TRANSCRIPT

Amadon: We think we're this person, we've created this person, our parents have created this person, our family members, our girlfriends, our boyfriends. We have this whole person that's actually not really who we are.

Fitz: Right, an alter ego perhaps.

Amadon: The alter ego, yeah.  

Fitz: And, you know, sometimes we get so caught up in the repetition of that alter ego that we forget that it's an alter ego. Sometimes that becomes us and we fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to be singular in something that doesn't actually reflect our soul's real content.

“Nothing You Do Matters Unless What You Do Matters”
I’m Amadon DellErba and this is “Get Real or Die Trying”

Amadon: Hey tribe, Amadon DellErba here. Welcome to episode 16 of my podcast. Today, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Fitzgerald Pucci.  He has the Deconstruct podcast, which I stumbled across about a week ago, and I was first actually attracted to some of the titles before I even listened. I just liked what I was seeing, you know, the titles and I thought this guy was conscious.  Did a little Googling, came across some of his videos, listened to some of his podcast, and I thought he'd be a great guy to have on the show. I thought we would vibe pretty well. So how are you doing today, man?

Fitz: Man, I'm honored first and foremost, by just… that's reaching deep. I'm feeling great today. Like I said a little beforehand, I've been in a period of some deep constructive work with a couple of the folks I really trust. So I'm coming in here with a pretty big load today. I'm real excited for what we've got to talk about.

Amadon: Cool. Cool, man. Well, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. For our audience this is the first time we've ever met right here, virtually screen through screen here, so we're just having a candid conversation. Two brothers in pursuit here and it looks like we actually started our podcast around the same time.  Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about how you would describe yourself and then, uh, I had some questions for you based upon some of the podcasts I listened to and just some things I thought we could jive on.

Fitz: Absolutely.  Well, first and foremost, I consider myself an emotional literacy educator. I run the Deconstruct podcast and a lot of that is focusing on addressing some of the overall societal myths that get impressed upon us from just the different rights of passage that we absorb. There are a lot of things that teach us that we don't really understand they're teaching us.

So every week we take one of these larger societal teachings, we give some historical context, we break it down, we offer some new perspectives in the hopes of going through this journey of getting more free together piece by piece. 

I do a lot of organizing in the central Massachusetts area. We've been hosting a lot of protests in towns that have not seen a protest in a very long time, trying to organize and mobilize some of the big worldly changes taking place.  A lot of the work that we're doing is saying these small communities in the middle of Massachusetts have not been paying much attention to the grief and the pain going across the United States. And we asked, well, why are we out of the equation? So, we've been organizing five or six different towns in the area, coaching protest leads, creating educational weekly identity calls, and hosting the podcast in the greater collective hope that we can start to transform the societal and cultural fabric of the central Massachusetts area. It's been a wild ride so far.

Amadon: Good for you, man. It sounds like you're doing a lot of great work and you're connected to your local community and trying to organize and inspire and ignite some change. That's really good, man.

Fitz: Thank you so much.

Amadon: I was also, you know, I was attracted to the name of your podcast Deconstruct because something I… a similar concept, I think, that I say a lot in my podcasts is that we need to unlearn.  You know, it's kind of like deconstructing, but we have to unlearn because we learned so many wrong things growing up in today's society in this culture. And we have to kind of unlearn these things. We get to a point in our adult life, at some point, where we start realizing the things we learned are actually really not benefiting our souls and are not benefiting our growth, our intellectual, spiritual, emotional growth.  They're not benefiting us in our human connection to other people. And we learn a lot of separations, you know, like you're talking about in the community and what's going on in this country right now, there's so much separation. And a lot of that is learned behavior passed down from their fathers or grandfathers, you know, whatever it may be.

And so coming into a sense of... one thing you mentioned in one of your podcasts, or maybe it was your speech, you had a great speech called “A Comfortable Evil” that I saw online. I took a few little, took a few little notes. I really appreciated a lot of what you had to say there. Another thing that stood out to me was… you mentioned, accountability.  That's something that I talk about almost every podcast, especially as men in this culture today, we really need to start having accountability for our actions and taking accountability. And you talked about, I think it was more in relation to the Black Lives Matter and the learned behavior of racism and really starting to take accountability and changing it. And so I really appreciated that because again, to me, accountability is a high spiritual virtue that isn't, there's not a lot of emphasis on it in the world. Like we don't go around saying, “Hey, I want to be accountable!”, you know...

Fitz: Right.

Amadon: But it really should be, it really should be one of those top things because when you're accountable and you pursue that accountability and you take responsibility to change, and to change yourself... you can really see progress in your own life and the lives of others around you.  And it takes courage, it takes commitment, to be accountable… and talk a little bit about how you see what does it mean? I think you, you talked about you're in a very small town, you're in a rural area...

Fitz: Right.

Amadon: You said there hasn’t been a lot of protests there, probably a lot of complacency, stagnation. What can the average person in that town, what does it mean for them to take accountability in their life?

