Season 02 – Episode 30: Evoking The Resonant Man, with Jacob Kishere
By The Gifts of Trauma /
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This deep, esoteric and practical conversation addresses the lack of positive role models and meaningful traditions for men, today. Jacob introduces the “Resonant Man,” an archetype that aims to evolve masculinity into a sacred form that addresses current societal contexts and the importance of male identity. After recognizing the need for a communal space that fosters growth and understanding in relation to masculinity, Jacob encourages men to connect with supportive communities, engage in dialogues, explore their emotional landscapes and open to the potency of personal transformation
Jacob and Kevin also delve into:
- The potential of the emotional gap between isolation and intimacy
- Opening paths to greater joy by confronting and embracing our vulnerabilities, fears and traumas
- Relating our personal internal conflicts to the broader struggles of today’s metacrisis
- The essence of existence, the groundlessness of life and the necessity of accepting uncertainty
- The roles played by elders, ancestry and intergenerational wisdom in guiding modern initiations for men facing unique contemporary challenges.
Overall, this dialogue explores how men can navigate their external environments and emotional landscapes, ultimately fostering deeper connections with themselves and their communities through shared experiences, rituals, and supportive communities.
Episode transcript
00:00:00 Jacob
We want to create an address of the situation that men face today, which is an absolute poverty of positive, profound and potent visions for what it means to be a man in this time, and the importance of becoming a man in this time. The Resonant Man,as we’re conceiving it, is deeply conscious of, and in relationship to the condition of metacrisis that we find ourselves in, living in a thoroughly unique time of globally interconnected crisis, acceleration and transformation of our reality at a peace that exceeds our capacity to adapt to it. Furthermore, the nature of that metacrisis is one in which our consciousness itself is a key piece of the entire puzzle. There’s a higher dimensional consciousness that’s becoming possible through this framework of men coming together, that really guides us. When we come into that Resonant Man mode, something initiated already can start.
00:01:11 Rosemary
This is the Gifts of Trauma podcast stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.
00:01:31 Kevin:
So my name is Kevin Young and we are here for another episode of The Gifts of Trauma podcast from Compassionate Inquiry. I am really excited and looking forward to speaking to Jacob Kishere. Jacob, you’re really welcome to the show. Thank you.
00:01:50 Jacob
Thank you very much, Kevin. I’m really excited to explore with you today, I’ve heard so much about what you guys are doing. So, good to be here.
00:01:58 Kevin
Thank you. And Jacob, I’m really keen to get into who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it. And I want to acknowledge as well, I’m particularly happy that you’re here in the world that certainly I live in, in our world of Compassionate Inquiry and healing. And whether it’s meditation or if I go to yoga classes or I deliver sound bathing experiences, it’s usually twenty women and me, so it’s really nice to speak to another gentleman.
00:02:34 Jacob
Yeah, really interesting to consider why that might be during the course of the conversation today as well. Yeah.
00:02:41 Kevin
Yeah, that’s definitely one of the things I’d like to unpick with you and, I suppose I have a little vested interest in that, I don’t think we heal as a community, a society, a world, unless we engage the other 50% of the population that aren’t going to circles and retreats and sound baths and meditations and that that’s our menand . So I’m going to see if you can help me to understand why that might be what we can do about it.
00:03:16 Jacob
Yeah, I’m a man and I’ve always been a man, but I’ve also been in the process of becoming a man along the way and still very much in that. And that’s a big piece of my journey. And I can definitely say that through that women have been some of my biggest teachers and my biggest torturers insofar as I’ve cocreated those situations. Yeah, I think it’s immensely important and as I became involved in the men’s work spaces along that journey, yeah, getting back to when I was in university, but really over the last three or four years, it’s always been front and centre for me that this kind of coming together as men was somehow containing some secret ingredients that would be affording of us actually showing up how we’d like to show up in relationship with women.
00:04:11 Kevin
Yeah, thank you. One of the things that our shared friend Matthew had said was that, he really saw that by engaging in men’s group activities that it really helped improve his relationship with women. And that’s another really interesting dynamic that as we come together as men and show up as we need to be, that things outside of those man to man relationships also change.
00:04:37 Jacob
Yeah, it makes me think about the sort of vibrational underlying reality that is our relationships with ourselves and between men and also with women. And a sense that I have that when I’m deeply vibing with other men, when I’m connecting, when I’m seeing and being seen, respected, that there’s like a vibrational reality to that. If I’ve been in a space where I’m really feeling, yeah, witnessed and more fully in me in the presence of other men, maybe older men, yeah, that absolutely carries out in my energetic signature. And then, you know, what vibrational connection am I able to hold when I then encounter women in the world as well, relative to if I’m not feeling seen or I feel like I’ve got something to prove or something like that?
00:05:34 Kevin
Thank you, Jacob. I think in there, a term I used recently, I don’t like the term toxic masculinity. There’s something very, I don’t know, condescending or degrading about it. And the term that I landed on was traumatised masculinity. And when I hear what you’re saying, when men are traumatized by men and we’re not seeing, we’re not heard, we’re not connected, we’re not in that energetic and vibrational exchange, then we become traumatized men. And as we’ve become traumatized men, we go out into the world as traumatized men. And of course, that has an impact on how we show up in the world.
00:06:10 Jacob
Yeah, I definitely started to grock a sense that the world that was in some ways a symbolic landscape and the people that would arrive in my experience at different times were presenting these dynamic mirrors, if you like, to the things within myself and yeah. And so far as some incompleteness or there’s something in relation to the father or to the mother, indeed, then yeah, 100%. Like we’re so deeply wired, it seems, to seek to find that wholeness, sometimes from very differing degrees of consciousness that we’re doing it, but the seeking out of role models and peers and the kind of challenges that can happen in relation to authority figures and things like that.
00:07:05 Kevin
Yeah. Thank you. Jacob, we’re already flying into this conversation and I haven’t even asked you. How rude of me. I haven’t even asked you to introduce yourself. I could… I have a lot of stuff here about you and what you do and stuff. I could reel that off. I would imagine that it would be more authentic and maybe truer to you if you did it. Would you take a moment or two and tell us who you are?
