Healing the Father Wound Part 1: Reclaiming Power, Presence, and Trust with Amir Khalighi

Welcome back to The Circle, the podcast where we go all in on men's work, embodiment practice, and personal growth from our queer perspective. If you're enjoying the show, please be sure to share your favorite episode, leave us a review, and subscribe. And if you have a question about anything that we've covered in any of the episodes, please send us a message. We'd love to hear from you. Today we're joined by a man we've lovingly referenced many times on this show, our teacher and guide, Amir Khaligi.

Amir joins us for a conversation on the father wound, how generational trauma travels through the masculine line, how it shapes us, and how we can begin to heal. Amir is the founder of Embodied Masculine and has spent decades leading men back to presence, purpose, and sacred connection. Tim, Amir, are you ready to go all in?

I'm ready.

Let's do it.

Let's fucking go then. Amir, first and foremost, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

It's my absolute pleasure. I've been looking forward to it.

And so with that, we're just gonna dive right on in. So when we talk about the father wound, what does that mean to you?

Well, for me, that would be a primal wound. So this would be, for me, the first wound that I can register as a human being. So when I feel back and I go back into what is the first the first wound that I can interpret or I can I can call a wound would be the absence of my father in my life? So his absence immediately impacted and shaped who I've ultimately become and has subsequently birthed my gift into the world. So, I'd be happy to go into to that in any which way or any direction you like.

Yeah. I I definitely wanna dive a lot into that. But just for clarity, you were speaking from personal experience. Yes. That isn't necessarily true for all of the men that will come into your space.

Right? And so there are any number of other primal or foundational wounds. Imagining there's probably a mother wound or other sorts of wounds that would occupy the same space for someone else. Is that true?

Absolutely. Absolutely. So if your question is about my personal experience and how the father wound played a role in my life, I can speak into that. But if we're talking about wounds in general, that'll take the conversation in a different direction. I'd prefer, I think, to share my own personal experience and around the importance of masculine figures in men's lives, men and women, of course, because I have direct experience of its impact, and I have direct experience of the journey that it subsequently put me on in understanding, searching, excavating, listening to what it means to be a man, what it means to be a man in today's society.

And I I think the father wound specifically, of course, other wounds are you know, play a role and and shape who we are. But no I I would venture to say no wound like the father wound can have an impact on a man's life.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. So I definitely think we wanna dive into that because I believe and I feel like I've witnessed men in the work who come with this wound looking to heal this wound or work with this wound. And I also believe a lot of queer men that I know work with this wound and are looking for awareness and healing.

So, yeah, let's dive in.

Yeah. I'm curious, just to try to get this shared understanding and shared definition of what do we mean by the father wound? So what I heard in your example was a father wound appeared because of an absent father. So in what other ways can a father wound exist? And then I guess even higher level, like, what is a father wound?

That's a great question. So I would say I would venture to say the absence, the presence of a father. So whether he's in the marriage and just absent or whether he's physically not there, the presence the presence of a man in a child's life in and of itself creates a space of equanimity. It it creates the environment where the child can begin to self regulate. He doesn't feel like the world is on his shoulders.

So many men with the father wound have had to grow up really fast. They they they they filled in shoes of the absent father. And that burden that burden, in and of itself, is painful to carry, to to to fall into dynamics where we have to play a certain role that we weren't meant to. Right? And and for altruistic reasons.

So for me, the absence of my father, really, I I saw the impact of that on my mother. And to mitigate some of that, I started to actually play the husband role at a very young age in being the empathetic listener or trying to mitigate her chaos. A 10 year old body is not made to hold that energy. It's not made to hold that pull. So I would say the ab the just presence.

Just presence. So even they could be physically there, but if they're if they're not if they're not present with the with with the child, that's that's part of the wounding. Obviously, there could be wounding that is directed when the man is living from shadow aspects of self. If he's living from shadow at like the tyrant. Right?

So one of the shadows of the king is the tyrant. And if you have a tyrant consistently ruling, making decisions in his home. And I'm not talking about being frustrated or annoyed. I'm talking about, like, living in his shadow, living from his shadow. Like, his come from is tyrant.

Right? So if if either he's a tyrant on one pole or he is the weakling on the other pole. They both impact the child similarly. Right? So for me, my father's archetype in his lack of presence was more in the weakling.

Was more in the weakling. He wasn't the tyrant. He was absent. He his presence wasn't there. And his father and and his father and and he himself took on that pole.

They kind of lost their power because they didn't know how to work and wield power consciously to something greater than themselves. It's some something that I took the mantle upon, you know, later on in life when I started to, like, deal with karmic lineage healing and so on and so forth.