Fitz: Right. Well, a lot of the ways of a small town like myself have found comfort in very familiar rhythms; very familiar expectations of what everyday looks like. And at this point, you know, people have been doing the same thing for so many times, they may be losing track of the things that are slightly uncomfortable in their day to day basis.

They may be losing track of the things that originally didn't make sense. But through the act of repetition and through the act of repeated exposure just become normalized. So I think one of the most essential aspects of bringing a small town community to the point of being primed and ready for a discussion about accountability is finding out what toxic aspects of culture have been normalized because every person has this like lining over their skin with the habits, the routines, the thoughts, the way they interact. And as they practice that, this film kind of starts building thicker and thicker and as someone in a small town, practices small town ideologies.  We are 98% white so racialized conversation never takes place from the advocacy side of those that aren't white. And those layers keep building up as one continues normalizing themselves to their worlds. That layer needs to find a way to be broken through. It needs to find a way to gently be removed from the individual.

One of the things that I talk about a lot is the way that slavery in the United States, when it was first introduced, was a deeply cruel and abnormal practice. And it was only through the encouragement and the repetition of actions of cruelty alongside the justification of these acts. The first thing that happens -  and justification is so important here - when someone brings up an idea that challenges those normal everyday interactions, one of the first things to come out for a small town community are the justifications, the defenses, the “I'm not racist.  I have all these friends that are black, that are brown, that are not white. I don't have a racist bone in my body.”

A very wise man, by the name of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi said this quote, that's been sticking in my mind all the way through for the past month, “The heartbeat of racism…” -  when we’re looking at it from the Black Lives Matter perspective of taking accountability - “The heartbeat of racism is in the denial of itself.”

So one of the first things that we need to normalize in one of these communities is the suspension of the excuses, of the reactions, of the defenses, the justifications.  Being able to come to a point where all of the little things in us that want to fight and kick and scream when they are confronted...to be able to deescalate those things within ourselves, to a point of, “you know, maybe I don't have everything right.”

That is really, I believe the first step to taking accountability, but it can be such a strenuous, energy-consuming process. Because I've really seen that when someone who has normalized themselves, when they're exposed to that, the entire arsenal of defenses generally needs to come out. Like, opening the Pandora's box and all of these bugs, and snakes, things with scales and fangs and ugliness, kind of need to leave the box.  And it's only when that box is depleted can you really have those conversations that bring the idea of “Maybe there are things that I can find strength in taking accountability for.”

Amadon: Yeah, no you bring up a lot of great points there. And it kind of reminds me of my own philosophy of being willing to look in the mirror and see your ugly side, see your weaknesses, you see the things that we don't want to see, you know, and look at that Pandora's box of the scales and the snarling aspects of our personalities, uh, that are not really  conducive to optimum human performance, you know, and being, basically being a loving soul and being, and being a human that connects.You talked about this in your podcast too, which I really liked, the concept of multiplicity. And you know, I talk about duality and the duality of man, a man and woman, you know, men, creatures, human beings is that to me, I'm fascinated with kind of the battle between our human nature and our spiritual nature. You know, because we are spiritual beings and we, but we're in this constant battle. And the more that we try and spiritize our hearts and our minds, the more we try and elevate our spiritual consciousness, we're at war with our lower self and our higher self; our human nature and our spiritual nature and coming in, you know, and all of us, every human being is a dichotomy in some sense, I was just telling my wife, I'm a fool and I'm a Sage...you know, I’m a dichotomy.

Fitz: Yeah, exactly.

Amadon: And I’m trying, I'm trying to be more of the Sage and less the fool. But if I were to say that I'm a Sage and not accept that I can be a fool as well. Then I'm, you know, I'm just basically full of sh*t, you know...

Fitz: Right, right!

Amadon: And so just having the awareness to grow.

Fitz: Yeah, that's a perfect point that you bring up there. And I really think that being able to end the war that exists between those two dualities comes in finding the balance where the child and the Sage can meet and begin to fulfill each other's needs.

Amadon: Yeah. Thus the duality of meeting… how to grow up, take responsibility, be accountable and be mature. Be a mature adult, but also have that childlike nature. And what is the childlike nature? To me, it's about purity. You see children are more, innately more pure and they have more virtues than adults because they've had less time to be corrupted.

Fitz: Exactly. Exactly. That’s such a good way to put it.

Amadon: And so a childlike nature is really just a more pure nature. They're more loving. They don't have preconceived judgments of people when they meet them, you know. They don't… they just don't see these things because they haven't learned all of these and absorbed them like you were talking about earlier. They don't have these layers of wrong learning. And so that childlike nature that we need to pursue to me is really purity. And then you get to the crossroads of, “Wow, how do I become more pure?” That's where the work comes in. You have to be able to like, sit down and say… that's what we were talking about… look in the mirror and say, “Dang man, like I'm ugly.  This part of me is ugly. This ego in me is ugly. Or this competition in me is ugly” or whatever it is...  Having the courage and the accountability to look in the mirror - or look in the mirror… sometimes the mirror is a friend, is a lover, is a loved one, is your mentor, is your spiritual elder, is your teacher who says, “You know what, this isn't working” and you should want that in your life.

