What It Means to Me to be A Man

As I sit here in stillness this morning, with the leaves beginning to fall from the trees outside onto the dew-laden earth beneath my feet, I am guided back to a memory from my childhood.

I am six-years-old and I have been taken by my stepfather to a house down the street. It is the home of ‘Angus’, a thirty-something-year-old Scottish man who has somehow found his way to live in a small council estate in Loughborough. I am sitting alone and looking at the large glass tank which is a feature piece in his small living room. Inside the tank is a large yellow corn snake; which, clearly to my now mature mind, was his pride and joy. My nostrils are filled with a familiar smell of smoke behind the mask of incense that is burning away somewhere in the room. It is dark and musty inside, and the deep, angry tones of a few male voices in the kitchen are echoing in my ears. I am wondering why I am here. It seems like no place for a boy of my innocent years.

As I sit silently and observe my surroundings, my stepfather rushes into the room and grabs me. In the blink of an eye, I now find myself clinging onto his fleece as he stands in front of me on his pushbike. ‘Keep your legs outstretched and hold on tight!’ He shouts at me as he begins peddling frantically away from the house. The rapidly passing streetlights create a strobe effect in my eyes. I stretch my legs out as far and wide as I possibly can to avoid being caught by the rotating peddles. I can hear my stepfathers’ heavy breaths. We move like rats escaping a snakes’ jaws.

Two days later, I come home to the news that my stepfather is in hospital. He has had his jaw badly broken and his face has been fitted with metal plates to hold it together. It turns out that Angus was a drug dealer, and my stepfather had been stealing cocaine from him. He had taken me along to Angus’s house as a form of protection, having known what was coming his way.

My mind is filled with childhood memories like this. My father figures were cowardly, weak and too afraid to face up to the consequences of their own actions. I have spent my entire life trying to determine what it means to be a man, looking back at memories like these to learn what it means to not be one. Here is what I have learnt so far about what it takes to be a man:

1) A man places truth above all, especially his own ego.

Though I often write with a critical voice towards the men that raised me, I am grateful to have had a mother who has been instrumental in making me the man that I am today. She has been one of my greatest role models and taught me about both the light and the dark. She had parenting methods that I agreed with, and some that, in hindsight, I was completely against. I understood, despite her many mistakes as a parent, that she was trying her best to raise me and my siblings with love to set us up for the life ahead of us. She did all that she had to to keep me safe throughout my early life, and instilled me with many morals that have served me well until today.

One thing that my mother couldn’t stand was a liar. If I was ever caught telling a lie when I was a child, I was met with her fiercest and most fiery side. Having watched the men in my life tell lie after lie, and end up in trouble time and time again, it is no wonder that she didn’t want me and my siblings doing the same. We were taught to tell the truth at all times, and this often came at the expense of ourselves, our own pride, and often brought forth feelings of fear and shame.

I felt, at times, the deepest shame throughout my childhood. We were a financially poor family, and I often wandered into school with holes in my clothes and shoes. I learnt how to tell little white lies about our family circumstances to avoid having to tell my peers that we were indeed, poor and living off of government benefit payments. When it came to the important things, however, I always understood the importance of telling the absolute Truth. When I was younger, I was taken to church, and told about the ‘God’ that was sitting on a cloud above watching and judging everything that went on down beneath him. Although I have now, thankfully, abandoned my beliefs in this version of ‘God’, my experiences within the church environment further taught me the importance of telling the truth.

To understand the ‘Truth’ as an adult, one must be willing to surrender ones own fragile ego. We are all telling ourselves stories on a daily basis, and the stories that we tell ourselves often influence our views of other people. How we see ourselves is how we see the world, after all. Therefore, we all have an innate tendency to manufacture our own version of the truth, bypassing the fact that there is one Truth that rules over all.

As a man begins to mature, and goes out in pursuit of the Truth of his existence, it is important that he works to develop his awareness - to, as Eckhart Tolle writes in ‘The Power of Now’, become the observer of his own thoughts, emotions and actions. When a man can observe, objectively, his own thoughts, emotions and actions throughout his life, he can begin to build his understanding of the greater forces that are at play, driving this existence beyond his own desires and his own ego. It is then that a man can see that there is a universal Truth, beyond the stories that he tells to protect himself and his own image. When a man develops his awareness, and goes beyond his own impulses, urges and desires, he can attune himself to the Nature of all things and surrender himself to a higher power.

2) A man surrenders to a higher power, and avoids playing the role of God in his world.