So a thing that I feel like I have observed and what what and what I heard you say about this young boy who had to kind of grow up and step into roles that were maybe not for him or appropriate at that time in his life, I feel as if I've experienced people kind of rewarding that. Oh, he's so mature. He he's, like, such a good communicator. He's, like, so adult for his age. We can kind of frame it in this positive way.

Can you speak a little bit about some of the dangers or consequences of asking a young 10 year old or 12 year old to be an adult when they're not yet?

Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, we are robbing them of the effervescence that comes with childlike wonder. And we are really, like, we we are we are stifling their expression. We are we are not allowing them to naturally move into that evolution, you know, and in a healthy way that's done through, you know, at at a certain point, conscious men of the community. They initiate young men into the fold of what it means to be a man, waking them to the reality that life doesn't revolve around you, waking them to the reality that, no, you have a place amongst us men, and we work for the greater good of the community.

So that mechanism is also something that contributes to petulant boys running around pretending to be men. Right? Because they are wielding power from an unconscious self serving way. So to to just go back to your question around, like, it impacts everything. Not having a a a loving father who's settled in his own life.

Right? So if I'm busy, like, playing roles that I'm not meant to play. Right? I'll give you an example. If I haven't severed let's say, if I haven't really changed the dynamic of my relationship with my mother, do you think I'm gonna have a healthy relationship with my wife when I get married one day?

Right? Because I'm gonna have three people in that marriage if I don't if if I don't if I have to self initiate myself, which is something I had to do. Like, I had to I had to sever you know, there's there's talk about, you know, what is that initiation? And I had to do that because there was no elders. There was no elders in the space.

And so most men in society intuitively self initiate, but they do it in harmful ways. Drugs and alcohol, right, or just, hanging out with the wrong people. And that's how they create the cut. That's how I did it too. Mhmm.

It was incredibly destructive. It feels really healing just to to say that to let any person who and I know so many of them. Right? That had to grow up too fast, too soon or were responsible for things that they should not have been. Just to say that that isn't what was supposed to happen and it's okay that that was a challenge, I think is the beginning of of healing.

But I know then in your community, so much more work comes into recognizing that and stepping consciously into our power.

And we can't really consciously step into our power until we begin to free fall into a relationship with that aspect of divinity within our hearts. And what I mean by that is until then, everything is predicated on what is happening on the outside. Even dynamics, relationship dynamics are, looking outside. Well, if she's or, you know, if if so and so's emotional well-being's okay, then I'm okay. Right?

Actually, you can be okay with with with the world spinning from your bank account going up and down, the house that is your dream house could disappear and something new could come. So part of the men's work really is about initiating men on a path towards that relationship deep within their hearts where the clarity of dynamics come into play. Like, you can start seeing this is not serving me. This type of relating to you is not serving me. Or maybe you outgrow a dynamic.

Maybe it served at one point to be in a trauma bonded, dynamic. But as you begin to, we'll call it, evolve or self actualize, you come to realize, I don't want that. I don't want that anymore. Right? So I think consciousness starts to come online in a new way as we that's why we, you know, we call it men's work.

But at the end of the day, we're really becoming really clear through the detachment of our attachments, through deeper listening to navigating, creating a life from our heart where our soul kind of nudges us in the directions that we you know, I don't know how esoteric and woo woo you wanna go.

We'll go

as deep as you want.

Bring on the woo. Bring the woo.

Bring in the woo. So I really believe each man also you know, I mean, we are talking about, you know, the impact of what it means. When we talk about father wound, we're talking about men's work. Okay? When we talk about father wound, we're talking about men who didn't do the work.

And we we are talking about men then who are picking up the mantle to do the work. And when you pick up the mantle to do the work that your father didn't, right, you will have to come to terms with all the ways that you potentially judged him, shamed him, thought of him. Like because all of that keeps us at bay from really feeling the feelings that need to be felt as part of the healing process as well. Right?

One of the things that I'm hearing around a father wound is that it's an unhealed or unacknowledged father wound will or could potentially start to show up in a couple different ways in a man's life. Codependency, people pleasing, drugs and alcohol, solo initiations, things like that. And then there may come a time in a man's life that they're like, okay, I've had enough. And at that point, a little bit of consciousness comes on of like, I have some healing that I want to do. There are some issues that I want to address.

And then from there, what steps do I take? Like, I've started to realize I've got some things that I'm I'm wanting to work on. I may not have a full diagnosis that it is a father wound. So if I'm in that position, if I've started to identify there are some of these things, like, where do I go? What is what's the next step?

Well, here's the paradox and the dichotomy because you're you're gonna need other men, and simultaneously, it's other men you don't trust.

For anyone for anyone that's listening and not watching, Tim and I both looked at each other because, like, that is exactly what you just said is the biggest reason why I continued to do this work. And and I think I've heard from Tim as well, like like

I started I went to men's work specifically because I do I did not trust straight men. I was like, I do not feel safe with straight men. I need to heal that. And so I walked into a men's coach training. That's that's how I came to to be in men's work.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, that that fear and lack of trust is part of my journey.