And I've talked about that in a lot of my podcasts… really seeking out the Sage, if you will, the teachers, the spiritual elders in one's life to have that guidance, to have that correction, which was what my last podcast was about, Carefrontation Vs. Correction. You know, and really wanting that, so you can better yourself, change yourself, improve yourself. 

And I think a lot of the concepts you touched on in some of your podcasts, you seem to really be exploring human nature and the pursuit to kind of deconstructing the wrong things we've learned, but also embracing and coming into the new paradigm and the correct ways of how we conduct ourselves and the conversation you're having with yourself and with others is a conversation that millions of people need to be having...

Fitz: Yeah, right.

Amadon: You mentioned something, let me just look at my notes here real quick...in your speech that was a, it was a concept that I really liked because it reminded me of a concept that I talk about here. Well, I think you were talking about society's pressure towards singularity…

Fitz: Yes.

Amadon: ...and what I thought about is a concept in a book called The URANTIA Book that I read. And The URANTIA Book is a, it's a big subject, I’ll have to touch on that, but it's a revelation, an epochal revelation that came to this planet through an anonymous, sleeping prophet. And anyways, there's a concept called unity without uniformity.

Fitz: Yes. Yes.

Amadon: And that's what we need to have. We can still have unity without uniformity. We don't all have to, you know, be the uniform patterns, you know, and look the same and act the same and really trying to get to that consciousness of unity without uniformity. You also said something, you said the word, you probably don't remember, maybe you do remember, radical something… I don't think I took the note cause I….

Fitz: Radical trust in the human ability to grow. Radical trust.

Amadon: Yes, I really liked that because… well one, we do... We lose faith in humanity. We lose faith in each other… And the radical trust in human nature to grow, reminded me of a concept of my father’s, that he talks about called, ‘Radical Unity.’

And I used to talk about it and people would ask me, “Why is it radical? What's what's radical about unity?” I'm like, “Well, it's a radical because we're so far from it! The norm is to be divided. So unity itself is radical.”

Fitz: We've made such a tremendous departure from the original teachings, which this country was founded upon. Exactly as you say, the immigration and the multiplicity of perspectives that have shaped American culture. We’re currently in this point where there is a cultural war that's being held that it's trying to commit a concept that I call cultural genocide.

It's trying to homogenize itself and it's trying to put… Once again white supremacy is rearing its ugly head and it's contesting, it's seeking to fight and to wound the other cultural aspects that are existing, that have made this country so powerful and diverse in its thoughts. And a lot of the people in my hometown they see these different opinions, they see these different perspectives of black folks, brown folks, queer folks, disabled folks; of indigenous people that are living around our areas.

And they see them as threats. They see the unfamiliar as threats because one of the biggest conditions, one of the most toxic aspects to the white supremacist culture that is sort of been cultivated is the indulgence of this vivid sense of paranoia in what we are unfamiliar with. When really, as you said earlier, some of the most powerful teachers that we can come across or those that we interact with and every additional aspect, every new perspective that comes into this conversation, has the potential to really teach us. I have some beautiful mentors, incredibly gentle, kind-hearted men that have taken me and shaped and gone through this powerful journey.

And I also recognize that some of my greatest teachers have been some of my fiercest opponents in the course of my life. There have been calls that have been directed at me to face the ugliness of my own past. There have been calls for accountability that were incredibly painful at first. And it's only with a little bit of time, only with a little bit of that process where I was able to convert the fear that I had of being called-out, into a gratitude, because some of the deepest lessons that have changed and helped me heal myself, have come from people that have originally meant for my harm. And I think that was one of the hardest lessons that I ever had. It plugs in here, where, if we are able to see the views which challenge our existence and feel uncomfortable to what is normal as opportunities to grow. It changes the entire perspective of how scary the world can be. And it heals at its very core, it’s root, that paranoia clutching so many and for the people in my community. 

Amadon: Yeah, that's beautiful. I love the way your mind sees that and approaches healing. I think… you know, it sounds like for you that you had something in your life where you realized you had to take accountability for your actions.

Fitz: Yes I did.

Amadon: And we all have that at varying degrees. Everyone, actually, has something in their life they need to take accountability for. Whether they've taken accountability or not is another thing. But what I like about what you're saying is that you got to that point, it was made clear to you by your mentors, your teachers, your elders (another word I like to use)

Fitz: I love that word.

Amadon: And you accepted it and you embraced it. And that happens to me every day. I'm having to take accountability for my actions and it’s being pointed out to me. 

I just - It's beautiful... but it's also kind of sad that so few people experience what you and I experience and in this, and feel that way or have come to that place, where we feel like it's, um, we feel blessed, you know.

Fitz: Yeah. And it is a blessing,

Amadon: And it is a blessing and a lot of people avoid it. And a lot of people that don't seek it out and a lot of people don't want to take accountability. And so I think all we can do is just talk about it, share, and I think share about how it's blessed us. I think when people hear personal testimony and they understand like, wow, this person is saying this helped them grow, and it was beautiful for their soul, and it was a blessing to them. It might shift their thinking a little bit.

