Episode 21: New Beginnings & The Masculine Principle with Ted Wallach
Marti and Todd welcome guest Ted Wallach, founder of the Quantum Warrior program, to explore the principle of masculinity in the context of new beginnings.
They discuss the principles of the feminine and masculine as complementarities that are needed for creation—energies not attributes. The conversation moves from the topic of defining, to boy kings, to imagining a different way of interacting and weaving.
From the Edge: Appreciative Inquiry (Todd)
Conscious Rant: Why are We Still Ranting (Marti)
Guest: Ted Wallach
Ted Wallach cut his teeth under Martin Scorsese. Directing and producing for over a decade in Bollywood, Hollywood, the Middle East, and Europe, his last film, Misdirection (narrated & produced by Common; on iTunes) in which kids escape the ghetto by becoming magicians, led to his creating a performance of a Blood-turned-magician for Google’s Peace Summit, where eighty “formers” (Neo-Nazis, gang members, terrorists) met to end the radicalization of youth.
As the original Creative Director of WeWork, Ted created campaigns from ending oil subsidies in America to building wells in Africa with Charity Water. After four years at different marketing agencies in NYC, he created The AMEX Trifecta of Upward Mobility with the Small Business Saturday team.
He became CSO then CEO of TimeRepublik a global digital time bank and returned to THNK: School for Creative Leaders where he did his post-graduate work to serve as an expert in residence supporting fledgling ventures with digital alternative currency strategies.
Ted now has a clinical practice in which he coaches individuals using a combination of Taoism and Quantum Mechanics to support feeling management, overcoming obstacles and manifesting that which they are trying to build in their lives.
He has become especially interested in the effect masculinity has on both men and women and has started Quantum Warrior, an online men’s circle with his partner Eric Shanks. Together they are launching a podcast about masculinity with the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford where Ted is currently a visiting scholar.
Series: New Beginnings
We're at risk of mistaking the current surge of new energies and opportunities for chaos, instead of recognizing them as energies of a new beginning that have risen from what is completing. Marti and Todd began to wonder about all the things we're deeply familiar with that may be coming to completion, and what may be emerging as well.
Timeline
0:53 What do we mean by “circle?”
1:58 Marti’s thoughts on “new beginnings”
4:57 Todd introducing the masculine as principle
9:50 Masculine, manliness, and polarities
13:13 Feminine and masculine as facets of creation
15:23 Feminine energy on the rise
18:36 Finding completion
23:36 Resisting endings
24:56 Our need to define limits us
31:34 Fascination with battles and boy kings
34:03 Powerful containers
38:06 Weaving the masculine and feminine
40:54 Complementarities
45:40 Correcting the balance at scale
55:13 From the Edge: Appreciative Inquiry (Todd)
58:16 Conscious Rant: Why are We Still Ranting (Marti)
Quotes
“If we start doing stuff too quickly . . . without engaging the second (new) momentum, we are destined to get stuck in the old one and just go to ground, not really creating anything new, but just making new versions of our old ways and ideas.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We have focused too long on structures and roles, to the expense of the dynamics, or energy that, when listened to, bring more responsiveness and fluidity.” — Todd Hoskins
“Structures and roles evolve. They shift. As we participate with what is happening in the world right now, we are more effective and not confined by the structures that are rigidly held onto even when they no longer work. When we are working with these dynamics, we have a greater impact and are much more adaptable.” — Todd Hoskins
“We have been in a cultural process for decades, at least here in North America, of learning that these pre-defined roles no longer fit. They haven’t fit for quite some time.
