Understanding the three stages of a man’s evolution :

There are three primary stages that a man moves through on his journey into manhood, his masculine energy matures and evolves in a specific manner. Throughout boyhood, his energy begins to rise and build from his root, which is the place within which we hold raw, primal, life-force and vitality, which contains a reservoir of the energy we need to grow into each phase of our existence. When he reaches adolescence he begins to experience that energy more viscerally, up until early manhood in which he is then challenged to work with this energy in order to harness it consciously towards pursuits that will serve his wellbeing and growth. Because modern living has disconnected most men and women from knowing how to direct and use their primal energy efficiently, the common tendency is to burn through our vital reserves of energy, long before we’re into our early thirties. Our vital energy is designed to be used consciously, and sparingly, rather than scattered and spilt through the over consumption of foods, and addictions to pursuits which squander our precious energy. In the case of men, not only does this result in the deterioration of a man’s sexual health leading to poor sperm quality and erectile dysfunction, it also deeply hinders and impacts his mental and emotional wellbeing. For this reason, it is extremely important to understand the three stages of your energetic evolution and begin consciously assessing where you are over-spending your energy and how you can utilise it with more care.

The red stage :

In this stage of a man’s development, he is learning to harness the raw, feral, primal part of his energy which exists to help him test, challenge, strengthen and explore his energy so he begins learning of what he is capable of creating with his life-force. if he is given guidance by an elder that has already walked in his shoes and learnt how to harness and direct the force that is masculine primal fire in it’s early stages of development, then perhaps he will make wiser, studier, more grounded decisions, in having been educated to understand that this feral, primal energy is a precious resource that must be used consciously, and with care. However, like so many young men, if he is not provided with embodied guidance and wisdom from an elder, rather than learning how to control, refine and direct his energy towards a target and pursuit, this fire will control, dominate and direct him whenever it desires to go, and he will become somewhat enslaved to his sexual impulse. Masculine eros is a force that is indescribably overpowering and will take hold of the man it inhabits, raging within him like a furious and inexhaustible beast, until he finds an out-let of expression through which he can direct it. The struggle of this stage of a young man/boy’s development, is that he has no embodied way to express what he is feeling without fear of being humiliated, shamed, ostracised and cast out of his community. Instead of someone explaining to him that all of these over-powering bodily sensations and feelings are his wild eros and primal vitality and part of what is needed for him to grow, expand and establish himself in the world, he is left to blunder and stumble along foolishly, often keeping company with other young boys or men that tend towards having a poor influence over his development and actually guiding him in the opposite direction of what he truly requires for his growth.

He will come up against three different battles in this stage : One) The battle of his inner-urges which frequently overwhelm him with impulses and needs that he can not find a healthy way to fulfil. Two) The calling of his higher-intuitive knowing that there is a better, more empowering way through which thee feelings and sensations can take expression, but it means he must move away from the influence of his peers, friends and culture, and isolate himself for a period of time before he is rooted enough in his identity to not be so easily swayed and influenced by the pull of what other boys are telling him he must do to ‘prove his masculinity’ and Three) The innate-need he will have for belonging, acceptance and acknowledgement from other young men, and the tribal mentality he will have to fight against to establish his own definition of masculinity admits a very pressured environment that wants to keep him limited, repressed and limited in his expression. The ‘Red’ stage is perhaps the most fragile of all the stages a man will ever encounter in his life, because he is contending to balance his inner-experience with the external pressures that are conditioned and hard-wired into young boys the moment they are old enough to begin establishing their place in the world. In shamanic, indigenous and African tribes, meticulous guidance is provided with each step of a young man’s development because the tribes understood that the health, mental and emotional stability of each boy/man will greatly impact the wellbeing and stability of the entire tribe. Such tribes live aligned with the cycles of nature, and innately understand that the health of each eco-system is held together by the co-creation and co-communication of the animals that are dependant on the land for their survival. The wisdom of these tribes comes directly from the wisdom of nature, and there is an inherent and deeply-embedded understanding that when the health of one member of that eco-system is absent, the imbalance of that single individual or element within the eco-system will eventually spread, impacting the entire system. Therefore, when a single living entity/animal within that system falls ill, the inhabitants of that system will work to bring that single living entity/animal back into balance until they are healthy once again. The tribes that have operate aligned with the intelligence of nature will treat the members of their community accordingly : If one of it’s members expresses signs of illness or imbalance, the tribe will gather and surround that member, singing, dancing, drumming or guiding them to drink plant-medicine so they can ‘cast-out’ whatever illness or imbalance is preventing them from behaving in alignment with their natural expression. In the west, we are divorced from this wisdom and knowledge of nature, and we lack the community guidance required to hold us during times of vulnerability. For young boys stumbling their way into manhood can feel like meandering through a dark forest at nightfall that seems to take them further and further into the depths of darkness, rather than into clarity and self-knowing. He might remain like this for years, without ever fully-finding a way to control, discipline, direct or harness his primal energy, using it as nature intended : to help him forge a unique path, using this force of inner-vitality which every creature on earth has been afforded for the same purpose. It is crucial that he finds a way to express his primal urges so that they do not aggressively rule and dominate over his life.

