Episode 114: Masculinity In The Modern World W Kale Kaalehaki

“Without lineage, a man becomes a wanderer in his own body.”

This one’s a rite of passage in itself.

Jacob sits down with Kale Kaalehaki, cultural revivalist, father, and co-founder of Sacred Souls, to speak on what most modern men are missing, not breathwork, not biohacks, not six-packs… but belonging.

Together, they unpack why grief is the doorway to manhood, how routine without reverence keeps us hollow, and what it truly means to return to land, lineage, and life as sacred.

This one’s for the men who’ve trained, regulated, achieved, and still feel hollow.

This one’s for the ones ready to come back to land, to ritual, to story, to fire.

To what was never supposed to be forgotten.

If you’ve ever felt like your nervous system was regulated but your soul still felt lost, this conversation is the fire you didn’t know you needed.

🔥 Here’s What We Dive Into:

• Why the “self-made man” is a myth rooted in disconnection
• The spiritual condition of modernity, and why most men are culturally orphaned
• The difference between initiation and rite of passage (and why both matter)
• How routine without ritual leaves men spiritually starving
• Parenting, grief, and the unexpected initiations of fatherhood
• Sacred reciprocity: reclaiming relationship with land, air, and water
• Why nervous system work isn’t enough without soul confrontation
• The return to songs, stories, offerings—and building true belonging

🔥 Love this episode? 

Don't forget to subscribe and share your thoughts in a review. We love hearing from our listeners!

🔥 Let's stay connected:

Follow Meg: @the.meg.o

Follow Jacob: @thejacoboneill

Follow the podcast: @sexloveandeverythinginbetween

🔥 Want more?

⚡ Grab our relationship freebie: https://meg-oneill.com/relationship-freebie

⚡ Join CLAIMED: https://meg-oneill.com/claimed-immersion

⚡ Join DESIRE DATE: https://meg-oneill.com/desire-date

⚡ Join Full Spectrum Woman LIVE: https://meg-oneill.com/fsw-live

Ready to dive deeper? 

We work with individuals and couples - slide into our DMs to learn more!