What it means to “be a man” or “be a woman” is being challenged, and rightly so. These are structures—roles—that not only are not serving people who don’t fit in a gender binary. They are confining for all of us. Why? Because there is so much available energy in being released from the confinement of these roles. For everyone.” — Todd Hoskins
“There is resistance to moving beyond these structures and roles because for so many it’s the prevailing way of seeing the world . . . Trees are for lumber. Animals are for food. Men are for labor. Women are for caretaking. It’s simpler this way. It’s less messy. And it’s less effective. It’s incomplete.” — Todd Hoskins
“What if we saw the masculine and feminine as principles rather than an attributes? As energies rather than adjectives? What if we didn’t try to tightly define them, and instead experienced them?” — Todd Hoskins
“We need to heal from what our distortions have wrought. We have lived under patriarchy, we have valued domination. And these outcomes are not reflective of the masculine principle. We need to re-imagine without defining. Experiment without shame. And support one another as we make room for new energies to emerge and help us restore our relationships with each other and the planet.” — Todd Hoskins
“The masculine and the feminine are ‘frames,’ or they are ways of imagining the world with poles like the plus and the minus on a battery. In between them, there's a spectrum. And the poles being out far from each other, actually create a polarity that allows for energy to flow between the two polls.” — Ted Wallach
“The split is what's ending. The masculine and the feminine operate equally in the process of creation and in the process of maintaining the world. Even in the process of moving to the next cycle, they are equal, but they have different roles.” — Marti Spiegelman
“In the Andean tradition, the feminine is in charge of love and wisdom. And the masculine is in charge of strength and intelligence. And what the elders will say is, ‘imagine bringing strength to love and intelligence to wisdom.’” — Marti Spiegelman
“More and more women stepping forward. And men, now have a chance to redefine themselves and re-express themselves in ways that that haven't been possible for a really, really long time.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Every time we try to separate the masculine and the feminine, we lose energy.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We've severed the relationship. We've imposed a definition. ‘This is what a man is.’ ‘This is what a woman is.’ We've also genderized it because truly the principles of the masculine and the feminine are not about gender.” — Marti Spiegelman
“The dance of the two energies is necessary at all times.” — Ted Wallach
“We've, in essence, ripped a hole in the universe to create this sacred space, create this portal and we then have to close the portal, and then that portal will never exist again. There will be new portals, but this one doesn't exist any longer.” — Ted Wallach
“We've been through this big cycle of experience. What's rising from that is a different proportion of the masculine and feminine. That's the second (new) momentum. It’s not one versus the other.” — Marti Spiegelman
“One mark of this age is that you cannot talk about something unless you define the terms of what you're talking about . . . We get into arguments about definitions—what's in it and what's not. Then we ignore the energies beneath them because we're so focused on defining.” — Todd Hoskins
“Don't die with your music still inside.” — Wayne Dyer
“What are the notes in this song that I need to sing? What's the melody? Have I been singing these notes already? Often those notes are often already in your life, but you don't necessarily have them in the melody yet.” — Ted Wallach
“Let's sit in circle together and speak our truth and pull our shadow and share to be known and try to get across the long dark night of the soul together, and see how we might turn what we're up to into service.” — Ted Wallach
“Providing and protecting in the future for the masculine is about holding powerful container. The way to hold powerful containersis through listening—listening to know other people, not listening to understand. Listening to know, and creating intimacy through listening.” — Ted Wallach
“It's not about whether you should take responsibility; It's about choosing to take responsibility because it's a powerful choice and it's a container-building choice.” — Ted Wallach
“Creation is dependent on complementarities. These words that we use—masculine and feminine—they really denote complementarities. We could trundle around the globe and sit with the elders of all different cultures, and they would essentially end up saying the same thing: these two forces are required for creation.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Listen to know, rather than understand.” — Ted Wallach
“These forces—the feminine, the masculine—are not human scale. They are universal scale. They are much bigger than us and they move through us.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Problem seeking, as much as problem solving, as seductive and habitual as it is, often ignores the existing momentum.” — Todd Hoskins
“When we focus on our complaints and whine about what isn’t, all we end up with is awareness of what we don't like, what doesn’t work, what’s missing . . . it leaves us with a bleak mound of data points about what has not occurred and it does not tune us into what is possible.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We are problem solvers and innovators. This is our human design, our unique kind of consciousness. But to really BE who we are, we must learn to focus on what works, what might be possible, even call in what has never been known before – to forget about probability and even possibility – and instead manifest the seemingly impossible!” — Marti Spiegelman
“When we open our awareness to new horizons, to what is working, to what can be . . . when we learn from, and work in service to, the conscious universe instead of trying to control it – we evolve collectively into brilliant states of fulfillment that are our destiny.” — Marti Spiegelman
Links
Yanantin - Andean cosmovision of complementarities
Moncropping depleting the soil
Difficulties of bird speciation
Excerpt of Wade Davis book, Magdalena
Credits
Theme music courtesy of Cloud Cult