Society is facing a crisis of masculinity, which is leading to harmful behaviour and violence towards women. Many cultures understand the need to initiate boys to men. We, in the west, have lost that understanding, that opportunity. As a consequence, are we inadvertently raising lost boys? Is it time to rediscover initiation?

This is some of Sujith's work. He is a champion of the contemporary men's movement, a space-holder for policy makers and organisational leaders across the globe, and a pioneer in the understanding and rehabilitation of masculinity in society. He is a prolific writer and wise teacher.

In this episode, Sujith and Ben explore the impact of societal conditioning on boys and how it contributes to harmful behaviour, as well as ways to facilitate conversations around masculinity to create a healthier and more respectful society for everyone.

Links

• Connect with Sujith via LinkedIn
• The Being Leader: Tracing the 'Inner Path' of Legendary Leaders – Sujith’s book
• Mature Masculinity - Sujith's book.

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking.

The series of conversations with academics advisors, entrepreneurs and

activists, people all championing those ideas on the margins, the periphery.

Why is this important?

Well, as the systems on which we've depended for the last 50, 60 stroke

thousand years, crumble and creek people increasingly looking for

new stories, new ideas, new myths, if you like, that might guide and

inform how they live and work.

So in these conversations, we take time to speak to those people who

are championing the ideas on the margins, championing the ideas on

the periphery, those ideas which are gonna shape the mainstream tomorrow.

Uh, and our hope is that you are a little bit inspired, a little bit

curious enough to take some of these ideas and bring them back to the

day-to-day of your work and your life.

Uh, So Sujith, welcome to Peripheral Thinking.

A pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ben, for having me here, yeah.

Um, so yeah, last time, as I kinda mentioned, we, there was, uh, we had

a beautiful free flowing conversation, which touched on on many things.

And, uh, when we were arranging this now, uh, we had a sort of

quick exchange before Christmas.

We were recording this in January, 2024.

Uh, we had a quick exchange for Christmas and you, you were

talking about this, this thing around, uh, a kind of, uh, a

crisis of toxic masculinity, or am I kind of adding, adding an

extra, extra, extra word in there?

Was that one, one that was one of one of the things you sort of, you, you

shared that would be good to talk about.

But actually one of the things, just a little bit of context, I mean, um,

I, I enjoyed on your, your website, the, uh, it was sort of talking about,

um, who you, the what you do, I think was the, because that's the thing we

obviously, which the kind of bucket we're always put into, what do you do?

And you kind of really kind of boldly and beautifully sort of answer.

How do you ever, how do you answer the question of what, what do you do?

But I guess I'm gonna put that to you.

How do you spend your time Suth?

Maybe that is a, that's a good introductory context for people.

Yeah, yeah, indeed.

You know, how do I spend my time is a good prompt for me

to reflect what I do, you know?

Indeed.

You know, uh, some of the things, you know, I, I'm the father of two

little kids, so spending time with them I find extremely important and

a blessing, a good fortune that I have, that I'm able to actually,

uh, spend so much time with my kids.

So I take that seriously and it's a blessing.

It's a great joy.

What else?

You know, a little bit of farming, uh, a lot of writing I love, you know,

your writing for me is yoga, you know, it is really my way of connecting

with myself to discover what I think.

That is what I do.

Then that aside, you know, at a vocational level, I'm extremely

fortunate to hold space.

So I'm a space holder.

That would probably be the best pigeonhole where I can put myself in.

You know, I hold space for policy makers, um, for organizational

leaders, uh, often at a national level, at a supra national level, at

in supranational institutions bodies.

I have been one of the modern champions of the current, the contemporary men's

movement in a number of countries, simply because I recognize that the

challenge with my own relationship with my masculinity is fairly

representative of the challenges that many, many men I come across.

And what do I do?

I just hold space for them to come to their own clarity of their

own inner leadership of like, what does it mean to be a leader?

What does it mean to be a man?

What does it mean to be a father, a spouse, a social citizen?

And so, um, you, you were talking about the, um, part of your kind of

insight into this was you also kind of being aware of, or kind of working

through your own relationship to your, to your, to your masculinity?

Was that right?

Did you make reference to that?

Very much.

That is, that is a journey that ,began Ben, uh, when I was 15, I was

extremely fortunate to, uh, have, uh, an initiation with some of my teacher.

And, uh, that's when it began.

And since then, I've continued to be on this journey to continue to refine,

polish, purify, explore, expand my inner masculine, my mature masculine energy.

And, uh, that I believe is a process that will continue forever.

Are you able to kind of, sort of share anything about what

the, uh, initiation involved?

