May 30, 2025 • 29 mins
A Journey Through Grief and Transformation
In this episode of Real Men Feel, host Andy Grant welcomes guest Marko Petrovic, a visionary world explorer and two-time bestselling author who connects ancient wisdom with contemporary living. Marko shares his transformative journey, from the loss of his mother and betrayal by a mentor to his nine months of silence and exploring sacred sites worldwide.
The discussion delves into pivotal moments that led Marko to embrace modern mysticism, the importance of rites of passage, and how aligning the gut, heart, and mind can impact daily decisions. Marko also talks about the Mara Project and its mission to bring people closer to direct experiences and sacredness in everyday life.
00:00 Introduction to Real Men Feel
00:18 Meet Marko Petrovic, Visionary and Author
01:00 Marko's Journey to Modern Mysticism
03:12 The Role of Grief in Transformation
07:26 Understanding Rites of Passage
09:05 Aligning the Gut, Heart, and Mind
13:20 The Importance of Ceremony
15:28 The Mara Project: Bridging Ancient Wisdom and Modern Living
20:42 Connecting with Sacredness in Everyday Life
24:33 Practical Steps for Spiritual Growth
27:12 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Connect with Marko
Instagram -- https://www.instagram.com/meetmarko/
Resources
Soul Path by Marko Petrovic -- https://amzn.to/4mEB1kf
Embrace of The Elements by Marko Petrovic -- https://amzn.to/4mAtWRI
The Soul Path Podcast -- https://rss.com/podcasts/soulpath/
Connect with Andy and the Real Men Feel Podcast:
Book a Clarity Call with Andy and get clear on your goals, what's in your way, and what you can do about it at https://theandygrant.com/talk
Instagram | @realmenfeelshow & @theandygrant
Andy Grant Website | https://theandygrant.com for coaching, healing, and book info!
Real Men Feel Website | http://realmenfeel.org
RMF Facebook Group | http://realmenfeel.org/group
YouTube | https://youtube.com/realmenfeel
#RealMenFeel ep 355
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What happens when you've checkedall the boxes for being a
successful man and still feel that something is missing?
Hello and welcome to Real Men Feel.
I'm your host, author, coach andhealer, Andy Grant.
Please visit theandygrant.com tolearn more about me.
We have conversations that most men are not having, but that all
men and the women who love them can benefit from.
My guest today is Marco Petrovic.
(00:20):
Marco is a visionary world explorer and two time best
selling author who bridges ancient wisdom with modern
living. He leads transformative retreats
to sacred sites worldwide, aiming to awaken the soul
through rituals and ancestral connections.
Today, Marco shares about his willingness to drop his armor,
to sit in silence for nine months, the one thing we should
(00:41):
use our mind for, and how grief and betrayal were his doors to
powerful transformation. Let's do it.
Hello Marco, and welcome to RealMEN Feel.
Thanks Andy. Great to be here.
Mark, I'm really inspired, intrigued by the work you do and
the sacred sites and the initiations and all these
things. So what were the pivotal moments
(01:01):
in your life that cause you to embrace being a a modern day
Mystic? I'd say it was an awareness that
the life that I've been fed by the modern world have a sense of
incompleteness to it. And the way that manifested for
me was I followed the typical model of what it means to be a
successful male in the Western country.
(01:22):
So I was raised in Australia. That's where the Hexan comes
from. And, you know, I started off
straight out of high school as apersonal trainer.
I, at the age of 19, was making more money than some of my
friends combined in a week. And so I was doing well as far
as material sense goes. And, you know, I drove a nice
car, had a nice body, like, oh, I checked all the boxes, so to
(01:45):
speak. Yeah, There was a part of me
that felt significantly out of touch with life, and it was a
part that I couldn't name at that point in time because I
wasn't even aware of what it wasthat I was missing.
But as life does like, it leads us down a pathway that gives us
the insights that we need. No.
So what manifested for me was I started to understand, you know,
(02:08):
topics of. And these are topics that to me
at that point in time was in thecategory of I don't know what I
don't know. Right.
So we've got that category is completely in our blind swap.
And to me, that was like the world of the inner realm,
introspection, meditation, personal insight through
reflective practices, through prayer, through connection.
(02:30):
And that was a completely new world to me because I was raised
to be, you know, a man, right? So I look at the world
externally and I put on my armorwhen I step out the door and I
go. And I forged my way.
And it was those experiences that led me down this path.
