Health Masculine Archetypes Kabbalah Concepts Yin Yang Balance Sexual Dysfunction Emotions

Meet your Teacher

Ruwan Meepagala

New York, NY, USA

Meet your Teacher

Ruwan Meepagala

New York, NY, USA

Transcript

Not only do we need to know ourselves and find balance within ourselves, We actually succeed and are happiest when we synergize with people who have traits and strengths that are different than us. Everyone is different, Our brains are different, Our brain chemistries are different, Our conditioning is different. Knowing who you are is the most important piece. However old you are, You've essentially been practicing your emotional responses your entire life based on what you've been exposed to. My perceived inadequacies or my real inadequacies when it came to masculinity, A lot of it I was able to actually embody the positive side of my fire when I embraced my water side. If all of your exes are really stubborn, You got to think like why am I constantly drawn to stubborn people? Is it that I'm not embracing my own stubbornness? I mean it would be an earth quality or if you're always drawn to people who are always up in the clouds like am I not expressing my air qualities enough? Is that why I keep getting drawn to these people? Because if you find a pattern in your social relationships, Chances are you're unconsciously drawn to that because you want to express that more. You need to express your emotions otherwise it actually causes depression in your nervous system. The Ruando podcast is an exploration of the unconscious in the game of life. Be sure to visit ruando. Com to get a preview chapter of my upcoming book Infinite Play and free access to my content library. Enjoy the show. Play me a hot man. Good morning everyone. Hope you all had a great weekend. You celebrate Halloween. Hope you had a great Halloween. There's also full moon, A blue moon, A hunter's moon this weekend, Whatever that means. And here in Thailand, It was also the festival of lights which is a very special holiday here in Thailand. So as you can see, I shaved my head. If you are watching the video of this, I normally don't have a shaved head. I did dress up as Avatar Ang from the children's show of the early 2000s, Avatar The Last Airbender. And doing this episode today, I'm balancing the four elements, The neurotransmitters that drive our behavior because the show, If you haven't seen it, Basically touches on the themes. It is a children's show. I'm a little old so I've known about the show but my little brother really was all about it. He's 10 years younger than me. Shout out to him. And I guess it came out on Netflix during COVID and he suggested I watch it. It's a great show. It is a kids' show but it's really enjoyable for adults because they do hit on real life lessons in a way that is entertaining to the kids but also very relatable and enjoyable to adults. But it's physically about the show. In this Avatar universe, They speak about the four elements in this fantasy world. There are people who can control air, People who control water, Fire and earth. Even though obviously it's a children's show, It's a fantasy show, Look at these superpowers. I found that, And I think this is very intentional by the creators of the show, It demonstrates different elements of our personality. The four elements have been touched on in many different esoteric traditions throughout the world. In China, They split up into five but I'll address that. They're not actually that different. But these four elements, Earth, Fire, Air and water, Represent different neurotransmitters and obviously expressions of our personality. So even in the show, Even though they're talking about fantasy world, I do find that it shows certain life lessons and this is kind of the goal of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, Where you're trying to balance the outside world within you. Many traditions view the self as a microcosm for the universe and from ancient mystics' perception of the universe, Seeing that the world is made out of these four elements, Fire, Water, Earth and air, How can we balance ourselves, Balance our personalities metaphorically to match what we observe in the universe, The balance of these four elements. These four elements have also been touched on in tarot, Western occultism, The four suits of playing cards are these four elements as well. Chinese medicine, As I mentioned, Breaks up to five. Also in ancient Greece and then also became popular in medieval times in western Europe, The four humors, Where they believe that we have these four liquids in our body that drive our personality, Blood, Phlegm, Yellow bile and black bile and they basically correspond to these four concepts again, These four elements. So we'll talk about this from a biological perspective because these four elements directly tie to four neurotransmitters that drive our behavior. Obviously the ancient mystics didn't know about the neurotransmitters but their observations match up with what we know today. We're also going to speak about how to actually balance them as far as qualitative things you could do and also how to play well with others because a big theme of the children's show avatar was getting along with people of different types, Like there's fire people and there's water people and it's kind of demonstrated hyperbolically in the cartoon but it actually shows life lessons about balancing well with others or playing well with others because as social animals, Not only do we need to know ourselves and find balance within ourselves, We actually succeed in our happiest when we synergize with people, Specifically people who have traits and strengths that are different than us. So there's a lot of application to being a leader of a team here, Getting along with people in relationships, We tend to attract our opposites even though they're hard for us to understand but also finding your own way of being to let your gifts come out. So anyway, Quick announcements. If you've taken any of my courses or trainings, You've probably had some bugs, There's been major tech issues, I won't get into the details but I'm going to send out an apology email this week once I resolve this. If you don't know what I'm talking about, It's fine but if you've taken any of my trainings, You might have noticed some of the links aren't working and stuff is missing. Going to fix that soon. Another thing, Next week based on votes of everyone in the masculine underground group here in this group, Next week we're going to do an episode on the warrior archetype. So a couple of weeks ago I did it on the king archetype, Next we're going