003 - No More Hiding, What's Behind The Mask

How often does the mask we wear–at work, with our friends, even our loved ones–match what’s going on underneath? 

The face we show to the world isn't necessarily the face we show ourselves. There's often a disconnect between the way we see ourselves and the way we present ourselves to the world. 

The more we aim to please, rise or shrink to fit given situations and expectations, the more we lose sight of who we are.

But who is that, really? It's time to pull down the masks, challenge what's real and what's illusion, and stop hiding. It's vulnerability time.

On today’s episode, I’m honored to welcome guests Ashanti Branch and Aaron Kahlow. The origins of Ashanti's work were featured in the documentary, “The Mask You Live In,” which looks at how traditional notions of masculinity are affecting our young men. 

Aaron is a social health and emotional wellbeing advocate and facilitator whose experience creating space for people to safely take down their masks makes him an incredible source of wisdom for today’s topic.

In This Episode

  • (01:38) Learning to wear–and take down–masks from childhood

  • (07:44) How Ashanti defines “mask” 

  • (13:12) Aaron’s exhaustion from wearing masks

  • (17:13) The concept of holding space

  • (20:03) How Ashanti uses the idea of masks to help kids open up

  • (25:50) Revealing what’s behind Aaron’s mask

  • (30:45) Using our masks as a way to bottle up emotions

  • (34:32) The importance of co-regulation and social connections

  • (36:58) The emotional upheaval of leaving your mask behind

  • (41:02) How we can create safe space

  • (46:15) Helping young men learn trust

  • (55:49) What it takes to trust

  • (58:03) Skillful relationships—with others and yourself

Notable Quotes

  • “I was raised by a single mother in Oakland, California. I was supposed to know what it meant to be a man. Even though there was no man really helping me figure it out. And I think the story that I wanna connect to what you shared was I was told by my uncle, I was a man of the house. And I'm like, ‘Hey, I'm just seven. I just wanna play.’ And that childhood got taken away really quickly. And so I began to have to learn quickly through a lot of pain, a lot of battles and fights that, who I am nurture-wise is not what my community accepted is what really means to be a man. And so I had to put on all these different masks… And I think that because of those early lessons of helping and nurturing and taking care of everybody made it really hard because I was in charge. I didn't get to go ask people for help. And so asking people for help is still hard for me to this day.”

  • “It's exhausting to be a leader. It's exhausting to be strong for the family. It's exhausting to play all these roles because at least for me, I'm not in harmony with the natural world… So every day is exhausting because there's a mask to protect myself so I can make it through the day. When I say that I can feel that in my eyes. And I know that's still true for me. As much as I work on that, like I'm still taking these masks off and wrestling 'em down every day. Like, no, you stay down there. I'm just gonna show up.”

Our Guests

Ashanti Branch is the founder and executive director of The Ever Forward Club, which he started in 2004 to provide underserved middle and high school boys with a safe community to build character and transform lives. Since then, The Ever Forward Club has become a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that serves both young men and women. It has helped 100% of its members graduate high school, and 93% of them have gone on to attend college.


Aaron Kahlow is an emotional wellbeing advocate, facilitator and leader committed to helping people create more meaningful human connection in our lives through authentic community building, shared learning, healing and personal growth experiences.

Resources & Links

On This Walk

  • Luke (00:00:26):

    Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart centered guests each week, as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul and with something bigger than ourselves. Now let's go on this walk.

    Welcome, welcome, welcome. And thank you for joining me on this walk. I'm your host, Luke Iorio. And today, we're gonna be talking about, we're gonna be walking with our masks. And so what we mean by this and where we're gonna head in some of this conversation is that, so very often we've got this outer presentation that we wear for the world that we walk with as we move ourselves out into the world. And yet, does that outer presentation that we bring, how well does that match? How congruent is that to our internal state?

    And so we're gonna be walking with this concepts of masks and just how much it can reveal to us today. And in a little while, I wanna share a few things with you first, in a little while we're gonna get to go on this walk with Ashanti Branch and Aaron Kahlow, and I will introduce them in just a little while and give you some background on these two incredible gentlemen, as we go on this walk. Where this begins for me, and, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to draw in this topic into our conversation into our community here, was let me go back to the beginning of this is that when I was young, when I was just five, five and a half years old, it was a, you know, just kind of a really beautiful clear day.

    I happened to actually be home from, I guess would've been kindergarten at the time. And I was out with my mom, I think we were doing some errands, I think maybe the hair salon, and we get swept up and we've gotta rush back to our neighborhood. And I don't know what's going on, I'm five years old. I don't really know and understand, why are we like, rushing? Why does it seem like there's this anxiousness that we can feel, in rushing to try to get back home? And so I'm starting to pick up on that. And as we get to the very, very top of our street, there's a barricade and we can't go down the street. And as we approach the barricade, there's an officer there who's starting to walk up to my mother's window, my mom's door on the window down, and I hear the officer go, ma'am you cannot go down this street.

    There's a major, major house fire. And that's when I heard and everything changed for me because my mom turned back and go, I know, that's our house. In the course of a very, very short period of time, I went from this pretty kind of curious out there, it's okay to say weird kind of kid, very, very creative, imaginative, playful, and overnight, I got very, very, very serious. I got pretty much stone-faced, is another way of talk, talking about it. I was emotionally tight, I wore the stiff upper lip and I was not gonna let anything else get to me. And I used that later on to be resilient, to become the good student, and ultimately through that whole trajectory, what it led me to was that the good student one day then became that calm, cool, collected adult. At least this was the way that I was presenting myself to the world. This was the mask that I was showing the world. I was the, the parts that I was letting them see. And yet what was actually going on was that I was still very, very much emotionally tight. I wouldn't necessarily say that I was disconnected. The phrases that I kind of, I, I like to, to come back to is that, I was bottled up and buttoned up, was really the way that I would present myself. And so within what was really going on was there was just so much fear and anxiety, and there was doubt and there was judgment. And all of this, the end of the day was truly about, that I was covering up pain and I was covering up the feeling of separation. Separation from my more essential self, separation from others, not feeling that type of connection because I had shut so much down.

    And there was this huge disconnect between what I was truly feeling within and what I was experiencing, and what I was trying to present to the world so that it looked calm, cool, and collected. It looked like I had the part down, I fit the role. However you wanna say that. And it was only later on, in a variety of different ways, was that I was then able to start kind of lowering this mask, but it was in pieces, right? It was in stages. It's not like I was ready to just say, oh, I'm ready. You know, here I am, it was, it had to come down and it had to come down in manners that I felt safe. As I did that, I actually started to get more of the type of experience of life and I really wanted to have, and for me, you know, one of the greatest examples of that was the way in which my relationship was able to change with my wife Dawn over that time, because, you know, she thankfully saw through the mask very, very early on and she was very patient and loving with me so that in those times that I felt like I was very shut down or I would wear the, that typical masculine 'I'm fine', right? Kind of role. And over time, as I brought down more and more of that mask, I could be so much more open and expressive of what was going on and what I was really feeling and what I was processing. And it changed, you know, the, it deepened our relationship in such beautiful ways. So the things I'd always been looking for, connection, that feeling of aliveness, that to feel the experience of life, which to me is also joy, could be felt so much more deeply. And at the same time, it's not that I didn't have grief or pain or nervousness and anxiety, and fear. I had all of those things, but I could actually feel them. And in a way that I could feel them, actually, there was even that joy, even behind the tough moments and the challenging moments, but it all came from how do we start to take down this mask?