Just 'cause I'm kind of really in curious about that also.

'cause the, the whole idea of initiation obviously is we, we

just sort of, so kind of absent in our kind of western culture here.

I'm speaking from the UK and one of my, uh, boys is 13 or nearly 13.

And I just was really struck by the absence of these, of these markers

in time, the absence of initiation.

And I'm kind of really curious about what experience you had and how that

kind of pointed to a lot of this work that you are interested in now.

essentially an initiation is basically an initiation from the

adolescent masculine to the adult masculine or the immature masculine

to the mature masculine or the sacred masculine or the divine masculine.

In the new age movement I keep hearing these words, so I just

want to make them inclusive.

And so initiation is that process to essentially subtract a lot of

the, uh, adolescent conditioning that we've actually grown up with.

You know, it's a raw masculine, which is combined with a whole lot of, uh,

conditioning that we experience through our parents, through the relationship

that we have with our parents, through what we absorb from our peers in school.

What we pick up from the media.

Such a huge influence today in the world where media is in everybody's

smartphone, in everybody's pocket.

The kind of influence all these forces has on have on us conditions

us to become who we are by the time we are 13, 14, 15, 16, and

we are in that individuation stage

now in the ancient traditions, we recognize that you know what, yes,

we are loved, we are nurtured, we are cared for, we are carried forward

as a child, as a boy, as a girl, by our parents, by our communities, our

schools, our Pearse, all of that.

And now we get into our adolescent and teenage stage.

A stage where we are individuating.

We are discovering who we are in our own essence.

And in that stage it is fundamentally crucial, extremely crucial that all

of us, boys, girls, people of other genders are taken through an initiation.

So that on the other end of initiation, we arrive, you know,

in union with the mature masculine, the mature feminine, all of that.

And the how, the how to of the initiation across all indigenous

traditions and civilizations have been pretty much the same.

Of course, the specific rituals or interventions would be

different, but what happens?

The initiation, you are taken through three steps, Ben, A departure, a

passaging or an initiation phase and the arrival, like with every journey,

the departure, passaging, and arrival.

The departure is a very conscious phase where each individual in

that initiation asks, you know, what, am I ready to let go?

You know, like in the past I may had a, a very codependent relationship

with my mother, where my orbit governed around the approvals and disapprovals

of my mother, or my relationship to authority, to life, to the larger

ecosystem must may have been a, a relationship where I was sort of

subservient to my father's authority.

Or my rebellion to authority, to my father shedding the old skin.

That is a departure phase.

And then we are left in a space of not knowing of like, oh, if that

old self that was very familiar to me, that was certain to me

is gone, then who is a new self?

And that is a stage of surrendering and allowing the universal wisdom

to become an apprentice to, uh, universal apprenticeship.

One where our masters, our mentors, our teachers, you know, tell us what

are the attributes of the mature masculine, what is a way of being

and doing of the mature masculine.

And.

Incidentally, the passaging phase also is a face of ordeal passing

through ordeal, slaying the inner demons, um, shedding the rebel with

him, opening up with, you know, wonderous curiosity to the explorer,

and coming to the mountaintop of illuminations or revelations of like,

oh, yes, I can feel it inside me.

The power, that infinite power of the mature masculine.

So it's a very experiential process based on a number of

ritual ceremonies, exercises, practices, processes, et cetera.

And then with that illumination, you enter arrival.

And arrival is essentially the return to our new self, returning to our

habitat, uh, with our blessings from the initiation, the simple recognition

that this is that experience of the mature masculine inside me that

I experienced when I was there in the wilderness, when I had shed

all my control, my rebelliousness, and I've completely surrendered

to the universal apprenticeship.

That illumination that I received, that epiphany that I received, the

experience I had at that moment, that is the divine experience of the mature

masculine, taking that blessing back to my habitat, to my life, whether

it is towards my lover, towards my parents, towards my siblings,

friends in the community, et cetera.

Let's call it a spiritual manifesto of the self, of the mature, masculine,

what it means, and suddenly qualities like valor, chivalry, honor, integrity,

purposefulness determination, principle centered compassion,

disentangled, uh, withnessship.

Everything that I've written about in the, on the book, on the mature

masculine, you know, it's there in two titles if you, if you look at it,

it's called the mature masculinity or more recently, the Shiva Code.

All those attributes become native to us.

It becomes part of our spiritual manifesto, one that we,

every day for the rest of our life, we continue practicing.

That is the arrival.

So, closing to your question, this is essentially the initiation.

Something that is, as you accurately pointed out, Ben,

it's lost today, unfortunately.