to speak about the warrior archetype also from a hormonal perspective, Noradrenaline and testosterone directly related to the warrior archetype. We're also going to talk about these so-called masculine virtues. I mean I believe they're masculine virtues. The current narrative in society is that masculinity and these virtues are constructs, I disagree but things like honor, Courage, Strength, Integrity. Also the reason why I thought of bringing up the warrior archetype is that a lot of guys reached out to me about psychogenic sexual dysfunctions. They can't get it up or they prematurely come because of mental things or emotional things and the warrior archetype, We'll speak about this hormonally, The warrior archetype is a solution if you can understand it and exercise it, It is a solution to mental issues that cause sexual problems, Accessing that hunter, That predator. So let's jump in. First thing, I want to ground us in the biology because obviously we're speaking about the four elements of nature, It can sound mystical but I'm not saying there's not, I mean not even saying there's not some energetic aspect to it but I do view that when people talk about energy they're usually speaking about things as far as feelings and metaphor. So I do want to ground us in biology just so we have something concrete to work off of. So these four elements, Fire, Water, Air and earth correspond according to me first. With dopamine is fire, Serotonin is water, Acetylcholine is air and GABA is earth and qualitatively, This fire energy, When you think of fire, When you think of a fiery person, What comes to mind, You think of someone who's passionate, Powerful or seeks power, They're intense, Maybe quick to anger, This is fire. A small child can recognize this, You can feel like there's like comparing fire to a personality, This is what it is. This relates to dopamine, Also testosterone to some level and noradrenaline, Like this aggressive like yang energy. Serotonin is receptivity, Like when serotonin relaxes us, Puts us in chill mode, It's also when we're flooded with serotonin like when on MDMA for instance, Not that I'm recommending anything but like everything feels receptive and healing and connectable. Acetylcholine is like the strategic thing, Acetylcholine is air, It's like thinking big thoughts and not taking things that seriously because you're kind of floating up into the clouds, If you're a heady person or if you're an airy person or if you have a tendency to go up into the clouds, Like that's the air quality we're talking about. High acetylcholine, The strengths there are in strategy, The negatives are being kind of disconnected from earth and being ungrounded or up in your head or outside of your body. The opposite of that would be GABA. GABA is the neurotransmitter of groundedness, Earth. Stoleness neutral in the show Avatar, All the earth benders are like stubborn and slow moving, Slow acting but they're neutral, Right? It's hard to move them like earth. And I became interested in this idea of the elements, Other than I think these fantasy cartoons are cool but also I used to follow the strength coach Charles Polikin, He's the strength coach of the gold medal Olympic team in 2000, Among other many accomplishments, He's been on Tim Ferriss' show, He sadly passed away last year. But he brought up these four neurotransmitters and actually it was called the Braverman test by psychologist Dr. Eric Braverman, I just got his books, I might do another episode on neurotransmitters, I also want to get him on the podcast, So we'll see if that happens. But Dr. Braverman basically has a personality test, I can put the link in the show notes, It's bravermentest. Com, It's kind of a long questionnaire and it is a questionnaire but based on these astronaut questions, It estimates the presence of these four neurotransmitters in you. So it's a personality typing test based on these four personality traits and a lot of it is kind of obvious like the dopamine questions like clearly are seeing how intense you are, How quick to anger you are but it also shows in your body, Right? Some of the questions ask you about your muscle tone and like how quickly you gain and lose fat and like your proclivities when it comes to exercise because those are also correlated with the presence of these four neurotransmitters. And Charles Polikin would reference this test because he was actually the one who connected, As far as I was first aware of, Connected these four neurotransmitters with the four elements. So he was saying that, And he was using them for athletes, Right? So like if you're high in dopamine, High intensity workouts are ideal for, You're probably drawn to powerlifting, You're probably drawn to things like football where there's downs and rests and then fast explosions. And if you're a serotonin athlete or I mean he would joke that serotonin people typically don't play sports, They prefer yoga which makes sense. Acetylcholine people like a lot of complex movement. They might be parkour people, They might be into strategy. Basketball players tend to be acetylcholine as a skill sport obviously. And the gaba players are like snipers. They're like the people who can like wait a long time and then pounce. They can be very zen and chill. Gaba people are better at meditating than most other people. And the first thing that matters with this is understanding who you are because so many prescriptions in the self-help world, In person development, In spirituality and exercise are kind of like one size fits all, Right? And I'm probably guilty of this too. I find something that works for me or people like me and I want to talk about it. But understanding that everyone is different, Our brains are different, Our brain chemistries are different, Our conditioning is different, It has led to different brain chemistry and different balances of neurotransmitter receptors in us. So like some of us respond to dopamine better than others which can be a good thing or a bad thing. Knowing who you are is the most important piece. And that's one of the general lessons of the Avatar show and I think most shows that reference stuff like this. There are a lot of shows where there's like an ensemble cast and they each have like a skill, Right? Like in the heist movies, There's like the nerd and then there's the smooth talker and then there's the muscle in the Fellowship of the Ring and Lord of the Rings. There's like one person with every kind of skill. In Avatar, There's one person on the team of every element showing the balance of all of these personality traits. I'm going to talk about groups in a second but