00:07:32 Jacob
Sure, thank you for the invitation. I’m also very, it’s my forte to jump into the flow without any provided context. But in any case, my name is Jacob Kishere. Some of the passions that characterize my life have been a long term draw to long form dialogue and really feeling that I could find a connection to presence and wisdom through participating in long form dialogues, particularly with other people who are oriented towards that certain something that can show up in dialogue. And I use the word dialogue more than conversation to indicate something that has a slightly richer intentional energy than just everyday conversation.
I grew up in the UK, but my life has seen me, in many ways, culturally displaced and drawn to other cultures and places on the horizon and finding myself through the process of that. So I had a lot of back and forth to the US when I was younger. I ended up moving from very middle of the road, suburban Poole in Dorset S England to Mile End in East London, which is like the Brooklyn of London in a way. It’s where the Jews from France arrived, and the Chinese, and then later the Bangladeshis and the Caribbeans and everybody. It’s like the melting pot spot. So yeah, throughout my life I’ve really been drawn to the other, whether it be in place, whether it be in explorations of mind and direct experience. I’ve had a lot of journeys with psychedelics, and I’ve also had a lot of intellectual journeying and then also through partners and through relationships with people who had different cultural backgrounds. And something about that for me always seemed to be very catalytic and something about coming into proximity with difference in an intimate way is self revelatory as well. So yeah, out of all of that, I did the bachelors and a master’s degree in London focused on Islam in the West and this like big picture tension between those two and how it was showing up symptomatically at the time with jihadism really at its height and around 2014/2015. But at the same time, I really was called to something beyond what my academic world and my level of selfhood at the time offered. There was something calling me beyond. The seeds of a fascination with the counterculture were planted in me at some point at a young age. And so that was probably the doorway that led me into initially kind of exploratory Beatles-inspired explorations with psychedelics. But this of course, as with many others, led to many more things, an evolving journey that leads me up to today where I now live in southern Mexico. And yeah, continue to do this work of dialogue. Also writing rap music, writing essays, leading and facilitating The Resonant Man, which is an international men’s initiative, and also doing a little bit of podcast production here and there, and helping other people out. So that’s a little overview.
00:11:12 Kevin
Thank you. And even within that, Jacob, I can literally feel my mind sparking with questions. When I read a little about you, I was aware that I could go into a very consciousness-based conversation and spiritually-based conversation. And even as you said, “…something else was pulling me to do this thing,” you can hear my mind onto the article. What is that? What is that something else that pulls a person to do something? Maybe I’ll get you to answer that question, just to tickle my fancy. What is that? What is that, that pulls?
00:11:47 Jacob
That’s a great question. I mean, it’s an ineffable quality in many ways. What is that? I think it’s a divine spark. I think it’s the divine spark within us that is called to insight, and I certainly wouldn’t have expressed it in these terms 5 or 6 years ago. But where I’m at now, my understanding is that we are souls, we have souls, and our souls are here with purpose. And that purpose looks something like a curriculum. And it’s not a curriculum that you can receive from a university or a lecturer or anybody else can give to you. It’s absolutely unique to you. And so then how do you figure out what your soul curriculum is? It’s a combination, I would say, of sensing into that quiet voice, that little what’s been described by others as the golden thread, the intuition, the curiosity, which I think anyone who’s ever gotten somewhere really interesting has gotten there as a consequence of a series of kind of golden thread following moves that didn’t really abide by a linear track. And then at the same time, it’s starting to read the book of the world, read your life as if it’s not just a random materialist reality, but it is a living, symbolic, unfolding reality that you are in a dialogue with, and it’s coming and presenting to you in relation to what’s going on inside of you. So in order to follow that golden thread, it’s also about listening to the world as it presents to you as well. And then maybe there’s something about following curiosity, desire, and becoming more comfortable with not knowing.
00:13:50 Kevin
I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna enjoy that answer for a second or two, Jacob, if that’s OK. That was… That was a beautiful answer. There’s something extremely powerful about enjoying not knowing. I’m a big fan of Pema Chodron. I don’t know Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher Nun, writes beautiful books, but she writes often and talks about a groundlessness and the idea that we’re all here scrambling and trying to convince ourselves that we have some sort of secure grounding underneath us or in front of us, when the truth is really that it doesn’t exist. And a lot of her writing is about… in Buddhist teachings, that your life will be so much richer if you can become comfortable with the groundlessness of existence. And from a personal point of view, I was about to say I believe her. I don’t believe her. I know it’s true because it’s my own lived experience. So Jacob, your answer was beautiful. And it sounds like, yeah, so let’s all do that. And yet here we are living in a world where I’m sure if we asked 10,000 people, “Hey, are you living your life’s purpose? Are you following your soul? Are you following that golden thread? Are you fulfilled and happy?” I don’t know. Anecdotally, 90% might say no. I’m doing a job that pays the bills, that feeds my family. I go on a couple of holidays every year and that’s my lot. So what gets in the way of listening to that quiet inner voice, to following the golden thread, to getting this curriculum? What gets in the way?
00:15:41 Jacob
Yeah, we’re touching on a mysterious terrain here, because I really don’t know, at a fundamental level, if everybody is set to discover their purpose in this lifetime or not. Or what are the reasons why some people you know and seem to be propelled towards certain paths and others not? With respect to my own experience, I can say that you’re not very likely to go on a hero’s journey if life in the village feels sufficiently content for you, or stable, for that matter. And equally, in the course of one’s life if the… what are those little wheels on the bike? The support wheels.
00:16:33 Kevin
Stabilizers.
00:16:34 Jacob
Stabilizers. Training wheels.
00:16:36 Kevin
Training wheels.
00:16:37 Jacob
Those are on the bike in terms of emotional and psychological journey. Then there’s also a limit in a way because it’s, if we limit the depth of suffering, then we also limit the height of ecstasy. I would say, and this is my edge of the understanding of things like Christ, the notion of the Christ, that we can get on to why I’ve ended up in that domain after psychedelics. But for me, it’s almost always been a consequence of some sense of rupture that has caused me to go forth into something new, and to sort of alchemize that into something. And I would love to say that there is another way. And in a way there is another way, because there’s a way of kind of forging deeper and deeper in and through those things in such a way that it almost becomes less tragic, over time. But yeah, I would say certainly initially, like moments of rupture propel us and also a lack of a deep sense of belonging, which is not to say, you know, I grew up or had some childhood where I was always feeling like I didn’t belong. I thought my childhood was quite ordinary, but in some ways a lack of a depth of belonging, meaning that if I stayed where I was, I wouldn’t really have come to know who I am. And luckily something about the inner guidance and the outer guidance that was available to me said, OK, you need to go forth.