Transcript

0:00

Titles without trials. Modernity has taken away all rites of passage. They don't allow us to understand our initiations. So what happens to the man? Well, like with the tree, when the roots are cut, the tree doesn't fall right away. It dries slowly from the inside into one day. The wind takes it and it dies. Without lineage, a man becomes a wanderer in his own body, longing for belonging. Really? You can't name it, right? Stories that used to be told by by our grandparents and grandfathers. It's just because we're talking about men right under the stars. They've been replaced by screens telling a man who to be what to buy and why is not enough unless he performs modernity. Replace the village. Now we have a global village all full of artificial light. Too much light. It's not meant to forget what they've come from, who they've come from, and worse, they've stopped asking. Yo yo yo lovers. Welcome, welcome, welcome to sex, love and everything in between. Where the O'Neals. You're here with Meg and Jacob. And this is the place we have really uncensored conversations about sex, intimacy and relationships. Well, super excited you're here. Enjoy this episode. Yo, what up lovers? Welcome back to another episode of sex, love and Everything in Between. Meg is currently asleep with Osheen in bed. We've just driven seven hours back to my hometown, and, it's so beautiful to have, an incredible guest here today who I'm really excited to. Personally, I'm a bit selfish in this. I just want to chat to this man and really learn from him and and really ask him questions that I want to know the answers to. So, brother. Welcome. Kali kali kahi. Yeah, yeah. Hey, guys. Good to be here. Thank you. David. Thank you so much, man. For anyone that doesn't know this man, he, I met him at Sacred Sons just over a year ago. And what I got to experience was his facilitation of of men's work in a variety of different processes and workshops. And, to this day, I'm, like, still deeply, deeply grateful for what I got to experience. That was a huge, huge, processing of some grief that I didn't even realize I was carrying from, a friend that committed suicide, ten over ten years ago. And the grief that I was holding around all of the the fallout that that came, came after it. And the fallout that happened with close friends, with family and all of this, all of this grief that was circulating that none of us knew what to do with. So, ma'am, thank you so much for for what you give to the world, especially what you gave to me on that weekend. And also, I just want to acknowledge, you know, witnessing you online and seeing what you create and your authenticity and how deeply, yeah, just deeply real you are. And seeing you go through the journey of grief recently and then also, you know, seeing you step into your, stepping into fatherhood really soon. And then also just the way that you deliver your work, man, it's it's it's deeply inspiring for me. I would I would, you know, I'm very, very humbly say that you're someone that I'm, that I look up to and I'm influenced by in the way that I choose to do my work as well, man. So thank you for being here. Oh, man. Thank you so much. So appreciate it. Yeah. Just the recognition. Yeah. Well received. And also, yeah, thanks for having this podcast too, for getting, you know, knowledge and information and, and, yes. Spreading it spreading. That is so important. I have this saying that's like, keep it local, spread it global. And so, I'm grateful to be here with you and yeah, for the seven hour drive back to your back to the home country. So, yeah, thanks for taking the time, bro. Yeah. No, definitely. I want to really start at the at the core of the conversation. What I feel the conversation is going to be around, and we can then follow the threads, but, man, like, I'd love for you to if you could just, you know, share with us what culture is and what it means to you and what you feel it, what role it, what pivotal role it's going to play moving forward for, for humanity. I'd love to hear from like, just a, just a general share on on what culture is. Yeah. That's great. I, you know, this is, a way that I kind of like to bring it forward, you know, for people is, we all come to a cultural understanding, you know, by the way that we grow up our parentage, those that we, you know, went to school with our own peer groups, extended family communities. So there's a lot of ways to understand culture, but the way I like to bring it forward is what is a rooted culture. And what does that involve? And what is a culture less culture. Right. And so the ways I like to speak of it is not that or, you know, antagonizing anybody or anything, but just looking at, okay, this is how it's played out. This is what we are. We are the beneficiaries of the things that have been left behind. What has happened? You know, when you have a culture that is rooted in belonging, will they they'll pass down knowledge and wisdom through generations. But if you have one, that's culture less like modernity, then you'll have something that's manufactured or fast tracked or trend based, right? Based on technology or transactions and efficiency towards things of the future. That is an unknown. Whereas a ruder culture looks at language in oral traditions as a way to bring story into people's lives, into communities lives they have ceremony and prayer and ritual. Community is one that is kinship. And it's not just about being reliant on each other, but how do we provide for one another and bring in these next generations. And so that's kind of how I, I like to see it for people. Because it's really important to know that, you know, I am a modern person to you. We're using these technologies, these mediums right now. Just because I'm an indigenous man doesn't mean like somehow I, want to go back to the past, which a lot of people tend to get confused with. That's not what I'm saying. There's no going back. I'm talking about now a new old way. How do we carry on the things that our ancestors, you know, had done for us for hundreds of thousands of years to then now we're here where we're avoiding our grief. We don't know what it takes to be present at birth or even with death. We mask, you know, our selves, our feelings, with, pleasure and impulses. Right? Right. Sexual energy. Just to. Just to get that off real quick. And busyness, you know, workaholic is a thing. Yeah. This fast, globalized location, this thing. What happened to the slow on the season, on the play space trail? What happened to the teachings of our elders and our ancestors rather than, you know, looking at a screen for a man to figure out who he is alone, especially when it's towards promoting individualism, self-righteousness, self-interested ness. What happened to reciprocity in In Sacrifice? And how does that how does that grow, you know, into let's just talk about men, right. How does how does what are the things that are consequences of that? What happens, you know, to men when we don't understand the measurement of our own souls and what we're in service to in the story that we have, or rather, were measured by our successes of money, fame and speed and technology. So, you know, that's kind of that's kind of how I go with this one. Yeah, I think about that. Like, yeah. I yeah, man, it's something that I'm, I'm only just really starting to try to understand for myself. Like living in Australia, being white, having the indigenous here and having the, the, you know, the the short history that I'm aware of, it hasn't been awesome. So it's like cool. That's happened. What are we going to do now about it? And how are we going to start to build something that is rooted? And I love what you said, you know, ritual, prayer ceremony. But most of my life I was seeking that I was seeking some kind of ritual come, some kind of prayer, some kind of ceremony. And even so, I'm just at my family home and I looked in my bedroom and I've got a, a cupboard. And on top of the cupboard there's all of these photos of all of my people. And I'm like, oh, there's this. Like, there's an altar in my I was doing this doing ritual without even knowing it. Yeah, you're doing the thing. But I think for a lot of, for a lot of men, you know, myself included, I feel like we, we we weren't educated on the, the, the ways of being in ritual, the ways of being in ceremony, the ways of being in prayer. And I found myself stumbling along, and I very much got caught up in the individualism way of being that I don't need anyone, I just need to look after me. And then I found entrepreneurship, which was kind of like individualism on steroids. It's like, I don't need anyone. I can work from my laptop in any location, and I could utilize cheap labor from here, and I can dropship this and I can ecom that. And there was this huge, from someone that grew up in a small town. I was always like, this is the answer to all of my problems. And I ended up feeling way more alone than I've ever felt on my entrepreneurship journey, which was which then led me to finding, you know, my my teachers, which then led me to finding ritual ceremony and prayer, which then brought me back