each of these neurotransmitters, Each of these elements represent some useful survival skill. And even though as modern humans, We don't necessarily, The reasons why we have all these dopamine receptors and like why men respond to testosterone in certain ways is for survival needs that in 2020 might be a little outdated, Right? We don't have to act with aggression on a day-to-day basis but that outlet does find its place in a corporate office. You might not need to actually physically defend yourself but people have those same stress responses because we're running on an operating system that will evolve for a certain situation. So anyway, First bit is to understand who you are and a very simple thing, I think the Braverman Test, The BravermanTest. Com is kind of a long questionnaire. As you're doing it, It might be obvious like based on your answers what the result's going to be but I recommend doing it anyway. It's good for athletes, It's good for just knowing who you are and actually a buddy of mine who is working, He's actually a strength coach but we're also working on this media project together. It was good for us to both take the test and see how we were with each other because it actually shows different ways people communicate, Right? Some people are super intense, Some people are super slow moving. I'm very much an air acetylcholine person so when I have an idea, I want to do it. I'm not very attached to reality as much as other people. So when I work with an earth person, Someone who is like way more gabber, Way more like let's move slow and see if everything makes sense, Conflict can arise. I want to say one more thing and I know I bring this up in a lot of episodes but I just think it's one of the clearest things especially for men or anyone who deals with testosterone which is all of us is the Winter Effect. So the Winter Effect is a phenomenon that was discovered in the 90s and I think people should talk about it more whereas when you do something where you perceive you want to challenge, A couple of things happen. Your testosterone spikes. So I think that's simply why certainly as a man whose behavior and well-being is largely driven by the presence of testosterone, Doing hard things even if you fail but trying hard things is the best thing for your self-esteem, Right? It seems like an obvious thing of like set goals and accomplish them but that actually changes your chemistry because not only does it raise your testosterone, It also raises your androgen receptors meaning future testosterone has a greater effect on you. But I know I brought that up in many different episodes but what I don't always stress on in the Winter Effect is that it's also true for dopamine, The fire neurotransmitter. Increases when you do something that feels good, That is a challenge, Even checking something off that releases some dopamine, It also increases your dopamine receptors so that future accomplishments feel even better. And I mean obviously all of this is conceptual like I'm not checking blood or anything. I would guess this is also probably true for noradrenaline which is the aggressive hormone. We're going to talk about noradrenaline more next week in the Warrior Archetype. And the same thing is true with anything, Right? Like if you are around a lot of people who are always looking at cute things, If you're around a lot of babies, If you're always looking at baby pictures and cat photos on Instagram, You're releasing oxytocin. That's what makes you, Anytime you feel cute, You can guess that oxytocin is being released. The more that happens, The more you develop oxytocin receptors to be the locks to fit the key of that neurotransmitter. Same thing with serotonin. Basically you end up practicing emotions and however old you are, You've essentially been practicing your emotional responses your entire life based on what you've been exposed to. So yeah, I mean if you've been exposed to, If you grew up in a yoga ashram, You probably have a lot of serotonin receptors. So anything that's relaxing probably relaxes you. You're probably quicker to relax than other people. If you grew up in a situation where you develop a lot of GABA receptors, You probably can zen out faster than the rest of us or go into chill mode or go into stillness mode. So however old you are and whatever your experiences are, It's good to know who you are and what locks you have for what keys, Right? If you're a high dopamine person, You need to find ways to help give yourself healthy boost of dopamine because it's going to make you feel good, Not in a way that is draining you in a way. Facebook, I think in today's day and age, We live in a very high dopamine. I mean arguably since the industrial revolution, Culture has been shifting towards the fire thing. And I think this might have been a commentary within the cartoon avatar because in that world there's the four nations of their four elements but the fire nation becomes angry and takes over the world, Right? I think that's a commentary on modern society like our pre-agriculture ancestors probably had a pretty equal balance of these four neurotransmitters, At least how they express these four elements metaphorically. But in post-industrial worlds, Dopamine is rewarded more than anything else, Right? If you go to your job, It's all about accomplishing things. In the corporate world, You get rewarded for intensity. You don't get rewarded so much for being strategic. If you're – I speak to a lot of computer programmers and my father is one and he shared the same sentiment that even though he's the skill position at his job, The people who get promoted ahead of him are dopamine people, Are people who just like are intense and they go for things and they don't necessarily – they're not necessarily the people actually making the money, Right? They're not actually the ones programming the things in the tech company but they're the ones who jump to the top because modern society in our industrial world rewards dopamine behaviors or fire behaviors more than anything. You show anger at someone, People tend to listen to you more than your rationality or empathy although I think certain things are shifting. We're going to talk about that shift next week with the feminization of culture. So anyway, Understanding who you are and finding situations that fit. I mean this kind of goes a little bit off topic but – well, I know, Understanding who you are like one of the hardest things especially when I speak to guys who just feel so out of place or they feel less than everyone else and they tell me about their environment. They're an environment that just doesn't