And we are starting to see around, I'm not just starting to

see, we've been experiencing the individual and collective trauma

of the absence of initiations.

The men not showing up in their mature masculine.

That has been so wounding to the self and others.

And something very tragic in the last four weeks, you know, in Italy, you

might know I have a home in Italy.

I have a home in India.

Uh, my kids go to school in Italy, so not far from Venice

in the hills, quite live.

So between Italy and India, I, I shuttle, uh, you know, also to hold

space on this beautiful continent here, uh, within the policymaking, political

business, institutions, et cetera.

Here in the last four weeks there has been two devastating events,

both involved, men, both lovers or ex lovers of women murdering the women.

And, uh, at least the first incident that happened about

four weeks ago, it touched the collective Italian psyche so deeply.

The funny thing, you know, there's nothing funny about it.

There's nothing amusing about it yet.

The funny thing is, apparently I read a, a report that said that the

same thing happens 10 times a year.

Only in Italy, a lover or spouse or a former lover, uh, killing their partner

and this being a male killing a female.

Four weeks ago, something like that happened and it was, uh, it really

stirred the collective Italian psyche in a very, very, very big way.

To the extent, if I'm not mistaken, even the Italian premier spoke about It.

it was a conversation in the media, all the media nonstop 24 7 for a

number of days, but it's nothing new.

And me having been in men work for so many years, like for the last 18, 19

years, pretty much nonstop, every day.

For me.

It's not surprising.

'Cause I hear about this because I'm tuned into that, that world, I

hear about this every day in every part of the world a number of times.

And then one or two weeks ago, same thing happened.

We could really categorically say the whole media was saying

that masculinity is in crisis.

And you know, Albert Einstein, a Western sage once said never solve a problem

at the same level of consciousness at which the problem exists.

And why am I saying this to you, Ben, at this moment?

Because the wounded psyche of Italia responding, reacting, you know what

the suggestions on the table are, this is media persons mostly, and

some uninitiated policy makers, all of them uninitiated, unfortunately,

sorry about my judgment, but you know, I can even name names if you

want, about who these uninitiated policy makers and media persons are.

That'll probably not serve our purpose.

But from the place of wound, the suggestions coming up are lock up

these men in prisons without trial.

Two, give a taser, you know, the taser, the instrument, the taser.

The government should give a taser to every adult woman.

Uh, three, double the, the prison sentence for these men.

Four, let's build a lot more, uh, informal prisons across the

country to lock up all these men.

And there might be more, you know, I remember reading a post saying

like, you know, we need to bring the American Second Amendment into

Italia, and the government should donate, gift a gun to every woman.

You know?

So all this keeps coming up.

Nobody can argue that masculinity is in crisis.

Ben.

And the funny thing, and I was, I was talking about this with a very,

very dear, a lady friend of mine a couple of days ago, actually I've,

I've saw one post on social media.

Otherwise, I haven't heard any serious, truly intelligent

conversation or contemplation around men and our upbringing as children.

Nothing, zero, nothing intelligent from anybody who's in a position

of power or authority, nothing,

I remember seeing one post and this post said something like to truly

address masculinity in crisis, we must look at our childhoods.

We should look at the way our mothers brought us up.

I'm just reading out what I remember.

We should look at the way, uh, our fathers were absent.

We should look at the way our, um, unconscious schools function.

You know, there's a lot of, uh, education.

There is something me adding, you know, all the education is on the

objective sciences, on how you can code a website or how you can, uh,

find a country on a map or how you can read and interpret history.

Zero is on the subjective education, the education of the self.

Nothing.

Anyway, back to that post.

Very useful remarks.

Let's look at our parents.

Let's look at our schools.

Let's look at our teachers.

Let's look at our, the kind of peer-to-peer culture we've

created for boys where we all have to show up as macho.

We are constantly competing with our friends.

This one upmanship the media extremely toxic on this land.

I'm sorry to say this is judgmental, but I can only speak

as a consciousness scientist based on the observation I have.

Very toxic.

You know, these are, this is the force field in which these kids grow up.

Anyway, that post was referring to these things.

And the backlash that person received for that post.

Finished.

No conversation around that welcome.

And Ben, you and I, I believe if we want to address masculinity in crisis,

the future of men, we have to go there.

So, yes, the two incidents that I talked about, these are extreme

incidents that clearly demonstrate that masculinity is in crisis.

But you know what?

I can tell you hundreds of everyday incidents that will demonstrate

this in small ways, ways in which every one of us relates to what I

mean by masculinity in crisis, ben.