Where he gets stuck in Red : Uncontrollable lust, poor choice of company/friendship, scattered energy.

Where he gets stuck in this phase is in losing contact with the intuitive-sense that he was born into the world with. The intuitive-intelligence that anchors him back to common sense, wisdom and his gut-knowing of what is good for him, VS what will lead him down the path of destruction. When he is overcome by his primal life-force and unable to find clear, grounding direction through which to convey and relief himself of some of this energy, it will turn back on him, and rather than becoming a source of power and creative-drive through which he obtains self-actualisation, it becomes a force of hell that begins easting away at him night and day, day and night. Our primal sexual energy which sits at the base of our spine is needs to be utilised every single day in ways that enable us to use up some of these energetics reserves so we can release some of the ‘charge’ that would otherwise result in us becoming flooded and consumed by our own life-force. When a young boy/man gets stuck in this stage, he begins developing feelings of aggression, frustration, hostility, anger, and in worst case scenarios, an overwhelming feeling of violence begins to emerge, causing him to fear his own expression, and resulting in him attempting to push aside or push down unwanted parts of his expression out of fear of what they might make him do once he loses control. The second thing he is bound to struggle with during this phase is uncontrollable sexual desire. He will most likely turn to porn in an attempt to try and relief himself of some of these feelings, and since porn will overly further fuel and exacerbate the overpowering feeling of his sexual vitality, he might end in a cycle of porn or sex-addiction, entering into reckless relationships and mishandling and perhaps abusing women in his desperation to find relief and release from a force that continues to threaten to overwhelm him.

What he is not taught nor told is that he will find relief when he learns to ground, harness and have control over this primal energy by exploring it through activities that pacify his fire a little so that it becomes more manageable, a no longer a hungry, insatiable monster without safe-space through which to give voice and expression to these inner-energies. (I will get into this topic more thoroughly in ’understanding masculine energy). In order for him to move out of ‘Red’ and into the next phase of his evolution, he must begin practising self-control and self containment, learning to direct his energy into activities that will serve his growth, strengthen his will, develop his self-esteem, help develop the self-awareness and street-smartness to navigate the world with wisdom. In the early stages, he is still easily influenced by external distractions that can risk disrupting and interfering with his growth. It becomes all the most important for him to find the right mentors and surround himself with the right people to serve this part of his evolution. He will save himself a lot of time, strife and aimless wandering if he can find the mentors that have navigated this path, and dug up treasures and truths that help a man define his own sense of masculinity.

The white stage :