    And so to, I wanted to share this conversation with you. I was, I was really, really fortunate to bring our guests on in just a moment because some of this really further clicked in terms of how to articulate this and talk about this, came to me when I actually first learned about one of our guests today, which was because there was a documentary called the masks we live in that was really looking at kind of that toxic masculinity, the masculine culture, and the way that it's been run in contemporary times and the effect it was having on our youth. And when I started to get further and further into that, I just got enthralled by both what that journey could mean, let alone mean to our youth. But I also was just so thoroughly impressed with the work that was already being done out there.

    And while that work was being done by the first guest that I would like to welcome on, which is Ashanti Branch. And so Ashanti, as you join me here, Ashanti is the founder of the Ever Forward Club. And this is just a, a wonderful non-profit organization that is working to be on a mission. And I know Ashanti, this is your personal mission, but it's to be on that mission to change the way that students are interacting with their education and the way that schools are interacting with their students. And so Ashanti has been pioneering some of this work just in a beautiful manner to reveal these masks and take these masks down and doing it with our youth. And I mean, that's just so profound in terms of how much that changes the trajectory of their lives.

    The second guest that I wanna welcome on is Aaron Kahlow. And Aaron, as you come on, Aaron is a social health and emotional wellbeing advocate. And I would also like to add, he is just an extraordinary facilitator, facilitator of circles, of councils, of all sorts of different events and ways of holding space that allow us to do this work, that allow us to step into this, this space with some safety and a feeling of acceptance and a lack of judgment so that we do feel safe to take down that mask.

    And so these were the two individuals like I, I had this thought of a while ago before I even had a chance to, even though I could get to Ashanti to have this meeting, which thankfully with, with, with Aaron's help, we were able to arrange this time together, Ashanti and Aaron, first and foremost, I wanna thank you for coming on this walk.

    Ashanti (00:07:42):

    Thank you. Glad to be here.

    Luke (00:07:44):

    Absolutely.

    Aaron (00:07:44):

    Great to be here. Thanks Luke.

    Luke (00:07:46):

    Thank you guys. And, and Ashanti, if, if I could start with you and I guess maybe if you could share, first is a little bit about what the meaning of masks is in your language, in the way that you would describe this. So we can just kind of see how well that syncs up with anything I've described so far, and then a bit of your own personal journey, 'cause obviously you don't, you don't dive into that type of work unless there's some personal connection there. And so I'm very curious of your own walk with your own masks, which ultimately led to you pioneering such beautiful work.

    Ashanti (00:08:15):

    I remember many of the days being with my mom in a car and dealing with traumatic situations, you know, I think life sometimes felt like I was jumping from one to another. My, my father died before I was born. I was raised by a single mother in Oakland, California. I was supposed to know what it meant to be a man, even though there was no man really helping me figure it out. And I think the story that I wanna connect to what you shared was at seven years old, I was told by my uncle, I was the man of the house. So, and I'm like, Uncle, I don't want that job, can you give that to somebody else? But it wasn't like he was offering me an opportunity. He was, uh, knighting me with a job that I didn't even have a choice to accept or not.

    He said, you gotta take care of your mom and your sister and your brother. And I'm like, hey, I'm just seven, I just wanna play. And that childhood got taken away really quickly. And what began to happen is because I was the oldest and I was responsible and I became very much a nurturer, what was respected inside my mom's house is very different than what's respected outside my mom's house. Like in my mom's house, I'm cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, folding clothes, I'm doing everything, right? But when you go outside the house, being too kind like when somebody falls in the playground, Ashanti would be one of the first people to go help you up. And then people would be like, why are you always helping people? Why are you always so smiling all the time? Why are you always so nice? And I realized that in my community, that what was respected in the house actually was negative outside the house.

    And so I began to have to learn quickly, through a lot of pain, a lot of battles and fights that, oh, who I am nurtured-wise is not what my community accepted as what it really means to be a man. And so I had to put on all these different masks, and my mom's house had another mask, right? Now, at seven years old, I was told I was the man of the house. But when I got to school and that first time that teacher told me, no, you can't go to the bathroom. I walked out. I'm like, I only asked you cause all these other little kids asked you. I'm not a little kid, I'm a man. So the fact that all these other kids asked you to go to the bathroom, I don't even know why, 'cause nobody, a man doesn't have to ask to do anything, you do what you wanna do. And then people were like, oh well, Ashanti, you're not really a man. I'm like, wait, help me figure this out. Wait, my uncle told me, I'm a man, now how do I come here, and now everyone gets to tell me what to do? And because, because the rules change everywhere you go, So I'm like, okay, uncle, you're making this hard, my life hard on me now, you know, I'm taking on what you told me to do. Now I go to school and I get in trouble. My mom is mad. I'm like, how are you all navigating this war? So anyway, I say that story because it was, it was confusing as a little kid trying to figure it out and then as becoming an adult. Well, forget the dope part, let me go one more. Um, when you talk about your mom, like I became the air traffic controller of the, a piece insanity of my house, right?

    So I could tell my mom, get out of her car, where the way she grabbed her bag, the way she slammed the door, whether we're about to have a good evening or rough evening. And my job was to get everybody in position, everybody pretend like you're doing something, you better be mopping or walking. Nobody's sitting around doing nothing, right? Cause when she walks in the house, she's into one of their moods. And you can tell when she's in a joyful mood. Okay, okay, we're good, everybody's good. We can, we we're good to go. And I think that, because that early lessons of helping and nurturing and taking care of everybody, made it really hard because I was in charge. I didn't get to go ask people for help. And so I don't, asking people for help is still hard for me to, to this day.

    So when you talked about being stone faced, right? Like you were like, I gotta take care of business, I gotta, like I had to shift, it becomes sometimes harder for me just to like relax and just not be in charge, like just to, I always want to be doing. And I think that my, my value is sometimes rooted in my doing, if I'm not doing, I often feel like, I'm not, the feeling I'm not good enough is, is a, is a weird feeling, but it also comes from this idea that I'm not doing enough, I'm not working hard enough.

    Luke (00:11:57):

    You know, it's amazing 'cause you know, the, the identity around doing is certainly one that that hits deeply home with, with me. And it's certainly also one that I hear, and I'll say that it tends to skew a little bit for men or on the masculine side is that, that constant, that doing nature as opposed to more of that nurturing and taking more time and patience in that perspective, it seems to that, be part of the way that we, we end up driving and pushing ourselves is to keep busy in that regard. I think the other thing, and then Aaron, I wanna bring you into this, is that in the way you describe it, the combination of kind of crossing the threshold out of your home and into a different world that then had this dichotomy of roles. So we've got completely, right, we've got all these different sets of rules that no, none of them seem to agree with each other and they're in all these different directions.

    And so, it's just like one layer of mask at a time. And then it's like, okay, we we're back at a place, we can take the mask off, but can we really? Can we? Right? And it's or, or how much of the remnants of, of these other masks are still there?