I used to feel such resistance and hatred towards the word ‘God’. Having spent six years throughout my teenage life contained within the prison walls of an organised religion, feeling a deep sense shame for having any earthly impulses and desires, and waking up every day feeling the judgment of the egoic, heavenly ‘God’ that was sat up on a cloud pointing ‘his’ finger at me, it is no surprise that the very mention of the word caused my body to constrict.

Over the past few years, I have been making peace with my past within the Pentecostal Church setup, understanding my mother’s reasons for dragging me and my siblings along every Sunday, sometimes twice a day, and trying hard to see the ‘good’ in my experiences within what I now believe to be a religious cult.

What my experiences within the church taught me during these precious early years, was to believe in a higher power. Although, in hindsight, this belief was, in fact, imprisoning, and caused me to give away so much of my own power as an unlimited, sovereign being, it did teach me that there are many things that are, quite simply, well out of my control. This enables me to allow my mind to rest.

Our human logical and rational minds have a deep desire to control every outcome, and sometimes this means that we even attempt to control each other: playing God in our own worlds. Much, if not all of our own suffering comes as a result of our desires to control, and the resulting anger that follows when something doesn’t play out as our minds may have wanted.

My understanding of quantum physics and ‘the Universe’, ‘source’, ‘spirit’, or, dare I say it ‘God’, mean that I understand that there is some kind of existence beyond my immediate egoic Self. I am, therefore, no longer the ‘God of my own world’, and this allows me to find peace whenever something doesn’t go as I would have liked. I can rest knowing that everything is working out as it has to for the highest purpose. This very belief that ‘everything is energy’ is also what contributes to my reluctance to use my knowledge and skills to manipulate other people and lead with the ‘Truth’ in every encounter in the physical world.

3) A man looks within to learn and grow at every opportunity.

‘Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.’
- Carl Jung

The pursuit to ‘know thyself’ is the ultimate life quest. There are no conversations that I enjoy more than one with a person that has placed self-inquiry and self-actualisation at the forefront of their life’s purpose. There is something different about a person that speaks from a place of this kind of self-awareness, talking objectively about themselves and their own life experiences.

True wisdom, I believe can only come from within. Knowledge can easily be obtained by anyone from books and training courses and regurgitated by the logical, rational mind, but true knowledge is something that can only be felt. True knowledge is accrued only through ‘feeling’ our own experiences and exploring our own inner worlds to link our experiences in the outer world to that within.

We must, therefore, walk through this life with one eye closed and looking inwards at all times, understanding that every experience and encounter; every relationship with another, is trying to teach us something about ourselves. We are cocreating our collective reality with every interaction, every thought, and every seed planted inside of our own inner worlds.

There is a divine intelligence inside of all of us that prioritises self-growth. Our subconscious mind is constantly trying to get our attention to teach us about ourselves as it seeks nothing more but to expansion and growth; just like the trees in the woodland through which we walk in the outer world.

‘As above, so below. As within, so without. As the Universe, so the soul.’
- Hemes Trismegistus

We have a choice to become victims or victors every day. We can spend the rest of our lives looking outwardly at the events taking place all around us, blaming and scathing other people and criticising their decisions. Every time we look outwardly at the world in such a state, we are, quite simply, living in avoidance; we are avoiding the pain of looking within to see our own inner turmoil and dissatisfaction with and unacceptance of ourselves. We avoid looking at the only thing that we have control over, and that is ourselves and our own actions.

When we look outside, we become victims. When we look inside, we become the victors; winning the inner battle that is responsible for creating the battles in the outer world.

4) A man escapes the comfort and delusion of his own fantasy and goes out into the real world.

I first picked up a PlayStation controller when I was around the age of five. My stepfather had one and used to spend almost every waking minute sitting in his dressing gown on the sofa playing on it. Me and my sister woke up early one morning and went downstairs before he had woken up and began to play on it. I still remember it clearly to this day. It was the first day of the next twenty years of my life. I was addicted from the first minute. I found comfort in the imaginary, fantasy worlds, and computer games became my escape from the cold, harsh reality of my real existence.

Instead of doing what most of my ‘normal’ teenage friends were doing throughout our adolescence: getting drunk, exploring and pushing boundaries, fooling around with girls, and finding themselves and developing their interests, I was mostly found sat alone in my bedroom playing on my PlayStation. I got really good at gaming. I could pick up a new game and have it mastered within a day or two. In university, computer games would be the reason that I missed the majority of my lectures and ended up dropping out early. If I wasn’t drinking, I would be dissociating and escaping my reality through gaming.