Fitz: It can really give people courage. It can give people the courage to say, this person can do this. Maybe I can too.

Amadon: You know, I saw a movie while we’re talking a little bit about, you know, black lives matter, and racism, and that white supremacy, and that wrong thinking. I saw a great movie the other night called, ‘Burden’ with Forest Whitaker. It's based on a true story of a KKKlans-member who basically had a change of heart because of the love and acceptance of this black preacher, who was Forest Whitaker, whose very own uncle was lynched and hanged by the KKK. Um, and he still showed love and took this KK member into his own home and, and basically through love and acceptance, transformed this guy to basically repent, and change his way of thinking, living and being, and I mean, it's power and it's a true story. And at the end they show, they show a clip of the, of the guy talking and it's really quite powerful story. And I think if that could, it just is an example of how these people can change their thinking through love.  And even I was watching this thinking, “Man, this preacher's got a lot of balls.” I mean, he's really a courageous guy that had this guy in his home and to show that type of love, he could be filled with so much hatred, but he was the real deal. He was walking the walk, man. I mean, he's a preacher. He's the real deal. He's not a facade. There's no bullsh*t there, man. He was doing what Jesus would have done… the real Jesus, not our little ideas of Jesus. He was doing...

Fitz: Not our, not our, societaly indoctrinated take of Jesus.

Amadon: Exactly, he was doing the real-deal Jesus, you know. Taking this man into his home and showing him unconditional love” and therefore it transformed him, which I thought was quite a wonderful story.

Fitz: That's really hitting deep. I talk about radical trust and I think, “what does that look like?” And what you just told me to take in someone responsible for the death of a family member, into your own house, and trust in that they can be healed. That's about as radical as radical gets. Yeah. And that's the stuff that's really going to change the world, I think. 

Amadon: Yeah. And imagine, you know… after watching that, I had the thought, imagine if all media that was put out in all movies had this type of beautiful, informative, inspiring spiritual message? And it, you know, here we are, you and I are in conversation about this movie I saw, but imagine if millions of people were.  Instead, we're talking about, you know, the fast and the furious, and we're talking about the blockbuster, Transformers, and we're talking about the Kardashians or whatever the hell people are talking about.

Fitz: And all the drama that people love to just suck up. 

Amadon:  Mindless banter. Mindless banter. The arts and media should be presenting these true stories and these inspiring acts of men and women throughout time, and currently living, who are doing great things.  But we, it's a way that the powers that be control the masses by just pumping out meaningless banter.

Fitz: Right. It's very profitable that banter

Amadon: Yeah, absolutely.

Fitz: And it feeds off of those layers that we develop. I think a lot of consumers who have been indoctrinated regularly to find their sense of gratification from taking the wrapper, peeling it off, and consuming whatever's inside.  For a lot of folks that is the closest thing to catharsis that they come across. And I don't think they realize that the more they depend on the cycle of consumption, the more they are being consumed. And it's deeply profitable to focus on the dramatic aspects, to focus on the conflicts, to focus on the things that distract us from liberation.

Amadon: That's interesting. That's a cool concept. It's kind of the more that you consume, the more that your soul is being consumed by them.

Fitz: Yeah, right. It's really making us compromise our humanity; the more we participate in that structure. And that's one of the biggest goals of a large, corporate, soulless society - to remove us from my sense of humanity and turn us into dividends.

Amadon: The lack of connection. Yeah. When you, when you have a lack of connection with yourself, with your fellow human next to you, it's easier to control, but you're also, you're then more capable of doing wrong.

Fitz: Yeah. And going back to the idea of what made slavery less horrifying to an American populace way back in the day. They had to train themselves to separate this one demographic of people from the concept of humanity. Dehumanization is such a part of the primer to enable what's harming us; to justify that harm.

Amadon: Yeah.  You… let’s circle back a little bit. You mentioned, you were talking about children and childlike and you were starting to tell me a story, I think, or you were going somewhere and I might've diverted the conversation.  But you were talking about how we, uh, at a young age are taught to do things or to unlearn things. I feel like I might've cut you off cause I liked where you were going and then we got excited about something else. But...

Fitz: So, in my childhood state I feel like it was one...that may have been one of the wisest points of my upbringing to this point, all the way until the age of 24, and everything that I've been doing from I'd say 21, 22 onwards has been trying to get back to that initial period of being easily impressed with the world around me. Having such a thin membrane exist between my body and the world around me… being so susceptible to the sun on my skin, and the breeze through my hair, and the sound of the birds, and all of the aspects of beauty in my environment. I miss having a skin so thin because it felt like I was in a constant state of communion between myself and the world around me.

Amadon: Yeah. When you were talking, I was thinking what you're describing is basically being in the moment, being present. But as we grow as adults with responsibilities, with the corruption of our purity, basically, we’re never happy and satisfied in the moment - the breeze in our hair, the sun shining - we become callous.  Our skin becomes callous and that thin membrane goes away and we lose the magic, we lose the appreciation, and we lose the gratitude for the beauty of the simplicity of existence. 