    Aaron, I just wanna bring you in obviously, if, if there's something there that you wanna comment on, please do, but then maybe to ask just a little bit, even just your own personal experience. Reflect on, on this process of revealing the mask and seeing what's there. I'm curious what some of this is already starting to bring up for you.

    Aaron (00:13:12):

    Yeah. I mean so much as you can imagine, the first thing I just, or the last thing I wrote down here as I was listening in is the exhaustion that comes from wearing the masks. I'm sure like, you guys and so many else, those are listening in, it's exhausting. It's exhausting to be a leader, it's exhausting to be strong for the family, it's exhausting to play all these roles 'cause there's, at least for me, I'm not in harmony with the natural world, you know, I'm having to project and change and figure out. And the second thing was just the psychological safety. I know that's a new buzzword these days, but because there's no safety, because we've lost our sense, I've lost my sense of tribe. I don't have anybody that I know I can count on and will be there for the rest of my life in many ways.

    I mean, there are a few family members I would say that about, but you know, I'm not around them every day and I'm not surrounded by them, that's for sure. So every day is exhausting 'cause there's a mask to protect myself so I can make it through the day. When I say that, I can feel that in my eyes and I know that's still true for me, as much as I work on that, like I'm still taking these masks off and wrestling them down every day. Like, no, you stay down there, like, I'm just gonna show up, you don't need to do anything. The second thing, if you don't mind, I just wanna put in is the childhood piece, both your stories reminded me of how much I had to take on. And when people would ask me, I would always downplay it. They're like, so I'm like you were the dad of the house when your parents got divorced. I was like, eh, it wasn't that bad. You know, I just did what I had to do. And, and that's true. Both are true, right? I did what I had to do and it wasn't that bad, you know, compared to many other situations. And yet I felt an immense responsibility to make sure I was strong for the family, strong for my mom too, especially, who passed away a couple of years ago. And I realized how much strength she actually had, it's just, she needed support and she didn't get it like most parents don't get, single or not single moms. And so I needed to be that for her. I had to be, as Ashanti said, a man for her when she was making decisions about moving or about what school to go into.

    And I didn't want any of that shit, excuse my language. I wanted to just like be a kid and play, and there was one story in particular, and then I'll, I'll pause myself here, I didn't talk to her for about two weeks straight because she went against my wishes of a decision for once. I didn't wanna move in eighth grade to a new high school, cause I had just made a bunch of friends and I finally felt like settled and she's like, nope, we gotta go, this house isn't working. And this is kind of the story of our life, we moved every year or two. And I just remember like, at that point, that I couldn't even trust my mom to do what was right. And so I, not even realizing now, as I'm speaking to you guys, more walls got built up along the way there. So yeah, lots coming up for me in this and lots tied back to the whole social health conversation, we're putting on the masks 'cause we don't have the support, in my opinion.

    Luke (00:16:04):

    You bring up psychological safety, you bring up social safety and there's so much in our environments right now that feels like it pulls us away from that feeling of safety, right? It's con, everything's vying for our attention, everybody's got expectations. We've got all these different rules, none of which agree with each other. And we kind of lose that sense of safety as well as even just terra firma, where to place our feet where we feel like it's solid ground. And when we don't have that, it now, it becomes a game like, you know, our, our purpose becomes survival and it becomes safety. And when that's gonna be the case, well then everything else and all the growth just gets shut down and that side of wellbeing gets completely shut down. And so you're, you know, I think you're touching on something that's really important. And I want to ask you this Aaron to, to, to come to this, to then shift back to something around awareness with Ashanti, is that part of what I also wanted to have you share today, Aaron, was around this notion of holding space, which I think it's, it's one of the things that is critical to finding and creating containers again, that people can feel safe in. And so if you could just talk a little bit to that, I think that'll also set up some of the things I wanna ask Ashanti about.

    Aaron (00:17:13):

    Yeah, definitely. Happy to do that. Holding space, for those that aren't familiar, it's the, the ability to create safety for someone to share and be seen and witnessed, would be the simplest way I would put it. There's a lot more to it than that, a lot more nuance. A lot of things that I think are ineffable when it comes to holding space. The reason I feel it's so important these days is we are so transactional, myself included, right? I talk to somebody cause I need something. I might make casual conversation 'cause I know I wanna get somewhere with that person. I wanna build a relationship, I'm networking, whatever it is. And so, holding space is the antithesis of that, which is to be there simply to be there for that person, even if it's in silence, to bear witness to their journey. And when you talk about masks, and I don't wanna be the mask expert 'cause I'm not, Ashanti is, but man, a place where you actually can just let your hands down and let those master holding up go and fully experience what you're experiencing in life, and then allow that to be seen.

    One important piece of holding space too is that when we are able to get out of our own heads and put it out there into the ether of the universe, in relation to others, something else happens to it. It changes, it morphs, it actually, in many cases, disappears. So it's a release point for us to be in a place where somebody is holding space. So holding space can be in a group, it can be an individual fashion, it can be professionally done or it can just be done by somebody who's saying, I wanna hold space for you. I really think that's part of what's missing for a lot of us these days is having that safety. It's psychological safety in a space where you can just let your masks down and share and be who you need to be.

    Luke (00:18:59):

    Thank you for that. 'Cause it's this idea of just, right? Being able to be so wonderfully present and connected with someone in a space that it's, it's without agenda. We're not trying to fix you, fix anyone, fix anything. And it's just to be with them and create that feeling of safety so they can step into it. And Ashanti, that's one of the things that, you know, I picked up from the bit that I can see from the outside looking in with the Ever Forward Club and the little bit of your work that was revealed in that documentary, is to understand a bit of that process because I would imagine, especially working with youth, although to be honest, some of the youth I've worked with have been a lot more open-minded than the adults, I will say that. I'm sure you can comment a whole lot more on that one. I'm curious about how we bring awareness to these masks, right? We get so used to them. We, like, they, they fit like a glove, so we forget they're even there. And so I'm just kind of curious about how that works. How do you help bring people to that point of awareness they can really understand that these are the masks somewhere?

    Ashanti (00:20:03):

    Yeah, I'm glad you asked. So this movement started in the documentary, what you saw was the first time we had done the mask activity. So, so I went to school to be an engineer cause I wanted to be rich. And then teaching called me and I was like, no, teachers don't make money. So I ran from that calling for two years. And then finally, when I came into teaching, I was clear like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Even though it doesn't feel like I'm being valued and the way that I want my career to be valued, but the work was clear. And so the Ever Forward Club started at me as a first year teacher cause I was doing a horrible job. And I had young men who were really smart in my class, but they were failing my class. And because I, well, it took me a while to remember what was going on.

    But I was really, because I asked them, I said, look, I'll buy you lunch once a week. In exchange for lunch, I want you to teach me to be a better teacher. And what we did in those lunchtime sessions was just talk like I was like, tell me what I'm doing wrong. Like I think I'm smart and I can see you all are smart, but you're failing my class. Why? Why would you, why would smart person fail a class where the teacher is here a hundred percent for you? I'm not here for this money, I'm here for your ability to see the life in a different way. And what they began to really remind me was that, oh man, I gotta be no nerd, no geek, no teacher's pet, because in that community, smart wasn't cool. And I had forgotten what it was like in middle school for me now, by the time I got to high school, I was on track.