to my like to some form of remembering, which I'm now learning to walk with a little more humility, a little more reciprocity, a little more. You know, freedom is my own is my own responsibility, and service is what I can give when I'm free. So. Right. Yeah. I mean, I'd love for you for you to maybe speak on if you can like, around this. What you see for men when they, when they don't have a rooted culture and how that like, influences their work in that especially they were like, you know, we have a lot of guys listening to this podcast on for relationship stuff. But yeah, a man that doesn't have access to or hasn't been, you know, immersed in rooted culture. How does that influence and impact his, his work and he's, he's relationship. So how have you seen it unfold. Yeah. Well this is a great question because there's there's many areas right. Let me start here. So the things that you spoke about and like you yourself have been searching for certain things about connection and belonging, and you're confronted with, again, the identity of whiteness. Yeah. Like I'm a white man here and in this land. And there's there's native people, indigenous people, and they're tribal and they were here first. And so you're born into this thing of your descendants and you and you weren't, you know, necessarily like, raised by the people who wanted to remember all of that, either. Right, of, like, what happened to them. All right. So this is the the point of contact that I'd like to bring up for a lot of people. And it doesn't matter, you know, if you're white, black or brown because it affected us all, you know, or yellow however you want to describe it. Colourism is the thing that causes our separation. And so what happened to our people, you know, was some may say colonization, right. People's land and language and life was restrict in the name of civilization. Right. This is civilized advancement. And we could look as far back as to the Roman Empire or even the Assyrian to say, oh, you know, I have German ancestry, I have English, Scottish in Irish, I have Norwegian in me. I actually have that. And so when I look at that, I'm like, oh, okay, I see what it was. It was, it was, it was the growth of empire, of imperialism that had happened. Then we look at religion as a place for conquest, where the sacred was externalized, institutionalized, weaponized. So these things can happen and the different ways of governance. Right. So we're looking at wars and migrations, and we bring this up. And education as it is, is not being taught about the historical, you know, relevance of people that have come that are now gone, extinct, even, or on the brink of extinction or nearly out. So we're taught to forget because we've been uprooted, because we were cut from it and we've been displaced. So I don't know who's feeling worse or who's whose experience of hell you know is worse because it's happening. It's either it's happening now or it has happened, and now we're just participating in what it is. And so for someone like yourself, you're like, oh, shoot, you know, I, I actually have pictures of my kinfolk, you know, on an altar that I look at. That's a ritual that your ancestors, you know, we're singing for you to do, you know, and it wasn't that, oh, this isn't a worthy cause. This is a worthy cause. Because those people are living in the very things I've been talking about. So what happens to a man, right? What happens to a man? So we're looking at things of so. If a man doesn't understand himself as a giver, but only as like, say, a king, then that's an illusion, because where is the man and all of that? If you don't know how to understand the grieving, there's just a king. And everybody knows. Like when there's a king and there's a castle and there is a castle. There's a kingdom and everything else. So where's the where's the realness in all of that? Because I don't see very many castles anymore. You know, I see a lot of men that are wounded and they see the world around them, and they're picking out enemies because they forgot how to honor. They forgot how to place offerings, they forgot how to become medicine for for a village. And so it's it's one way is like, when we see, I see just the overarching modern man. They, they forget culture because they want to be free, right? Entrepreneurship. You know, I want to be free. All my problems can be solved. Solved if I if I just do this, if I make more money, then I'll be liberated from all these things right now, that's consumption. It's a way to say that if I have more of the very thing that they're telling me is who I am, then I will be more. Then I will be self-sufficient. And self-reliant is self-made. But you're just feeding on the machine. You're just. You're just active muscle, you know, for this thing that wants to use you anyway. So a man without connection to his ancestral knowledge is just a house, no foundation. It doesn't matter how you build, eventually he will collapse. And many times, you know, people can assume that, you know, what I'm saying is just, you know, that's just that's just a story. I'm fine. I'm doing just fine. I've got the money, I'm strong. I got six pack abs. You know, I can do everything I have. It all together. But what is what is the real capacity that you have to protect life and to praise that which is fragile. Right? To me, that sounds like boys acting as men. You know, how do you understand yourself? Not only as the king, but also as the beggar? How can you be a how can you be a warrior and a lover? How can you be the adolescent and the elder in your adolescence? You know, and a man who hasn't actually died to the things that he thinks he he clings onto for power, control and performance and for pride. He really doesn't know who he is deep down, because he's left unproven titles without trials. Modernity has taken away all rites of passage. They don't allow us to understand our initiations. So what happens to the man? Well, like with the tree, when the roots are cut, the tree doesn't fall right away. It dries slowly from the inside into one day. The wind takes it and it dies. Without lineage. A man becomes a wanderer in his own body, longing for belonging. Really? You can't name it right? Stories that used to be told by by our grandparents or grandfathers. It's just because we're talking about men right under the stars. They've been replaced by screens telling a man who to be what to buy and why is not enough unless he performs modernity. Replace the village. Now we have a global village all full of artificial light. Too much light. It's not meant to forget what they've come from, who who they've come from, and worse, they've stopped asking, you know, memories. It's something that is just stored in the brain. It lives in your bones and songs and the way you tie yourself to the obligations of the people that have come before you, and the people that are coming after you. It lives in the way that you bury your dead and how you care for them. So yeah, you know, it's it's a big thing. The man must ask himself is like, am I whole? I like where, where is the parts that are missing? What are the fragments? What are the frayed edges of myself? Not for my own comfort and not for the control. Because I need safety, but connection and contribution. A place inside of this. This great song that's been sung long before I arrived. What did my people praise? What? The degree. What part of the world did they feed with their presence and then beginning again, you know, so a man raised in modernity is exiled from meaning. He's taught to compete instead of contribute. He might build an empire, but he'll die without ever being seen. For who he truly is. And that's what I think is the hungry ghost of masculinity today. Yeah, man. Yeah, we've we've been really sitting with this as a, as a, as a group of men recently around like how do I become the me is to me. How do I become the you know, the Jacob is Jacob rather than be, you know, rather becoming the man about town or the man on the hill that knows this and knows that and has this and does this. Yeah. And we've really been, another thing that we've really been checking each other on is how where are we regulating above the right of passage? Where do we keep regulating and just reaching for the next thing? Regulate, reach, regulate reach it just keep stacking acorns is dollars and then not actually going into the rite of passage, man. Going into what? You know, you said like become grievers actually be with death. I find this to be like, I don't know if you've witnessed this, but I've, I've seen a lot of men build success through, you know, extreme regulation. And then when life actually asks for them to dance or to sing, they turn to water. They they turn to dust because they don't have the, the they're not spirit fed in that way. Which, is something that I've, I've really noticed in a lot of, the Australian landscape is a lot of guys are warriors, and they regulate it and they train and they regulate and they train, but none of them ever actually break through through the rite of passage, man. So I'd love I'd love your take on that, because that's something I'm still I'm still