My addiction became really dangerous around my early twenties. I would work in a supermarket throughout the day, play computer games avidly in the evenings, and then go out drinking and partying on the weekend. The only taste of reality that I really had was during my time at work. I had very little curiosity for the world and no desire to learn any new skills or pick up any hobbies. In hindsight, I know that I was nursing some symptoms of childhood PTSD for many of my early years. Gaming, drinking and partying was my escape from the traumatic youth that had left its’ mark on me psychologically and emotionally. It was much easier to live in my fantasy world, dreaming about the life that I wanted than it was to go out and create it.

I began to change my own life during my mid-twenties. I had escaped my own fantasy world and got myself a girlfriend for the first time. Fast-forward nine months and I had my first taste of heartbreak and spent the next month or two grieving the loss of someone that I had loved for the first time. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I turned off the computer games, hit the gym hard, and began turning my pain into muscle. I picked up a camera and a pen and started telling stories to the world through an Instagram page that I set up to document my transformation and tell the story of a man who wanted to make something out of his life.

I eventually went on to escape the four walls of the gym and ventured outdoors into the real world with a camera in hand one day. I turned the camera away from myself and towards the natural world, and the rest, they, say, is history. No longer do I hide away from the world in the safety of my bedroom behind a screen, interacting with people through microphones and headpieces. I am facing audiences through public speaking engagements, putting my most vulnerable Self out into the world through my photographs and writings, and standing up for things that I believe in. This is the kind of courage that, I believe, makes a man. It is in environments like these, when a man faces his own fears and opens himself up to judgment and ridicule from his peers, that he allows himself the space to grow and develop spiritually, stepping into true masculinity.

5) A man creates purpose and places this above all.

I spent a large part of my late teens and early twenties feeling extremely disconnected from this world. In fact, when I come to think of it, I was largely disconnected throughout my entire life up until the age of 25 when I embarked on what might be described as a ‘spiritual awakening’.

When I say that I was disconnected from this world, what I really mean is that I was disconnected from myself.

There were times throughout my childhood when I was labelled as ‘too soft’, ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too emotional’. I was called all kinds of names by the men that were supposed to be showing and teaching me love because I didn’t live up to what their idea of a ‘man’ was.

Men should be angry. Men should drink and take drugs. Men should spit on the floor in public. Men should ‘own’ their women, physically and psychologically. And men most definitely should not display their feelings and reveal emotions to the world.

I wished that I was someone else for much of my childhood. I craved acceptance from these men and I often wondered why I was so ‘weird’ for being the exact opposite of what they wanted.

I spent much of my teens and early twenties disconnected from reality and escaping into different worlds via computer games, pretending that I was the characters inside of them. Most of my friends were finding, or already half way along their paths by this age. I ended up following the crowd, trying to play catch up.

I went to university. Failed my first year. Went back to college. Stayed there for a month. Went back to my old university town for a party during freshers week. Decided to stay a little longer and ignored all of the phone calls from college. Signed back up to redo my first year and left the college. Proceeded to drop out of university after a few months. Got a job stacking shelves to pay off some debts. Partied a lot more. Took a few holidays with the ‘lads’. Stacked shelves for six years. Applied for the Royal Marines. Got deferred for a year because of an operation. Found a girlfriend. Thought my life was made.

I was 24 when this relationship began. It was my first and I thought that it would be my only. My first step father always told me that I would find a beautiful blonde girl, marry her and live happily ever after. I thought she was ‘the one’. It ended for good after 9 months when things became a little too serious for her. She was with another guy just a few weeks later whilst I was lying on my bed crying into my pillowcase wondering what on earth to do with my life now.

I was 25 years old. No money. A car that I could barely afford the repayments for. Dead end job with no prospects. And now I was alone with absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I was helplessly lost.

Love can change a person. Thank god, it changed me.

The heartbreak sent me into a very deep state of introspection. My questioning process began. I began peeling back some of my many layers to get down to my core. I decided to reinvent myself. Twice. The first version of me that I built after my heartbreak was one centred around rebuilding my shattered ego. I posted photographs of myself in the gym as a statement to the girl that hurt me. I had an awful lot to prove. I wanted to ‘be a man’. Strong. Stoic. Untouchable. The second version? Well, that is really me. The child behind my many masks. Emotional. Sensitive. Vulnerable. Honest

Finally, I think I have found my true self. Or, perhaps I have spent the last six years creating him.

With that has come an incredible and sometimes incomprehensible sense of purpose. Amongst all of my pain, I found the key to life: a deep and powerful reason for living.

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
- Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

That sense of purpose is what has given me a truly wonderful half a decade of life. Along my path towards purpose, I have met and conversed with so many incredible and inspiring souls, and, most recently, I have met my soulmate with whom I have now been in a relationship with for almost eighteen months. One of her favourite things about me is the fact that I stand firmly in my own truth and have a clear sense of direction in life. I am of the belief that, for a relationship to work in the long term, a man needs to have a clear direction in which to lead in the physical world, and a reason for being that is much bigger than his relationship.