00:18:18 Kevin
Appreciate that as well.
00:18:21 Jacob
And please, if you feel like I’m ever being too vague or esoteric with my responses, we can speak in many different kinds of languages here, so I’m happy to to shift across as fits.
00:18:34 Kevin
Sure. Sure. Thank you. I will certainly do that. And you, I’m not so sure that anyone can speak “too esoterically” to me. It’s a space that I like to be in and I have to be mindful that I don’t get too deep into it is probably my thing. Jacob. I’m mindful of allowing my mind to get wrapped up in what you’re saying. I’m going to get you to repeat something. I didn’t write it down quick enough. You said, if we limit the depths of suffering, we limit the height of joy. Is that what you said?
00:18:59 Jacob
Ecstasy, yeah.
00:19:00 Kevin
Ecstasy! That’s a really profound yet simple statement, isn’t it? If we limit the depths of sorrow, then we limit the height of ecstasy. Can I read you something? As I was reading just some stuff about you, I pulled some books off my bookshelf. The stuff I was reading made me think of these books, and I’m sure you’re familiar with some of them. One of them I pulled off the bookshelf. Was, The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zuckoff? I don’t know if you’re familiar with Outlook, No. And I’ll read you a little bit of that maybe in a while. And then anyone that listens to me will know that I’m a John O’Donoghue fan. I’m going to tie into the contract of our podcasting that you must go and read some John O’Donoghue. That’s part of the deal.
00:19:42 Jacob
Received from an Irishman, so it counts for extra.
00:19:46 Kevin
For sure, I think you’ll love him. Given what I’ve read about you, I’d just love to have your thoughts on it and feel free to ask me to read it again. Sometimes a first read doesn’t always hit the spot, but let me read this to you and see what you think. “Our hunger to belong is the longing to bridge the gulf that exists between isolation and intimacy. Distance awakens longing. Closeness is belonging. Everyone longs for intimacy and dreams of a nest of belonging in which one is embraced, seen and loved. Something within each of us cries out for belonging. We can have all the world has to offer in terms of status, achievement and possessions, yet without a true sense of belonging, our lives feel empty and pointless.”
00:20:43 Jacob
I’m curious to give you the first word on why that poem, why that extract came for you.
00:20:48 Kevin
I’ve been reading this book for a long time. The book is called Eternal Echoes, exploring our hunger to belong. And maybe on the 10th read or something, after many times reading it, I started to realize that, you know that first sentence, Our hunger to belong is the longing to bridge the gulf that exists between isolation and intimacy. And on maybe the first half dozen or 9th or 10th reads, as I read that I perceived or believed that there was a bridge that would lead me somewhere outside of myself. So there’s something I’m longing for and it exists out there. And then, after reading it many times, I realized that this bridge isn’t outside of me. It’s inside of me. In fact, I am the bridge. I’m also the gulf. I’m also what is isolated and also what I need to be intimate with. And the reason that this passage speaks to me is because I think in one sentence it sums up my work and what I do and what I’m hoping to achieve for myself and for others around me. I want to bridge the gulf that exists between isolation and intimacy.
00:22:02 Jacob
Yeah, I’m just appreciating that metaphysical move that you made when you took the bridge from outside of yourself and then you just brought it all within yourself. And the transformative logic of that in a way to really feel the love you seek, the recognition you seek, the worlds that you are longing for, the places of really realizing yourself, ultimately, you magnetize them to you through relationship with what’s within you. But then of course, at the same time, action is real. Overcoming… overcoming fear, Overcoming discomfort.
00:22:51 Kevin
And those, Jacob, maybe I could pause you there because I also when he talks about bridging the gulf that exists between isolation and intimacy. Often in our work and particularly maybe with particularly maybe slightly more so with men, maybe I’ll say that. The things that we have isolated are the very things you’ve just mentioned. It’s the suffering, it’s the fear, shame, guilt, anger. We isolate those. And maybe those are the very things that we need to get intimate with as well.
00:23:24 Jacob
Yeah. My sensibility in relation to this relational work, in relation to supporting somebody else’s soul journey and equally in relation to the men’s work. Like, so much of that is about where I have been able to go within myself and the depth to which I’m able to meet and witness and hold space for anybody else is entirely contingent upon the depth to which I’ve gone to those spaces or similar spaces and depths within myself. If somebody’s with something that I am not in contact with, within myself, then it’s going to be, it’s going to be a more tricky process. But in a sense, if I have gone to that place of suffering within myself and I’ve brought like a deep, deep surrender to it, a deep acceptance has occurred, then it’s like the foundation of my being has been changed by that. And then if somebody comes into that space and I’m really fully tapped into myself and holding that space with them, then it’s like whatever kind of really tightly locked up fragmentation is within them, can potentially dissolve into that larger space of acceptance as being held within me.
00:24:54 Kevin
That’s very altruistic, Jacob, of you. Are you familiar with the term Bodhisattva?
00:24:59 Jacob
Of course. But I have… I meditated a lot in my early years, but I never really went deep down the Buddhist path. I didn’t find it opened up for me. So I’m fairly ignorant in terms of the metaphysics of Buddhism.
00:25:14 Kevin
Sure. Yeah. No, it’s just to be a Bodhisattva is someone who enlightens themselves so that they may enlighten others. That I’m sure there’s a much more technical description than that, but someone who seeks enlightenment so that they may help others find that. And when I hear you chat there, I hear that in your answer. So that when you go and see this suffering within yourself, when you go visit what’s in you and bring a deep surrender, I think you called it, to it, then you’re able to facilitate and hold space while others do the same. And that makes you, that makes you a Bodhisattva, my friend.
00:25:52 Jacob
Takes one to know one, I guess.
00:25:55 Kevin
It does. And I totally agree and hear with you, that maybe from a very practical point, if we’re in, if we’re working with someone, they have a deep experience and they’re crying and or something’s going over them. And if we can’t hold that, then that’s not going to be a very useful or productive experience for that other person.
00:26:16 Jacob
Spot on.
00:26:18 Kevin
So maybe we can shift gear a little bit then. And I’d love to know, Jacob, what sort of person comes to you for help and what do they come for?