You know, very frequently when I'm in Italia, you know, whether it is an

Easter or a Christmas or a Halloween, I take the initiative to organize

together with my kids a get together like a potluck get together or anything

else, bringing some children, some friends, some local families, et cetera.

And I have to say, sorry if I sound judgmental again, as a consciousness

scientist, I like to, uh, base my conversations on my observations data.

You know, my son, who's nine, pretty much every boy or girl who comes to

join the parties, they're accompanied by their mothers, fathers absent.

And I ask, you know, where is a dad?

Not that they're separated.

No, dad has other priorities.

Number two is these other 9-year-old boys.

I might be exaggerating.

I'm an Indian, you know, and I, I tend to be exaggerated.

I tend to be dramatic.

But I want to share based on, you know, what I observe.

You know.

The relationship between, I'm Obser, I'm a people watcher, that's one

of my top hobbies, people watching.

I just quietly just watch people for hours.

When I go visiting a city, I don't like to go to the monuments and the museum.

I like to find a squire, sit down and watch people.

There's so much, it's fascinating watching people.

Anyway, I watch these friends of my son.

The relationship between the that son, 9-year-old and the mother

is literally this, a relationship of a bullying boyfriend and a

submissive victim girlfriend.

That is the relationship here in Italia between the mother and the son.

And how does that bullying perpetuate?

I notice this, I notice this often, oftentimes, again,

I'm, I've been watching this.

The mother is telling the boy, Hey, help me with the dishes, or

help me set the table or clear up your toys or go brush your teeth.

And I notice the mother's voice has become a background noise.

There's something very deep for us to explore in how we

are bringing up our boys.

It's just a background noise.

One that doesn't even enter the ear of these boys.

And I'm watching this fascinating.

I don't intervene.

It is literally the mother eventually has to scream at the top of her lungs

before the boy even hears that mother.

There's a land that, uh, prides itself for its motherly

love, the Italian mama thing.

We as pioneers for human evolution as spearheads for human evolution, as

consciousness scientists, we need to challenge all of that, for our own sake,

for the sake of the new generations.

You know, what is a virtue there in that kind of parenting?

I notice this, this relationship sort of a quasi incestuous relationship

there, and that's how they're growing up and they become adults, where I

notice many of these young adult men and they come into my retreats, into

my circles, into my space, I notice they sort of have an en sense of

entitlement towards a woman's love the way they had it with their mothers.

You know, the ever forgiving mother, ever giving mother.

What did they have?

They would say like, you know what?

I want one more mandarin.

The mother gives one more mandarin.

I want one more cookie.

Get a cookie.

I want the latest iPhone.

You get the latest iPhone from the mother.

I want money to go to the McDonald's.

You get the money, no questions asked.

You know, and then I do not make my own cup of tea.

The mother will make it for me.

I don't wash my own underwear.

My mother will do it for me.

You know, I open the refrigerator.

I'm not satisfied with everything, the snacks that, uh, I miss there.

As a boy, my culture is, I scream, mom, why is the refrigerator empty?

I think you recognize all of this as you continue observing.

And then they become a young adult without initiation.

Nothing.

And they carry with them a sense of entitlement for love, for a womanly

love, which is a very legitimate need, that I demand this love, you know,

how dare you individuate yourself.

And in both these cases that I'm talking about, where these women were

murdered, you know, they were murdered because they had withdrawn from the

lives of these two men, and they couldn't handle that loss of love.

Loss of love incidentally, is one of the three, uh, losses

that we can't handle in life.

The other two being the loss of life and the loss of identity.

The loss of love is so wounding for us, so traumatizing for everyone.

True.

You know, it's legitimate.

So I'm not blaming the hurt that comes from the loss of love, but because

there isn't initiations, issues are one, we as men who individuate from

the adolescent into the, uh, adult, we have never truly learned to orient the

locus of attention of love inwards.

In simple language.

Ben, we've never been trained on self-love.

Like, you know, touch wood.

I hope I'm not coming across as arrogant or bragging.

I have self-love.

What does that mean for me?

I love spending time with myself.

Hours every day.

I love spending alone with myself in my companionship, because I love myself.

I don't need, I don't have a hole, uh, in me that needs to be filled

by the presence of other people.

That is how self-love ex, uh, expresses through initiation, we learn self-love.

We discover how divine we are, how incredible we are

as a company for ourselves.

That is completely absent.

Two, initiations helped us cut the emotional umbilical cord with the

mothers, this codependent relationship with mothers so that, you know, we

can show up in the relationships in our lives, especially with the

women around us or the feminine.