In the white stage, a man is between the ages of 28-38. He yearns to become someone significant in the world. Nothing tends to enrage or turn a men sour like the feeling of insignificance and dormant potential that he does not know how to harness and direct outwards into manifesting whats he desires. So the ‘white’ stage of his growth is potentially what will make him, or break him, depending on the steps he takes towards securing his future. If he has not already uncovered some sense of his purpose in the world during the red stage, by the white stage, he will begin to feel mounting frustration and annoyance towards his lack of direction. Here, he has two choices, either to re-define and re-establish his life as he knows it (re-evaluating where he wants to invest his time and energy, perhaps leaving behind friends, maybe even family that are pulling him off course and preventing him from truly knowing himself and what he is capable of achieving, or, continuing to walk the path he has always walked, and potentially wasting a great deal of valuable time which could have been spent re-defining who he wants to become in the world and what he desires to contribute. Now, this might sound like a great expectation to put on a man still in his youth, but time flies, as the saying goes, and if he doesn’t at least begin developing a clearer sense of the life that he’d like to establish for himself through exploring various paths and sharpening his capabilities by age 28, he might well reach the age of 35 and still have little to no clue of what he’s here create and achieve in the world. His frustration and annoyance towards himself will only continue to mount and mount, and he will then direct his frustration and anger outwardly towards the one’s he loves in his irritanance and anger towards his own self for not being able to act and move forward with purpose and faith in his ability to create what he wants. If he lacks confidence, self-belief and self-trust, he will sabotage his ability to move forward, but lack the self-awareness, consciousness and conscientiousness to recognise that he is the source of all his own problems. That can be a tough one for a man of his age to face, but look, better to face it now and then do the self-healing work and take the action steps required to actualise a more developed version of himself, that play the blame game of pointing fingers at everyone or every circumstance in his reality supposedly holding him back. The truth of the matter is, if he really wants to, he can indeed create extraordinary change in all the areas of his life he feels dissatisfied in. And this is the stage of his life to do it. The white stage is the phase of in his existence in which he needs to be laying down the foundations for his future and plating seeds for a good crop to flourish during the next season of his life. He can not afford to be squandering his time and energy all over the place, without clear, conscience, grounded awareness of how his investments are actually benefiting the overall outcome of his life. This is the phase in which he will be most distracted by relationships and women, and if truth be told, he shouldn’t be concerning himself with either until he is 35 and beyond. Why? Men do not fully develop intellectually and emotionally develop until the age of 35. This is not to say there is no room or space for exploring relationship and intimacy, but he would place himself in a far more useful, capable and beneficial position, to himself, and his partner, if he establishes his sense of purpose and financial security first.  He will also be far more self-satisfied, emotionally fulfilled and will have greater peace of mind in having established a sense of confidence and pride in their ability to financially provide for himself and for others, rather than battling to get to his ideal version of self, whilst also holding space for intimate partnership in his reality. This comes down to wise-decision making, wise investment of time, establishing the direction of his life, even if that direction at times feels vague and without a clear target. But it is better than he does something, anything, oppose to mindlessly or aimlessly wondering from one shiny possibility to the next, without a clear sense of where he is going. He might have to wander aimlessly for a period of time, before he establishes a deeper knowing of what he is here to create and craft with his life.

Where he gets stuck in White : Distraction, misuse of energy, bad decisions, wasting time.