formulating my, my perspective on, because I'm going through it myself. Yeah. You mean like the rite of passage or what's the what's the question? Okay. Do you, what's the difference between a man that's gone through a rite of passage and a man that's just gotten really good at regulating his nervous system with tools? The. That's a good question. You know, I let's talk about that. Yeah, this is a good one. The thing that I think about first is the difference between initiations and rites of passage. Right. So initiation, the things that happen to you unwillingly. Right. So, like, let's say, like, your, your puberty, right? When you enter puberty and the hormones change now, you know, and your body changes. And then now the point of puberty is. So now you can procreate, right? You can, you're now a viable, you know, specimen to then procreate. And bring in the next generation. And then with that, in this time, what do kids learn about their puberty? You know, in the States, they go to public education and they'll receive, you know, sex education class, you know, and that's pretty much about it, because in the society, we don't want to talk about those things. We don't want to talk about sex, even though it's prevalent everywhere, because sex sells, even though it's accessible at any moment on your phone. And there's the point of addiction is running rampant. But nobody wants to have a conversation about that, you know? And that's what I see is as part of the Western societal, cover up, right. Is, is is part of that hungry ghost is that the sexual energy is being sapped from our young men because they weren't given the proper rites of passage during their initiations of puberty. So the difference is that an initiation is going to happen to you unwillingly. You don't get to decide it. It's just there. The rites of passage is the opportunity for the village to come around and to acknowledge that you've crossed this natural, primal threshold into something else. The boy must die for the man to live. And then you hear that, and a lot of ancient wisdom that come from traditional societies, First Nation peoples, where they may be because it's like the boy has to die. And why is that? Because he has attachments to his mother, to his father. He has attachments to, the comforts of his life when he was being cared for and taken, taken care of, and all of the comforts and ease that he had. Now you have to go into the world and provide for the village. And so if you're not doing that and there's there is no village, then what do you do? You provide for yourself. And so what is the difference between a man that goes through a rite of passage and one that just knows how to regulate their nervous system with tools is such an awesome question, because in in its in and of itself in the question it says because I haven't had a rite of passage, because those things haven't been around in my life. I've looked to tools to help me with my nervous system, where as a baby, right? How are you? How old is your baby? Six months. Six months. Your baby. Right. So your baby's nervous system is directly attached to his mom? To the mom. Even though they're outside now, it's like they still there. Whatever she go through, they can go to is that boy. Boy, yeah. Boy. So he's he's he's his mom's baby. You know, you're the dad and he'll self-regulate with you. But neither one of you are tools. You were there for your initiation into fatherhood as much as she was initiated into motherhood. And then there's a rite of passage that will come which the baby is giving to you, because that's your village. Now. So his very presence in this little bundle of, of, of this you know, living ancestor, you know, come around the way now embody from from, from, from a long time ago is like now here with you is your son. That one is is there for you now to give you focus in understanding. Because now you have to look at them as a reminder every single day of like what that initiation was. And he is giving you that rite of passage. So we have it in us. But the thing is that we've outsourced so much of ourselves that is already naturally inherent to authority figures to, what you call that thought leaders, to these influencers, to these people who have come into our lives to say, hey, you know, this is what it means to be you. However, what we're seeing is that a rite of passage that comes through with the village. Let's get back to that point. Is that threshold moment? It's a designed event through ceremony, prayer and ritual CPR, right? So when a body is fixated, he cannot breathe. We offer them CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation. What do you do with a society that's forgotten how to breathe? And when I say breathing, I don't just mean like how you fill your lungs and hold it for a few seconds and in box. Breathe. And talking about the last breath. In the first breath, you know, baby born scream. We forgot about that. So we need ceremony, prayer and ritual. We need CPR. Right. And so now we're looking at these things and okay. So what are what are the tools. So if I put myself to task and I'm like okay when I wake up early in the morning I'm going to get my cold plunge on, I'm going to hit the sauna, I'm on, I get a workout in, I'm going to make sure I sun gaze with the sunrise. I'm going to, you know, make sure I get, my healthy fat and eat my carnivore diet and, like, all that. Well, that's just a mess of tasks. It's it's routines. But where's the ritual? The routine sharpens you. That's good. It helps. But the ritual says, I don't have to do this. I get to do it. And what fills in the space? So we're looking at things like, how do we reform this, understanding what we're capable of carrying through that responsibility to take care of ourselves. Right. Self-love. Self-care is very important. But now we have to remember the initiations that had long gone without being recognized. They're not just symbolic things. They're cellular. They're in our cells. So these roots that we take to do things, it's like it's good, but it's not the same. It's not the same because in many ways, if you haven't received that ceremony, rite of passage, rite of passage, and you're an uninitiated man. So there's many men out there because of not having that. They don't know how to be there in the moments of their child's birth or the moments of their mother's death, because they just were never taught, and they never saw that designed architecture of beauty, of the sacred and how it can be brought forward. And so, like the nervous system, again, it's not regulated. So why would I want to be present for something that's so immense and so unfamiliar and immense and overwhelming that it triggers me emotionally? I can't do it. And so then then we have absent fathers, right? You know, we have absent men and the lives of, of, their own families. Right. Let's just say for a son to their parents, it's like, oh, I don't need to take care of my parenting where they're just old, you know, I'm. I put them in a in the States. We put them in the, old folks home. Yeah. We let other people take care of them and we pay the money for them to do it. Right. So rites of passage are important because it's not that we have to rearrange the man, we just need to bring his beauty out so that he too can praise and grieve the beauty that's around him. If he doesn't see the beauty within. And it's not just about function, right? It's transformation. And this is a deep soul confrontation. If you really look at it, you know, nervous system work is a foundational tool, but the tools will break. And maybe that's the thing that we need to understand, is that we will have broken tools, and we as men need to learn how to repair those tools so we can repair the work that needs to be done. We need to restore ourselves by restoring ourselves. So you may be able to manage your anxiety, but never face your shadow right? You may be able to use breathwork to feel calm, but you avoid difficult conversations that would break your heart open because you don't want to cry. Because it is dangerous, right? You feel danger, there's danger there. So you might think you're doing the work because it makes you feel better. But feeling better isn't always the same thing as becoming whole because you don't get initiated. The techniques you get initiated by surrender, by being broken open, and a container should be there that's strong enough to hold what gets revealed. Some. It's kind of how I'm talking about it now. Yeah, man. All of that. All of that. Oh yeah. Yeah. I feel like my journey, you know, just to speak, you know, very succinctly, like I've started to place these rites of passage before, moments that I've needed to be ready for something that I am truly having to surrender to. I know before I got married, I, like, took myself away and, and, and, you know, assigned a god to take me out into the wilderness to go out for ten days and be like, you could just, you know, be, you know, go out and survive and hunt and forage and and be in a completely new landscape where I was guided to really, like, take a look at myself. And then when I came back, I felt like I could