Yeah. And how much of that journey has, like like, as you've moved into it, how much of that has been about also your the freedom of your own understanding and self judgments about what it means to be a man?

Yeah. If I understand you, I think I was really holding on I'll just speak for myself. I was really holding on to these ideas of what it meant to be a straight man from the place I grew up, how I differed from that, the ways in which that was wrong. And I think for a lot of really valid reasons and decades of of having it reinforced, was holding on. As I started to get into men's work, I was able to start to soften my grip.

I mean, one of the greatest gifts, some of my closest friends now are are straight men that I met through men's work. Where like a place where I would otherwise, you know, eight years ago have felt not at ease. I now I now have brothers. So the transformation for me has been incredible and has changed the way that I move through the world. I don't know if I just answered your question, but I was able to release my old ideas of what like, how I thought I was failing or at at being a man.

Right. So it's interesting also because I think I I mean, I'm very curious. I'm not I'm not a gay man, so I don't have the perspective. But in my world, a man is a man is a man. Like, I if anything, one of the disservice one of the disservices that really I think we are as a community beginning to, like, reimagine and redefine for what it means to be a masculine being in the world.

You know, such disservice went into the subjugation and the ridicule and the shame perpetuated on young men that exemplified or amplified any feminine essence through their body. It's it's such a loss. It's such a loss, and it provides so much work that we have to do in unwinding that. Some of the most powerful men that I know are incredibly powerful masculine beings on one end and incredible expressive feminine beings on the other. It is it is this capacity to know the depth of your range and to be able to work with that from moment to moment that really makes me feel like, oh, this is a trustworthy human being.

I don't trust anyone who suppresses any aspect of themselves or shames other. Right?

So that that tells like, that image of that that kind of, like, healed or realized man potentially could be a goal of, like, trying to identify, work with a father wound. It's like trying to get us to that point that we can trust our own masculinity, trust masculine in others, as well as owning all parts of ourselves, including our feminine.

Well, it becomes internalized misogyny. We don't even know that we're doing it. Right? We bought into this paradigm that we are unpacking, that we are unraveling. We're like, you know what?

I don't buy that. I don't I don't buy that anymore. Right? And I for now I saw you, Tim, come into our community, and I saw the shift. I saw, like, this veil get removed over your head.

And we can't talk about what we do at our initiations, but there was a moment in during the initiation process during the MWI program that I literally saw it come across your face. You're like, oh, I can be who I I can be me. I'm accepted. I can be me. And I think if we're talking about, like, father wounds, you know, wounds perpetuated by patriarchy or however you wanna frame it, at the end of the day, unconsciousness, self being self serving.

Like, all of these have play fear have created this paradigm of masculinity that this generation doesn't want. Right? And in our community, what you'll see is men that are are living a life in alignment with their hearts because they're not they're not chasing bells and whistles anymore, and they are beginning to really come into their own. And and and part of that equals all that internalized misogyny that we that we that we've taken upon ourselves. That's why when we have, like, a feminine embodiment practice, there are some men that just they have a really hard time being able to go through all the layers of shame and and and judgment that, you know, that that they're working.

They're working towards being able to move. There are some guys that are completely immersed, and there are some guys that are barely moving. Those guys that are barely moving, they're working really hard. Mhmm.

Right? I'm really glad that you brought that up because it's a it's a factor in our queer community. I think specifically for gay men. We have this you know, we've been given a lot of programming about what a man should be, this old thinking that you were just referring to, what a man should be, how we differ from it. And so there is or has been a movement to try to not be that.

And so, it's sort of very politically incorrect. This I don't know if you've heard of this mask for mask. This idea that as a gay man, I'm only gonna hook up with or be attracted to some other person who fits this idea because we've been handed that over and over. So, like, the the archetype of the motorcycle guy, the the the construction worker, the police officer, that's very, like, masculine idea. And if it's anything femme, they're like, I don't do I don't do femme.

Don't do this. I don't do that. And it feels like that is what we're talking about, this old idea. And then men's work has for me allowed this this authenticity of full expression. So that Mhmm.

So that the the the man can express in all kinds of ways and that that is ultimately more trustable.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't I don't I don't, you know, I I believe every man has a seed in his heart that was planted that he's come here to bring into fruition. And along the way, he will have to go through healings, and and and that's part of his evolution and growth, right, and coming to terms with what that is for him on this round. Right?

So on this round, the father wound was the one that I like, when they were, like, handing out things to work on, they were like, okay. Father wound who wants to take the massive father wound and then start to work with men later in his life, and that's gonna become I would be

like, Order number 57. 50 7. I'll

take it. I'll take it. And on on the surface level, it would it it looks pretty hard and devastating. Oh, my father was a, you know, drug addict. He was he was a heroin user.