    So I'm thinking, hey, you're in high school, you should have had a middle school teacher save your life like Miss BP did to me, but none of them had a Miss BP. So I'm like, oh, so I need to like try something with them to help them find their, find, get on track. And that's how the Ever Forward Club started. So we were talking about, we didn't use the word masks, we just talked about what was going on in our lives. And then when I got to my old high school, so 20 years later, so I taught for 10 years, administrator for three, went back to my old high school, and these young men I was trying to work with were, they were masking up. I wasn't even using the term mask until the day we did the activity, but they were, they were getting in a lot of trouble.

    And what I realized that my work was shifting, right? Cause I tried all the magic tricks I had and then they asked us, could they come film us in this documentary? I'm like, well it ain't working, like this stuff, you should go to the other club over there 'cause that club is doing good, right? They were like, no, we wanna see where you are. I said, well, if you wanna see failure, go ahead, come on. Because it wasn't working. Like we were meeting every week, I tried food, we tried meetings, we tried movies, we tried all the things, and they were blocking everything. And that one day they came to film and I said, you know, I'm gonna try my last thing, what if they don't have to talk about it? What if, I've been trying to get them to talk about it, they are so like, resistant to talk about what they're going through.

    They're all stone faced, right? They're all cool. And so when we did that activity, I was like, well, what's on the, what do you let people see? And what are the things you don't let people see? And when we mix those papers up and we threw them at each other and you see the documentary and they opened those up, like, I didn't even really know how to respond because I had never seen them go into their hearts. I have been trying for weeks and weeks and weeks, like what the heck is going on? And really, I mean, it's from, it's my community, like I know these kids, I identify with them, but they were, they were, they had powerful force fields, keep me out. And that one day, when you see what you see there is happening, I'm responding in real time because I'm like, oh my goodness, what's happening?

    And literally that's how the mask came about. So thinking about that is like, this idea of giving them a space to take off that layer of saying, I'm gonna let you see me a little bit more, even though it's anonymous first. And once it's anonymous and I've voiced the fact that in this circle we've created enough safety that, oh wait, we're all going through something like that? But on the outside, everybody's so cool and they got nice shoes and everybody is, got girls and everybody got partners and everybody seems happy, because we've gotten really good at keeping the image up. And that's when it worked that day, I felt like something was, was shifting in our work. And that's, that's how the work has shifted. So like, I was trying to find some teenager masks here and I only see some older men masks here, but we, we actually make masks with people. So maybe if you think about it for yourself, I'mma, this is a 26 year old man, and this is a 39 year old man. So let me just shoot two men, right? So let's, I'mma just show it to you. I don't know if the screen will pick it up, but maybe you can read.

    Luke (00:23:58):

    Yeah. It, it, the, the mask is on, the front of the mask, I see strong, intelligent, happy. And on the inside, selfish, impulsive, apathetic.

    Ashanti (00:24:08):

    Yeah. I really want to like operate in life, like a warrior. Like I really want to operate like a warrior, but oftentimes I feel more like a worrier. Like, I feel I'm like, do I, am I gonna have enough money to keep this organization running, this non profit? Am I gonna be able to like have a retirement fund working for this non profit that I started, right? Am I gonna be able to have a, think of a dream vacation one day? And the, like all the things I worry about, it may be what keeps me working so hard, but it's because I'm constantly, this fear of failure and worrying about, am I gonna look like a failure after giving up my engineering career? And that was 20 years ago, I gave up the engineering career, but sometimes I do think back, you know, like what could I be making right now if I had stayed in that life, right? But I'm, but I'm clear that's not where I'm supposed to be. So, I mean, that's something I don't talk much about.

    Luke (00:24:53):

    I mean, that, that even speaks to, to myself. Cause you know, if I think of, of, you know, still what's behind the, you know, behind that mask. And I think that worrier and that anxiety is still there. And for me, using the example I gave around wanting to, to show intelligence, it's because the truth of it is, I don't know. I don't know how this is gonna go, I don't know all the stuff I, quote unquote, need to know for all of this stuff. And it's like, how do I just, I make it look good, right? So there, there is, there's that worry, there's that anxiety that is present, that is there at that time, but we try to like, quelch that down. Even as I think about that or even, and feel into that for a moment, I feel the tension that that creates, right? To not acknowledge, and it, it feels better to just say it aloud, is to acknowledge what is there, to acknowledge that, now there is anxiety there. Here's what I'm going for, but here's what I'm going through and it's okay to talk about it. And it, it just, it releases, now all of a sudden, like the tension, just, it breathes a little bit. Aaron, how about for yourself?

    Aaron (00:25:50):

    Yeah. Two things came up for me. I got a chance to like, think about a little longer since you guys were talking, first was actually sad, that there's sadness there, there's sadness that I'm not fully aligned with my more true essence. And I'm not trying to get all deep on you, Just there's something that just, isn't all there. And I've gotta keep, I think about careers. You know, one of the biggest arguments I have with my wife, I'm sorry, honey, if you don't want me to share this, but here we go, is like, I don't want a job. Like this whole career thing that's just made up, like I wanna just live and offer my, my best to my community and let that be enough. And they receive back and be in alignment with that and be in alignment with nature. So I'm sad.

    I can feel in my eyes, that's one where most of my emotions, I could see my eyes and feel on. The second piece that came up for me, that would be on the, that back of the car would be, um, uncertain. And when I just peeled that back a little bit, I was like, yeah, you're, you're probably scared, you're probably scared. And the interesting thing for me on that twofold, I'll just mention that I just came to a conclusion on right here and now, one is, it's, scared is just the opposite of what was on the front of the mask. So I'm noticing maybe I need to watch the documentary too. It's like, and what's in the front of the mask usually is what you're protecting in the back. I'm guessing there's a lot of that going on there and I'm learning real time as we're here.

    And then the second thing that came up for me is that when I thought about the scare piece, particularly that, that, that was an emotional uncertainty. And I was looking at on the kind of that what's called emotional plane of life. But when I dropped in just a little bit spiritually, had that deep breath, I'm like, no, no, I'm not scared. Like it's, I have faith. You know, I have a faith and I have faith. And so there's interesting things are kind of working that, you know, I can't live in the spiritual realm at all times. And so how do, how do I hold both of those spaces and maybe strengthen my spiritual practice to, to keep me less scared.

    Luke (00:27:46):

    Aaron was aware of and reflected on a sadness that was present for him in his experience. And I want to acknowledge that for all of us, well maybe at least for myself anyway, when I get crosswise with self, meaning when the way that I'm living my life is not congruent with my true self, even if I'm not conscious of it, there's a sadness that starts to emerge. It's a sadness because I'm not honoring what that voice, that deep inner voice, my soul, truly wishes for me and is asking of me. That sadness can then also grow into a frustration and an aggravation. Ultimately, all of these were true for me until they boiled over because I wasn't paying attention to them. This conversation isn't only about being more honest with ourselves, although that's a huge piece. It isn't only about lowering the temperature and regulating ourselves to be a bit more authentic either. Although again, that's also a good beginning point. All of that is all a part of it, but truly at the core, this is about getting people back in touch with the truth of who they are and to reconsider how they can present that authentically in their lives, in their relationships and in their choices. And with that, I asked to Ashanti to elaborate.