actually feel the commitment and the devotion that I was choosing in the marriage. I could feel it was so different when I came back from that experience because I was like, oh, this is this is no joke. Like when you choose a woman, you choose a woman. I'm not just I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not fucking about anymore. Yeah. And before that I'd be like, oh yeah, we get married because that's what we do. And we've been together seven years and that's long enough. So I bit it before it was all very of the mind, and now it's like it was just like I've been using the word conviction. It was this deep, like this sort of bodied feeling of like, I have actually, I'm not just choosing this right now. I'm choosing all that comes with it moving forward every single moment. And that was a huge shift for me in how I approached big moments in my life before, where I'd kind of held my breath and just braced, whereas I could actually come in, surrendered to something and let myself, like, fully have a felt experience as I, you know, married my wife and that to me was, was, was was it was actually quite like it was revelatory for me. Yeah. Beautiful. That's a beautiful example man. Yeah. That's, that's the sum of all the things I said that right there. That's. Yeah. That's how we could do it. I, I really feel like there's, that's something that I've, you know I, I, I, I've seeked it massively and I've gone looking for it in so many different places. And I think, I don't know if this is, you know, something you'd like to, you know, a thread you like to pull on. But for me, like I went to South America and I got to the mountains of Peru, and that felt more like home than I've ever felt for some reason. And I think it's because of what you're saying into the ceremony, prayer and ritual was just it was it was living and breathing there. So the coca leaves, the cups of what you are, the, the despite all of the offerings and the way that they would talk to a mountain as if it was a as if it was a living, breathing elder ancestor, that all just like spoke to a deep part of me, which then I realized when I came back home, I could actually identify where I could cultivate that in my my home or where we are, where I'm from as well. So, like, I don't know if this is something, you know, and the other I don't want to get into like the whole what's cultural appropriation, what's not. I want to play that. No, no, no. That's that's even God with that surface stuff. But like, I think there was a deep part of me that had to go so far from home to find what I was looking for, and it gave me a reference point. And then I got to carry that with me and bring it back and start to grow roots where I knew I needed to be planted. Man. Like I'm not meant. I know I'm not meant to live in the mountains of Peru and and do that. And you. I had to come home and start to build some build or like grow these deep roots and start to facilitate a, a remembering of, of, of culture that I believe is, you know, in service to me, my, my son, my wife and my community. Yeah. Yeah, bro. Yeah, I think so. This is a thing to for me. And I'm glad this question is being asked, because a lot of what I've learned and how I've come to be is, is through the Kanaka Mowgli traditions, which I here in Hawaii. But I also have my the quarterly years that I followed through and learn. Then I have I have two other lineages, but I'm mostly known for these, these two. And so one of the things that comes up for me is that I'm out there, you know, I'm teaching people culture, right? And then I show them certain songs or chants, and then some people, you know, without knowing anything about me, but just, you know, just from what they see on Instagram or whatever. Then there's like, why is it, why are you going out teaching white people, you know, our culture. So I'm not teaching white people our culture. Where's the white people? You know, because they're me. I'm not seeing white people. I'm. I'm not seeing any of that. I'm. I'm what? I'm seeing is what one of my teachers, Steve Jack, had called orphan wisdom, and he learned from also another man named, Martin Patel. Those are all really good books. For those that are listening, please check them out because I'll. Put a list of those I've just started reading. Stephen Jenkins is and I've read Martin's books, so I'll put them in a list down in the show notes. Guys. Oh, man, they're so good, so good a lot. So just a real quick one with that too, because I had learned from a cultural school from Halawa since I was 17 years old. And so I understood it from one way, which was an indigenous man on these islands of Hawaii. I didn't understand the other part of it. So to me, at that time, when I was young, I saw white people everywhere. You know, I didn't understand it that way. I saw brown people, black people. But through learning with them and learning through my other mentors in the traditions, I started to understand that there is such a thing as the spiritual condition of modernity where people are inheriting, you know, technologies and consumerism and all these different types of identities. But they're not getting teachings, they're not getting wisdoms. Life experience. Right? There's no rituals, no roots. Right? It's just there's no belonging. And so when people come in contact with with the very like a living culture that has had their pitfalls, has had their ruptures too, but they maintain themselves in that belonging. You're going to feel at home to because maybe whoever's listening, you were not raised by people who remembered how to carry the sacred, but you still feel called to it. You may not know your ancestral songs, but you feel the ache of their absence. Just like a phantom limb. You know something that's been severed. And you may live in convenience, right? And disconnection. But something ancient is inside of you. It's in your cells. It's in your DNA. It still longs to praise and to grieve and give thanks. So it's it's it's about this depth that when you experience it, whether it's in Peru, here in Hawaii or wherever you go, these are the things that allow people to move towards this kind of wisdom that is growing in the cracks. And now you can compost your sorrow amongst those that have this kind of technology, so to speak, because that's that's the words that we use. Right. But it's really a living art form of creating a human being. Right. And then and then comes the practice and an unknowing. And then there's the devotion, right? Not just the discipline of a person who can remember these things that you were never taught, but have experienced from another people, almost like you were being fostered into something because you are a culture loss orphan. Right? And so it's a return. And that's what I'm seeing for people when I, when I choose to go out there and I teach them about, hey, here's a chant for the sunrise, okay? And then they learn that chant, the activation of that is they get you out to appreciate the sunrise. I'm not just like, hey, let's learn Hawaiian things. No, that's not the purpose of it. Even that even the chant that I teaching people is all baby food. Children know this stuff. You know, I learned that when I was a kid. So it's just, this is a I'm just in the art of memory, the act of remembering in ancient of remembrance. So that we can start bringing back these, these the elemental ways go back to elementary school going back in that way, not let's bring the past forward and reset everything. No, I'm just saying let's bring back what we had that was so true to us in our souls and to the places that we live in, so that we understand how to belong and be in reciprocity with these places. Right. To care for them more deeply, to be stewards of things. Right. Life tenders. So when I think about it, you know, it's, if you don't if you if you're not functioning on an origin story that asks of you to participate in the world around you that way, and the creation story is when you have dominion over all land and everything that's around you, then of course you're going to behave as such. But if you've learned, you know, manhood and masculinity from a society that's not driven by metrics and they're not using movies or, you know, media to interpret that thing, then they're going to understand that, hey, the well is dry. We need to go get the Water of Remembrance again and fill up that well and or maybe get to the actual wild water where the spring used to be. And I covered that one as well. So that's that's what I see is like when you have the taste or the taste of real food, you know, because there's a people still cooking the old recipes and yeah, you're going to feel like this is home because it's inside of you. And that's the thing I so I tell everybody is like, what I'm teaching is baby food. This isn't I'm not giving the sophisticated, complex things that I know of because of initiations and rites of passage that I went through. I'm just giving people simple things. Hey, here's a song for the moon is a song for the sun is a song for the land. Here's a song for the grieving. Here's a song for the men. Here's a song for the women. You know it's