He did time. I mean, he like, he was and and he put so much fear into me about who he was that I really kept him at bay. I judged him. I didn't wanna have anything to do with him. And even after he died, I didn't wanna have anything to do with him.

You know? I didn't understand him. I judged him, And it took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that these these mechanisms that I put in place to keep him at bay were really around me not feeling the deeper feelings that I was avoiding to feel. Right? The devastation of what it feels like not to have a father around when you're young.

The the anger around how fucking could you. You've missed everything. You missed all of it. You missed my grand you missed your grandchildren. I needed you in these times of my life.

Like, the anger, giving myself the permission to begin to feel deeply into all the feels. And when that started when I did that, the judgments began to drop, and then I began to see him and myself in that. I I stopped judging my my patriarchal line, and, I started to have an healing experience over who I was in my place amongst my people, you know, until then. And, you know? So from the wound to the healing, you know, at the end of the day, on this path, it has to happen.

One of the things you you just mentioned, which I wanna highlight, that in men's work, we often come into safe containers where we can then have some of these messy or raw experiences safely to take that away. So what what I was hearing you say was allowing yourself to feel the feeling. Some of those feelings were, probably impolite or or rough or big or any number of things. Right? And so men's work is one one place where with safety and consciousness and guidance and support, we can engage in that process so that we can move forward, you know, in the direction of our authenticity and our purpose and, in service to the highest good rather than not really knowing how to work with this power and then having it come out sideways.

You

Look. This this power is energy. Okay? It knee it's either flowing through us or we're or we're stifled and blocked by it. Right?

So, like, for our community and and other men's groups, maybe they're more talk talk related. People wanna talk their way through it. In our community, we're somatic. We we believe in the wisdom of the body. So once a week, what do we do?

Like, hopefully, you're doing it for more than once a week. But, you know, you come to a space where for seventy five to eighty minutes, your attention goes inward, and you begin to tend and be with yourself. You begin to rely on those practices to go to crevices to explore and be with and express and journey and to understand yourself in different ways. I mean, that is such a missing component in society for men. Like, it's just go go go go produce produce produce produce.

Oh, you're not producing. Shame shame shame shame shame shame. I'm sorry. It feels like somebody's fucking using me like a battery. Mhmm.

Yeah. And I don't want that.

Agreed. I first wanna thank you, Amir, for for sharing your story and letting us in on on the background of your father and how that impacted you. And so I'm I'm wrapping my head around this that if we have fathers who are either physically or emotionally not present in our lives, then they are not modeling the fullness of the human experience that a man can have. And so then I may start to repress certain parts of myself, or go through this life with certain conditions or certain ways in which I can have things come out sideways. And it's then through the work of bringing on a little bit of consciousness to be like, oh, okay, I see that thing.

I wanna work towards that, and I wanna bring more of myself, more of my fullness here. And that to me is a big part of men's work. Right? And starting to heal that misogyny, that internal misogyny, that external misogyny that we had and connecting it that misogyny and that way that we treat ourselves and each other can be can stem from the father wound, the lack of presence either physically or emotionally of a man in our lives that can help us to be in our fullness. Am I understanding?

Am I, like, in the ballpark here?

Absolutely. Listen. A man that is that is settled in himself, a man that is connected to his heart, a man that is living a life that's purpose driven. And what I mean by that, he's he's in alignment to, like, living in accordance with what is meaningful to him for the highest good of all that that are around him. A man that is living that life, his simple presence is healing for a child.

His simple beingness around the family is healing. Do you understand? So the more presence and the more the the more I take care of myself, the more others are taken care of.

And to get to that point, part of the the healing is is working with our fathers, whether they are here or not. So can we talk a little bit about, like, the the the process of beginning that healing?

Yeah. I I think the process starts when we stop looking outwards for dopamine hits to deal with uncomfortability and really become willing to face the deeper the deeper asks of what's really going on within. Generally, that process is not done alone. Generally, that process is done either with a mentor, with a group of other men that have gone through this and now can share with you how to navigate these waters. Like, what is the fucking problem?

Like, I just know that I'm miserable. I I I'm not fulfilled. Right? I just like, somebody fucking help me.

Mhmm.

Right? So sometimes it needs to get to that. Or I'm about to lose my partner or my husband or wife. And, like, people wake up like there's a rattle. Like, there's a rattle.

That's that's how most men come to men's work. And then we're like, okay. Great. There's the opening. We're gonna look in.

But the the the but but but if it was like, nope. I know you think it's that. I know you think if you just had more money or if so and so didn't say that or all these things that are outside of you that are running you. They're running you. You know what else is running you?