    Ashanti (00:29:09):

    Well, I think what you said, Luke is really important because in the beginning, when you talked about, when you, at five, you became, you saw something, you may not have known all the details of what the insurance and family, but you felt it, you internalized it. And you said, I went to a place of like being really stone faced, right? And I think it was really beautiful because I don't think that how we're being is being fake. I think it's, we're being who we think people need us to be. And sometimes when we know that we're needed to be something, sometimes our needs don't matter because we are being what other people need. We're supplying the needs, but not getting our needs sometimes met. And I don't think, when I tell young people about this work, I don't tell them you're being fake. I say, who, who are you having to be so that you can be accepted in the ways you have to be accepted in the world?

    Luke (00:29:56):

    I love that. Thank you so much for that. I love, I love that frame and I love that perspective because it does, it does speak. I can feel the, kind of the truth that, that resonates with, within me on, and that we do, we, we want to show up in certain ways because there's the part of us that wants to be there for the ones that we love, right? There's part of us that also wants to keep ourselves safe and secure, so there's that side that comes out. There's the part that wants social acceptance, especially as we're growing up, because that's so much of the way in which we develop. And so there's, right? And then there's, then we can get into a societal acceptance. We go write down a list, right? And it's, to your point, which I think is so valid and so important, is we're not being fake. We don't even know that it isn't the truest version of ourselves. It's something that we have picked up for an intention, for a reason. And usually a reason that's very, very good and noble, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's aligned with the truth of who we are.

    Ashanti (00:30:46):

    Yeah. And I love the way, and you said about the exhaustion, right? Because when you begin to allow yourself to feel what you really feel, it can feel awkward. Like I'm always, like I've cried more probably in the last 10 years, and I have all of my whole life. When I finally allowed myself to say, I feel things, 'cause for a long time, I was like, I don't have permission to feel, I don't get permission to show emotion, men can't cry. Suck it up, Ashanti. You're being a wimp, you're being a, you're being all these things that they call you. So then, when I began to be like, I'm gonna let myself feel. It's like, damn, why am I always a crybaby? Why, all the time, it's okay, you know? So it's like that, its like, and I have to tell myself, okay, am I being, I ask myself because I've so long been programmed not to let myself feel, when I do it, I'm saying, let myself feel too much. And then I have to like, I'm going, I'm second guessing my own feelings, right? Because I've been trained so hard to keep, keep 'em locked away.

    Aaron (00:31:45):

    Man. So much coming up for me, Luke, if you don't mind, just to touch on a couple things. I wanna admit, I'm putting on my mask of pretending like I'm an expert in social health right now. So that's the mask I'm responding first. But when Ashanti was talking about all the bottle up emotions and finally getting expressive, like if folks haven't heard about this before, they, I just wanna make sure somebody said it like, this is how physical disease happens. This is how we break down, this isn't just mental. Of course it's where a lot of the mental breakdown comes in. But this is where the physicality comes into and the research shows this. So I just wanna like check that box and like you, if you wanna be healthy, period, you need to express your emotions or else you're gonna die. I think, God, I'd like to say it like that. It'd be a little bit more extreme just so people can see it work clearly.

    Luke (00:32:29):

    On just that point of disease. The two things I wanted to bring up there is part of the reason for it is that when we live in this state of tension, it upregulates our nervous system. And so our nervous system is constantly out of whack and it goes into our sympathetic response, which means the body can't repair itself because we're out of the parasympathetic response. So it's just, we go into the constantly stressed, constantly going. We need the adrenaline, we need the push and our body can't repair itself in that way. So we've got that side. The second side, and I'm curious, Aaron, if, if this is part of where you're going or certainly add in, is that they've recognized that our source of and our connection to relationships, number one, directly tied to the level of happiness and wellbeing that we have in life.

    And if we are constantly behind some type of mask, even one that might have been well intended, but we're gonna feel that separation that's, I know that was part of the pain that I felt, was I felt this separation. I felt that disconnection and isolation, the feeling of isolation is become something that's even been crippling inside of our society. It's been there for a while, but in the last, I mean the last two years, good Lord. It's been awful. I wanted to bring those up 'cause it does fit into that social and emotional health conversation there. Aaron and I'm, I'm glad you brought that in. Let me just toss back to you to just add on and then certainly the other things you wanted bring up.

    Aaron (00:33:43):

    Yeah, yeah, happy to talk to, I mean how much time do we have on this topic? I mean the research like Harvard's longitudinal study, right? The famous one, you know, been following three generations of families for over 85 years and Bob Waldinger and the work he's doing now, it just shows that the number one reason for longevity and health is your social connections. Doesn't matter what you eat, doesn't matter how much you smoke. I mean, of course that matters, but in comparison it, it pales. And so we regulate, you know, we talk a lot about this at every man, is we co-regulate, we need to co-regulate with others. You know, when you hold your baby, I've got an 18 month old and you might hear her in the background and you're rocking her you're co-regulating with her, so she can calm down. That doesn't go away, that we need that all the time.

    And so without that co-regulation, we're in a constant state of anxiety. And you know, if you were to ask me, what's the challenge of our time and I'm sure there's a lot of arguments made for all sorts, but at the core, like breaking it down, is what you said, separation. We're separated from our own selves, we're separated from each other, we're separated from nature, from spirit, all of those things, that separation, that sense of like identity that comes with it, which is also then tied back to masks, right? We have identity, we create these separation and we live in these worlds. And man, I think, again, being a white guy is probably not fair for me to say, but I think most of the social inequity, especially incoming inequality comes from that. That somehow we just think we deserve more than others. I think most of the harm that comes to the world in violence comes from this separateness and stems from that.

    So I could talk a lot about that. I did wanna just give you guys a visual ahead when you were talking about all the things and all the pieces that who we are and why we are had this visual, the knot, right? That we are one big knot and you know, we do therapy and we get to talk, but we're pulling at the pieces, you know, we're doing it man, but it, yeah. And it starts to, you just feel it, and then you're like, holy cow, how much more is back there? And you just keep pulling it. And for me, I was just thinking like, how do you slice straight through that thing? And just like cut it and begin. Cause I almost feel like that's how we need to reorient. You need to almost forget everything we've been taught and come back to just starting with a clean piece of string and see where we go. So I'll pause there and see this come up.

    Luke (00:36:04):

    It, it's part of where, where actually I wanted to, to bring the conversation next and maybe Ashanti, I'll start to bring this over to you, right? Is, one piece of this is the beginning of the awareness, right? Of, of these are the, the masks and the roles that, that I'm fulfilling for whatever purposes, whatever reasons. Awareness is just the beginning, right? Because then, you know, if we want change, there's a whole host of things and it's not even just a change process. It's like, wait a minute, if I let that mask down, what's gonna happen to my life? What's gonna happen way, everybody knows me, what's gonna, can I keep the, you know, can I still be brave? Can I still be, all these questions come up of how am I gonna depart from what I've known? And so I'm wondering if you could speak to, kind of the, the two aspects of, yes the change. Like how do we start to actually bring down this mask? But also to the emotional, like departure that, that like, that threshold that we have to cross to be able to do that work.