Uh, uh, partners around us.

We can show up not from a place of neediness for love, but

from a place of abundant inner love that we want to share and

celebrate with some other person.

You see the difference between that?

When I'm lacking internally, I'm in a vacuum, I'm from, from that place

of lack, I'm desperately looking for a boyfriend or a girlfriend

or a partner, so that this person can come into my life and fill

me up and make me feel complete.

That is a wrong premise for the mature masculine.

It is not even a consideration.

The other alternative is I'm so full of self-love that I'm so effusive of

that love, I'd like a partner to share and celebrate that abundant love with.

That is something that comes from initiation.

But also initiation helps us understand, you know, what

it means to rev the feminine.

You know, because inside us also there's a feminine, and next to us

there are feminine, whoever, not just feminine, all other genders, all other

people, all other races, all other generations, all other cultures, plants,

animals, you know, that appreciation comes through initiation too.

And these are real things.

You know, in the UK I hear such a massive conversation going on around

all these, uh, illegal migrants.

And that conversation is an important conversation to have because, you know

these migrants ideally would be better off in their own homes, in their own,

uh, habitat, in their own communities.

If that kind of, uh, safe and, uh, prosperous conditions

would be created for them.

So it's an important, it's a, it's a relevant conversation to have, and world

leaders must have that conversation.

But a lot of that conversation is mixed with xenophobia, racism.

And this land, me as a, as a foreigner on this land, I can see that, you

know around me all the time, I just choose not to be a victim of somebody

else's, you know, unconsciousness.

That's a personal choice.

But I see that, you know, initiation takes us beyond that, to a place of

awareness where we are connected to each other, through our oneness, through our,

uh, everything that makes us the same.

That, uh, separates us based on these condition notions of separateness.

That is the power of initiation.

And like the stories I was telling you about this, children growing up,

then they individuating, and then they're resorting to violence because

they can't handle the loss of love because they feel there's a sense of

entitlement, there's a, an entrapment that they grew up with, with their

mothers, with their fathers, whatever.

For me, the return of initiation is going to become the most revolutionary

intervention that we are going to bring back to the men kind today.

I mean there's so much, isn't there?

Just even in the phrase masculinity in the sort of culture, which is

why I kind of sort of asked, started with that sort of stupid question

about what you meant by masculinity.

Because in a way the kind of the language of our culture, of our sort

of contemporary culture, you know, particularly over the last sort of 10

years or so, you know, masculinity now sort of is in a way via the lens of

contemporary culture associated with, in a sense, almost something kind of bad.

You know, if you think about hashtag me too movements and all of those where

clearly kind of p men, uh, were kind of abusing kind of positions of power

or strength or whatever it may be.

And in a sense, the whole language, just the word masculinity, uh, becomes

almost a toxic word in a sense.

And so it's kind of really, I was kind of just curious and keen to

hear what you meant by masculinity.

Because it much, 'cause I guess in a sense that's one of the sort of default,

uh, kind of lenses I have that this idea that, oh, ma masculinity is bad.

You know, that's what the culture culture tells us and what we're

sort of talking about there.

Given there are sort of then generations of, uh, men, young or

old who ha who, who don't have that connection, don't have that awareness.

what, how do we sort of start to stitch that back then

into, into people's lives?

Yeah.

You know, it's a, it's a very, very relevant, uh,

reflection you are having, Ben.

If we would say masculinity's bad, then we would have to also agree femininity

is bad, and we simply have to agree that our human existence is bad.

And I would imagine pretty much most human beings, plants

and animals agree with us.

Even the entire, uh, environment agree with us, us the human existence is not

really good for them, and we are proving this, uh, delightfully, uh, with data.

More seriously.

Firstly, it's not my job to go and correct people in a

more scientific way, you know?

Oh, no, wait a moment.

You know, that's an inaccurate statement.

When somebody says masculinity is bad.

Everybody's entitled to their own vocabulary.

The way, in a more scientific way, I look at masculinity.

That we look at masculinity simple.

It is a certain awareness that exists within every sentient

being as femininity is.

You know, now, if you look at some of the attributes of the

masculine, the conventionally spoken, I'm not talking about men.

I'm talking about the masculine.

You know, we talk about some of this, uh, the, the spirit of, uh, freeness.

I talk about, you know, this orientation towards a vision, uh,

higher purpose, integrity, you know, where your word word is, your law.

Um, the idea of, uh, valor honor, all these things.

Principle centeredness, the more straightforward simplicity,

determination, focus, firmness, you know, these are all qualities

associated with the masculine.

That is masculinity.