6) A man owns his own destiny.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a dream to live life on my own terms. I spent a good few years following the path of the masses, working for companies in my teenage years and early adulthood but it never really fulfilled me. I had no idea who I was up until the age of 26 when life dealt me some turbulence and I was forced to get to know who I was and what I was doing here on this planet.

The strongest men, I believe, are those that know who they are and are walking their own path through life; a path that is different to most and has no fixed ending in mind. Most people go through life following a blueprint. There aren’t many who truly know themselves and have decided to which port they are sailing. Most men are stuck, working 9-5 jobs with no way out. They watch the clock until it finally strikes 5pm on their 65th birthday and they can press the escape button and enjoy the rest of their years in retirement.

I have been dreaming for some time of having a different life to the masses. I want to be one of those men that walks his own path and goes to the grave with pride, knowing that I gave everything that I had inside to a cause that was my own. My formational years weren’t particularly ‘normal’, so why would I now try to live a life that is deemed as that? If I am to be true to myself then I have no choice but to make something out of the deep pain that I felt throughout my formational years. I also have to stand up for myself and what I believe in, despite it being different to what my mother has raised me to believe. She took me along to a church throughout my teenage years, and, for the most part, I hated it. I couldn’t wait to turn 16 so that I could start working every Sunday to avoid making the 30 mile round trip to go to church.

Most men, from what I have observed throughout my life so far, never truly find their own voice or develop their own beliefs. They never begin to question what they have been taught since they were children. The voices of their mothers and fathers live on through them, and they continue to care for the approval and validation of their parents until well into the latter years of their lives. In my opinion, a ‘real man’ is one that has spent some time developing his own thoughts, opinions and beliefs, and has disconnected emotionally from his parents to forge his own path and find his own reason for being. It is particularly important, I believe, that a man severs his emotional connection with his own mother, especially if he is to give his heart over to another woman and lead the way on his own path through life.

7) A man embraces challenges, particularly those from the feminine.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

Challenges arise in life to test our capacity as men. Only the strongest will make it through. On the other side there are often no rewards; just a stronger, more whole and healed version of ourselves waiting for us. A real man knows this, and walks headstrong into the fires knowing that he is about to be forged into a weapon capable of handling further challenges that the world throws his way.

Only a coward hides away in his bedroom and avoids facing the challenges of this existence. I have been one of those, and I made the decision a few years ago to not hide from a single challenge that arises in my lifetime moving forwards. I have now spent the past six years moving towards them and facing all of my fears instead of running away from them.

A relationship, as I have learnt so far, is the ultimate spiritual test. The dynamics at play in our intimate lives are preparing us for our time out in the real world. The feminine, as in my own experience, loves to test the masculine. She wants to see whether he is worthy of her love, and whether he is a worthy father to her future children. She wants to know that she is safe to express whatever comes to her in any given moment. She wants to challenge him to see him grow, and she does this mostly subconsciously. The feminine challenge is the ultimate act of love.

It is our duty as men, to step up, face the discomfort, and embrace these challenges. This is how we learn: about ourselves, her, and the world in which we live. This is how we connect on the deepest level. This is how we grow into the most powerful versions of ourselves. This is how our consciousness expands and we move forwards as a species. This is how you prove your worth to your partner, and build the deepest level of trust and intimacy in your love life. By overcoming the challenges in our intimate lives, our blades are sharpened for the challenges that will inevitably arise in the real world.

8) A man keeps his heart open in times of difficulty.

In my opinion, this is the truest test of a man: to remain open and not shutdown emotionally when the inevitable storms sweep across his internal landscape. The truest tests that I have faced in recent times, are during those moments when me and my beautiful partner encounter difficulties in our relationship and when, as is natural for the feminine, she purges and heals her deepest personal and collective trauma, moves through emotional and psychological turmoil, and, therefore, things in our relationship aren’t how my ego would like them to be; comfortable, safe and secure.

A man should be capable of keeping his heart open during the difficult periods in relationships, and life in general; to ensure that he doesn’t shutdown emotionally and withdraw from the world to keep his wounded heart safe and protected. Of course, it is completely natural that, sometimes, as men, we are going to want to withdraw when things get tough, but, we must remember that a man with a heart that is closed for too long will become numb, closed off to the world and, therefore, stifle his own spiritual growth and development. A man that can walk through the world with his heart wide open, however, feeling the pain and pleasure cycles that will inevitably come his way, ensures that he allows the true nature of consciousness to forge him into the most powerful of weapons, capable of creating change and taming the dark forces that wander across the earth.