    Ashanti (00:36:58):

    I almost think we, we gotta talk to young people, because young people get trained out of talking what they really feel. We train them because we've, we, they know, we train them with emotion, we train, we train them with like, energy. They know, I gotta pretend, I'm gonna show you another image. I think I'm, I'm into images, but this one is by a group of middle schoolers, says 'I'm fine'. But can you see the words inside 'I'm fine'?

    Luke (00:37:24):

    Yeah. Unhappy, coward.

    Aaron (00:37:27):

    Annoyed, baffled. Yeah.

    Luke (00:37:28):

    Replaceable.

    Aaron (00:37:30):

    Aggravated.

    Luke (00:37:30):

    Stressed.

    Ashanti (00:37:31):

    Middle school, middle schoolers.

    Luke (00:37:32):

    Brutal words to see there.

    Ashanti (00:37:36):

    On a notebook. I mean, this is art and they did it on a spiral notebook. You can just see like, I'm like, this is a work of art, right? And how often do we, when you sit here in the, the big knot, like, you know what I saw? No, I'm not sad. No, I'm not afraid. No, I'm not worried. No, I'm not stressed. We are a big ball of knots because we're not allowed to feel what we actually really feel. And so imagine how often it takes to unwind all those things we've been telling ourselves that we're not because we are afraid to be who we really are sometimes. And I think, when those middle schoolers, when I talk to young people who are willing, they want you to ask them, they know there's rules at the middle school to not talk about their feelings.

    But when you create that space and I think that, I told young women, I see young people make their mask, I say, you know what? I have a hard time getting adults to do this. So I wanna tell you, I'm so proud of you. And if we can help our young people begin to ask ourselves, imagine if our kids ask us how we doing and we say fine. And they, they say, huh? Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that. Like, what's fine? Like the adult be like, huh? What do you, what do you, what do you mean? Right? Because we've gotten good at putting on the mask for them. And then they get good at putting the mask on for us. And we realize that when we ask people how they're doing, we don't really, it's not really a question, it's more of a greeting.

    And so I think the way we begin to work on those masks is really, do we begin to like really make time to listen to each other and ask each, and be curious. And I think that's how it starts, I think the movement that we've created, we, we set a goal to create a million masks around the world. Like, I don't know a million people, I only got like 3000 followers on social media. Like how, how am I gonna do this? Right? But I realized that every mask we make with someone, every time someone's willing to share three words and a picture on the front and the back, oh man, I see them through those words. And you even, kids would say, one kid yesterday at middle school would say, I can't, I don't have, I don't have three words. I said, did you do your best? And he was like, yeah. I said, then that's all that matters. And I give, give a fist bump and he could see the relief on his mind. Like he couldn't think of the words on the back of the mask. And I'm like, don't stress. Did you do your best? Yes. Then gimme some. And I think sometimes school becomes like, oh, if you don't get the right answer, then you're a failure. And I think there are certain things that need to be the right or wrong, right? This is the right answer, this is the wrong answer, that's fine. But if everything you do is about whether you got the right answer, as opposed to, did you try the best you could, and I think we, we can, we can get kids pulled into a cycle of like never being enough either. And that's not how they're, that's not how they're born, right? So anyway,

    Luke (00:40:11):

    Okay, ouch. This part hits a little bit close to home. I've chased the right answer over and over and over again in my life. What's the right decision here? Do I go this way or that? I've second guessed myself and sewed the seeds of doubt where previously I had confidence. I created the feeling of being stuck, where before there was flow, I'm not saying we just throw it all to the wind, but we want to encourage taking a chance in our youth. We wanna encourage them to explore and experiment and to learn in motion, not in a vacuum. And we need to relearn this ourselves. In fact, actually probably better said, I think we need to unlearn this idea that we can just get it right. Something I used to share with my team within my former business at the Institute, was that we are looking for you to make the best decisions, not the right ones.

    What this meant was that when we think in terms of right or wrong, we think there's just one answer. We think there's just one way and we agonize over getting it right. We can become paralyzed trying to even determine what is right. Right for this situation, right for me, right for how others are gonna see it, right? Because of the exact perfect outcome it's supposed to achieve, who gets to determine this? Instead, what we were looking for, what I was asking for, was what's the best decision you can can make at this time? Factor in what you know, what you feel, what perspectives you can gain and take a wider view, and then even a deep view, as best as you're able, and then go and make the call, make the choice. If it works, fantastic, build on it. If it doesn't, that's okay, did you try your best? Okay, then what do we need to do now? What did you learn that sharpens or grows you for the next time? What did you learn about yourself in this process? And so on. It's about making the best decision, not the right one.

    Aaron, we talked about holding space. How do you create that space? Because I'm sure there's, there, you know, there's a lot of people that are gonna listen to this and they're like, this sounds amazing. This is, I'd love to try this, I'd, how do I do it? Like where, I don't have somebody like that in my life, I'm not in, I'm not in the Ever Forward Club because I'm now 50, you know, case may be. How do they create that space for themselves?

    Aaron (00:42:42):

    Yeah. How do we create safe space? I think the first thing is to be authentic and vulnerable yourself. People can sense that right away. I can keep going into that, but I think it speaks for itself. Second, I think is to slow down. Like you can hear how I'm even changing the tone of my voice and I'm not trying to be like the expert of all experts, but I'm slowing myself down so I can feel myself. So I'm not just trying to catch up with my thoughts and get into it. I think the other thing is just to set some basic agreements. When we do introductory circle work, we do just three so it's easy. So it's simple and easy, confidentiality, no advice and judgment free zone. And just try to share it from your heart the best you can. We also add in try to listen with your body, it gets people into a different type of listening mode and keep it simple, but just some simple agreements and have people raise their hand and say I'm in for this. And so that's basically getting buy-in and agreements and that's really the start, if you ask me.

    Luke (00:43:42):

    Yeah, I think it's, it's a very helpful start. And I think just to kind of affirm this for everybody and, and certainly Ashanti, and I know Aaron, you, you have these direct experiences. I've had the good fortune of participating in a variety of different groups, right? Some that we're called masterminds a little bit different. I've participated in, in men's work. And with every man, I have been part of sitting with council as well, all different ways of, of doing this type of space, right? And in the most recent part of my journey, and I'm only gonna share a little bit of those, 'cause this brings up a whole other aspect of what I've been doing recently. That's a series of shows that we'll get into at some point, but I've had this experience of actually having a few very, very close friends, hold space for me, where I have been able to share what I'm going through, what I'm processing, what I'm taking down, as well as what I'm letting through, what I'm struggling with and for them to literally just hold that space.

    They have no agenda, they're not trying to fix anything, they're not trying to tell me which way to go, that's not about advice, it's literally just this heartfelt listening and that if there is anything for them to reflect back of, just, I just noticed when you were sharing this part, there was this, changing your voice or I could, I mean, I could feel, I felt emotion when you were speaking. I don't know if you were feeling it, but I was feeling it and just this beautiful way of mirroring back to you, your experience and what it's done aside from the connection I have with, with these individuals is it's allowed me to put that version of myself further out into the world, allow it to be seen, and then I can reflect and go, oh, maybe I could bring this elsewhere. Like this version of me, like maybe I'm, maybe today, I'm now 82% me, or maybe I'm 83%, right? And tomorrow I can bring 85% with me, right? And so it's just, it creates this pull forward.