real simple stuff. Man, I, I love all of that. That is all like, it's all, you know, a big part of, the work that we do here in Australia with the with the men's work that we're building is, is is bringing back some like some, some, some rooted cultural things of, of like learning songs, learning dances and learning things that men's work in Australia hasn't necessarily been known for. Men's work in Australia has been ice bath hollow tropic breathwork. Yeah. You know. Bashing, bashing pillows and screaming at the top of their lungs. But now, there's been this whole, like, new world that's opened up to me through, through actually through sweat lodge initially and then through and through Vision Quest, which I recently just, you know, the last two years I've been, you know, working with a lineage from Mexico, but then a whole other piece came through, with, through, brother, that's a method poetic. He's like a mythologist and he tells the stories of the from Ireland and from from Scotland and from England. These these beautiful stories. And he was that. Martin Shaw. He worked with Martin. Sure is. His name is Leon Leon Costa. He's, he's an Australian man. And he went and worked with Master. So he comes, he comes to our events and he tells, he weaves the myth and the old, and he takes something that could be just a process and turns it into this, this mythological, like mammoth of of the experience, man and and that. And you know, when you said baby food, I was like, when he speaks, I feel like I'm at prep, like I'm a full year old listening to the story of going on a bear hunt. You can't go under it. You can't go over it. You've got to go through it. And he's telling the story of Iron John and telling the story of, you know, my son's name is oh, Shane, because I heard him tell the story, the birth of Shane, which is a love story. And I was like. Oh. Man, that's got such deep roots. And it and and, what I've taken from, you know, my experience of, like, song and story is that it nourishes me in a way that no other practice does. And what it, what I feel is like, I feel that when we have culture, we have stories to share. And when we have stories to share, we can sit around a fire and then we start to naturally just do elemental things. Yeah. Which is which is, like you said, it's baby food. It's like simple. Seems to be pretty, pretty spot on for most men. Like simple is best in, you know, I always say let's, let's, let's do the simple things well. And I look back on my chart and, you know, and then like going to Peru and, and witnessing how they build a fire for the to or witnessing how they, how they do the offerings. And then I started and learning how, you know, how to use tobacco a little more, you know, appropriately. And I, I then came home and I started to see how in my, my, my family dynamics, even in my community, we we've, we've, we, we've been trying to do it. Yeah, we've been trying to find ways and we go camping and we light a fire and we do the things, but we don't necessarily have a relationship with it. It's a thing. Right. And this is what I've just recently learned through a book called Braiding Sweetgrass, which is like blowing my blowing my mind, bro. Like that book should be given to every single man. I, yeah, I learned fire is it's something. It's someone and that they when they would track an animal, they would say someone has been here. Not something. And I, I was like, wow, how many things do I sign object to? Do I sign them as an object rather than an entity like a sentient being? And it made me laugh because that's just my natural thing, is to claim ownership or to dehumanize. So it's been like for me like this practice of song story and, and stillness in nature, they've all started to like almost reanimate life for me. Like bring the animist back, the animistic nature of life back where I'm like, well, I can actually talk to this tree, and this tree might have something to tell me if I sit long enough and ask the right questions. And maybe if I clear up the rubbish here at the campsite and I actually start to be, in relationship, and that's what's been blowing my mind personally, man, is like, I can have relationship with anything, so I'd love to, like, maybe just drill a question in here for you is like, what role does relationship play in a man's life? And for me, what I've noticed is men see a relationship as a means to an end. If I have a relationship, it means I've got someone at home that I can come home to. And I'm not lonely. And this, that the other. But I've just take, like, my land, my learnings of relationships are going, you know, are being blown out of the water personally. So I'd love to know what role relationship plays, you know, for a man that is, you know, finding finding culture in his life again. Yeah, brother, this is good. This is a good quick so. Yeah. I want to, I'm going to take it back to when you were saying, about, you know, men's work being about, you know, breath work. How does your breath work in the ice mats and and things. And then I want to get into that the other part. So, when we look at things. Right. So our relationship to that stuff, it's all inherent to the human being. Right? Movement. Right movement is, is is life. So sex ceremony can be life, right. But how do the two merge? How do we understand that, you know, these things that we're doing as ice baths is just us coming back to the water. You know, a sun gazing is just us coming back to the power of what's in the air, you know, and then us, you know, even doing our fitness routines, things like that. It's coming back to the land. So when you have someone that can kind of take these complex things or let's say like, like, like foodstuffs ingredients, put them into one big recipe, put them in a pot, put it into the cauldron and make a magical brew. And, you know, then you have somebody like the mythic poetic man you talked about, like the now he's serving you up something that he created because he's a cook in the kitchen. Ray's his chef. And for you, in however many ways that he does it, you know, it's beautiful because it's needed, right? Because we talk about baby food. Well, normally, if the baby needs to, start to get teeth, right, you gotta chew up some of the, the, more difficult things and give a little bit at a time. Right. So that's part of the baby food work, too. And I believe in the myth poetic way that this man and others like him that have walked the path before him, that's what they do for us. They help, help, help us chew some of this food by chewing it first and giving it to us. So when we look at that, right, we have this very stark contrast between, you know, self-serving modalities to help me as an individual. And then actually, the storytelling to restore ourselves, that helps the community. Right. And so all of that, and when we talk about the men's work and this is relationships, right. Well, why do we not understand natural law? And you talk about rather walking the natural law, which is land, air and water, okay. And air and water. But these teachings, these rituals, these land based practices, all these types of things, right, like what happened to us. Right. And now that we objectified things, we dehumanize and we look at them as as tools. Right? Because we're using them all the time. Yeah, we're on the phone or in the whatever, you know. And so, of course, you know, when we come from a place of learning about the world around us, if it's if it's coming from a place of like, let's say, you know, imperialism, right? Then whatever is around is either going to be used as a resource, it to be extracted, or it's just in the way. So I have to remove it. And that includes people too. That's not just land, air, water and animals. So land becomes property, not kin. Because we forgot an island, we forget it was severed and it was promoted for us to not understand our ceremonies and our food, you know, and what's in our bones, in our ancestors. So restoring land, it should be the men's work. Restoring land means learning to belong again, not to dominate. It means relearning this thing of life tending and stewardship, reclaiming that relationship. It means protecting and planting and tending, not just taking. So a man without relationship to land will always have a severance to the relationship that he has to his own mother, and then the women in his life, because he will always seek that power and dominance over it and in artificial ways. And so this is a little bit deeper than what most people, I'm sure are familiar with, because I don't know who is listening to your podcast, but I'm going to go there. And so the same is same as, with, with our breathing. I love I love breathwork, I do, and I utilize certain methods that I've learned over the years as a way for people to connect to spirit. Right? The animism, the wind that is always coming in and out of us and that breathing that we have, breathing can be the prayer. However, when when the air is polluted, right. And this is just on a personal level, paralyzed by noise or distraction, then we forget how to speak clearly. We forget how to listen deeply. We forget how to breathe with