00:26:29 Jacob
I haven’t got a massive data set at this point, it’s just starting out. But the ones who’ve come have been young men and the kinds of things that have been moving in them have been addictions, spiritual crises/awakening, creative blocks, creative and motivational blocks. But more broadly, I think this depth of witnessing this orientation that’s developed through the practice of dialogos, which has been really what inspired my call to dialogue for the last five years, and comes from various lineages going back to Socrates and more recently David Bohm and John Vivaki. This practice of dialogue is really oriented towards the restoration of flow, and that’s a very healing thing. If we want to talk about gifts of trauma, it is getting to a place in the process of down, in, and through, where there’s like openings of more flow than there was before. That is very redemptive to me. And in the context of dialogue, what makes that flow really juicy is that it’s aligned with insight. The sense as we were talking about that golden thread, it’s like actually experiencing and dialing into the golden thread together between us and then just being nourished by that. And there’s a kind of communion-like process that takes place through the unfoldment of the dialogue and through the sort of arrival of that third thing, which can show up as the flow. It can show up as new insight. It can show up as a sense of a shared field emerging between the participants. But that’s really the magic. And it’s not exactly my magic. It’s more like magic that’s available in reality if we show up together in the right way. So I just try and be like an acoustic muse for the conditions in which that can happen, which in a way does relate to emptiness. Like I do sometimes just become… try to become space which requires an emptying out of my mind and a fullness of presence at the same time.
00:28:50 Kevin
For me Jacob, no matter which lineage or spiritual tradition or religion or philosophy, when we get down to the nuts and bolts of what they’re talking about, it’s all the same. It’s emptiness, it’s presence, it’s divinity, it’s Brahman, it’s God, it’s truth, it’s love. That’s what I thought of for me, when two or more people are involved in this deep dialogue, something else appears, some other energy, intelligence, truth, and that is emptiness, that is Brahman, that is all these terms. How does that land with you when I say that?
00:29:24 Jacob
Yeah, I would say that is why I’m here, and that’s the heart of most of the different forms of the work that I do. It can be described as collective wisdom, collective intelligence, or it could be described as the presence of Spirit.
00:29:40 Kevin
For sure. Yeah. Thank you. Another right angle turn question. If you’re OK to receive it. What are you hoping to achieve? What are you hoping to achieve with this work?
00:29:53 Jacob
It’s a right angle question. It’s a tough one to answer off the dome for me. But broadly speaking, I can’t say, oh, I want to create a whatever… whatever ranked company and have this kind of XYZ business result. For me, it would be something like participating with deeper and deeper aliveness with people who I vibe with, to greater and greater depth, and through doing so having greater and greater impact. And so I’m in a dance right now. Is it about coming back to tradition? Or is it really holding space for the imagination of something completely new? My friend Jordan Bates would always answer a question like this with something really bold, like, bringing the Kingdom of heaven on to earth and bringing down an abundance and joy. So I’m going to dare myself to say something like that and then let the specifics fall as they may.
00:30:54 Kevin
Beautiful answer. Yeah. To bring the Kingdom of heaven down to earth. And. And that’s what I meant to Jacob. Maybe achieve was a clunky word. Maybe, what do you aspire to, through the work that you do, it wasn’t, how many dollars do you want to earn or more more… What is the aspiration? And with this work, working with men, and let’s move on to Resonant Man very soon. But maybe another very short question would be why? You know, so if I read, 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… and I like the choice of that word. 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. Why? Why might a guy do that?
00:31:48 Jacob
Why might a guy do that? Because feels a call, because he feels a call to do it, and in that sense, he feels chosen to do it. I certainly couldn’t have plucked together the conglomeration of highly meaningful things and intersecting things that have now become the core of my work. I couldn’t have done that myself. It’s been an emergent process and it’s also seems to be working backwards and forwards in time and pulling together and integrating things that were present in my early life and ancestrally and because you felt the need yourself, because you realized what you didn’t have and then sought to become at and articulate it for yourself. And then in articulating it for yourself or sharing it and breaking up that bread, sharing it out, inviting other people into it. And in the process of that, refining it and working through the bumps and all throughout feeling that it is… there’s a call to a horizon embedded in this, especially in the context of the men’s work, to be sure.
00:33:04 Kevin
Can I pause you, Jacob? Because there’s a real thing in there that I think I’m curious around. What what, what, what is it that you didn’t have? So when you were drawn to create this thing that that you didn’t have, that you noticed there was a space that that something didn’t exist in. And when you help others to do that. I’m question stacking here, I apologise. So what is it you didn’t have and what will be the impact when you do?
00:33:33 Jacob
I didn’t have a functional religious tradition or lineage. I didn’t have any kind of meaningful processes of initiation, or maps or conveyances of what that might mean, or even the notion that was important. I didn’t know about lots of things. I didn’t know about how to deal with money. I didn’t know about filing taxes. I lacked a circle of peers and men who were further advanced and wisdom that would have helped me to stumble around a hell of a lot less, and also stumbling into relational attachments and really painful drawn out relational attachments, which did traumatize me. And in that context, I see very clearly just an absence of a depth of… I didn’t have at that time a depth of communication with my family, with my father or other men in my family. There’s deep ancestral reasons both in my family and in my culture more broadly for why that is the case that go back to the wars, and I didn’t have it with my peers. You’re thrust into these systems of education that don’t actually account whatsoever for your soul’s education or developing you in a holistic fashion. So all of the deep important stuff, all of the heartbreak, all of the inner world, all of the subtle patterns and trauma dynamics and these things, they all get fragmented and put over here. And this, this is just random personal stuff for you to deal with. And the important thing is this box ticking. And as we spoke to before, these achievements, and I could be doing pretty damn well on those achievements. And I did pretty well in spite of the fact that I was really struggling, really struggling being in push and pull relationships and half in, half out and trauma dynamics present and just having my nervous system saturated with the anxieties of that. And in that context, I still would have appeared to have been doing things right. And that’s a broken, that’s a broken ecology. And I, I suffered the consequences of that. But as we say, gifts of trauma, huge revelations, huge transformations come out of these things and they do seem to have a kind of destiny in them. So I don’t, I certainly don’t wish to undo any of the suffering that I’ve experienced in my life.