Limiting beliefs. You know what else is running you? Shadow aspects of self. So listen. Why don't we slow down, come into this container, and we'll guide you through a process where you can have space and time from other men who've gone through it, and we'll show you how to look inward.

We'll show you how to be with. We'll show you how to develop your capacity to be with uncomfortability. We'll show you how to arrest suffering but deepen your capacity for holding the evolution of pain. And when I say it, all things that grow include pain and and to relearn what that means, to redefine that for ourselves. So all this happens, hopefully, from men who innately wanna give that to other men.

And why are you doing this podcast? That very reason. Yeah. That very reason. Right?

To bring hope to someone who is completely fucking lost that two nights ago may was thinking of checking out. And the message here is, hey, brother. Pause for a second. Come tell me about it. Come hang out with us.

Just hang out with us. Don't do anything. Just hang out. Hang out with us. Simply by being around other men who are embodied, who are and aligned with their hearts and their path, There's healing just in being around that.

So who are you hanging out with? Who are you spending your time with? What environment do you live in? What does it promote? You can have the best intention to grow this flower, but if you put the seedling in a dark room and never water it, I'm sorry.

Really glad that you said that because, I do feel like in this world people want a really quick fix. Of course, I want that too. I I would like all my problems to be solved like right away. But it it feels like you're speaking to an obviously an experience that I've had personally, the importance of coming back. Especially if we are in a place in our lives or in the world where this inundation of distraction and other things.

So this coming back and so the image I'm having now is this sort of spiral. We keep coming back to the practice with, like, a deepening and deepening and deepening of understanding. Can you speak a little bit to that, the importance of

that? Mhmm. Well, I think I think if you don't latch your lasso into a parallel structure that cultivates this otherness, you're fucked. You're you're fucked because because you're competing against the society that is a consumerism society that just wants to devour everything that's worthwhile and turn it into a commodity, and it'll use you and abuse you. And you'll you'll go further and further away from you.

So find a community of men that you feel comfortable hanging out with and doing some of this work in whatever form it takes. Our community has a certain flavor, and it's meant for certain people. Some meant for everybody. But if you're if if you come into our space and you experience our practices and where we go and what it does and the way we do it and the way we hold it, you know, we come from different traditions that we you know, it may not be everybody's cup of tea. But for those that it is, that's your space.

Now you're in a parallel structure where everybody has a culture of, like, living this way, and you are going to have an ecosystem that you can come back to no matter how how far it takes you, and then you come back. Takes you and it comes back. You know, there's ebb and flow in here. We are living in in this. We are living in Rome, and Rome must receive its taxes.

I get it. But, you know, a nice Jewish carpenter, and I'm not religious at all. Like, you know me. I'm not religious at all. He said, you know, be in this world, but not of it.

You know, I think what he's talking about is like, okay. I I know where to go to keep this other essence of me alive while I come into my clarity, while I come into my healing, while I come into my self actualization and take my rightful place in what I'm called to do.

I'm so glad you're bringing this up because, you know, the the power in this community, of course, it is ideal when we can come together and be in the same share the same physical space. But we don't need that to feel our brotherhood. And so I just just a few days ago had a call with, a man. He was in my little pod in my coach training in 2020. And we hadn't connected in a long time.

And my tank was so full after ninety minutes of a Zoom conversation with this man. This man who I've met in person two times. I helped him and his wife move their apartment. And the power. I'm like, oh my tank is full because I trust this person and we are far apart.

So if you're listening, that's why we're doing this podcast and why you know, Amir you have your online circle every Wednesday night. These these are powerful, and they can provide you with this thing even if you can't necessarily be in the same room with someone. You can still have the benefit of this feeling held, safe, being guided, and this community of conscious support through this process. It is really, really nourishing. So anyone listening right now, if you don't have a circle like we have in Provincetown that you can go to in person, there are still places you can go.

There are lots of different resources available if you are wanting this sort of support and engagement. And we all come to these spaces with different things that we're working on, right? For some

of us, it may be a father wound. For others, it may be something else. But when we come together and we are witnessing each other as men and witnessing other men in their expression and in their vulnerability, it it like gives this permission that like, oh, I can start to bring a little bit more of myself as well. And in doing that, there's so much healing that starts to happen. And I just think about my time on retreat with the two of you.

Right? Like I felt comfortable, but there was still a part of me that was like a little guarded. And it took a big experience for me to really start to like, oh, I'm working with some trust issues here. And I need to really admit that and be vulnerable and admit that. And then through that, being able to work with other men and see other men and have other men see me helped me to start to heal that part of myself so that now I can go through the world a little bit more conscious, a little bit more aware, and a little bit more grounded in my fullness to hopefully be able to offer that to others.

Right? And kind of this generational thing. Like, I had some shit happen to me. I'm not going to blame anymore. I'm going to say it happened.