Fitz: I love the word callous, that you use.

Amadon: I was just having this conversation with someone the other day about just observing my little three-year-old and just how… the joy and excitement that she can have and that most children can have over such beautiful things and that we harm ourselves by not allowing ourselves to have that childlike excitement and that, you know, there's something to it.  But really what it is is that children, for me the spiritual lesson that I'm learning from being a father myself, is that children live in the moment so much better than adults; they’re in the moment.

My father, Gabriel of Urantia, who is a spiritual teacher and he's a writer, he talks about the eternal moment and being the eternal moment and that there is the duality of appreciating the moment is actually linked to having a distinct understanding and respect for eternity. And so, you know, the moment - you can appreciate and be in the moment when you have a sense of eternity because you know where you're going, you know that this moment is qualified by eternity itself.

Fitz: Yes. Yes. I love the idea of eternity validating the constant stream of now. That's so, that's it. I I, and you know, what causes our skin to callus? I think that is a great place to explore. Well, the first cut is the deepest. When we are children, we have not set any sort of internal process to protect ourselves from some of the hard aspects of the world.  Some of the difficult, scary, troubling things. So as I began to experience some of that pain, I said, “I don't like that. I don't want to have to deal with that. I want to find ways to protect myself against that.” So the joy and the wonder and, I really feel one of the things that allowed me to be so wise as a child was in my ability to be naive in my trust.  I was so able to give back because I had never been hurt. And as I grew, I grew these callouses. I grew these layers to protect and insulate myself from the hurt. 

Now that I've sort of gone through the mouth of some very deep hurts in my own experience, I've realized that maybe this pain isn’t something that I need to be as afraid of as I previously was.

Amadon: I was telling someone the other day that saying “hurt people hurt people.” You know, hurt people, hurt other people because they're hurt...

Fitz: That's a novel in four words...

Amadon: Yeah, really, I mean, a huge discussion there and seeking that personal healing, it kind of circles all the way back to the beginning of our conversation about taking accountability, changing ourselves, and healing ourselves so that we can be “loving-people, who love people” instead of “hurt people who hurt people.”  You know, “loving-people, who love people.”  And getting to that point and to that consciousness and that state of being, it actually isn't easy. It takes a lot of exploration. It takes a lot of emotional, spiritual, psychological healing and analysis. And going within and changing, deconstructing, unlearning, um, tearing down like, dying to thyself.

You know, a lot of us have these - you know one of my podcasts was about, you know, having a facade - we have these facades, we, we think we're this person, we've created this person, our parents have created this person, our family members, our girlfriends, our boyfriends. We have this whole person that's actually not really who we are.

Fitz: Right, an alter ego perhaps.

Amadon: The alter ego, yeah.  

Fitz: And, you know, sometimes we get so caught up in the repetition of that alter ego that we forget that it's an alter ego. Sometimes that becomes us and we fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to be singular in something that doesn't actually reflect our soul's real content.

Amadon: Yeah, I was listening to - you know, Mike Tyson has a podcast that, the heavyweight boxer - you know, he's going through his own kind of spiritual discovery. And, you know - talk about the exact example of an alter ego - he was the heavyweight champion of the world, this whole big, you know, alter ego. And he said on his podcast, he said, “You know what? I've been living in my alter ego for my whole life. I was the heavyweight champion of the world. I was this mean guy, I was this vicious boxer, I was this killer. I was this…”  This was all... and he goes, “That's not even who I am. I'm just now discovering who I am. I'm Mike Tyson.” He's like, “I'm a nice, funny guy.”  He's like, “I don't even know who that old Mike Tyson is.  I don't even know him anymore. That was all just my alter ego.”

So it's really cool to see like other people, and even him and in that exaggerated form, because we all talk about having an alter ego, but imagine actually having it, living it, being in it, personifying it and it, really, in your life - you're the heavyweight champion, you're making millions, anywhere you go people are kissing your ring, basically. You know… So that was like he is the exact example of that. And here he is, years later, like deconstructed.  Here he is years later, like, “Whoa, I don't even know who that guy was.  This is, I'm finally discovering who I am!” ...you know?

Fitz: I just found another circumstance like that, that really hit base so deep. Do you know the rapper, DMX?

Amadon: Oh yeah.  Definitely.

Fitz: Yeah. Yes. Super hard core.  Super tough. Just a straight up original gangster, bad ass. 

Amadon: He drops it hard.

Fitz: And I found out, I found out he has a garden of orchids that he tends to...

Amadon: There you go.

Fitz: ...on a regular basis. And I, I'm seeing DMX - one of the hardest dudes in the industry - watering his orchids and

Amadon: There you go...I think he might read the book, The URANTIA Book, I was mentioning, too.

Fitz: Yeah, and it brings me so much joy, especially in the realm of the persona of masculinity, especially from the hard person, from the “conqueror,” to be able to see people express a genuine self of gentleness that acknowledges the hard itself and transcends that.