match them, Right? I spoke about this in the episode on breaking social constructions, Right? Like you've grown up to be whoever you are, To be a certain type of person with certain interests, With certain balances of these neurotransmitters and what makes you happy versus not happy and say you're a high acetylcholine person and you found yourself in a job which is all about customer service like a serotonin trait and it's just really not your thing and you feel like an idiot because everyone else seems to be getting off on this thing and you're not or like you're a dopamine person and you're in some other job or you're someone who needs to be working his body and you're in like – people find their ways into situations that don't fit them and they feel less than it causes shame as I spoke a lot about in that episode. But if you just find yourself in the right environment, Sometimes that's the biggest thing which is why I recommend to so many guys who feel stuck in their social paradigm that they go traveling, That they change cities just to realize that it's not them that was broken. They were just trying to fit the wrong shape peg and the wrong shape hole. Anyway, Yeah, Okay. So that's essentially the biological basis. Now, So what does it mean to find balance? Now, I'm not super familiar with Kabbalah but I do know this is kind of the spiritual goal of Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah which is as I mentioned at the top of the episode, Finding a balance of – I mean the belief that the body, The self, The individual is a microcosm of the universe. So these many thousands of years ago, They were obviously not aware of the neurotransmitters but they observed the universe. They're like, Okay, There's like fire in the sun, There's water, There's earth, There's air. This is what the world is made out of. How do we balance ourselves to match what's going on in the world? So essentially is what we're talking about, Right? Finding balance in yourself. So this is a concept, I mean even in the ancient samurai, This is one of the reasons why as they were fighting men, Samurai learning the arts of war and sword fighting and combat, They always balanced yang with yin, Right? They always balance killing with poetry or painting because they recognize that when you don't have this balance, Things go awry. And you can see this, You can look at society, You can look at the cartoon avatar, You can look at people who – you'll get men who are like bound by rage and they're just like destroying things and you look at the rest of their lives, You look at these young men who are causing atrocities and it's always a surprise to other people because they seemed so quiet, So timid. One could argue, I'm not saying that definitively this is the case in every one of those cases but one could argue that because they did not find balance, Because they went so far, Like the guys who go so deep in nice guy syndrome, Who go super yin, Just to correct this imbalance in them, They have to go all the way other side and do something dangerous. I mean this is the whole idea of going postal. You can see this in the BDSM world, That is an example I brought up in other episodes as well. The people who are the highest paying, Most consistent customers of professional dominatrices are high power CEOs. Why? Because they're going so far in the yang role. They're going so far in their whole life, They're super, Super dominant and it doesn't feel good, Even if that is their style of being, It doesn't feel good to be so far out of balance. So in order to feel balance and to feel that nourishment in their soul again, They have to hire a little Asian woman to stomp on their balls or something. Obviously, In this extreme case but those are extreme situations where someone is so far in one thing versus the other. And in the show Avatar, If you've seen it, You could see especially one of the characters who goes from being a villain to kind of like part of the hero's gang. He's a fire person, He's obviously very angry, He's a caricature of fireness, Of being angry, Of being intense, Of like never chilling and he needs to learn water qualities to chill out to become a hero. Up until then, He's kind of an anti-hero slash villain. So as we can get conceptually understand these four elements and these four characteristics, We can see that there's pros and cons to everything. It's not that one is better than the other. Actually a lesson in Avatar is you kind of need all four elements to save the world which is a representation of individuation. So I kind of mentioned this already but if you look at fire, Being a fiery person can often be seen as a positive thing. Fire is also related to power with intensity, With standing up for yourself, Anger being not a negative emotion in itself. Expressions of anger can be negative but Gavon Ramse has this great little talk, I mean a short clip online. We're speaking about how his soul talk was about how you need to express your emotions otherwise it actually causes depression in your nervous system. He has all these examples about how people who always did things for other people and not themselves would end up actually getting cancer in ways that you wouldn't expect or they would drop dead quickly because they were never prioritized in their own emotions so their body was, Parts of them were atrophying. And he was speaking about how anger, The fire emotion, Is actually, It's just simply the emotion of claiming your space. Even a two year old, Even a puppy is able to access anger. It's an imprinted emotion or it's an instinctual emotion of getting space. If someone gets up in your space, You try to push them away, That's what anger is. Even life forms that don't have emotions the way we would consider them like fish or even single cell organisms, Obviously they don't have, They have maybe proto-emotions. They have some version of like get away from me, If they're capable of defending themselves, If not, They run away which is another version of that. But on the other end, The con is in our language, Someone who's over exercising dopamine and we can see this in the social media area where we're like stuck on clickbait, We're constantly bombarded with email notifications and to-do list from our work and stuff like this overload of the dopamine circuit, What does that lead to? Burnout. It's another, It's fire language, Right? It's already in our language. Looking at water, The positive sides are receptivity, Nurturing, If you think of water as a thing, Serotonin is about chilling, Relaxing, Feeling connected to people. But on the other end, Being watery is certainly