Like in know, femininity, there are different set of attributes

associated with the feminine, the gentle, the caring, the nurturing,

uh, the more creative, the more intuitive, uh, et cetera, is

associated with the inner femininity.

So that's a different awareness that we carry with it.

You used a word predatory.

That is a helpful segue to understand masculinity in more detail.

There is a egoic masculine, or the adolescent masculine, or,

you know, I hear these days more words like juvenile, masculine,

toxic, masculine, et cetera.

You know, there is an uninitiated, a condition masculine that is

really predatory, while the mature masculine is the protector, the

juvenile masculine is a predator.

that is a egoic masculine.

And how do you classify that one?

You know, I can throw some attributes at you that you will nod your head

about, like the macho, this competitive one, the one who's, I'm the winner.

I'm right.

You know, you see that in the policymaking circles all the time.

You know, those kind of personalities.

The controlling, the dominant, the totalitarian, the authoritarian, even

the manipulative, the predatorial, you know, these are all attributes

of the adolescent masculine.

Because there are no experts today, either who don't understand that much,

the true masculinity, or they lack the courage because of which, We don't take

the time to have this conversation, to help distinguish between, you

know, what is the mature masculine and what is the adolescent masculine.

You know, humanity cannot exist in the absence of the masculine,

as humanity cannot exist in the absence of the feminine, how

much ever science might advance.

Now all, all these institutions, look at the, the fire persons, the

plumbers, the electricians, the timber workers, the masons, the construction

workers, Somehow it's 90% or more men.

You know, at the same time, it's also very helpful to look at same statistics.

You know, more than 90% of those incarcerated are men.

In most of the Western countries, more than two third

of those who suicide are men.

Uh, almost every homeless person who does not receive shelter is a man.

Mental health challenges that goes, uh, untreated, men,

Incidentally, for 14 days from now, I'm actually recording for

Netflix for the OTT platforms, a documentary, eight episode docuseries

on initiation to the mature masculine.

It's a big budget thing.

You know, people have been super generous and, you know, we've continued

to collect funds and we brought a great production team together,

and a great set of participants, men who are uh, very courageous to,

uh, agree to do this walk with me.

I'll facilitate it.

And be open and authentic on camera, to ensure that hundreds

of millions of people, you know, get into a proper and accurate

conversation about what's going on.

You know, it's very nice in the new age movement to throw out their

talking points without understanding the science and the true reality.

And one of the, uh, three intentions of this docuseries is to cultivate greater

compassion at every level of society.

Greater compassion for the challenges that men face.

You know, you talk about domestic violence, I have actually held space

for so many men who've been incarcerated or put in juvenile centers, et

cetera, because of domestic violence.

And I listen to them and repeatedly I hear them say so

did you have to believe me?

I'm not that person.

I'm not that person that I've been framed to be, or

I've been portrayed to be.

I'm not.

And I believe that 'cause we all have duality that you are a very nice person.

I'm a very nice person until somebody shows me a finger.

Who knows?

Shows me a middle finger.

I get so triggered suddenly from being all this Jekyll.

I become the Hyde.

And initiation is also one where we reclaim our inner authority, uh, Ben.

One where I come to a place of pure presence where your finger, your

middle finger, I will interpret your middle finger more as a representation

of your reality rather than mine.

You are showing me the middle finger that shows that you are unhappy.

It doesn't say anything about who I am.

To offer that, to put that agency back in your code.

Comes from initiation.

Back to the masculinity thing, it is important to

distinguish a couple of things.

One, pointless trying to bash masculinity, because that is

equivalent of self bashing.

Every one of us, we have the inner masculine within, whether we are in

a male form or a female form, or a transgender form, doesn't matter.

We have masculinity within bashing it, no help.

I can tell you enough stories of where, you know, there are institutions

with only women and they don't exist anymore, you know, simply because

these institutions don't have diversity and they get into other set of crisis

that male only organizations get into.

Either ways not helpful.

Distinguishing between the, the adolescent, the juvenile masculine

and the mature, the divine, the sacred masculine is important.

So yes, completely, you know, masculinity is in crisis?

Oh, absolutely it is in crisis.

I would be the first person to say that.

And I think pretty much everyone around me agrees with it.

Some of my greatest friends and partners are feminist or feminist

organizations, big champions.

You know, this documentary that I'm making, the kind of help

I've received from feminist organizations is phenomenal,

because we have the same cause.

They recognize that I'm doing something about, something

that is creating divisions, inequality, violence in society.

That's men's work, uh, about.

So even they, these friends of mine, they do recognize, yes, there is a,

a positive component to masculinity as there is an egoic component.