Amadon: That's so cool, yeah.

Fitz: And, you know, one of the really beautiful things that I've found about being soft; being sensitive. When you're around people that don't have pure intentions, you can smell it from a mile away.

Amadon: Oh yeah.

Fitz: And then when one learns how to practice strong boundaries, the boundaries given to us by the Sage who has the experience. When we can inhabit the space of gentleness and sensitivity and wonder to the world around us, we’re fueled by this magical force that just makes living easier. 

And when we receive the wisdom of the Sage, who has had the experiences, who has the clarity of vision that cuts through the artificial of the worlds, that cuts through other people's personas, that can see what's really deep down there.

I think being able to find those, the best of both of those... the wonder whose naivety is checked and the wisdom whose callousness is checked. Being able to inhabit both of those spaces is really like, it's like DMX in an orchid garden. It's really like Mike Tyson slipping into the perspective of humor and gentleness because we really can be complex. We can outstep the parameters of this really narrow definition of masculinity that we're, that a lot of us have been forced to perform. That's one persona that I think is unilaterally imposed on men.

Amadon: Yeah, it's really cool. You bring up masculinity. That's something I explore pretty much every podcast in some way, it comes up just the concept of masculinity and the need to redefine it, the need to re-personify what it means to be a masculine male, and really the need to take control and take back the definition.

I think, you know, there's such a lack of balance. I think of balance and men today, they're either, there's just imbalance, you know? You can be too macho and too strong and too chauvinistic and too this, or you can be kind of weak and you lose the manly qualities of decisiveness and being a protector and being absolute and being a guide and being a man.

And so that's like the spectrum is just going away. It's like, you're either really off and, or, and, or you're just too weak, you know? And I don't say weak as in like, a bad thing… but there are archetypes of what a man should be that work for the progression of society and humanity, and a good man really has to have strength so that he can pursue virtues of honor and integrity and honesty. These things don't just come to you. You have to pursue them. You have to work towards them and it takes commitment. It takes courage to actually be a good man. You don't just wake up one day and you're a great man. And then of course there’s the unlearning of the toxic masculinity.

That we're all a product of it doesn't matter because if you grew up in America and you didn't even have a father, you're still a product of toxic masculinity because you see it everywhere. You observe it everywhere. You take it in as a child, you're a sponge. You see it in your coach at school, you see it in your principal.

You see it on the President on TV, you see it on the main character in the movies you're watching. You see it in the video games are playing. You see in the magazines, you're reading, it's everywhere. You're inundated with this toxic image.

And so it's time as men that we take accountability and that we personify what it means to be a godly man, to be a responsible man. And when I say godly, I'm not talking about the straight-laced Christian, you know, “I'm a godly guy,” you know what I mean?

Fitz: Right. “I'm a God fearing man.” Yeah.

Amadon: We’re created beings by a loving cosmic Creator that is much bigger than anybody knows. It doesn't fit any book. It doesn't fit in any ism or schism, you know.

Fitz: Ooh. That's such a nice phrase. That's great. And, you know, I really think of that as just existing in the perpetual reverence of that moment. When I'm living and being in that perpetual state of sensitivity to what the world is saying, listening to what my intuition is saying, listening to what the world is saying, that's one of the times where I feel the closest to that which created me.

Amadon: That's good that you say being a listener, a good listener, because I think that's one of the biggest problems with men today is we're not good listeners. We don't listen to the women in our lives, whether it be our significant other, whether it be our sister, our mother, our, our friend, we're not good listeners and we need to start listening.

And I think, you know, right now with the whole Me Too movement, which is proper and needs to take place,

Fitz: Yeah. It's something that we ought to listen to.

Amadon: It’s something we need to listen to. Yeah, there's going to be some things taken advantage of there's going to be some exaggerated situations. There might be some people, whatever, taking advantage of the Me Too movement in some ways. But the fact is, that it's time for men to take accountability for their actions. That the way we live, the way that we treat women, the way that we view things needs to change. We need to be responsible and that it's wrong. And we were not being told, “Hey, that's wrong. Don't do that. Stop that.” We haven't been told that enough as men for the last three, four, five, six, seven hundred years on this planet. A thousand years? Two thousand years? We can keep going back. 

Fitz: Yeah, we really can.

Amadon: Patriarchy and the wrong abuse of male power on this planet goes back a long time man.

Fitz: There’s a deep, deep, deep, deep generational curse of our sex

Amadon: Yeah, I think it's exciting that we live in an age now where we can share and get out to the world. Like, “Hey guys, we can do this different.”  We can be better men. We can be more vulnerable. We can be more honest. We can be more gentle. You can be strong and gentle at the same time. In fact, someone who truly is strong is actually gentle at the same time, because you have to have both. Strength without gentleness is not strength it's just… it's meaningless because you can't actually activate it in, in divine harmony.

Fitz: Right. It becomes brutality, I think.

Amadon: Exactly, strength without gentleness is brutality. It's domination, it's oppression and it's force, you know, but strength with gentleness is energy.

Fitz: Yes. Yes.

