The Protector
Tolerate no more! Shifting from a modern male malaise into enduring passion, synergies & full aliveness. On having it all: fast action transmuting our difficult legacies.
Bonny calls me. She’s one of the most radiant beings I know: incredible light with deep, extraordinary insight into souls and a phenomenal presence. My friend Bonny is bonny-grádh embodied.1
Yet, this afternoon resilience has dropped and there’s a concomitant darkness as deep as the light. It’s Saturday and she is ‘so incredibly tired, no emotional space for anyone else but myself, so reactive. I do not want to be like this. Narcissistically miserable until I am able to admit how exhausted I am.’
She asks me if I’m okay to be on the phone with her.
I say it brings out The Protector in me. I feel a rush of powerful and primal sensations, from the ground, through my core, into my extremities. Plus an equal and opposite feeling of experiencing peace, as the universe, protecting everything.
The Protector is a Masculine energy and, in feeling it, I’m alive to stark simultaneities too. Misused it embraces centuries of patriarchy, oppression and abuse. My male birth enables institutional, cultural and structural privilege.
Simultaneously present, alongside these tensions, I feel a very deep rush of care and compassion, strength and love, responsibility and awe. I’m not being asked to tamp down or superficially fix desolation but rather ease-fully assist to transfigure anguish: trusted as a focus while wisdom crystallises for my friend.
Hence The Protector: Can we transmute and transcend its old limiting associations?
Polarities in relationship
The contour of your closing, the form of your suffering, is defined by what you won’t embrace, feel and open as.
David Deida, Blue Truth.
We have justifiably and happily reacted to masculine abuse with equality. Everything and everyone should be equal, yet this is a bland balance denying our embodied natures.2 It’s like we level up once, level one inequity to level two fairness, and forget to keep playing. Level 3 is far more rewarding.
In intimate relationships there are many re-conceptualising feminine calls for this:
The Sacred Role of the Masculine:
There is a primal, unspoken dance between the masculine and feminine energies, one that has existed for eons.The masculine is the rock, the grounding force, the protector. When the masculine provides safety—emotionally, physically, spiritually, and yes, financially—it’s not because the feminine is incapable. It’s not because she cannot take care of herself. It’s because, in that sacred space of surrender, the feminine can fully open and expand into her true essence.
When the feminine feels safe, in ALL ways, she blooms. She softens, her energy becomes fluid, her creativity ignites, and her sensuality flows without resistance.
It’s not about dependency, but about freedom. Freedom to let go of the weight of protection, to release the armour that the world often demands of her.
Regan Hillyer3
Can we have it all and bring such dynamics into our friendships and society too?
Modern male malaise to aise
Feel into the heart of whoever you’re with. When you get good at that, feel into everyone's heart. When you get good at that, feel through everyone's heart, living and dead. And when you get good at that, feel the absolute, endless miracle of the moment.
David Deida, Blue Truth
Men can be stuck, challenged by what we could perceive as a threat, the loss of cultural and society privilege. On a society scale this translates to reactionary politics opposing balance and equity measures.
Individually we may be freer yet we step back from action. There’s a level of uncertainty, a wariness around engaging in fields that have been associated with perpetuating abuse. Mud sticks, we think. It is best not to not venture onto the metaphorical equivalent of a wet mountain trail.
As a result, we privilege just being. It is like ‘oh, there’s a mountain trail down there. That could be fun to explore and run but not today, too slippery.’ We are deprioritising the gifts that go with our awareness. Doing, from expansive awareness like this, can become doing as a focus of light and co-creation.4
How perverse! We’ve all experienced times when what we do far exceeds our wildest expectations. Pieces fall into place, what seemed impossible synthesises, beauty and collective power emerges. Who wouldn’t want more of that?
There’s an understandable shock and overwhelm with it too: What? You’re asking me to hold myself responsible for the actions of my ancestors? Most of us don’t have to go very far to find an abusive or patriarchal piece of masculinity, once or twice removed from us.
This manifests as the modern male malaise, subtle tendrils of inaction or unaccountability. I can feel the echos of this in myself, I feel it currently as a reticence to write this article, to speak about The Protector.
Transmute
Your heart always knows the truth of openness. In every moment of your life, your heart tacitly compares the closed suffering that you are doing to the bliss of your true openness. ‘This moment can be deeper.’ ‘Our love can be more full.’ ‘My life can be more fulfilling.’
David Deida, Blue Truth
So stuff it. I’m not having this. Let’s shift it and integrate the tethers, whatever difficulties there may be, when and as we find these.
It can be a glorious, in-depth process. This time, let’s choose fast and focused. You will invoke The Protector when you:
Don’t try to fix the situation, empower her instead to find her own solutions. Ask ‘what do you need’? Being listened to deeply energises, surprises and delights her.
When you feel a little shimmer, gentle whisper of wind, intuitive sense calling for connection, honour it. Notice that gossamer thread and act. Call her, unprompted, reach out.
Then double down. Remember once is never enough. This is about presence and hosting the spaces.5 Contextually appropriate constant confirmations and affirmations of affection.
And ok, if you can’t do anything else send back an emoji 🤪❣️
What’s in it for me?
If you give her safety, she gives you everything. And I mean everything
Lorin Krenn
For men,6 when we recognise The Protector and let it flourish we feel a deep font of inner power: total trust in ourselves and everything around us. This is radiant, highly attractive and others feel our openness.
Synthesis and synergies multiply, timeliness shift, everything is far more possible. Practically, well you name it in the end:
a back rub
full support of your purpose
an enduringly passionate relationship
For women,7 leaning into The Protector is full safety: a capacity to surrender and to let herself be there in all of her full life forces, warm chaos and love.
We all have feminine and masculine energies in ourselves. As a man, as I’m hosting The Protector, I’m opening into the feminine full life forces of love within myself too: being here, right in the now and fully committed.
Pictures: Festina Lentívaldi, (be) Benevolution. Reuse: Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 US.
A bonny-grádh: abundant expanding love, from interpreted Scottish Gaelic.
Regan is a self-made serial entrepreneur and multi-millionaire.
Privileging being is the feminine holding energy of full embrace while becoming the foci of light is the creative masculine energy of sheer skill. These are two of the four feminine and masculine energies we all have. See How wild can it get for more.
When we pay attention to micro moments, like these three points, we’re scaffolding our highest selfs, our peak states. This article draws on
’s Core, the extraordinary clarity it gives us into our personal development—a depth like nothing else—and, my coaching practice. Please feel free to ask about this: email me>Including all people more naturally in their masculine energy.
This includes all people more naturally in their feminine energy.
This is powerful and beautiful, and a stirring call to my own masculinity. Thank you, Simon!