I'm working on it so that I can kind of, like, then put forth new energy out into the world.

Yeah. What I what I wanna just kinda tap like, just write on that statement. What I wanna say is, like, you're actually not responsible for creating the healing. K? You're not trust me.

You're not doing you're not doing the healing. Cut cut your own cut your own hand and say heal. You're not doing the healing. What you're responsible for is putting yourself in the optimum environment for healing.

My my yoga mentor, Narayani, would always say create the causes for what you wanna see in the world.

Mhmm.

That I'd like, you know, create the causes, create the environment into which you like, the thing you want grows. I feel like that's sort of what what you're saying too. Find this environment. Create the space where healing can exist.

Like Eric said, he he was feeling safe enough to kind of bring his shoulders down and start to let more of life start to come in. Like, life is meant to be experienced in a surrendered state, not in a perpetual state of vigilance.

Oh, I'm clocked. Clocked. Let's go back in time thirty years and say that to me, please.

So when you when you when you come into a space where the culture is there, then it's up to you on when the flower blooms. And this is something I I really just kind of dislike in the polarity teachings is this kind of unconscious shaming of of women and their closures. In in polarity teachings, oh, you're there's something wrong with you if you have a closure. I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure the closure is there for a purpose.

And you have the dignity of being closed as long as you want. A flower blooms when the environment is right for it to bloom. No flower ever fucking bloomed because you shamed or yelled at it. Yeah. Right?

So and I know that's a different paradigm. It's a different world. It's it's it's, you know, men and women trying to create polarity, and I get that. It's a separate issue. But I I'm what I'm talking about is the wisdom of the body's closure until it feels ready.

Like Eric was saying, you know what? It took me a couple days, and then I I started taking deeper breaths. And when I when you start taking deeper breaths, what do you think you're letting well, you're letting go on the exhale. You're opening on the exhale. You're more receptive to be impacted by life.

Right? And I think a lot of men that have father wounds are so contracted because they've had to take on so much at a young age that they don't know how to let go. They don't know how to trust. What am I trusting into? Right?

What you're trusting into is a free fall relationship to something magical in your heart that will be the comfort, the guidance, the heat, the the muse for how you live your life. And I think true men's work should be driving men to that relationship.

So I'm really glad that you brought that up because I have I'm curious to hear from you. Men come into your space and they see you. I'm about to shower you with appreciation. You are one of, my favorite people and one of the first straight men that I felt so comfortable and and could trust with my whole self. And so men come into your space, trying to create the causes for the healing that they're wanting and being guided by these practices.

I'd love for you to chat a little bit about men who are opening and opening, but then meet a contraction again, whether, you know, and and project that onto you. I mean, I definitely I've I've observed this moment where you've been doing the thing and then one thing kind of goes wrong and suddenly it's like, ah, I knew it. Like, you know. And can you talk about that? Because I feel like most people going through this process are going to have a moment like that.

Maybe not with a particular person, but that it's gonna come up. Can you can you speak to that a bit?

Yeah. What you're what you're what you're referencing is transference. Okay? It's a union term where, you know, the stuff that you're dealing with needs to be put on somebody else because it's too hard to be with. Okay?

And whenever you're in a leadership position and, you know, you're leading circles and the more the deeper you go with the opening of people, some projections will come your way. And the way I've had to learn to work with that is, a, to not take it personally, and, b, give them the dignity of their their travels. If if if they need to take their father wounding because I'm naturally in a in a in a kind of in a patriarchal position holding this community from birthing it to what I how I, you know you know, run, you know, programs. And just naturally, I'm in a leadership position, and you'll you'll and it's very similar to the dynamic of the father or the mother. Right?

So it's inevitable that some people that will need to they they won't know how to work with that angst and the the the depth of that pain, we'll say. And it'll be easier to communicate that through transference or try to project that. And I I don't pick it up. It's like playing tug of war. There's no tug of war if not both people are pulling.

If there's only tug of war when there's two people pulling. So when I see the rope come my way, I don't pick it up. If somebody wants to have a conversation with me, I'll be more than happy to clean or clear the space if they need to express something. And if it's all, like, vitriolic projections, I'm not gonna give that too much time. I'll know pretty quickly.

But if I sense that they're really working with this piece and there's some consciousness around the fact that they are, like it's really triggered them because of their past history and they, you know, they care enough to come to me, then we have an opportunity for healing. Because I have an opportunity to show up in a different way than they're used to, and they have an opportunity to be back in that space of that vulnerability and express themselves maybe before they got shut down and shamed. But with this courage now, like, you know so I found myself many a times playing that let's rewrite this script together moment. Because I can tell. I can I can feel like their work they're, like, half triggered, they're half projecting, but they're trying?