00:36:37 Kevin
And I thank you for pausing there, Jacob. You said so many wonderful and interesting things. And I want to come back to the impact… and maybe the answer to what is the impact of that is the opposite of what you’ve just answered that all of those things would be in existence. But I really believe listening to you that what you’ve just talked about is a really relatable thing for, again, maybe mostly young men and men, but I guess, maybe the population at large of our Western culture that tick all these boxes. As you just said, get your degree and get a good job and that makes you look good and fulfilled human being. But it totally omits all of those other things that you talked about, our spiritual our soul wellness, our ability to see our own suffering so that we can recognize it in others, an ability to tap into our own compassion. Our ability to be able to be with and deal with grief and anger and get taught any of that stuff. These are all new words to me in the last, I don’t know, maybe 8 or 10 years of my life. So I think what you’ve just said could be really relatable to a lot of people listening, that, I am not getting this internal fulfillment. Can I ask a question… you’ve touched on it a little bit on it. So what was the impact of that on you, of not getting that the stuff you’ve just talked about, what was that suffering like for you?
00:38:11 Jacob
Isolating. I would say very isolating because I kept it all to myself. Even though I became an atheist. By the time I was 17 or 18, I was still carrying these sort of Christian codes somewhere in my mind, which showed up as self sacrificial tendency and the desire to rescue on some level and be like, oh, this person has not experienced that kind of love. So I’m gonna show them how. And yeah, I mean, at multiple junctures in my early 20s and mid 20s, having these moments of crisis, the full breakdown of those partnerships, which as a consequence of not having this ecology around me, I was deeply dependent upon. And on reflection, my grandfather was abandoned by his mother when he was a one year old infant. And this is something, oftentimes they’re like facts, things that live in the family story at a factual level, but they’re not actually at all understood at an embodied level. In a way, I knew these things, but I didn’t really know them because I hadn’t had my heart broken by them. And so my speculation is that, I have been in some ways working out this abandonment wound, and maybe there were other abandonment wounds in the family tree as well, but these things were conveyed unto me unconsciously. And yeah, for that reason, those separations felt like death. And you really just, you feel like a child that’s been abandoned at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. And because of the lack of equipment that you have, you really are isolated in that you can’t convey that to people around you. So yeah, I went pretty deep into that suffering and there was also a deep degree of fragmentation that occurred for me because I found myself in dynamic relationship where I’m both loving somebody and also in relation to traumas within them that are unsafe to be around. And I think for men in particular, it’s incredibly difficult to to fess up to having been in that kind of position because we always think of, and I’ll say more broadly, I think the entire discourse around abuse and abuser and this kind of persecuted persecutor always is collapsing complexity, even though this tendency now everybody’s getting trauma aware and they’re saying, Oh, my dad’s a narcissist or whatever. Like, every narcissist is a wounded narcissist in my book. So that you really can’t separate trauma from any of this. But in any case, yeah, I I felt, yeah, fear, I felt fear. I felt massive spikes in my nervous system because of these conflicts that would pop up intermittently and unpredictably with the person that I lived with and was my girlfriend. But it wasn’t really a clarified relationship either. And someone who I’ve great love for and great regard for to this day, having been through a massive process in relation to it. Like still, I stayed in that. I stayed in that situation. And many times I actually would flip between an escape. I’d go into an escape mode and I would start thinking like, man, I need to move, I need to get out of this. And then for whatever reason, I would just say, there was some reason I just kept staying and accepting and coming back into. And in order to stay in a situation like that, you have to fragment off. So the longer I went into that and the deeper I went into intimacy with that person, the deeper that fragmentation, and in the way the imprinting of that into the depths of myself.
So that was my big initial break at age 23, I would say. And I finished my master’s degree and the burnout hit not long afterwards and my body started breaking down. I was feeling sick. I just couldn’t, literally couldn’t do anything. It was becoming apparent to me that I’d been forcing myself forward in a kind of survival mode with some kind of apprehension that if I just succeeded in all these worldly objectives, that somehow this situation would resolve itself. And it was only resolved by things falling apart and crashing out. And yeah, that was a primordial thing that set me on a wisdom path. And as always, we find the tools out of necessity. Yeah. I found some of the tools at that time that were very helpful. And I’ve continued to discover many more in the years subsequently, and in later experiences of crises that have come and yeah, had been born out of… born out of things falling apart and really intense life destructive ways twice within this prior to the age of 26 or 27. And I’m 29. So yeah, it’s been a very accelerated learning process. And if I hadn’t already been on the path with respect to psychedelics and starting to open some of these medicine portals, I might have just run off the ancestral code and I might have just buried all of that down. And I might have just become a kind of shell of a man that many men are walking around as. Because the pain is buried so deep and there’s a consequence, the aliveness and the will to live is also castrated.
00:44:35 Kevin
And the use of external things to bring us our vitality and our excitement increases. So that leads us through to addiction and sexual promiscuity and gambling and eating and working too hard, etcetera, etcetera. Wonder if it would be OK if I took you back a little bit. There’s a real central question in my work and our work in Compassionate Inquiry. And the question is, you said, and something was drawing me back. Something was drawing me back. And that’s a really important inquiry in the work of Compassionate Inquiry. And we often ask, what were you getting from that? And that’s a soft way… That’s not an accusatory thing. It’s not blaming. It’s not… So when someone is addicted, when someone is behaving in a certain way, when something is happening for someone in their lives, we’ll often ask. What were you getting from that? What was that doing for you? So the loving people that hadn’t been loved like that before, the meeting the traumas in people, our exploration into self might ask us, Why did I do that? What was I getting from that? Was the function of that for me. What was my prize? And I’m curious, what were you getting from that?