At this stage, if he fails to get control over his primal life-force and fails to establish some sense of direction, he risks burning through his vitality as early as his thirties, making it increasingly difficult for him to regenerate that vitality, as long as the pattern of squandering his sexual vitality and allowing too much of his time to be squandered on relationship and women as a whole, continues to overpower his ability to ground, focus and discipline himself. Some men never even make it out of their ‘Red’ stage, because they’re so consumed by their primal animalistic impulses, they spend much of their twenties, thirties, and even forties, chasing after inaccessible women, rather than building themselves up financially, morally and spiritually, so they broaden their opportunities and possibilities (as far as women, career and finances are concerned). The greatest mistake he can make during the white phase of his existence, is to continue playing out the same patterns and refusing to self-reflect and own up to his mistakes or short-comings. He does a huge disservice to himself because what he refuses to see, he can not change, and what he can not, or does not change, will continue to dominate and have power over his life. It might take him many more years until he awakens to his blind-spots, but if he is courageous and has enough drive to change what he dislikes, he will also simultaneously begin to change what he attracts, and this will further encourage him to keep making the necessary self improvements. What he has to understand in the early stages of his self-improvement, is that the external results and rewards will not be there for the first few cycles that he exerts effort. He will have to place an awful lot of blind faith and self-trust in his choices and keep going regardless of how little payback he seems to acquire (financially, social approval, family support, etc.). Truly, he can only mess up his destiny if he gives up, and goes back to his old ways (whatever they might be.) Men need to be driven and pushed forward by a vision, a plan, a knowing that there is a better future awaiting them beyond whatever current inner-struggles or external pains they navigate. The only thing that will hold him back from fulfilling his destiny, is choosing to remain tied to his old ways, allowing himself to become repeatedly distracted and repeat the mistakes of the past, and giving up long before he’s even given himself the chance to really succeed. He must be patient, he must be resilient, and he must be extremely committed. In a world of ‘over-night success stories’ which simply don’t exist, whatever it is that he sets out to build will take time. And a lot of it. And if he truly wants to emerge from his thirties and gracefully enter into his late thirties and early forties with a strong sense of his own power, strength and creative ingenious, he will need to work. Work at the practicalities, work on his healing, work on self-improvement, work on his communication-skills, his emotional intelligence,  and his ability to form lasting, fruitful and beneficial partnerships and relationships with others. The key word to reflect on here is ‘distraction’. Can he eliminate distraction, knuckle down and get to work on himself. On creating a clear plan of action for the next five to ten years of his life and harnessing the will power to see that plan though. Above all else, he needs to find some place to direct his energy. He needs to establish direction and find a ‘why’ to fuel him forward. A man without purpose is a man that becomes increasingly frustrated, angry, dejected and bitter towards himself, and especially towards the women in his life. All men need something to strife towards. Without that, he becomes a disaster and a destruction to himself and everyone that crosses his path. The longer he allows his energy to build without directing it somewhere that reaps fruitful rewards, the more apathetic, stagnant and self-hating he becomes. All of us are implanted with a strong dream and vision for our life. Whilst this vision might become dulled or hard to connect to from years of denying yourself the right to follow the path that is individually yours, that vision is always within you. Buried within you, wanting to find it’s direction and express through you. All men have this. When they refuse to listen to their inner-calling or settle for less than they know they are capable of achieving, they suffer. And that suffering manifests as deep rage and intolerance towards their own self. Men need to have purpose. In the white stage of his existence, he can begin to find that purpose if he allows himself the breathing space to really find what is authentically his, and make a life out of that.

The Black stage : In the black stage of his existence, he is fully grown. He is either in his early or mid fifties, (it is rare to find a man that has entered his black stage in his early to mid forties, but it can happen if he has set himself up well during his thirties. During the black era, He has emerged from most of life hardships with a philosophical wisdom that carries him through with strength and understanding of the power he contains to manifest his life accordingly. He is not quite healed from his past wounding (who is?) but he knows how to power himself forward with courage, confidence and a deeper self-trust in his own masculine strength. By now, he has grown bored, tired and weary of his sexual lust, and he knows better than to squander his sexual life-force moving from one partner to the next. By this stage he is a great deal more cautious and mindful about how he utilises his energy, no longer having thew carelessness of youth driving his decisions for him. If he has done a great deal of inner introspection and take on board his past mistakes and vowed to become more conscious with his future decisions, he will put himself in a favourable position for success, fruitful relationship and promising change. On the other hand, if he lacks conscious awareness of what it is within him that is creating destruction, hinderance, and keeping him from truly seeing himself, he will begin reaching an almost unbearable inner-frustation and disappointment towards himself. Men their black era, often need to go off in search of the deeper meaning of their life, sometimes burning down and abandoning everything they have cultivated this far, in order for something better to take it’s place. This might been abandoning his career, beginning a new business venture, re-accessing his relationships, and turning inwards for a duration of time in order to connect to a deeper sense of what he requires to feel emotionally and spiritually nourished during the next phase of his life. Every person must go through this process of burning away what is not necessary in a particular chapter of their life, in order for something greater, richer, more expansive to be born. Men that arrive at a place in their life in which they feel deeply frustrated, angered, and irritable in their relationship, their work, must wander off into the wild for a period of time and reconnect to stillness and prepare for a death of their old self. It will do him no good to continue walking around bearing such anger and hatred towards himself and the world. In fact, this anger and hatred he holds is towards his own self, for wanting to do better, but not knowing how. He would be better off venturing into the wilderness (literally and metaphorically speaking) than sitting around at home, sulking, grumbling, isolating himself from the people he loves the most because he has no words to express the depth of self disappointment and irritation he holds within himself towards himself. That is why he must wander a bit, allow himself together lost for a period of time, to create the breathing space within his psyche and spirit so that clarity can begin to seep through. This is essential for the masculine within both women and men. Both the masculine and feminine need wilderness, stillness, silence, death and rebirth to lose their inner sense of boredom, deadness, apathy and misery, and be reborn anew. But the masculine within us all needs to be left alone, undisturbed, given the permission to wander, to philosophise, to dream, to reconnect to inspiring visions, as well as the fluidity of the feminine. He needs to reconnect to the power of the elements and regain connection to his primal power. To sit around the fire and let his mind wander, to bathe in the river and allow the water to wash away what is no longer needed, to ground himself with the earth, to get back in touch with freedom, space, and his own spirit. The modern masculine way is so tremendously depleting and imprisoning to the spirit of a man, no wonder he reaches a place in his life and consciousness where we can not stand to exist this way anymore. He can not stand to operate in such a mechanical, repetitive, auto-pilot, rhythmic manner, absent of any aliveness, unpredictability. This is often why men during this stage will become enamoured with younger women. Because they are desperate to regain connection to the softness, fluidity, playfulness and spontaneity of the feminine. If he develops an obsession with feminine energy, it is because he is attempting to feed, nourish and awaken the parts of himself that have ‘gone offline’. That have been made lifeless, exhausted, weak and malnourished from too little time connected to the wilderness, the earth, the divine, and too much time connected to the repetitive monstrosity of a capitalist machine. It will do him no good to chase younger men with the hope of igniting his aliveness. That is not truly what his soul is seeking. And he will eventually revert back to his frustrated, irritable, angry and self-despising self for not having the courage to go off into the unknown and reclaim his vitality and lust for life, and taking the easy path - Finding a woman to pacify the knowing hunger within him, crying out for a type of nourishment that can not be found or sustained through anyone or anything else accept his connection with nature, the wilderness, his own soul. During the black stage, sooner or later, he will have to make a choice as to whether he allows things to continue on as they have been, and therefore continue fermenting in his lack of enthusiasm for his life trajectory, or re-consider his relationship with all primary aspects of his life, and whether he is content to remain with things as they are, or is in need of venturing into the wilderness to regain connection to a higher-calling, something that will fulfil and enrich his life beyond his material needs and desires.