And I can get to the core of what the thing is, and then hopefully that becomes a healing moment.

So to translate, father transference aka rejecting daddy issues? Yeah. Pretty much. Is that what we're talking about? Okay.

Yeah. That's what we're talking about.

You wanted to say that phrase this I've been

wait I've been waiting for the opportune moment, and that was

You say daddy issues?

Just say

daddy issues. Daddy issues.

But, yeah, so it's it's father transference. So I'm I'm in this space. I've started to work on myself, and I'm, like, I'm in a place of of openness, openness, openness. And then all of a sudden, a trigger happens. I get a closure, and I'm, projecting my daddy issues onto you.

And so through a healthy conversation and addressing it and acknowledging it, then there are then steps that can be taken. And I'm just gonna speak about a recent example that happened with you, with me going through shadow work, was that I was able to, in that that deep experience, actually come out the other side becoming my own father. Like Mhmm. Fathering myself and tending to myself. So that is one way in which you can guide men to to to working with that so that they don't project it onto you and onto other people.

Are there other ways that that men can can work with that part?

Mhmm. It's a great question. And I'll start by saying, you know, part of the father wound is is trusting men again. Right? So or especially men in leadership positions.

Right? Men in general that you know? So first and foremost, I would say, the first stage is to learn how to be a safe container for yourself. To begin to begin to be a safe container for yourself, like, even though you may be in a deep practice, there is a part of you that's like, okay. I got me.

Mhmm. Like, I I I I can I can be with this? I can allow this feeling to go deeper. I can allow the heartbreak to keep going. A part of me's got this.

Right? For me, when it came to, like, one of the biggest healing experiences of my adult life was with my was around my father. And I was I was in a ceremony, and I I started to get those feelings. I started to like like, the tender child, like, ones that you were experiencing. I I was they were coming in big, and I immediately was like, oh, wait.

I know how to do this. I teach this. I I I started to, like, create that space for myself to start having my own feelings, really starting to feel them. And then I could feel also, like, oh, fuck. I would really love if I could have this experience with my father.

And then I got you know? And then, like and then the sadness, like, all my stuff around him started to come up now. And I was like, I don't know if I can hold this. Right? And I was in ceremony, and I kid you not.

As soon as I started to tune into the part of my feelings around him, I could feel his presence. I could feel his presence. And the more and more I allowed myself to feel those feelings, what I was doing was actually taking my own hands off of being the safe container and trusting him again that he in this highest he's passed away subsequently twenty years. Then I started to really give myself permission to fully feel those feelings around the loss of not having him in my life in the way I needed it. And, subsequently, once all those feelings are fully owned and expressed, that's part of, like, the masculine issue is if you read king, warrior, magician, lover, men move into shadow states is because, one, they're not in alignment to a greater calling, and two, it's because they're not expressing energies.

They're stat think shit's shut off, right, or it's coming outside. And once I was able to really express and feel those feelings in in the in the depths of where they were, that's really when I started to experience a different profound healing with him and see him differently, really see myself and my my my patriarchal line differently. I was like, yeah. You know what? All this judgment about, oh, they're tattooed up and, like, they're street hustlers.

Like, I'm like, wait a minute. Fucking covered in tattoos. I'm like, I'm I'm one of I I I am one of them. Like, know, I stopped I stopped judging us. I stopped having to be the good son, the good father, the good like, even that is shadow.

Shadow doesn't always have to be this, like, dark, aggressive, violent, suppressed anger. Sometimes it's good boy. I'm just gonna be the best father. I'm just gonna be the best father in the world because my father wasn't in my life, so I'll be the best. No.

I don't mean I mean, number one father on the planet. That's shadow. Because what happens when my eldest daughter doesn't wanna have anything to do with me and judges me? I'm devastated. But if I wasn't run on shadow, I would be like, you know, I know who I am.

I know what I've done.

So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about I feel like you're, in the zone now, about forgiveness. So my my yoga teacher, Sharon G from Jeeva Mukti Yoga, often said, you know, everyone's doing the best they can at any given moment. And so when we engage in this work, it feels like we have to allow ourselves the full breadth of our emotional experience, but then also recognizing, you know, were our fathers or our grandfathers or our uncles or whomever modeled these tools, modeled these ways of being. And so when we do the work, how important is forgiveness and that perspective in how we move forward through our process?

Forgiveness really opens the channels of life force to flow again. Right? We're in a state of openness. We're in a state of receptivity when we have fully forgiven. We are reengaging with life again.

Any contractions in the body, we we need to be aware of them. Right? And if it's trauma, we need to tend. Like, it requires our attention. But in a in a perfect state, we are in a complete surrendered open state.