the world into the world, because now we're only using it as a way, as a tool to get us to a certain place, right, to a cathartic experience, to a peak experience, so that now we can cinematically move to tears is big thing right? But what about the words that we could do? We have some brevity and clarity and respect upon the way that we speak like a monkey, which means in the word there is life. In the word there is death. So we speaking words that build our. Are we speaking about brands? Right? Are we clearing our mental fog with some silence in nature and speaking from the heart? Or are we just dancing around the damn thing and creating, you know, a puppet show and we're all on stage with our presence. So when a man can actually breathe as something that is of ceremony, to help them clear the air of themselves, then they can bring that to others. And the same thing with restoring the water. The wood water is always pure. It's the other particles that are in it that pollutes it. But water is pure. It's always pure. You can whenever we filter the water so we get fresh water, water to drink. And that's the emotion, that's the memory. Water, as I've come to understand, is the daughters of the sun and moon, right? Rivers and streams. They're making their way to great great grandma. The ocean, every single one goes there. So it's a feminine intelligence, and it's those tears that should be allowed are the same things that the rivers demand of us whenever we step into that river, because we're never the same person once we step out and not the same man twice, and you step into the body of water. So men that are cut off from the water, cut off in their ability to feel and to grieve, to cleanse and to flow, and then you see it, right? What do we do? The rivers. We dammed them up so we can get hydropower. Right? All these things. So what does it mean to restore the water? Well, let's get back to natural law. Animism is key. Animism is the beauty of a faith that I practice because it involves all religions. It doesn't matter which one that you claim or the one that claims you, because it's not about worshiping the things that are around us. It's giving them praise and taking care of that, you know? And the conversation isn't all you should give all your prayers and recognition to the creator of all. I mean, how how so how so when I'm actually here and I need to eat and drink and to be alive, and if those things aren't taken care of, then I'm poisoning myself and those around me because I just don't care. I don't have the right relationship. I'm not in right relationship. If a man cannot cry those losses and he cannot lead, I do not believe because he's not able to listen to what's been lost. And so to me, it's those relationships. First, you know, with the men's work is like, if we're going to gather together, we better be gathering together to build something that looks like restoration. Because we can't restore ourselves unless we take care of natural law, land, air and water and whatever form that takes, because there's a lot of beautiful technologies out now today that I enjoy that I'm involved in, and I'm learning more of that is bringing me even clearer to the path that like, oh, this can happen a lot sooner than I thought. You know, some of the things I'm working on here, I'm always just just a quick example is that there's agroforestry that I've learned in agriculture from my really good friend. We partner in a nonprofit called McCall quest. But, he taught me this way he can revitalize, you know, old plantation land that that was chemically, you know, saturated and also extract it to the soil is now dead without nutrients and minerals and plastic just layers and layers of black plastic so that they could continue to grow the crop, whether it be pineapples or sugar or whatever it. So what he could do with what Central African culture was was eight years and then now he's learning these other methodologies that involve indigenous microorganisms like from Korea, natural farming. And he can advance full restoration of the soil in two years. So then now we can take everything into a mature forest and what nature would normally do in like 30 plus years, with human, engagement, contribution and stewardship and life tending, we can bring all that back in five years. So that's the men's work in my mind. You know, it's like great. You know, we have things that we need to move through. That's just the first step. That's baby food. And because we didn't have those those rites of passage, right. We weren't understood in our initiation. So yeah, let's do that. First. Let's scream and yell and hit pillows. You know, let's let's do our breathing. But then we have to grow up, put the boy things away, get back to land, air and water. So that to me is is the relationship. Yeah, man. That's that makes so much sense. That makes so much. Especially the piece that I talk to men around the dam, the swamp in the river, and on the one of them flows back to the source. And, the way that you explain that is the sons and daughters of the of the of the cycle of the sun and moon. Yeah. Like that, that makes so much sense to me. Like, that's like it's. And of course, of course that makes sense. And for a man to have a relationship with Lee and with land, air and water, he then has a relationship with life. He can then like have a relationship with other. Yeah. It makes, you know, the foundations are in place. Yeah. The foundations are in place because it's so. So here's another piece. Right. So we've we're I'm a mod I'm, I'm a modern person to a functioning and I got bills to pay everything else and I provide services. I also am very engaged. So what I do here in my community, you know is to bring people to that. I, you know, I have my, my sweat lodges, I have my Greek ceremonies and communal work. And then I'm also out there, you know, in a way so that I can provide for my family. Because that's key. But I don't lose sight of the natural law. It's all part of invigorating a channel so that these resources can be used in a recipe. And in a reciprocal way to give and receive. So the more I can hold and the capacity I can hold emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, that capacity grows and grows and grows. Now I can start distributing, right? So it sounds natural, right? Because we've been shaped by systems designed for control, not for connection and right. We are raised as men to be useful, not soulful or emotional or tuned into these things, which comes with so much value when we do. But as we're looking at things as products and commodities, right. Properties. And so what do we do? We take them for granted. So how many times within myself, if I taking myself for granted, how many times have I have I killed the dreams of that little boy? How many times have I abused him? Right? And you look at the world around you. You tell me. You tell me when it started. Right? This is what I inherited to, you know, as a modern man with indigenous roots, you know, it's all just just adding that to it, you know, it's like we we're not here to conquer the mountain. We're here to listen to them. And I didn't say it. I said them on purpose. Because we need to know that there are things going on, whether you're drilling the earth for oil or mining or whatever it is I can you still offer your prayers? Can you still honor what you're doing as a modern man who's never taught belonging but only taught ownership, how do you still do that? How do you still find meaning through your achievement and through your relationships? Right? That's a big question. And the question that people, you know, men can be like, well, how do I make the time for that? You know, what we which I think is such a funny thing because like, after witnessing it in Peru and then and then practicing it back here, it becomes it becomes ritual and ritual just becomes, a part of life, like you said. I think you said life is ceremonial. Ceremony is life. Those things that, become rhythm. And it's so funny, we had, what really started me most of this work was, you know, working with the plants and the and the teachers over in Peru. But then I came back and I started the most simple thing. It was called Men's Weekly Connection. And what do we call it? Our nervous system reset. We'd go out to these, beautiful cascades, these rock pools, and we'd sing and we'd meditate and we'd breathe, and then we'd hop in the water. And over time, we started to build ritual around it. You know, when we get there, we offer it, you know, we'd offer prayers to the water first. We'd open up the flow directions. We do this and we start to just, like, build a whole ritual around it. So there was a there was an offering before we actually took from the place and it became this, I actually believe it became like by, like one of the most important things in my life. And I don't think I would, would have been able to stay my relationship or stay the course of, you know, building my business. If I didn't have that Saturday morning and I didn't have those men that was standing in a circle with me doing the practices as well. And you know, what was so funny, man, is that