not a positive thing when someone's watery, What does it mean? You can't pin them down, They're like, They're never able to speak up directly for themselves, They kind of sidestep, Maybe they're passive aggressive. Then also there's a term drowning in your emotions, Someone who's like overly emotional, It's a very unattractive trait in men not to be in touch with your emotions which is great, Which is the positive expression of connecting to your water. Actually, I'd say most of my growth, My whole life I've been chasing fire because I thought this is what men are supposed to do. I've certainly felt burnt out and a lot of guys I speak to, It's not like they don't have enough masculinity, They're actually not able to express themselves or they're not reaching their potential whether it's in dating or in life or whatever because they actually need to get in touch with their feminine side. They need to actually chill out for a second, Be nice to themselves, Validate themselves instead of forcing themselves into conflict all the time. But the negative side of this is the thing that's quite unattractive especially in men, Given that water is the feminine side, Is drowning in your emotions. But much earlier in the year, I think like nine months ago, I did the episode on the mother complex, The mother complex, Mother being tied to the tarot suit cups or hearts in the playing cards, Also water, This is all the same thing like a guy who drowns in his emotions, Who can't handle his emotions like he just becomes smothered or he becomes smothered by his mother's presence in his life or his mother's presence in his mind or he gets smothered every time he is attracted to a woman and gets one-nitis and goes deep into nice guy stuff. He can't handle, It's like he can't get his head above water, Right? All this, This is all in our language already, He's drowning. This is basically someone who can't handle his water side. He can't handle the neurotransmitters that we associate with water, Serotonin and oxytocin. Acetylcholine playfulness is like think of air floating off the ground, Like not taking, Being light about everything, Not taking things too seriously, Being into ideas and not being too worried about the practical side, Being a visionary like looking up into air, These are the positive sides but being airy, Being an airhead, Being up in the clouds, Being out of your body, All of these are also air qualities of not actually embodying it in a positive way. A lot of hippies, A lot of spiritual people and I've been guilty of this, They go so up into ideas and concepts, They're totally disconnected from the real world, They're way too airy, Not a positive thing. And then with earth, With gaba, Being grounded obviously is an important trait, The opposite of air, Bring us back down to the body but also being dense and being slow moving are traits of gaba. So these are conceptual ways of seeing like okay, All of these, There's not that any one of these things are better or worse, It's good to know yourself and know what specifically makes you happy if you're a fire person, You need to do more intense things to feel happy if you're a gaba person, You got to do like meditating probably affects you a lot better than other people but also not being afraid of these emotions and being able to access these elements within yourself is important because if you see, I have friends who are very anti-fire, So anytime someone's angry, They become very resentful, Like how could this person become angry or they become very, Fire is also the masculine or young energy like there are I think a lot of people in modern culture especially, Left-leaning modern culture has become very critical of masculine traits or fiery traits even though it's ironic, I mean actually this is not ironic, This is why because certainly since the industrial revolution, Arguably since the advent of agriculture, Our society has been overvaluing dopamine, Overvaluing fire, It's become excessive in the social media era or internet era and we can see culturally that this overemphasis of fire, Emphasis on war and production and intensity and working has caused imbalances and has caused negative experiences in large parts of the population arguably in everyone to some degree. So a lot of people are critical of fire traits right now, This kind of an attack on masculinity, Partially justified but largely, I mean there's certainly fallout from this too, We're going to talk about that specifically in the next episode but yeah, I mean finding positive expressions so like a dopamine person, A person who whatever prior to their internet usage probably maybe they did a lot of activities that made them feel good, That caused them to have a lot of dopamine receptors, They don't find activities like that that are useful, They're the ones who get sucked up into their phone faster because like that scrolling thing really stimulates them more whereas someone who's maybe low on dopamine receptors is not a super, Who has found positive expressions of that is not going to get so glued and the same thing, Not everyone's into strategy stuff, Acetylcholine is a thing, I mean when I recognized before I even thought about this in terms of elements and neurotransmitters, Just when I got real with myself, It's like I'm a freaking nerd, I love things like board games, I love strategy things, I love playing poker, I love things that like require like a lot of like mapping out things and game theory obviously I'm obsessed with, When I really like just became honest with myself like I don't actually like going out clubbing, It's a dopamine activity, I've never really liked it, I like connecting with people but I also prefer to play board games, Once I just got real with myself, It's like this is who I am, I've been trying to be a jock my whole life but like let's be real, I just like to do this stuff, My quality of life changed so much, I just knowing, Just recognizing myself, Not even thinking in the terms of acetylcholine but just recognizing these are the things, You know, However I've grown up, This is what my nervous system is like, These are the things that make me happy, I just got to do them more, Like why am I trying so hard and I was speaking to a guy, Guy I'm coaching who is semi-related but he's had this idea and I think he's been influenced by the pickup world where like they've really gotten this propaganda out especially to men that a really attractive man or really great man is great at cold approaching, Right? So you have all these guys who've grown up thinking like in order for me to be attractive, I have to be good at cold approach