    And so to even have just one person and that you could sit down and hold that type of space, and I would even say do it at separate times, meaning like, you know, have your turn and that's that day, that's that session. And another time, you hold space for them so that it, it's not transactional at that point. It's just, that moment is just about you, that moment is just about them, and you can show up that way. And the, the affirmation that comes from that is like, it's unreal. To be perfectly honest with you, it's some of that work, that's why we're on the show right now. And, and it's part of what we're not only doing, but why I finally said, all right, screw it. I'm gonna do it, let's go. Ashanti, anything you just wanna add to, to the holy space and what we're reflecting on right now?

    Ashanti (00:46:15):

    Yeah, I really like that. And I think what we, what we experience with the young men in our circles is that, if I can just slow down enough, creating this space is one thing, you trusting this space is another, right? And I think, you know, we we've had young men who took, you know, sometimes in this work, like, let's say if we were, whatever the work people are in, in the, solving problems, I mean, ideally most business are to solve somebody's problems of food or resources of connection, whatever, right? Most schools would hope that we could come in one time and we could fix all the things that kids have been going through. I mean, that, that's what they would, in their minds I think, subconsciously they think that's the way it works. But if a kid has been going through trauma and he's 15 years old, you somehow imagine in one hour, I can come in and I, I wish I had to magic 'cause I'd be rich. Like I could find my richest then, right? If I get one hour, get you to fix all your 15 years of stuff, sign me up. But what I recognize is that one, some young men in one or two weeks, they realize, oh wait, I'm safe here.

    Luke (00:47:17):

    Yeah.

    Ashanti (00:47:17):

    This confidential space, people are kind and he's respectful here. No one's trying to judge me. And some young men take six months, and I've had young men that after six months, now if you are the kind of person who says, well, look, I've been sitting here with you for six months and you're not opening up and I quit on you. I can't be, I can't time your healing, I can't time your healing. Something, the healing, you, you look fine on the outside, there's no bumps and bruises. So I'm thinking like, you're not, you don't care or you don't want to, but it's hard to trust. And I think finding the trust, and so for men who out there who were saying like, where do I go? First is like, can you trust? And you may not know if you can, you may have to see it in action first and then men can be trusted. I didn't grow up trusting men, I didn't have a father growing up. I didn't trust men, right? I, so I didn't have a, I didn't even even thought about going to a men's circle until somebody invited me. I never even knew they existed. And so I think it's like making those space, but when I tell you about that one young man, after six months of checking in, he was always a 10 on a scale from one to 10, he's always a 10. But I'm the Dean, he's not a 10, but in the circle, he has to be a 10. And I can't tell his business in the circle. Like I know what's going on with his life, but in the circle, I gotta just let him lie. And I'm just letting him, watch him lie for six months in a row. And I'm like, God, this, nothing's working. And one day he came to the circle and he said in the circle, he said, I hate my father.

    Now a kid in the circle who had father, had lost, his father had died, that kid got pissed off. He was like, how dare you talk about your father like that? I should beat your blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, hold on, slow down. The first time he opens up, somebody attacks him verbally. But this kid is remembering his father, and this kid is talking about his father. And I said, let him tell you about his father. And when that young man told the circle about what his father had done to him and done to his family, that young man said, I'm so sorry. I was missing my father. And I'm sorry that you were treated like that. And I mean, but, but you know, it requires us to give enough time for that young man to when he's ready, after six months to finally open up.

    And when the space becomes unsafe, we gotta be the people who are saying, hold on, you don't get to judge here. You don't get to have an opinion here, actually, you just gotta listen. You know, you, you can always have an opinion, but you don't get to express your opinion in the, towards him because he's telling his story from his perspective. And I think its about how, you know, we live in a world today, I mean not for only kids, but adults, look, these devices as much as I love my phone, here's what I know, we've gotten lazy at hearing opinions that are not our own because all I gotta do is swipe past it. I don't, oh that's not, and then the algorithm works for my benefit. So only thing that shows up is the things that I already like and agree with, and therefore, when I see somebody in real life who's saying something I don't want to hear, we can easily just be like, oh how do I swipe you out of the way?

    Luke (00:50:03):

    Yeah. Let me keep scrolling.

    Ashanti (00:50:04):

    Yeah. Get outta, get outta the way, right? Because I'm not used to having to be present with words that don't match what I already believe in. I think that's part of the word.

    Luke (00:50:13):

    I think, so, so there's so many things that, that, that come up here. One is what you just brought up, is being able to sit with that tension, right? When something really, really uncomfortable is coming up and it's not even directly at us, but we just feel that need, because we're just not used to being comfortable with the discomfort. We're not used to sitting in it and recognizing that it's okay to sit in it. Like it's, you're okay, it's gonna be all right with that. The couple other things though that you, you brought up and then I really want to cover on this last piece, but to bring up the issue of trust. And I think this, there's a few things to share. One is for each of us to recognize that, you know, if you think of trust as kind of like a dial, right? We can fully trust all the way up at the 10, right? Or even go to 11, right? Or it could be all the way down at zero and wherever we are, like when we enter into the space, for us to just say, okay, on the scale of zero to 10, 10, no trust at all, 10 we're fully, completely in trusting everything. And we realize we're at a four, what's a five? What do we need to do to just open that one little door, that one little percentage just to slowly crack the door open so that we can see what's there and also understand how do we build trust? Because to Ashanti, what you brought up is that you can create space. And that is the beginning again of that part of the process. But we've gotta recognize that we, we have to give trust as much as feel like the circumstances have to be perfect for us to feel trust, you know, trusting as well.

    So that it's a two way street that we've gotta take our, our personal responsibility for. So it's, it's for everybody just to kind of reflect on where you are on that scale, in the different circumstances and the different relationships you may show up in. I love the reflection on just we can't, you know, we can't set a clock to healing. It's gonna take what it's gonna take and to be patient and present with that. But the piece you really brought up that I did not wanna leave this conversation without addressing is that when we can begin to connect with people in this way, lowering our masks, the feeling of otherness begins to disappear because we don't see just the projection. We actually have to see their humanity at that point. And I'm just curious from both of your perspectives, but to me that has, now that has the power to go from personal healing to collective healing because there's just so much otherness that's being felt in the world. And I know that's been growing on for centuries, but there's been so much otherness and it's been so clearly on display in this last period of time. But for us to enter into that space, to hear each other, not react, it's just, I love the possibility of, of that. So I'm just, I'm just curious how, for both of you in, in both taking down the masks or being in this, this safe space, how you've seen it begin to break down those walls of feeling like the other or making somebody else the other.

    Aaron (00:52:51):

    I just wanted to name something based on what Ashanti's story brought up for me. Some of my best healing and circle has come from listening.

    Luke (00:52:59):

    Yeah.

    Aaron (00:53:00):

    When I hear somebody else talk about their problem, it's the same as mine. All my bullshit goes away and I can see it clearly. And that, that a lot of the healing comes from just listening. And that, that, that to itself has a ton of value when you're holding space in circle. You know, I think it's funny, I'm rereading some of my Buddhist texts, Norm Fischer of the, of late. And he talks about the Buddhists output path, and remembering that Buddhism can be both religious, spiritual and secular in all of these. So I just say this in that way and not trying to purport Buddhism by any stretch, but the Buddhists output path is one that's imaginative and creative. And one that allows you to think about all the possibilities so you can work towards the infinite that is never possible, but should always be strived for.

