A professional dialogue facilitator, writer, rapper and philosopher, Jacob created the SenseSpace Studio and Podcast. He publishes essays on his search for meaning, belonging and understanding, beyond cultural boundaries, and explores different rap genres. He co-founded The Resonant Man which supports the evolution and revivification of masculinity and recently launched Soul Journey, which unearths and births the soul through dialogue.
This short edited excerpt of Jacob’s interview arcs from his men’s work to his views of soul purpose, the upside of discomfort and suffering and his personal calling. Hear his full interview on The Gifts of Trauma.
I’m a man in the process of becoming a man—it’s an ongoing journey. Women have been some of my biggest teachers, but as I became involved in the men’s work, I found that coming together with men offered additional ingredients that enabled me to show up how I wanted to show up in relationships. There’s a vibrational underlying reality in our relationships with ourselves and others. When men are not seen, heard or connected, when we’re not in that energetic and vibrational exchange, we become traumatized and go out into the world like that, which of course, directs how we show up. We’re so deeply wired to seek wholeness, sometimes from differing degrees of consciousness, from role models and peers. And while we’re doing that, our vibrational state influences our perceptions and choices. So when I’m fully witnessed in the presence of other men, especially older men, the vibration in my energetic signature changes. It serves a function similar to that of long form dialogue, which is a passion that pulls me as I sensed that it could connect me to presence and wisdom. This pull was an ineffable quality, my intuition or perhaps the divine spark in me, which moves us to the spiritual plane.
In my understanding, we are all souls with bespoke purposes, each of which is unique to each of us. We discern our soul’s curriculum by sensing into our quiet voice, our intuition, or what’s called, ‘the golden thread.’ So it was that, plus I was beginning to perceive my life as not just a random materialist reality, but a living, symbolic, unfolding reality that I was in dialogue with. This latter view presents me with a distinct sense of what is going on inside of me and what is going on in the world outside me. It also involves following my curiosity, my desires, and becoming more comfortable with not knowing.
Buddhist teachings say our lives are richer when we become comfortable with the groundlessness of our existence. I know it’s true as it’s my own lived experience. But if asked, “Are you following that golden thread? Are you fulfilled and happy?” 90% of people might say, “No.”
What gets in the way of listening to our quiet inner voices, to following our golden threads? We’re unlikely to embark upon a hero’s journey when our emotional and psychological lives are stable or comfortable. For me, it’s almost always been a sense of rupture that’s called me to go forth, to find something new, and alchemize that ‘something new’ into ‘something else’ Another distinct path calls me to forge deeper and deeper into things, so that over time, my suffering is less intense. Additional motivation comes from the absence of a deep sense of belonging. While my childhood was quite ordinary, I lacked a depth of belonging, which meant that if I had stayed where I was, I couldn’t have come to know who I am. Luckily, something about the inner and outer guidance that was available to me said, “You need to go forth.” I did, and I learned that when we allow comfort and stability to limit the depths of our suffering, it can also limit the heights of our ecstasy.
In both supporting another’s soul journey and undertaking my men’s work, whether I’m able to meet and witness and hold space for another is entirely contingent upon the depth of suffering which I’ve experienced myself. When a deep surrender or acceptance has occurred, it changes the foundation of my being. After that, if somebody enters a space where I’m fully tapped into myself, holding that space with them, any locked up fragmentation they bring can potentially dissolve into the larger space of my acceptance. This depth of witnessing developed through my dialogos practice, which is a deep healing practice that travels down, in, and through to restore flow. Dialogos comes from various lineages going all the way back to Socrates, and more recently, to David Bohm and John Vervaeke.
In the context of dialogue, what makes that flow really juicy is its alignment with insight or the golden thread we were talking about. It’s like a concurrent experiencing and attuning to the golden thread and accepting its nourishment through a communion-like process. This takes place through the unfoldment of the dialogue and through the arrival of a third element, which can show up as either the flow, as a new insight, or as a new shared field that emerges between the participants. That’s the magic that’s available if we show up together in a certain way. I become an acoustic muse, inviting the conditions in which that can happen. Conditions which, in a way, relate to emptiness. I sometimes become space, which requires a simultaneous emptying of my mind and a fullness of presence.
I do this work because we’re living through a profound turning in the human soul, a metacrisis that demands an evolution within and between us. I’m here to midwife that shift, to listen and lead in a way that reveals the profound depths of who we are and what it means to come together. I feel a call to do this work, and I feel chosen to do it, because…
I certainly couldn’t have plucked together the conglomeration of highly meaningful and intersecting things that have now become the core of my work on my own. It’s been an emergent process that also seems to be working backwards and forwards in time, integrating things that were present in my early life and ancestrally, because I felt the need, I realized what I lacked and sought it out for myself. And through articulating it for myself, refining it, breaking up that bread and working through the bumps, sharing it out and inviting other people into it. And all the while, feeling a call to a horizon embedded in this, especially in the context of the men’s work, to be sure.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share it with others in your community.