which is not necessarily the case, Cold approaching, I'm not against it, In fact it's been positive in my life for a period of my life, Is a certain way to meet people, Right? It's a certain way to practice and if you are afraid of interaction or penetrating a space is a good fear to get over but it's really not the best way to meet people and there's no reason why you have to meet people that way, So like my current client, My specific client happened to meet a woman where she kind of fell on his lap and he didn't actually do a lot for it, He didn't work for it, He didn't have to like put, Throw himself into tension, He was just being himself and she kind of fell into his lap, You know, Not literally but almost and he's finding this idea like I can't accept this, It's like I need to, This is not okay, I didn't work hard enough for it, I keep trying to get him to understand like there's no reason why life has to be hard, You know, When something good happens to you, Just say thanks because bad stuff is going to happen to you eventually too. I know this is a little off topic but I do think a lot of guys, Especially guys who like group reading pickup material which was really, Which was like the primary propaganda in men's development 10 years ago, Let's say, This is just what was on the internet, It was kind of flooded with like this is how you call the approach, You got a cold approach, Everyone's got a cold approach, Here's our formulas, Here are 10 step systems, That's not the case, Right? And like, And I think it's actually culturally part of like the over dopamine part of our industrial complex, We're like there's this idea, This fire concept, This fire propaganda if you will that you have to fight or struggle for things to be good, That's not necessarily the case and like, You know, Montachia has mentioned how people are meant to do war, Right? We are meant to go to war, It's actually an important part of ourselves and you know, It's important, We're going to talk about this next week, The warrior archetype, Men especially have to experience something that either is war or simulates war which is why men tend to be drawn to contact sports or seeking business or things like video games where you get to experience at least simulated war, It's important for our, We have all these keys in our nervous system for, We have all these locks rather for neurotransmitters, These keys that come from conflict, Right? But given our world is so hyper dopamine, Overly the military industrial complex has made this extreme, A lot of us are burnt out, Right? We're overly dopamine fed and Montachia was saying like, We're meant to do war but only about half the time, Right? Our pre-agricultural ancestors would do war like activities, Would do like intense dopamine activities like going hunting or fighting a battle but that was only a small, It wasn't even half the time, It was a small fraction of human existence, A lot of life was doing these other things, Chilling out, Zenning out, Doing strategic things, Connecting with people like that was half or more than half of our lives. So in our current lives where we're in war mode, Where we're, If you work a 40 hour work week or 50 hour work week, You're basically in war mode but to a level that's not actually healthy. So most of us, Even if you are genuinely a fire person, A dopamine driven person, A dopamine driven athlete if you will, Most of us if you live in normal society doing conventional things as of the 21st century, Chances are you're low in these other areas and specifically fire and water balance each other out and earth and air balance each other out. So if you're doing, I'll speak for the simpler things first, If you're doing a lot of fire activity, A lot of intense fiery stuff, If your job involves a lot of intensity and conflict, You actually probably need yoga more than most people, A serotonin activity, Which is probably why yoga has become very popular. If you're constantly doing strategic things, If you're a programmer, If you work with numbers a lot, You actually need to do physical things more. Like something that's actually made me a better writer and a way more, I shouldn't say better but has gotten, I mean I have this war of art behind me, Something that's really helped me increase my productivity in the volume of words I could write in a day has been working out in the middle of my work day. I write for two hours, I go lift some heavy things and I can do it again. I could almost never write for four hours in a clip because it's so, I don't know, I mean it's all conceptual but I'd imagine my acetylcholine receptors are maybe just overloaded. I need to go do something, It's the opposite of air, I need to do some earth activities, Move some boulders, My kettlebell and then I can go back to it. It's like this refresh. I spoke about this in my cult episode but most of my life, This idea of me seeking to fill in my perceived inadequacies or my real inadequacies when it came to masculinity, A lot of it I was able to actually embody the positive side of my fire when I embraced my water side. So I was certainly a burnout, Right? I was seeking all of these hyper masculine activities when I joined Officer Canada's school for the Marines or I was playing all these combat sports, Things that I genuinely liked but I was doing them so hard all the time that my body is actually breaking down and my mind is breaking down. When I joined the matriarchal cult and I was around women doing all these hyper feminine activities all the time, Just being around women all the time, It really nurtured my water side and I was able to balance out. Actually, I don't know if I mentioned it in that episode but like this random thing, When I was in the cult and they pair people up, They typically pair a guy and a girl and you have to sleep together as part of the research, You know, Research in quotes. They openly said that they would pair up a fire person with a water person. So I was a very fire person, My love interest through my two years in that community was a woman who was like very water, Right? Hyper nurturing, Hyper in her emotions, Very much manic pixie dream girl and she balanced me out and that's part of the narrative. Actually, I forgot to mention this but I put out a request to the masculine underground group to get feedback on my book. A bunch of you guys responded. I appreciate it a lot. It's been very useful. So if you are interested in my book, My memoir of my two years in the matriarchal sex cult, I just want an update. Going out for publishers this month probably will be out within the next, Actually I have no idea when it