When we keep our hearts open, we learn: about ourselves, our feminine counterparts, and the world in which we live. This is how we connect on the deepest level. This is how we grow into the most powerful versions of ourselves. By keeping our hearts open, we allow ourselves to feel the depths of whatever is coming up inside of us. This is how we expand our emotional capacity. This is how our consciousness expands and we move forwards as a species. This is how we prove our worth to our partners, grant them the space that they need to heal, and build the deepest level of trust and intimacy in our love lives, and with the entire world as a result.

9) A man ventures into the darkness to face his own shadow before it unconsciously rules over his life.

‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’
- Carl Jung

Some research shows that 90% of our decision-making occurs subconsciously. This means that our brain is forming perceptions and making assumptions that are based on beliefs that are often inherited, past experiences, and the often-unconscious projections of others. Have you ever caught yourself saying something that you actually don’t believe in? Something that you may have once heard another person saying? This kind of behaviour is inauthentic.

As children and young adults, this is how we learn: we mimic other people and adopt their behaviours, mannerisms and ways of talking. This is great if your father is Albert Einstein, but, perhaps, not so great if your father is a drug dealer or an alcoholic, and you don’t have the capability to determine ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ at a young age.

It is important, I believe, that, as we venture into adulthood, we learn to determine the difference between what is really ‘us’, and what are the behaviours and actions that we are still repeating unconsciously, that aren’t congruent with who we truly are beyond our own conditioning.

A man ruled by his shadow becomes angry, violent, abusive, and manipulative. He may lie, cheat, steal and bully his was to ‘the top’. He may become a womanizer and coerce the feminine to get what he desires, rather than approaching with honesty, truth, vulnerability and, ultimately, love.

It is vital that, as young men, we recognise our capacity to be all of this. In what I believe to be one of the greatest movies of all time, Gladiator, for its’ attention and depiction of the masculine psyche, and the great inner battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, we see a marvellous and unforgettable rivalry between Maximus (light) and Commodus (dark). Throughout the movie, we see Maximus leading with great purpose, truth, honour, justice, and integrity. Commodus, the shadow ruler of Rome, leads with anger, resentment, injustice, pride, and, ultimately, his own ego.

In our pursuits to become more Maximus, it is important, I believe, that we also recognise where we have been Commodus-like in our own lives: where we, too, have bullied, lied, cheated, stolen, manipulated and coerced other people to get our own needs met. We must constantly reflect upon the lessons learnt and mistakes made throughout our own youth, so that we know how not to be in our adult lives when we acquire greater power and authority in the world.

Read more: Gladiator - The Ultimate Study of Masculinity

10) A man owns his gifts and recognises the dark potential of them.

There is no doubt in my mind that every human being here on earth has some incredibly unique and powerful gifts that can be brought to the world. Our gifts, as with anything, have the potential to be used for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ purposes.

In the book, ‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover’ by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, the authors explore the ‘magician’ archetype, which is the spiritual side of the psyche. As my mind understands this archetype, it looks at how we can use spiritual and psychological understanding to deepen our awareness of Self and other.

In my own experience so far, I have used this understanding to open myself to the world, and, in return, I have found that more people open up to me. Using this ability for ‘light’, I can lend support to people when they ask for it and help them by sharing my own life’s wisdom. It has also allowed me to launch a podcast and dive into people and their ‘why’s’ behind their own creativity. If used for darker purposes, I recognise that I have the potential to open people up and plant seeds inside of them that could, perhaps, be used for my own gain.

In recent times, people have been coming to ask for my opinions on their photographs. I recognise the power dynamic here, and I am well aware of the vulnerability that a person shows by asking for another person’s thoughts on their own creative works. It is incredibly important, I believe, that I continue to recognise the place of the ego in a situation like this, because, if I were to become consumed by my own, it could lead to my abuse of such power in pursuit of feelings of grandiosity and self-importance. Maybe I would start to put people down to make myself feel better, much like the weak stepfathers that led me through my early years.

Tying all of this in to the previous point, I believe that it is of the utmost importance to bring into the light, what, perhaps, might be hidden in the darkness. Many of our desires on this earth have been repressed and suppressed for so long that we fail to acknowledge that they exist at all. Repressing them further is a dangerous act, I believe, and could be the cause of many of humanities wider issues. It could be the reason that men, for example, lash out in anger, cheat on their spouses, and enjoy the thrill of fighting with another man. By recognising the desires of the egoic mind, I can increase my own awareness, further distance myself from the ego and move closer to the soul, which prioritises unity, oneness, authenticity, and the absolute Truth at all times.