00:45:58 Jacob
Yeah, great question. I think there’s two pieces that come to mind. The first one, prior to what I was getting from it, of the why, is also just a sense of disablement and lack of preparedness to be in the world and to move in the world from my small sheltered sort of upbringing. Just like even something like the courage and necessity to make those moves and propel myself outward, I lacked. Which brings me into what might I have been getting from that relationship and many early relationships was a perennial dynamic. When I haven’t fully realized myself and I don’t have men in my experience that are reflecting, nourishing and supporting that, these really special women teachers come into my experience. I also happen to be in super complex relational entanglements with them. But they’re teachers and they have the divine feminine instinct of nourishing and cultivating and we’re not getting it from anywhere else in that… to that depth. We’re not getting it from our institutions or our educators. We’re not getting that sense of wow, this like deeply tailored, like deeply… of someone who can see the potential in you and is like loving it and growing it and giving their life energy to bring you forth. And that.. there’s a line in one of Kendrick Lamar’s albums, Mista Morale and the Big Steppas where he talks about all these women that gave him superpowers that he thought he lacked. And that’s 100% resonated with me. I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for the series of key one or two really key partners and relationships over several years that developed me. But here’s the trick of it, is where there is trauma, where there is a lack, where there is and and I can certainly see probably an absence of… I seem to magnetize women who also had an absence of father figures. Make of that what you will. But in any case, when that nourishing and that giving is coming from a place where there’s still some lack in place, then it’s a way of getting love and maybe not believing you would get it otherwise. So the ride of a lifetime, the education of a lifetime is what I would say, Kevin, because I learned more with these women than I learned in schools, and they journeyed with me into the arts. We journeyed together through psychedelics. We went to different depths that I didn’t go to with any of my guy friends. And as a consequence, the depth of loss when those relationships end is, “Oh, am I actually going to be able to access that depth within myself anymore? Because I’ve only ever accessed it with this person.”
00:49:07 Kevin
Thank you to talk of, why might I draw into my life these women seem to have a lack of paternal or fatherly love in their life, when we think of the story that you’ve just told here is this young man, Jacob, who is going to love someone really hard so that he can get seen and witnessed and nourished. And if you need to love someone really hard, so that you can get seen and witnessed and nourished, it might be reasonable to think that the person that you’re going to attract into your life is someone that needs to be loved really hard. The dynamic is totally symbiotic in that two people that need something, they seem to be opposing things, but what they actually are is gravitational things. The woman that needs a fatherly love or a male, love or someone to really love her heart. A young man that needs to love someone really hard so that he can be nourished. And there we have a perfect traumatic relationship or a perfect trauma bonding. Does that make sense or am I being too prescriptive or presumptive?
00:50:16 Jacob
Yeah, I think that’s great. And that was really, I think discovering what you’ve spoken about is the process I began after that. Like I really started to inquire into, what’s this landscape of trauma. And I haven’t really encountered the Hubl work or Gabor Maté, or anything at that point. I was just intuitively… what’s going on here and that sense of these roots and branches that were attracting one another and these hidden, this sort of hidden root system in each person’s personality that is super uniquely drawn together even without them knowing it. And you get the relationship and then three years in you discover some wild correspondence between their paternal grandfather and your lineage. And so, this is happening all the time, but we, again, we don’t really have the grammar for it and we’re just discovering the grammar for it as well.
00:51:09 Kevin
Yeah, Gabor talks about that you will meet someone whether you believe it or not, you will meet someone at exactly the same level of consciousness as you are. And I watched a little video of Gabor recently where he was talking about being married, but he said the person that you marry, you may find them very attractive and they’re wonderful, but what you’re really attracted to is that they are going to highlight and illuminate all the things in you that need to be repaired or worked on or that you need to be freed from. He says, and that’s why you bring them into your life. OK, Yeah, I can understand that.
00:51:48 Jacob
Yeah. And I think also, that becomes both. There’s a… I heard it said once that the partner you’re magnetizes the combination of your karma and your drama.
00:51:59 Kevin
I like that.
00:52:00 Jacob
And so it’s obviously not simply, it’s not simply your karma, it’s not simply your unique trauma bond, which in itself is not a bad thing. If we come with an awareness of that, or an orientation to OK, things are drawing together because there’s a possibility of healing nested here. That was a revelation for me, but then also the Dharma. And so which is to say, the more tuned in we are to our soul, the more significant, and obviously significant the people who come into our field are going to be. If we’re oriented towards that all the better. And so people come also with blessings. They come with tools and keys and things we’re missing and things like that.
00:52:54 Kevin
I really enjoyed what you just said Jacob. It was a little light bulb moment for me that it always comes with the possibility or the potential for healing and thinking that the universe, if you like, is always moving towards healing. It’s always moving towards truths, it’s always moving towards love. And even in those darkest places or in those very difficult relationships, if we can see what is it here for me that I can see and heal, it supports that idea that the universe is always moving in your favor. It’s always moving towards healing and wholeness and wellness and growth. So thank you that, there was a little light bulb went off in my head that I really appreciate that. Jacob, is it OK if we take another right turn? If I stick the indicator on, that we do a right turn? Would that be OK?
00:53:42 Jacob
Let’s bank right, we’re flying now, yeah.
00:53:46 Kevin
OK. We’ll blank, right? Yeah, OK.
00:53:48 Jacob
Thank you. The road metaphors are too linear. Now we’re in the air. We left them 50 minutes ago.
00:53:52 Kevin
Resonant Man, tell me a little bit about that and what that’s doing, what the hopes are for it. And again, I don’t mean that it becomes hugely successful, but you know, what’s its, what’s its mission statement or what’s it setting out to do? And then how can people access that? Well, how can they get in touch with you and access the wisdom that is within Resonant Man?