will be out but things are moving on that. If you want to be notified when my book comes out, I feel very good about my book especially with the feedback recently. Just make sure you're on my email list. I don't send out a lot of emails but I will send out an update on my book when it's going to come out. Working titles infinite play, Coming of age in the matriarchal cult of orgasm where I learned to connect with my water energy. It's a tale for men. Anyway, So I just want to go back. So we're going to end with the practical applications, Right? So I'd say there's two sides of this. The first bit we've spoken about is knowing yourself, Right? You could probably look at yourself qualitatively and just be like, Okay, This is like I'm clearly this kind of person or like these are the things that make me happy. Yoga is a really big thing because I probably have a lot of serotonin receptors or I'm a acetylcholine person. I need to be doing strategic stuff to feel good or I'm a gab at person. I got to do things physically to feel in my body. And knowing that it's okay, Whatever you are is okay. Validate who you are. Just know, I mean you can look at yourself if you zoom out for a second and be like, Okay, If you were to create a user manual for yourself, This is actually an exercise I've given to guys. If you were to make a user manual for yourself, Like if you were like a video game character and you wanted to make a guide for someone else to play, Play you, Right? What are the things that work for you, Right? Like what are the things that make your body, Mind work well? You can probably come up with that. It's not a bad exercise to do if you're listening to this because you might have been, I mean I know for myself, You might have been lying to yourself your whole life thinking like, Oh, I'm supposed to be a power person but really I'm a strategy person or whatever it is. But then it's also in your assessment, Recognizing that you might have some imbalances, Right? Like you might have been going super hard on the fire stuff, Like most of us as I mentioned are probably overloaded on our dopamine circuits. Not even because we want to be or we mean to be but most kinds of work, Most kinds of media, I mean Facebook, All of these things are basically hyper triggering our dopamine circuits which is why a lot of people have short attention spans and all that stuff. But then in any actually a little thing, Well yeah, I don't actually have to get into this. I'm going to repeat this but my love right now, She's really into the I Ching, I Ching. She basically did an assessment on me which kind of confirmed the Braverman Test and all these things. I kind of guess I'm a thunder person in that realm and essentially, And I've had certain conflicts with some of my friends recently because when I feel a truth, I feel like I got to blast it out which is kind of a thunder thing. Not always the best way for playing with others which brings us to the second point. So we are social animals. It's not actually effective. The whole reason why we're social or why any species is social is because when you get together with a group of members of your species and can synergize into some form of superorganism, Everyone gets to specialize and the group gets to accomplish more, Right? It doesn't make sense for everyone to make their own shoes and their own hammers but if one guy makes all the shoes and gets really good at making shoes and one guy makes the hammers and gets really good at making hammers, We can have more hammers and shoes and they can trade, Right? That's essentially how specialization works. That's one of the reasons why we have sexual polarity. There's certain traits especially in pre-agricultural society that really need a testosterone-driven behavior and a body that's run on testosterone that's stronger, That's more aggressive, That's more courageous and fearless and then there are certain traits that a group of organisms need that are more oxytocin-driven behaviors or serotonin-driven behaviors, Being nurturing, Being emotionally aware and prior to the advent of civilization and agriculture, Those masculine and feminine roles were probably pretty much in balance as far as we can tell, At least as far as an armchair anthropologist like myself can tell. But since agriculture and certainly peaking at the industrial revolution and in the internet age, One is highly more value than others. Culturally, People are trying to balance it out by shaming masculinity which I don't think is the right way but we'll talk about that next week. But all right, So anyway, Back to this, Right? Assessing your social map, Right? Chances are, However you are, Whatever elements, Whatever neurotransmitters are dominating you, You are probably drawn to people that are opposite. Either drawn directly like if you're like a fiery guy, You might be drawn to watery women or the opposite. If you're really in touch with your… actually, This is something I've noticed myself. I used to be really drawn to… I've gone to different phases. I realized maybe a couple of years ago, I've been drawn to fiery women. I think after getting in touch with my feminine side, I became very drawn to like aggressive women and I was like, I don't really like that. But then if I look at who makes me feel good is more of these water type people who intellectually I kind of shamed. I was like, Oh yeah, I mean anyone who is super emotional is probably just like they're not getting along in life. But I actually thought, I realized, I assessed my social map. I was like, I feel way better around emotional people for some reason. And anyway, Doing this kind of assessment with your life of recognizing that as in the Avatar cartoon, As in Lord of the Rings, Teams are what get things done. You might be drawn to a certain type of person either consciously or unconsciously. Unconsciously, Very often this shows up as you're always around a person who… it's a type of person that frustrates you. You got to think, Why are you attracted to that? If all of your exes are a certain way, If all of your exes are really stubborn, You got to think like, Why am I constantly drawn to stubborn people? Is it that I'm not embracing my own stubbornness? I mean, It would be an earth quality. Or if you're always drawn to people who are always up in the clouds, Like, Am I not expressing my air qualities enough? Is that why I keep getting drawn to these people? Because any type of person that… if you find a pattern in your social relationships, Chances are you're unconsciously drawn to that because you want to express that more. It's kind of like how… yeah, I mean, Like