And to take a step back dispassionately asking what is it that we can do in a,

in a, in a genuine way, not like, you know, this, crappy suggestions like

taser, uh, or a gun given to every woman and, you know, creating all

this informal and temporary jails to lock up every second man, et cetera.

You know, uh, it's interesting, uh, to laugh about with a cup of tea.

I'm, I'm, so, I'm conscious of, of your time, but there's a couple of

other things that I've just, I'm really kind of curious about within, within

the, the context of this one is, um, is it the, the this, so the, this the

kind of lack of an initiation I can, I'm sort of really kind of feeling an

understanding that the thread of what you're talking about, is it, you know,

to what extent is it possible, um, for initiation to be experienced at any age?

'Cause in a sense, we started talking about initiation,

uh, by your own experience, like the, the kind of 15, 16.

I was thinking very much about my own boys in that.

Uh, but then as you kind of have spoken, thinking about my own, uh,

my kind of own life, life growing up.

And so kind of conscious about, um, curious about whether the

extent to which initiation can be experienced at, at any age.

And the other thing which was just in my mind, which you can sort of go with or

not go with, uh, you were sort of, you were talking about like the, the kind of

egoic drives around kind of masculinity.

And one of the other things I was sort of struck by, which obviously

also just reflects my, so I'm 51 and so kind of, you know, noting as kind

of 51, a lot of those egoic drives of, you know, sort of start to kind

of lose, lose their hold somewhat.

And I guess the thing that I was thinking about as you were sort

of talking is, that's sort of, you know, despite a kind of initiation.

So just the kind of passage of time a little bit.

And I, and I kind of also kind of feeling that that leaves

men, particularly around that sort of age a little bit lost.

I was reflecting on a conversation I was having with someone and we

were talking about this idea of masculinity, but not from this lens.

'Cause what he was sort of saying was that he was sort of appreciating

not needing to be top of the pile, not needing to kind of win, not

needing to have the most vocal voice.

Uh, and in a sense it was sort of like the kind of relief of time for

him kind of meant that he could sort of step into a little bit more, uh,

the, the kind of wise masculine state that you were sort of talking about.

You know, there are a couple of layers to this question and, uh,

I wanna make sure that I address all those layers appropriately.

And the first one is around, you know, when is the right time?

The best time is the teen years.

In our tradition, we aim between 15 and 19 as the best window.

And why is that the best window?

Um, is because, you know, remember that is a time of great

individuation going on within men.

You go back to the time you were 15, and I go back, I, I understand, uh, this,

that we are so searching ourselves, we are so unsure of ourselves, we so

mask our insecurity with this macho, confident thing, which is exactly

what, uh, it, uh, uh, exposes that is insecurity, it is all insecure men who

have this, this confident, macho facade.

The truly confident men are the wise quiet men who have no show off.

You know, the ones who are so comfortable in their skin that they

have nothing to prove that I'm right.

I'm the winner.

I am like the next incarnation of the divine.

Nothing.

You know, uh, they're not kind of peacocking or anything.

They're the wise elders, you know, like that.

Um, this indivi individuation time, uh, when you are a teenager is the

best time because we are so deeply searching that if only the resources

would be available for initiation.

And number two, I would just have the humility to, you know what,

I'm not the know it all, just out of a pure sense of adventure, I'm

happy to jump into initiation.

That if that motive is there and the resources are provided for,

poof, they will be an alchemy that happens across society.

And here, before I forget, I wanna say this, you know, among your audience

for that recent bet, if there are people who are, doesn't matter of

what gender they are, if they are truly caring about the societal cause,

about the relational cause, about the educational cause, about the children's

course, about the men's course, about women's course, then I welcome them to

be part of this conversation through whatever channel that you offer.

I welcome them to reach out to me and ask questions.

I welcome them to open doors to policy makers who have the courage,

to do something genuinely difference making for men and for of course,

the women and children and people of other genders around them.

You know, I wanna put that invitation out.

Let's, let's expand this conversation so that we do the right thing,

rather than think about, you know, more informal prisons and locking

up men without any trials and giving a gun and taser to every woman.

Those kind of things, those are not serious people.

You should not even take them seriously.

So those courageous policy makers or social leaders who want to be

part of the solution, initiation for me, I have to say, is the greatest

intervention to transform the course.

Of the history making we are part of.

And I can say that authoritatively from the age of 15, for the

last 36 years, I've been in men's work on every continent.

Some people even call me one of the pioneers or the current modern

fathers of the modern men's movement.