00:54:18 Jacob
First of all, I’d be very encouraged if it became hugely successful. The Resonant Man is, is a vision that has been born out of my journey and also the journey of my cofounder Matthew Green, and really emerged through a connection that we shared quite organically, around an inquiry into our ancestry as men. And I had written an article several years ago whilst I was living in Germany reflecting on my relationship to my grandfather and the war and my fascination with becoming a soldier and what was really going on here. And Matthew has his own fascinating stories with relation to his father and grandfather and uncle, as do most Englishmen, and many other Europeans, in the case that almost all of our grandfathers and great grandfathers shared this war experience. So that brought us together and we started to realize in the course of our dialogues that there was some emergent call happening, there was some buzz, there was some resonance that was animating us. And each time we tuned into it, it had that Dialogos-like quality where we were tapping into the flow of insight. And so it wasn’t a sort of preconstructed or preconceived idea that this would happen. It more just emerged through dialing into that possibility space and doing podcasts together. And I had, over the course of my journey, gone from participating in men’s circles to stepping up to leading them, and then from leading them to seeking to actually really grow and develop what this thing could be. And I realized a lot of people just like, oh, I kind of need a Men’s circle. So I’m going to throw together a men’s circle and people will show up and we’ll do the thing, which is powerful and important. But to me, it always needed something more. It needed vision. It needed that kind of Tolkienian aesthetic that gives life to it and it needed some mythos around it. And so I started to play with that. And at the same time, I started to play with giving curriculum to this and OK, what are the key pieces and themes and areas we could move through together as men that would deepen our capacity to tap into that collective wisdom together? So that started with men emerging and I did a Dialogos and fellowship group. And then with Matthew, we started to conceive of the Resonant Man, and it’s been a profoundly beautiful, elegant, rich, unfolding journey. The quality of the Resonant Man for me is that it’s the Resonant Man is almost like an archetype that has emerged through our dialogues. It feels like the Resonant Man is a presence in a way that we can tap into that calls us forwards in the work and then downstream of that, like a direct sense of how we’re really tapped into something here. There’s a higher dimensional consciousness that’s becoming possible through this framework of men coming together that really guides us. And then we start thinking about, OK, we don’t just want to create a deep container. We want to create an address of the situation that men face today, which is an absolute poverty of positive, profound and potent visions for what it means to be a man in this time and the importance of becoming a man in this time. So we conceived of it from the start as holding this dual purpose that it would be both, in a dialogue with the circumstance of men today and continually seeking to cultivate a richer and deeper vision, exploring what the different elements of this are and evolving masculinity as sacred masculinity. How does this masculinity sit in relation to women, in relation to the feminine and the divine context? How does it sit in relation to traditional masculinity? We didn’t want to just create a super spiritual, sensitive and attuned group of men. We wanted to also tap into the fire. We wanted to address the structural issues. We wanted to clean house, so to speak and do that traditional stuff that defines masculinity in a positive sense for our forefathers as well. So that’s a kind of ongoing unfolding question. It’s occurring through, principally, this core container that we launched in November, through which we have different monthly themes, the month of the ancestral, month of the sovereign, month of the feminine, month of the metacrisis. And you can hear in all those different themes the kind of multidimensional approach that we’re trying to take just to say we trust most deeply in the wisdom of the field. And we spend a lot of time attending to and cultivating that context so that ultimately the healing, the insight, the growth that occurs through being in relationship to the space and participating in the space comes from the space. And we’re in service to that. But alongside that, we’re continually creatively bubbling and thinking about, OK, what’s the kind of dynamic acupuncture that we can bring that’s going to poke it and open up different avenues for the men in the space and ultimately bring us to a sense of OK, we are moving in accordance with sacred evolution, we’re becoming better fitted for our lives, for the women in our lives to step up in our working lives, and becoming more whole, becoming more healed and doing that work. And Matthew is an absolute wizard in space holding and has been deeply devoted to training with Thomas Hubl and the Collective Trauma Healing work in Europe and has just come back from retreat with that. So he brings a real subtlety to, How do we hold this space? How do we do the deep listening? How do we not allow kind of default modes and patterns of advice giving and all kinds of things to just come in? And how do we actually create a space that can deeply honor, process, and honor a man within it?
01:01:17 Kevin
That was really beautiful too. Thank you. It sounds both inspirational and Invitational, which I really like. And if there were a young man, old man, whoever… listening to this? And they’re thinking, I’m really relating to Jacob and I’m, I’m really relating to his story and what he says and his desire to grow and to heal and behold and to tap into this thing that helps us relate better and work better. How would people go about doing that if they wanted to be in touch with you, or Matthew or Resonant Man or?
01:01:58 Jacob
Yeah, we have a number of points of contact, which I’ll probably give you some links to drop in the description. We have our sub stack publication if people want to more gently get a sense of the vibe. We publish a piece every single week, transmitting what’s actually going on in the space. What are we learning? What’s at the edge of our understanding right now, going through each of the themes, but more directly, they’re invited to just reach out to me, or reach out to Matthew and have a conversation with us and sense into what feels aligned and alive with them. And yeah, and then the space is open to new joiners. We have a very multi generation home spread right now ranging from 29 to our elder, Jeff, who is 80 and many of our men in the 40s to 50s range. And we really wanted, we really tend to the process of bringing a man into the space. Like we want to have a bit of an honoring process of, OK, nobody’s randomly stumbling into the Resonant Man. If they find themselves in the Resonant Man we assume that there’s a, there’s some greater reasons behind it. And so we want to invite men in on that basis, if they’re showing up, they’re showing up for a reason and to honor that.
01:03:14 Kevin
Your eyes sparkle when you talk about Resonant Man, Jacob. Something happens.
01:03:24 Jacob
I’m delighted to hear that. The Resonant Man has been born out of my soul. I’ve never birthed a vision that felt more in congruence with my… the highest calling of my innermost reality. So the Resonant Man is a kind of compass that we don’t know the full depth and meaning of. And yeah, I think there’s an intentional and unintentional beauty in the Resonant Man versus other archetypes like the Bodhisattva or the Christ, which is that, every man I think has a sense on some level of what that Resonant Man feels like. The one who’s in tune with the musicality of life, with his own soul. Who’s able to be in resonance with others as well. And dialogue. Who’s in resonance, who’s in attunement with women, who’s in attunement with the people that he works with and is in attunement with higher realities, sacred worlds that are guiding his life as well. And then able to express from that place, to speak with residents in that sense, invite as well, because the quality of us speaking can invite other people into resonance as well. And then wow, we’re making Resonant Worlds and that’s actually the name of Matthew’s sub stack Resonant World. So yeah, I love that reflection and thank you.