in Avatar, They find the different elements to make their team. A part of us wants to be around all of these things because we know in real life, In natural life I should say, As opposed to artificial society, I mean, In the wilds, We need all of these qualities. That's why we have receptors for all these neurotransmitters. And if we're not going to have them all in our cells, We're actually inefficient to have all of these things. You can't be good at every skill. You can't have every personality trait and trait in spades. Anyway, To be in a group or have a team, We have one of every type of person. That's why in heist movies, They always have that scene that Rick and Morty made fun of in one of their heist episodes, In that heist episode where you find someone of every skill. So if you can… if you recognize this, You might be like, Okay, I keep drawing in stubborn people. Maybe there's something that I need to embrace and maybe there's actually something I want rather than something I'm fighting. And if you caught the episode I had with Carolyn Elliott a few months ago, One of the tenets of her book as an essential kink is having as evidence of wanting. If you keep drawing a certain type of person into your life, If you end up on teams, You end up in relationships with this type of person, Chances are there's some part of you that actually wants it, Right? Otherwise you wouldn't be attracted to that person or you wouldn't end up in friendships with that person over and over again. So if you can buy that idea as a working assumption, It kind of changes your perception of like, Oh, How do I get along with this person? Because especially as we tend to be drawn to our reciprocals, Like David Dada would always say you are attracted… you always attract your sexual reciprocal. If you're very watery, You tend to attract fiery people. Even if as a water person, You might be afraid of anger, You might be super turned off by fiery people, But for some reason you always end up dating them. Why is that? Because you actually want to embrace that, So you're trying to unconsciously associate with that. Recognizing, How do you get along with that? So I speak for myself as a very air person, I have a hard time with people who move slow on things, Right? Earthy people, Right? When I have an idea, I don't want to think about whether it's practical or not. I just want to go, Go, Go. I just want to do it because it's fun for me when things move fast. But for some reason I always end up on teams or drawn to people who are kind of the opposite. They want to be very slow and practical and think about every detail and I find it frustrating. But then I wonder why do I always end up on teams with these people? Why do I end up in friendships with these people, With people like this? Chances are this is a part of me that actually wants to actually go slow and chill out for a second as opposed to my natural tendency. And earth people are actually good for me to balance out. And if you think of this in this way, Do the Braverman test or assess your life, I would guess this is the case where you are drawn to such people. And if you can find ways to understand who they are, Understand their elements, It becomes easier to relate. Because if you keep applying your paradigm to other people, If you're a fiery person, Why is everyone not yelling the way I'm yelling? Because this is how you express yourselves. You have to remember people are different, They have their different ways and you can learn how to communicate and certainly just like have compassion and not get angry at people that are different than you because there's a reason why you're drawn together. And I just want to emphasize this idea if you find yourself around people that you constantly resent, There's probably something in that that you actually want to get in touch with. That resentment might be some cultural conditioning of like, Oh, Emotional people are bad but I don't know why I keep ending up around them. It might actually be that you're unconsciously drawn to them because you want to balance that thing out but your ego is judging them because maybe your societal narrative is that this type of person is bad. I think more, Especially in left-leaning society, Masculinity is being shamed. So you might find yourself, Actually I know a lot of my female friends maybe intellectually hate this idea of stereotypical masculinity but they're attracted to stereotypical guys. I mean this is, Yeah, One example. Yeah, So seeking balance. Those two aspects of this as far as practical application, Knowing yourself and feeding yourself based on your assessment of yourself. The second bit is assessing your social map and connecting with the people that balance you out because you don't actually have to express everything in yourself. You want to have fluidity but you don't actually need to be everything because as a social animal, You want to connect with people that have skills that you don't. All right. That is that. I'll repeat our announcements, Next week we're going to do the warrior archetype, Speaking about honor, Courage, Strength. Speak about noradrenaline, The aggression hormone and some sexual application of the warrior archetype. Probably the week after that, We're going to speak about male tribes. I might throw that into the warrior archetype, We'll see. I've been reading this book, Way of Men by Jack Donovan which is actually recommended by some of the guys in the Masked Underground Facebook group. Very interesting stuff. He comes at it from an angle that I wouldn't have expected. So we might speak about some of his ideas. I might have him on the podcast actually. If you've taken any of my courses or you're going to any of my trainings, I apologize about the links not working. I'm going to get that fixed this week and we'll send out a polished email this week. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. If you are watching the recording of this or you are watching the video, Staring at my bald head, I'm honored that you want to look at me. I would highly recommend that you subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Whatever. Consume all this auditorily so you can actually move your body. Go out and do some push-ups, Take a walk around the block, Walk your dog, Walk your neighbor's dog, Do some yard work, Stretch. If you can't touch your toes, Now is a good chance. Let's do a podcast and work on that because we all need to get off of our screens. Too much dopamine. Anyway, That's all I got. Four elements. Avatar is on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, It's a good show. All right. Goodbye.