You know, I've been involved with men of all ages, all races,

all uh, uh, uh, continents.

And I've been the founder of the, the festivals of brotherhood in many

different countries, and some of them are still running beautifully.

I've been more than 500 plus sacred circles for men.

I've been instrumental in launching worldwide because these are safe spaces.

These are sacred spaces where men can come and do their healing and grow, be

authentic, connect, heal, all of that.

Having been in all of this.

I can authoritatively say that any man who would jump into initiation

will never regret it, because that is the greatest gift that he can give

himself, or society can give men.

I would say every school should reintroduce initiations.

The kind of benefits that will come out of it is so huge that it

is a policy, it'll become a policy initiative when you start seeing

the difference that it makes.

You know?

But it's not only to your question then only for 15 to 19 year olds?

No, I've had a man who was 82 or 83-year-old who came into one of

my eight day walks of initiation.

You know, the only challenge is the older and older we get, the

more difficult it becomes for us to subtract old conditioning.

That is the only challenge there.

It takes a little bit more effort than for a teenager to peel old conditioning

in order to welcome the new that is already resident within each man.

So I welcome, you know, even this walk we are doing, the one that is

being recorded, the age bracket is, I don't know, maybe from 20 to 60.

everyone, the, it's never too late to jump into an initiation like that.

Younger than 15, I personally, I know there are probably some traditions

where even at 13 initiations happen, but younger than 15, my feeling

is there are men not yet ready for that kind of cutting the, um,

political cord from the old life.

That's beautiful.

Sujith.

Um, so I'm conscious, I'm conscious of time.

So, uh, where, where, where can people, uh, 'cause I appreciate also your,

your kind of, your, your invitation to, to widen the, widen the conversation

to, to bring more people in.

Where would people, uh, where can people best find you?

The easiest would be social media.

I mean, if somebody would Google my name, I think, uh, there would be many

hundreds of hits around men's work and probably some emails would be available.

The safest, the surest way would be through LinkedIn, uh, Facebook, uh,

you know, platforms where I'm not personally very active, but those are

active platforms thanks to beloved friends who, who kind of manage them.

Yeah.

we'll we'll include all of the, uh, links to, to your work and, and

websites and, and things like that.

So, uh, we'll include all of that in, in the notes for sure.

Is, is there any kind of, uh, sort of parting thought that you'd like

to leave, leave our listener with?

Firstly I'm so grateful, Ben, you know, that we had this

conversation, and you know, you gave me permission to be as candid

as possible, uh, as provocative as possible, and I'm grateful for that.

You know, that is, those are the kind of conversations that, make a difference.

Uh, you know, we don't have to be politically correct about how divine.

Our mothers are, our fathers are, and how we cannot criticize

or, uh, uh, evaluate our schooling system, et cetera.

No.

And having that kind of a conversation and you holding space

for that, I'm grateful for that.

This is a fundamentally essential conversation to have in the

most truthful manner, manner.

The absence of truthfulness or political correctness already

demonstrates the absence of masculinity because masculinity is

associated with fierce truthfulness.

We take a stand for principle over anybody's hurt emotions because

of the, the truth we speak.

Truth always hurts.

It hurts somebody or the other.

And what has happened, at least around me in these nine, 10 countries that

I frequent every year, you know, helping, policymaking and other men's

work, they're way too polite, way too nice to be truthful or honest.

And my invitation, my, my parting invitation, my remark is, you know,

let's bring truthfulness back so that something that needs to be discussed

in the right spirit so that right action can be mobilized, can be done.

Whatever the choice of words should not separate us.

Uh, the truth that is spoken should unite us instead.

That would be a parting reminder for myself.

Ah, beautiful Sujith.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you so much to be continued.

Thank you again for listening.

We really hope you enjoyed that conversation.

As ever, if you like what we're doing, uh, if you think anyone, if

anyone you know, would benefit from listening to this conversation, enjoy

it or dislike it even as much as you have, please feel free to share it.

Uh, we really appreciate you taking the time to do that.

The sharing is the lifeblood of this sharing and liking.

I think are the, the currency of our modern time.

So if you take a moment to, you know, share it with somebody

who you think would benefit, we hugely appreciate that.

Or even take some time to write a review.

Uh, irrespective, if you like what we're doing, you can

find out more if you search up peripheral-thinking.com, you'll find

your way to the podcast website.

You can sign up there, you can register there.

You can keep abreast of everything that we're doing.

We'd be sure to keep you notified as soon as the next conversations go live.

Meantime, thanks again for your time.

Thanks again for your ears, uh, and we look forward to

you joining us next time.