those those those fourth things, you know, song story stillness and, and movement, they all came. They all started to become the cornerstones of the, of what we were doing before. Yeah. So men. Yeah. And and yet, you know, the world was sitting on it. Was it on a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, you know, Rocky cascade with the water flowing, the breeze, you know, the land, air and water. We were we were remembering in a way I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and many times it's just an invitation because they're always there, you know they are. It's just you just, just take the invitation. You know, and invite by being invited, acknowledging that invitation. That's simple right. And that's, that's what I hear you were doing is the most simplest thing. We show up at a place we acknowledge that we give our offerings and offerings are wonderful because they're just they're offerings. You give them freely without any expectation. You just you just there. And so it's like you don't have time for that. What do you mean? Yeah. What do you mean you don't have time to give something of yourself? I mean, people are more willing, you know, to give away things than they are to, like, hoard them. Most people. But then when there's a few of us within the larger collective that's always trying to reserve that and try to keep it close, then it makes us all started. Now our nervous systems are like dysregulated because we're like, what's this guy's problem? Why is he not acknowledging the invitation? And it's here and it's very present. It's like when you have all the men come around, you know, I'm sure maybe a little bit has it because they're still in their little boy. They're afraid, but at least they're there. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. It's like they made the time. Yeah, man, I, I know we're coming up to time, but I another thing that I learned through braiding Sweetgrass was the honorable harvest. And this. Yeah, this blew my mind because I really, I thought I was I was very much just take what I need. I was super scarcity, take what I need. I'm not going to take any more than that. And then I got I said, I went like, fuck that, man. I'm going to take what I want because I'm a man and masculine is all about doing and being penetrative. And I'm going to go out and I'm going to live on purpose. Right. So it became that I'm going to take what I want because I'm Jacob and I'm worthy of everything that I desire. And then when, when the, when the in this in this book they talk about take what is you know take what is given. I was like, yeah. I was like, dude, I was like, oh, so I've gone from like this codependent I need they need to, I want and I'm independent and you're going to give me what I want or else I'm mister. I'm the I'm the king of the castle into this beautiful, beautiful, interdependent place, man. This interdependence. And I was like, wow, what a beautiful take. What is given. And, you know, it all came back to me because it in Peru I built out a mess out with the with the Khoi is the sacred stones from all the mountains and I couldn't get. I was like, I can't take anything from these mountains, man. I don't want to be that guy. And it was so beautiful what one of the teachings of Porco said he said, he said, the mountain we want. If the mountain wants to give you a stone, it will tell you. And how do you feel when you want to give someone to something? When you've got something to give to someone and offering and they say no, how does that make you? And I was like, oh shit. Yeah, oh. Yeah. So, so, you know, the the beautiful thing of the message, like the collecting the coins for the Messiah, was just like, was this, like, such a, a lesson in, like, taking what is given, but also me learning to receive as that little boy that. Yeah. So engaged with the atomistic world then and I'll just to finish this story that that message with all of these beautiful coins from all through Peru, from all the sacred mountains, actually got stole in and they threw it out the window in the, in that valley where we would go to the men's Cascades. My back, I got stolen. They actually threw it in there and and it became an offering to that valley in a weird, messed up way. And I thought I'd lost it. And it was a full circle moment, man, that I was just sort of. I was reading this book, and I was like, everything was sort of collapsing in on this, this, this page. So every everything that you've been saying, man, has been so it's, you know, thank you because it's made me feel understood. And that's something that as a man, especially a white man dude, like for me, I've never really I've always felt misunderstood for, you know, believing in magic, believing in this way. And, the way that you've explained everything today, man, has been, deeply, deeply. It's soul food for me, man. So thank you. Bro. Yeah, all the way, I got it. Thanks for having me. And I really appreciate the questions and the stories that you share and just wonderful events. Just sharing a little bit more about your life. And because when we met each other, you know, we didn't get to do all that. We went straight into the work, you know. And so it is, it's it's it's cool like it. But I don't really get to know people. You know, I get to see them in those really deep parts of themselves. But I didn't really get to know the man. You know, I got to see the story unfold and and to be of service to that. But so I really appreciate this time that we could talk and and hear your stories better. Yeah. It's landed. Landed in so many places of me too. So just yeah, along that reflection as well as the, you know, we, we, we share ancestral roots, don't we? Yeah. You've got some Celtic in you. Yeah. My majority Celtic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. There you go. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much. People, where can people find you, man? Do you want me to direct them to your Instagram? Yeah. So one of one of the things about, the work that I do is that. Yeah, if they ever want to get it, get in tune with what I. What I do is Instagram. Just my name. Kaleka colleagues call you. They also have my, now academy, which is my, my online membership. And that's, that's a really good one, man, because that one is like, if you feel aligned to the things that I'm saying, then you get a deeper dive into what that means and what I do. And I'm here to teach people. And so, I do for live calls a week. And then I got a whole classroom that, gets you situated for, seven days free and everything else like that, and then, doing, introductory calls, you know, for people. Then the other thing as well is, is that, you know, I'm a co-founder of Sacred Souls. I still do those events as well. I have one called Maui Mana. But this one, this one is coming up soon in, in May, but there'll be other ones. So that's how people can find me. Yeah. Yeah, man. And, I just want to plant a seed. Yeah, I run, I, I run a thing called the Gathering of Men, which is a convergence of all the men's communities, in Australia. And we, we, we bring a whole heap of dudes together for four days. And, you know, one of our prayers is to, you know, invite guys from from different places in the world. So. Yeah, man, like, I'm just planting the seed that one day we would love to have you. If you ever feel called to come back to Australia and share your medicine. Oh, yeah, we'd love to. We'd love to have you, bro. And we'd love to talk about that. You know, next year or the year after, we're going to be around banging the drum. So whenever it whenever it aligns, then we we would love to have you. Oh, brother. I'd appreciate that so much. Yeah. The call coming back to Australia has been strong, so I would I would love that man. So thank you for bringing that up. And and I say I just like to say, for, for those still listening, just remember that a man cannot protect what he doesn't love or he just won't. He just won't. But he also cannot love what he does. I remember so so remember, remember these things that that we share. And the hope is that Jacob, you continue on on your path, health, happiness and harmony to you and your family, your ohana, to your wife, for your baby boy and and the work that you do for and for the men in your community. Yeah. Strive on my brother. Yo, man, thank you so much. Hey. Yo, peace out, beautiful people. Thank you so much for listening. Yo yo yo. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of sex, love and Everything in between. Now, if you'd like to stay connected with Megan, you can head on over to Instagram and follow me at the Jacob O'Neil. And where can people find you? Love her at the dot, Megan O. Amazing. And yeah, guys, check out the show notes for all other information in regards to what we've got coming up. And yeah, we're super, super grateful that you guys have taken the time to listen in to this podcast. If you do have any topics or any questions, like I said, hit us up on Instagram and we'll see what we can do apart from that. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of your day. Thanks for being. Here. Big, big love.