I have always been deeply interested in consciousness, spirituality, what is the meaning of life sort of thing. I was never the religious sort in the traditional sense, I never found useful answers there, but I did know that answers were needed and I had a deep yearning for them.

When I grew up there was no consciousness movement at all. No Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer or even Tony Robbins. They were still 10 or 15 years off. All the answers one could get came from religious traditions which weren’t really even asking the big questions. They were simply telling you how to behave.

I did find information in some metaphysical and esoteric literature I came across but the spirituality of even the best stuff at the time had a really serious problem. They had no balls. Spirituality was so much about behaving good, about denying impulses and instincts (to transcend it all whatever the fuck that means), that pretty much everyone who took up a practice lost that masculine energy. There was such an extreme emphasis on losing the purely animal that it was abandoned altogether. To put it bluntly men were emasculated, socialize, domesticated, castrated. We became like house cats instead of king of a castle.

In the mid nineties, mercifully, I got introduced to “men’s work” This was the mytho-poetic movement of the time and it’s express purpose was to recapture the “sacred masculine”. To recover that masculine energy which had either been totally commandeered for the interests of society or shamed into retreat by religious teaching. For the first time in my life I actually started to love being male. I started to love my body. I started to love my energy, to value it and thus, most importantly, to inhabit it.

Moreover, I came to see how destructive it was to deny it. Hard as you try, you can’t actually get rid of it. All you can do is suppress it and, if you have done any work on yourself at all you know that, anything that is suppressed does eventually get out. When it does It usually takes a less than useful form and usually at a very inappropriate time. The current overly defensive and aggressive state of pretty much every male-dominated government on the planet bears testimony of what happens when genuine male energy is suppressed. We have a world being run by boys in men’s bodies. Boys carrying really big weapons I might add.

It is time we owned all of who we are. In order to do that we have to put the lie to a totally destructive and pernicious teaching. The teaching that the animal nature must be controlled, even eliminated. The ridiculous notion that releasing masculine energy in its raw form reduces the world to chaos and violence. Suppressing has already done that I am afraid so the proof is overwhelming that a different strategy is needed.

I am convinced that if we do release that raw, male energy we will simultaneously discover our 2 other powers (also greatly lacking).

1) Restraint – Our ability to control the raw male energy and
2) Wisdom – Our ability to know how and when to use it

Power, Restraint, Wisdom – These 3 qualities define a man. Any one of them missing and the others become either dangerous or impotent. We must have all three. So let’s do a little chest pounding guys. Let’s no longer believe or submit to the people who tell us that if we let out our inner chest pounder that we will become misogynists, self-absorbed meatballs or violent sociopaths. All that nonsense is just another way of making you feel ashamed for being what you are.

I for one have decided to completely inhabit my maleness and to explore all aspects of it. Not just the convenient ones or the ones I have been told are OK. ALL OF IT. Not just the pretty parts. Not just the well-behave parts. Not just the socially useful parts but all the parts. No more plump house cat for me. I have become a Tom!

The Balls Project

GP Walsh is co founder of the Balls Project, a spiritual teacher, EFT expert and master coach with several years of experience. GP on Google+