Amadon: Different than force. It’s an energy.

Fitz: Yes. Something really hit me so deeply when you were talking earlier about that, that paradigm that exists of the two extremes, of the man obsessed with the toxicity of strength and the man that is utterly devoid of the health aspects of masculinity. It reminds me of a time in my journey when I first came to confrontation with the ugliness of some of the things that I had learned. In the beginning part of my own deconstruction, I had a point where I wholeheartedly, 100%, and entirely rejected everything masculine because I had such an explosive reaction to seeing the harm that was being inflicted to other people from some of these unhealthy aspects. I wasn't able to differentiate and I threw the baby out with the bath water. There was a point for a long part of my time where I was this really... I had so much energy. I had a lot of charisma. I was really intense and I loved being intense. I had so many of the aspects of what a strong man had; gusto, passion, ferver… And I became so caught up in timidity, and guilt, and fragility, and fear, and undeservedness, and the thought that I should be the last person talking to you. I was pleased with myself and every waking moment instead of living in communion. And that way that I rejected the healthy aspects, the dependability, the gentleness, the communications / specificity, the boundaries, the ability to listen. Even when I was quiet, I wasn't able to listen to other people cause I was so obsessed with, am I being quiet enough? Am I being quiet enough? And it was such an unhealthy way for me to be small. And as I let go of that, which didn't serve me, I had to build myself up again after that point. Now, after years of work, I finally feel in a place where I have found my rooted presence again, and that reunion was so beautiful. But what you said really stirred that experience in me of what happened when I lost everything about masculinity.

Amadon: Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that, because that is actually a poignant, powerful, and beautiful self-analysis of your process. And I think it's almost a micro… your micro process is kind of like, to me, an example of the macro reality of what's happened with men, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of men on the macro level of not trusting themselves anymore; going to the wrong end of the spectrum into that weakness, into that in decisiveness into that lack of passion, that lack of fervor and wanting to take responsibility, and it they've gone to the other end of the spectrum. And so now “it's all good, man. Everything goes.” They don't want to say, “No, don't do that.”

Fitz: Right.

Amadon: They don’t want to say, “Hey, that's wrong.” “Hey bro, it's all good.” And that's too much relativity, because it's not all good. There's a lot of things that aren't good. And as a man, you gotta be able to take charge and say what's not all good. And so I think what you just shared there was a really powerful little testimony that I think would help a lot of men grow so I appreciate you sharing that because, and you know what? We're going to have those moments all throughout our ascension in this life. We're going to keep growing. It's not like you've arrived and you’re perfect now. You're going to have another process where you've come through just as I am, and we're going to keep deconstructing, keep learning, and keep getting more balanced.

But the process you got to is, I'm actually being too weak. I've lost trust in myself and I'm appeasing this guilt. Basically this… and it's almost this macro guilt of all men. Collective, and it's affecting my own personal psyche and I'm becoming weak and in a lot of ways. You know, that process you had is powerful. It needs to happen for millions of men, and it'll continue to happen in different ways in our lives as we grow as men, as we heal. It's constantly refining, you know? My wife, God bless her, she's always, she's always telling me, you know, don't be so dramatic about your flaws. It's really just... think of it is that you need to refine more. You're refining, it's just refining. It's like...

Fitz: It is.

Amadon: I can really beat up on myself, I think my whole, you know, I'm just so terrible and this and that, I'm completely flawed. And it's like, you know what? It's just, you just need a little sandpaper in some areas to smooth out, you know, and give ourselves some grace, you know, but also recognize that we need the sandpaper. Having that balance, there's a duality again, you know, of growing. 

And you can't have other people can't really do it for us either. It's like, we have to take the sandpaper and do it. And they can point out and say, “There's a rough patch, you may want to smooth it out a little bit,” on your soul, on your personality. “There's a rough patch. Go ahead and give it a little sand.” And we can either respond with humility and gratitude for the... or we can respond with, you know, arrogance, pride

Fitz: With tension...

Amadon: Yeah, and tension… and what are you? Who are you to tell me that? And it's cool. It's cool that we're having this conversation and I wish that millions of men were. You know, I wish it was happening on the global level. I wish that men who had hundreds of thousands and millions of followers on their platforms were saying this, instead of the BS, they're saying, you know. Talk about the wrong use of power and the misuse of power and just delivering meaningless banter. Again, instead of delivering and taking responsibility with the audience they have and saying something of meaning and saying, “Hey, look, guys, let's do this better. Let's be good men.” They're saying… they're actually promoting the opposite. Power. This is what it means. Gotta do this. Take women. Basically misogyny, you know. It’s just really sad.

Fitz: Yeah, you can never apologize. You never admit you're wrong. You keep plowing through you. You kill your opposition. And I think of how many incredibly prominent, powerful men there are and how many opportunities they have to explore the harm they've caused. That's one of the things about the Me Too movement that I really think... It is a judgment of powerful men. It is a lot of our collective reckoning. But in it, there is an opportunity to respond to this harm with grace; to take accountability. What happens if all of these prominent men who have allegations stacked, binders full, if they were to take tremendous courage in beginning to look at that sincerely?

