The start of my redpill journey
The feminine-primary social order conditions us all–Western Buddhists included
When I first encountered the socalled ‘red pill theory’ online years ago I immediately rejected it. It triggered me hard. The ideas and claims I read grated and short-circuted all the beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and assumptions I’d identified with throughout my life. Most of what I thought made me a ‘good person’, that I’d invested my ego in, that were ‘right’ or ‘true’, were revealed to be just that– thoughts. Not reality.
I only gave the red pill another chance a year ago when being in relationship with my wife — who I love and respect deeply – had become such an unbearable nightmare that I had to find another way forward.
I needed to find a way to not be constantly angry, blaming her for my problems, feeling like a depressed zombie all the time. And I do love and respect her–I don’t know why, I have no reasons, but I do.
Some of the manosphere voices like Roosh V’s, or some of the anonymous users on /r/theredpill (PROTIP: read everything on the sidebar, take your time) may appear caustic or toxic to the uninitiated–they certainly did to me. But I see now that they serve a purpose.
I experienced the waves of bitterness and anger early on in my journey of learning about game, the manosphere and conventional or positive masculinity. But those reactive emotional states also generated mental clarity, focus and motivation. The rage was real, and really useful. It helped me to start working on sorting through and taking responsibility for the habitual thoughts, behaviours and ways of speaking I’d developed that were making me weak. I used that fire to help me burn off a lot of dead wood, to help bring balance to my marriage and to my relationships with women in general — this is no simple task.
Anger, bitterness, and denial or resentment are early stages (1 or 2 depending who you talk to) of ‘unplugging,’ and part of the process of coming to terms with the realities of intersexual dynamics, hypergamy, the feminine imperative, etc. There’s nothing wrong with having these difficult emotions, and through meditation, I was able to practice experiencing them in awareness. The danger is: if you start to indulge and believe your feelings as ‘true’, you may unwittingly be using emotionally reactive mindsets to justify your painful experiences. If you do that, you may become stuck in the less useful branches of the manosphere like MRA and MGTOW, that tend to cast ‘men’ as victims.
Turns out for me, the resentment towards women I felt at first when ‘taking the red pill’ was just a manifestation of a deeper fear, of neediness, insecurity and despair, masked by thoughts like: ‘it’s too late for me, I’ll never be able to change,’ or that ‘I’m doomed to be miserable with women forever’. I then used these thoughts and feelings as justification to project my fears onto others in the form of generalizations blaming ‘women’ for all the x or y that had hurt me.
Own your shit
The trick I discovered, was to remember to be specific. To take responsibility for the hatred or anger or whatever, and just sit with it in meditation whenever it came up, without feeding it more thoughts or taking any action. Stop blaming, stop explaining. This helped me a lot. Now nearly a year later, I’m finding my awareness is becoming more fine-tuned and I’m less afraid of the fear when I experience it in myself or encounter it in others. This is a significant skill to develop, and has had a major positive impact on my life, especially in the workplace, and on my marriage.
One thing to remember about the comments on reddit is that they are created by a lot of different men at various stages of ‘waking up’, of various levels of awareness, and of various degrees of maturity. But all of them are anonymous. Anonymity is the ability to express yourself without personal identification or recognition. There’s no ownership when commenting on reddit, that’s part of what makes its communities so powerful, but it can also be misleading for outsiders.
The more nasty or resentful comments in the manosphere communities (that many White Knights point to as toxic–as I did at first) tend to come from people just beginning to see the myriad ways the social conditioning of the feminine imperative impacts men. How men have been habituated to disconnect from our interior sense of masculinity, our biological instincts and our purpose. I was one of these men trundling through life, aimless, happy enough, entertained… until I wasn’t, and I couldn’t bear it anymore.
As these anonymous men–young or old– encounter, ‘unplug’, and practice game (if they’re single), or conventional/positive masculinity (if they’re not) over time, they may find (as I have) that its’ possible to move towards balance in their inter-gender relationships. They may also tend to stop posting and commenting, or leave the subreddits all togehter and become less active. This kind of churn leads to an overwhelming percentage of commenters venting their beta-misery, blaming women, being bitter, spiteful and making malicious comments — without realizing that by doing so, they’re only further reinforcing their victim identity, and making it harder to take responsibility for themselves, their thoughts, words, and their actions.
I didn’t set out to learn and practice positive masculinity to save my marriage. I’m doing it to make myself strong and increase my SMV, to learn to establish frame and to become a leader, to discover what I value and to live my life with purpose, to be a freethinker without having to depend on any authority to feel safe. So far the process has brought me a lot of peace and calm. I’m doing all this too so that I can help others sort their lives out, find peace, meaning and live fulfilling lives (that’s where Buddhism comes in).
It’s up to her to follow me or not. I have no expectations that she will, and I’m completely willing to leave her on one condition: if I leave her I am not doing it to be happy. I refuse to leave her to become happy or find peace, that would just be another way of putting my inadequacies and weaknesses on her.
I recently started this blog to convey my experience of how my meditation practice, my encounters with Buddhism and learning from Jordan Peterson has helped me ‘unplug’. This niche perspective may not interest everyone, but it’s where I’m coming from, and it’s my attempt to pay forward some of the hard fought lessons I’ve learned.
Many Buddhist communities I’ve encountered over the past four years were filled with confused, deluded, or pathologized men suffering from Robert Glover’s ‘nice guy’ syndrome just like me. These communities are made up of the same men that you’d encounter in any major Western urban city. They are the colleagues, classmates, friends, relatives and strangers we pass on the street. Normal men going about their days, trying to live happy lives the best they way they know how.
Since launching Practice comes first I’ve now ‘met’ one other man who sees the same connections between Buddhism, positive masculinity and Jordan Peterson’s work, that I see. This is encouraging. I’m just getting started.