Right? There's no tigers coming to hunt, like, get us. We don't like, that primal aspect of self is incredibly important as a as a as a way to tap into power, but the vigilance and the contr like, constantly being overly worried, like, then we know there's something off. So what forgiveness really does, it it says, I'm a yes to life again. I'm a yes to relationships again.

And just because I forgive you doesn't mean I have to go back into relationship with you. But I am going to be open to the next person I'm in relationship with. I have to forgive you completely if I want to have if I wanna launch, like, in a clean slate with somebody else. The depth of my intimacy is predicated on how many, like, ex relationships I have completely healed and, like like, completely honored and, like, felt complete with.

I'm hearing forgiveness as a radical act of self care, having much more to do with you and how you show up moving forward than it does necessarily with any particular circumstance or or individual. Am I hearing you right?

Yeah. I mean, think about it. In our in our MWI program, three and a half months, we talk about the the temple body. We talk about the temple body. We talk about how we leak energy.

We leak energy. And when we leak energy, we can't quite step into that version of ourselves that we are aspiring to to become. There's a lot of moving parts here from forgiveness to limiting beliefs to integrity issues to, unfulfilled reconciliations to the all the damage we've done into the world that we need to come into balance with, you know, low vibrating traits that we have to really come to terms with within ourselves. I mean, this is a growth process. This is a journey of self actualization.

But at the end of the day, we are returning to a state of full, you know, reverence and awe for life. Right? Like, life was meant to be lived in reverence and awe. It wasn't meant yes. There's always been, like, wars and things we could focus on, but in its essence in its essence, I mean, look outside.

I'm looking outside of my tree. It's got hundreds of oranges, like, pouring out of it. It it the the tree is not giving us plastic bags. It's not giving us rubber shoes. It's giving us it's giving us fruit.

So it is in the essence of of life force essence is love. It is that's why we call her mother, mother earth. She's constantly giving, right, the essence that runs through her. So I think part of men's work, not part, I think a big part of men's work is is re re returning to that wholeness of self. Free from all the fears and and all the noise and free from the the pain of recreating events in our lives that keep, like, repeating.

Like and really becoming the curators of the life that we want to paint and create and live. Like, you can have that. You can have that. You don't have to settle. You can have you can have what your heart desires.

I really, really believe that.

Really deeply appreciative of being able to to be in the presence of you two men and have had the opportunity to learn so much and to be held as I've I've been in the environment to be able to have healing happen. And I'm just deeply appreciative and deeply in awe of of the message that that just came through with that that bit. So this conversation could go on for hours. And I do believe that in many ways, it will continue for a lifetime in my heart, in our hearts, and in the hearts of everyone listening right now. And so, Amir, as we close, what's one thing that you would offer to a man who feels the ache of this wound and is ready to begin?

Yeah. I just wanna I just wanna encourage you to avail yourself to to men that see you, that can empathize with you, that have the capacity to be with you as you are. And I want you to know that as you begin to tend to this wound, right beneath the wound, there is a pot of gold. And that pot of gold, when you claim it, will become the medicine that you will serve, that you will pay back in return for the healing, for the empowerment, for the freedom that you will experience in facing aspects of yourself that you've been avoiding and facing. So I just want you to know that the best is yet to come.

Mhmm. With that, I feel very Tim, how do you feel?

I just before we finish this episode, I just have to say I am a strong believer in synchronicity and cocreating our reality. And it was a little over four years ago that I happened onto Instagram to see an Instagram interview, which is happening a lot right after pandemic, with a man named Amir talking about one of the four masculine archetypes. And it it is not surprising to me at all that you have found your way into my life. And it is in large part because of you and your community that I have experienced the changes and the growth that I have. I feel unbelievably proud of so many of the things that I've created and you are a huge part of this.

You know, you you say put a stake in the ground, like, so to have you now on this podcast, which is an extension of the circles, which are an extension of our time together and your teachings, just feels so beautiful and magical. So I just need to take this moment of deep, deep appreciation and gratitude. Again, I've referenced my teacher, Sharon Gannon. She said that what we should say to our teachers, I will say to you now, thank you. Please keep teaching me.

Please stay in my life. I love you.

Oh my god. I love you both so much. I love you, and I'm so proud of this incredible podcast that you've that you've birthed. And I I just know it's reaching the hearts and ears of, you know, some men that desperately desperately need a new way of being and living in the world. And you two are taking your rightful place, and that makes me incredibly proud.

I love you both.

I feel complete. I love

you too. And question to you, Amir. Are you complete?

I am complete. Tim, will

you take us out, please?

I will. Let's close our eyes. And just for one more moment, allow ourselves to swim in these ideas, these shared sacred time together, any awarenesses, insights, understandings that may have come. And as we leave this circle, I wish us all safety, community, brotherhood, and love. In this moment, I release the archetypes and the spirits.

And with these words, our container is open but not broken. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. No.