Amadon: yeah.

Fitz: And we have, we have this feeling of that's going to kill me if I do this. It's going to destroy me. It's going to rip me apart. It's going to consume. Doubt consumes the individual. Guilt consumes the individual. And we build up all of these layers to insulate ourselves from those hard feelings when really they are the keys to our prison cells. We are our own wardens and the more we spend time running from this, avoiding this, the longer we perpetuate the collective sin of our gender and the deeper that encompassing guilt that neuters people, exists in. 

So, I think one of the ways that I have found peace in navigating what accountability looks like. It is by embracing aspects of the divine feminine within myself, because I have found my divine masculine. I have found my present masculine tendencies of being decisive, of having genuine confidence, of communicating boldly and clearly and truthfully. And how can that be nourished? How can that be viewed with gentleness? How can I sustain myself for work like that. And in order for men to take accountability for the collective weight of our historical sins, I really think that we need to invite the divine feminine to the decision making table that exists within us; to embrace the multiplicity of the expression of our souls.

Amadon: Yeah, very cool. It's kind of similar to a concept that, you know, that I study about it, it's called complementary polarities and also just the understanding of, of a man and a woman creating the third mind; coming together, and that leadership really should be both. It should be a man and a woman.

Because then both aspects of the circuitry, the father circuitry and the mother circuitry are introduced. And so having more balance, you know, there shouldn't just be a president of the country, there should be two; a man and a woman. And they should be complementary polarities. Whether they're in a relationship or not, they're probably not. They're just complements and they're in a functioning relationship in the sense of complementing each other to make the right decisions for their constituents, for the people around them. If they're leaders, you know?

Fitz: That's a deep wisdom.

Amadon: I'm blessed to have been raised in a spiritual, intentional community. And in this community, it was founded by my parents actually, and my parents (obviously a man and a woman) so…  But the leadership, the leadership was, it was my mother and my father. And so it had that. And so I saw, and can witness firsthand and in a testimony, to the balance that comes from two leaders of the opposite sex, working together. And like you were saying, it's the blending of the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And it's so important, you know? Gabriel of Urantia is my father and Niánn Emerson Chases is my mother and they're both spiritual teachers and they've, they've built something pretty amazing here. One of the largest communities in the world with a hundred people from all over the world, living on 220 acres in harmony with each other. And it's a big subject and I think we'll talk on your next podcast kind of about what I'm doing and stuff, but...

Fitz: Yeah. I would love that.

Amadon: It really taps into a lot of the things that we've talked about today, really flow nicely into the ways that we live our life here in a community setting with unity without uniformity, with radical trust, with radical unity, with balanced men and women, with respecting each other. All of these subjects we've actually taken here and created a culture where we're trying to personify them. We’ve created a culture where they're existing; where that love can actually take place, that radical love can exist because there's a consciousness around it that supports it, nourishes it and helps it grow.

Fitz: Yeah.

Amadon: Well I appreciate your sharing with me man. Of course, your podcasts are great, so I really encourage everyone of my listeners to check out our brother Fitzgerald's podcast, Deconstruct, and that we've had a great conversation today, we’ve covered a lot of territory.

Fitz: We really, really have. It's been incredible. 

Amadon: Thank you for coming on, man. You've got a lot of great insight and right on the same vibe as me and, you know my show is called, Get Real or Die Trying cause it's about just getting real, and that process of getting real, deconstructing, unlearning, healing, like you said, going back into the past, uncovering the wounds, taking accountability, and becoming a better human being. You know, that's what we're all trying to do here. So, well not all of us, but we should be... that's what I'm trying to do and I'm trying to encourage others and we're all in it together, man. One big family. So thanks for coming on.

Fitz: Your words have inspired me to dig deeper into that capability we have. Thank you so much for bringing me on for this today. It’s been a pleasure and an honor.

Amadon: Absolutely. Peace out man.

Fitz: Much love.

Check out my website at http://getrealordietrying.com

Leave me a voicemail on Anchor at Anchor.fm/getrealordietrying

Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or any of the platforms you listen on.

Be sure to follow me on social media and share this podcast with your friends.

Word of mouth is a great way to share the vibe.

"Get Real or Die Trying with Amadon DellErba" is a production of Global Change Media.

And remember: "Pain is Temporary. Victory is Eternal."

Amadon: So, just so I pronounce your name right, how do you pronounce it?

Fitz: Fitzgerald Pucci.

Amadon: Pucci, alright. So you're Irish, Italian?

Fitz: Yeah. I say all the time, I am your classic European mut!

Amadon: I'm actually, I'm actually Scottish-Italian. 

Fitz: That's really cool.

Amadon: So you can imagine the temper, you know, it's not good.

[laughter]

Fitz: Yeah. Phew! You got some high blood in your veins, my man. Well, it's like, it's like on one side you get like two very distinct flavors of that temper. I see, I see really energetic hand talking and screaming bagpipes!?! How does that come together?

[laughter]