Where he gets stuck in Black : Regrets, dwelling, victim mentality.

He get’s stuck in the shadow-side of the black when he wallows in the regrets of the past,  dwelling it what could have been, and stagnating in victim mentality, and fixating on what is wrong with his life, oppose to driving his energy into what most be changed so that he can become the man he desires. Needless to say, we waste a lot of precious energy dwelling on the sorrows of the past. If he can learn from his mistakes, and walk forward with pride, he can turn a bad situation into a miracle and a success of an outcome. Too many men get stuck in black, and remain in black until their remaining days, blaming their wife, their boss, God, someone, in an effort to justify why their life turned out the opposite of how they would have wished. Deep down, he knows he has only himself to blame (or at least partially blame) but his pride will obscure him from recognising that truth until he is forced to reconcile. In this phase, the most healing medicine he can give himself is to make peace with what has been, and walk on purposefully in the direction of hope and possibility. There is always hope and possibility, no matter what challenges or sorrows he has encountered. But it is abut his attitude and his perspective. A man (and a woman for that matter) will have to start over many times in their existence in order to forge a strong foundation that can hold the increasing fullness of the person they are becoming, and actualise a more fulfilling life-path. Many men will ignore the calling toe go in search of something deeper, richer and more spiritually challenging, because it is much easier to stay with the path we have always known. But in his black era, he has enough wisdom, resilience, and understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in order for him to create a more lasting sustained sense of fulfilment. But he will need to gather a great deal of strength to re-create his life over, if that is what is needed. No more wasting time, wasting energy or getting distracted. When he was younger, he could afford to be distracted. But in his black era, he must be calculated, shrewd and careful with how and where he invests his energy. If he is unhappy with where he is asa in life, but if he wise with his energy, he can seriously turn his entire life around for the better. The take away is that to regret, to wish, and to dwell does absolutely nothing to serve him. He must rise from whatever adversity, hardship or disappointment he feels towards himself and his life and walk forward with determination, grit, strength, wisdom and curiosity of what lies beyond what he knows of himself and his life thus far.