    And so when I think about holding space, I think about that. And I think about the way the world could be, if we all just trusted each other, because we listened to each other and we held space for each other all the way through. And you know, if you wanna be in service, like do that for somebody it's my, my favorite thing is when I see somebody homeless on the streets, is I just say, how are you doing? How's your heart? Sometimes they're yelling before I go up to 'em, you know, and I'm not trying to sound like a savior, cause I'm not, God, it makes me cry, the fact that I live in a society that does not figure that piece out and I'm still contributing to it. That's, yeah, that hurts. But just to be able to do that and the possibilities, cause 10 times out of 10, we connect, I get to connect with that person. And it means a lot to me and it feels so fucking good, like I could do it just for the feeling. And I think when we're talking about being in service, a lot of us can get wrapped in how we're making social impact. And that becomes an identity. And that's a mask like having done a lot of work with social entrepreneurs, like we have, those are masks too, we have awareness masks, by the way, we can be aware and play that, play that too. And I've done that and I still do it, but yeah, I just think about the possibilities if we all were willing to rewire a little bit and check our intentions as it really just to be there with that person.

    Ashanti (00:55:05):

    Yeah, and thank you for that answer, Aaron. Um, one of the things I would think about, when I was thinking about, what I was hearing Aaron's answer is like, when we sit with others that don't look like us, seem like us, act like us, or we, I think we quickly realize is that there's so much more that we have in common than we can see with our eyes. Our eyes can see a couple of attributes and we've been taught by training, by rearing, by nurturing, by whatever, that, oh, they're different. And what's happening behind the skin and this, this body size and the gender and the skin tones, is heart and soul, right? And I think that, when you talked about the idea of the trust and the dial, I was like, yeah, like what does it take to take a, get a little bit more trusting of someone?

    What does, what does someone have to do? What, what does it take someone to earn my trust? What does it take for me to trust someone else, right? And I think, what, what do I have to shift? You know, like what do I have to shift in my own brain? Cause trust is hard for me, and I know it. And I think I'm working on that place of like, one of my mentors asked me recently, he says, Ashanti, where are you fully known? And I was like, nowhere. He's like, you know, men's team, you've been on this men's team for 10 years. Wait, what do you mean? It's your family? I said, well, they know what I let them see. And when I go to the circle, once a week for three hours, they let, they get to see what I let them see. And he said, he asked me this question. He says, do you think it's possible to be fully loved if you're not fully known? Oh, and I hated him.

    Like what, I, because the question is, hmm, so maybe I'm protecting love by giving you what I think you can handle, but maybe I'm protecting the image of what love is. Because if I tell you these other things about me, maybe you're gonna stop caring about me or loving me. And so maybe I don't let myself be fully known because I don't fully love myself and I have to constantly keep working on me. And so part of my work is continually talking to young people 'cause I talk to them about how I see the world and I don't think I'm right. I just think I have thoughts. And I love to talk about how I think and what do you think, right? And giving them space to let them feel what they feel. And so those are the journey that I'm continuing to walk on.

    Luke (00:57:18):

    Ashanti, I, I absolutely love that. Truly love that. I think what, just one or two thoughts here before we conclude is that, in Aaron, which you brought up and, and mentioning for instance, the Buddhist path, was that just to slightly reframe something most of the time, you know, as we talk through the full path you hear and I've studied this and I've studied Christ consciousness and I've studied all sorts of different things and you hear this phrase to be in right relationship. But you know, it's been clarified by many other teachers to think of it as to be in skillful relationship and to think about what does it mean to be in skillful relationship with myself? What does it mean to be in skillful relationship with this moment, with this space, with these gentlemen I get to share this space with? What does it mean to be in skillful relationship to others?

    And so to just think of what's, what does skillful relationship look like in all of these different contexts, can be a very interesting frame to think about how we approach. And then I think Ashanti in, in many of the things that you just said, one of, one of the, that stands out in that is that the way that we can deeply listen from this place of heart centeredness to each other, that's a really wonderful beginning point to being in skillful relationship with others is to listen from that place, to listen to not just what they're saying, but what are they not saying? What's their body saying? What is, what are their emotions saying? What is just, you know, everything, even just the energy you're picking up, the vibe you're picking up from them that day. What is all of that saying to you? Because I guarantee you, it's a whole lot more than the mask you see, or the words they say and that we know it's true for us.

    We'd want other people to give us that benefit of the doubt, we'd want other people to give us that space, so let's give it to others. And we might be surprised at how things begin to change for us and how we start to show up differently and to get met in that space very differently. So Ashanti, Aaron, I just, I want to thank you guys so much for being here on this walk. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I know when I go back and, and, and listen, there's like gonna be a million other questions that I wish we could've gotten into today. Cause I could feel the energy around it. And this is a conversation that, that we probably need to revisit in, in many different ways going forward. But I just wanna thank you for entering this space with me today. And for, for going on this walk together, it is greatly appreciated. And I thank you for your time.

    Ashanti (00:59:31):

    Thank you. Thanks for having me.

    Aaron (00:59:33):

    Yeah. So, so grateful to be here, Luke. Thank you.

    Luke (00:59:36):

    Thank you. And for everybody just before we, we sign off, there's a lot here today, right? There's an exercise to go back and reflect on to see what is it that you would write on the outside of the mask in terms of what you show others, as well as what's on the inside that you don't let anybody else see? You can reflect on that, you can reflect on what we were just talking about. Skillful relationship, listen to others. You can reflect on this idea of how can I hold space? And I'm gonna give you one more idea on this. And this might stretch a little bit, all right, this may not be for everybody. And this is gonna let you into my own weird little world right here. I didn't know I was gonna go here, it just popped in. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna run with it, let's see what happens. So one of the ways that I have actually started to practice this is to be able to go out into nature on my own, in solitude, to be able to find a wander into a place that just feels interesting. Something about the energy draws me towards it. And inevitably when I'm in that space, there's something that then further draws my attention. Now for me, it's usually a tree of some kind. There's usually something, whether it's really old tree or an old tree stomp or whatever, well, here it comes. I let the tree hold space for me and I just fully get present and express and communicate with whatever that is in nature. And it's amazing the things that begin to move through you and come to you. And then to be able to sit in silence, try holding space for nature.

    See what it is that starts to come to you, see the messages and see how much gets communicated. It's unbelievable. And so I say that because I don't know, you may or may not have that person that immediately comes to mind that you can sit down with who could hold space for you, you may not. And so if you don't have that person, it means there's other ways to do this. And I gotta tell you, nature's one of the most loving things you will ever find when you connect with it. And so, and if you do have that possibility to sit down with the close friend, the close family member, to be able to start to hold space for each other in this way to think about what would it mean if I let my mask down just one or two more degrees to feel into those conversations, to express them and what begins to well up inside of you is extraordinary. And it's something that you're gonna want to start to share more often with so many people.

    Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com and click on Community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join. Until we go on this walk again, I'm Luke Iorio. Be well.

Feliz Borja