01:05:00 Kevin
You’re welcome. I was at a conference in Prague just last weekend and Thomas [Hubl] was presenting at it and he was talking about that idea of when we do the work, when we meet together, that creates its own energy which will draw the right people into that. And he talked very much about not worrying about how many people are there, or the number. He talked about when the energy is right, the thing will grow, and the right people will come to it. And it’s lovely to hear you chat about that. I lifted another book, Jacob, and I’m totally biased. It’s another John O’Donoghue book. I’m sorry… sorry, not sorry. And this little book is a little book called To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donoghue. And I lifted it and I knew there was a little blessing. And he writes these little short blessings for all different moments in life, for grief and for an addict and when someone dies and someone’s born and for when you, you lost trust in another being, all these little moments in life. But I knew there was one in there. And it’s called At the Threshold of Manhood. And just as I was researching you, and knew that I was going to talk to you, I thought, I want to go and see that again. And I just, I’m going to read a little tiny bit of three, 3 little stanzas. And I’m guessing the one before this is At the Threshold of Womanhood. I’m guessing that these were written for her young pubescent boys and girls as they step up to being men and women. And then as I read it, I’m not guessing because in the first line… You entered while still a boy and light clarifies around him. So they were written for young boys here becoming men. And as I was reading your stuff and thinking about the work that you do, I read a few stanzas at this and I’m curious to see what do you think of it And maybe do you agree with my perception that this could also be at the threshold of manhood for any age of boy or man? This isn’t necessarily for a 13 or 14 year old boy. This could be a 40 year old or a 50 year old or a 29 year old or an 80 year old. I’ll read you a few stanzas and just let me know what you think. May your new strength be graceful as you learn to carry yourself with a dignity that is sure, bringing your gestures and expression into an easy harmony and rhythm. May you never feel the need to be coarse or force yourself. Rather, may you receive your manhood with grace and mindful ease. Then at one with your own elegance. Your presence will claim its radiance. May you awaken confidently to the feminine within you and learn to integrate the beauty of intuition and feeling so that your sensitivity kindles and your heart is trusted. Your thoughts please.
01:08:08 Jacob
It sounds like John O’Donoghue has tapped into the Resonant Man.
01:08:13 Kevin
It certainly does. That’s what I thought.
01:08:15 Jacob
Which is to say that when we’re tapping into the Resonant Man, we’re also tapping into something that predates our own efforts, and it’s certainly something much greater than them. Yeah. I mean, I love what you said prior. I thoroughly, wholeheartedly believe that this kind of initiation is, is fractal. It’s not linear. We obviously draw from the example of more indigenous societies and rituals of initiation, and they, like certainly for me right now, I’ve been going through some of my own initiations and I’m not literally being sent by the men out into the wilderness to fend for myself. But in other senses, I can feel those metaphors help to understand. Yeah, there’s a lot of possibility growing up in the world as it has been in modern times to go through large amounts of life without undergoing certain initiations. And they come for us at different times. I often think we can’t really judge the process of another person. We all have insight time bombs that are on delays that are set in the Akashic whatever to a time that is not of our knowing. And so some people need to go through a 35 year long marital journey or something. We’ll get to the very latest stages of their life before this revelation comes to them, before this cracking open comes. But it would also be nice if there was a field of wisdom with growing potency and impact and culture that could support people coming into those initiations of the heart more easily, more smoothly, even more quickly. Which is a strange thing to say, because urgency is a bad recipe for surrendering of the heart and letting go. Those things really require letting go of urgency in many respects. But at the same time, the Resonant Man, as we’re conceiving it, is deeply conscious of and in relationship to the condition of meta crisis that we find ourselves in, which is thoroughly unique, living in a thoroughly unique time of globally interconnected crisis, acceleration and transformation of our reality at a pace that exceeds our capacity to adapt to it. And furthermore, the nature of that metacrisis is one in which our consciousness itself is a key piece of the entire puzzle. This can’t be initiation as it was for ancestors, because they didn’t face the same condition that we do, they faced a consistent environment of intergenerational transmission where what was true for great grandfather was true for great grandson. We are in an environment where what was true for grandfather is not true for son, is not true for grandson. So we have to have this much more dynamic initiatory field where there can be a communication backwards and forwards up the generations as well, which is part of the benefit of these kinds of spaces is like, yes, the elders have wisdom and yes, also the youngers have wisdom. And when we come into that Resonant Man mode, something initiatory can start and it seems like this poem with John O’Donoghue is a remembrance that has in some sense, a perennial quality. It’s something that’s always available if we tap into it in the right way.
01:12:22 Kevin
Thank you Jacob. Jacob, I have one last question, and hopefully Matthew didn’t prime you when you spoke to him about The Gifts of Trauma podcast. I like it to land fresh for people. It’s playful and serious and you can answer it playfully or seriously, whatever you prefer. And the question is, if you had the ear of humanity, if you could whisper into the ear of humanity, what would you whisper?
01:12:53 Jacob
I would whisper a song that awoke the heart of the truth, that this world is not all that it seems. We are here for a rich purpose that we are already rich in purpose and love is the way through.
01:13:16 Kevin
Thank you, Jacob. Jacob Kishere, Thank you for joining me on The Gifts of Trauma podcast. You’ve been a delight and a pleasure to chat to.
01:13:27 Jacob
Honoured to be here with you. Thank you, Kevin.
01:13:32 Kevin
My friends, if you are or have participated in the Compassionate Inquiry Professional Training Programme, please join us from June 17th to June 19th at Renewal ACI Summer Solstice Retreat, hosted by Sat Dharam Kaur and 18 CI facilitators from around the globe. In this immersive journey into renewal and transformation, you’ll experience guided practices, nature immersions, creative activities, small group workshops, connection circles, meaningful conversations, and much more, all designed to support your journey inward, as we celebrate the solstice in community. Tap the link below in the show notes to learn more and secure your place.
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Resources
Websites:
Related links:
- SenseSpace Studio
- SenseSpace Podcast
- CulturePilgrim Substack
- CulturePilgrim Rap (Spotify)
- Soul Journey
- The Resonant Man
- Resonant Man Publications
- Resonant Man Introductory Call
- Pema Chodron
- David Bohm
- John Vervaeke
- Jordan Bates
- Thomas Hübl
- Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”
Videos:
- Gabor Maté On Choosing Marital Partners and Trauma Healing
- The Meaning Behind the Resonant Man Artwork
- SenseSpace Studio Launch
Poems:
- “Our hunger to belong is the longing to bridge the gulf that exists between isolation and intimacy.
Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Everyone longs for intimacy and dreams of a
nest of belonging in which one is embraced, seen and loved. Something within each of us cries out
for belonging . We can have all that the world has to offer in terms of status, achievement and
possessions, yet without a true sense of belonging, our lives feel empty and pointless.”
– John O’Donoghue, Eternal Echoes, Celtic Refelctions on Our Yearling to Belong.
Quotes:
- 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.” – Jacob Kishere
- “If we limit the depth of suffering, then we also limit the height of ecstasy.” – Jacob Kishere
- “The partner you’re with magnetizes the combination of your karma and your dharma.”