Of what? What you tell this is a modern
Mystic. Was there a single dark night of
(02:52):
the soul and you just became aware suddenly?
Or was this, you know, a slower process of various steps?
How did it? How did it unfold?
I wouldn't say there was one dark night of the soul moment.
There was definitely key points of impact.
I'd say a blessing in disguise was actually my mother's
passing. And I only learned how much of A
blessing it was later on in life.
(03:13):
So she passed about, this is now11 years ago, so in my early
20s. And at the time when she passed,
you know, there was a lot of sadness around the fact of like
this person that I've known to have in my life around every
breath and around every meal that we eat to always be there
is no longer here. And all the experiences that
(03:34):
I'll miss that I was looking forward to her being there for
such as, you know, like at my wedding to witness my children,
you know, all those important milestones of life.
And I experienced her passing both with sadness and grief, but
at the same time a lot of beautyand love and grace.
How I experienced that beauty was realizing that when she was
(03:55):
no longer there, some of the thepieces of the way that we relate
because we all have our ideas ofhow we should live our lives,
right? Our parents have a certain idea
and I have my own. And those themes that I didn't
agree on with her and where I would previously argue with her,
I realized I no longer could because she wasn't around.
And the deeper insight that I gave you was that actually all
(04:17):
those arguments was her best effort of expressing her love to
me. And so that cracked me open in a
way that I still kind of expressing words.
And it had me look at life in a completely different way,
realizing how much time, energy and effort I'd spent doing this
with her butting heads, rather than taking a moment to look at
life from a slightly deeper lensand appreciate how much love it
(04:39):
takes to have a child that goes against the grain and still keep
showing up for him. Right.
And so I'd say that was one of the big moments.
The reason why I say it was a blessing in disguise is because
I later learned through studyingvarious indigenous cultures and
and initiatory practices that for men, one of the key
processes for a boy to become a man is actually have separation
(05:01):
from women all together. And so for me, life kind of
gifted that to me by the passingof my mother, which then led me
on this quote UN quote soul searching journey of being a
modern day Mystic. And many times I found myself by
myself entirely. Or do you surrounded with with
elder men? Is it common for grief to be an
(05:22):
opportunity to to dive into a spiritual journey?
I'd say so. I'd say it largely depends on
how he made it right in that my greatest initiations in life
have been through the darkest and most challenging times, so
the passing of my mother is one of them.
The feeling of abandonment by a mentor and a teacher who
(05:44):
promised to do good on his word and then turned his back and did
the exact opposite was another. You know, all these experiences
where we can experience extreme shock and trauma.
Shock is like, if we look at it from good and bad, the way I've
experienced it is shock is bad if I stay stuck in it.
It's good if I can see the greater effect of that ripple in
(06:06):
my life. And what I mean by that is shock
would be me continuing to speak about the sadness and grief of
my mum's passing and never actually integrating that
chapter of my life into understanding the blessings that
that it gave me. Because for everything I lost, I
gained something, right? I gained the opportunity to get
to know myself in a way that I didn't.
I gained gained the opportunity to get to know life in the way
that I didn't. In the same way with like, you
(06:28):
know, a mentor or a teacher abandoning me.
Like these relationships that are really close indeed to us,
that's usually where the greatest levers for
transformation are. And when I say it's how we meet
it, it's about me asking the question of how is this
benefiting me in my life? And until I can bring it to a
point where I can look at that person in the eyes and say,
(06:48):
thank you, I love you. By realizing the the degree of
blessing that I got, then I haven't come to peace with it
yet. And to to me, it's ultimately
that, you know, it's easy to point the finger and say, ah,
this person did that to me or whatever.
But it takes a real man to be able to look at the demons in
our lives and make them our best.
Friend, I, I wanted to ask you how important rites of passage
(07:12):
and initiations are. But but already I think you I, I
at least used to have a rather formal definition of what those
were, but it seemed like you're any challenge in your life
you're talking about as an initiation.
Yeah, absolutely so. How important are they and can
they be? Are they kind of self chosen?
Self-described. Yeah, I'd say that absolutely
(07:34):
self chosen. The piece to it is that life
will inevitably bring them upon us.
It's a question of whether or not we pick up the sword, right.
So if we look at it through a mythic lens, like the hero will
have a challenge, whether it's the dragon in the castle,
whether it's the town bully thatpicks on him, whatever it may
be, the hero will always have a task to show up to.
(07:57):
It's a question within us whether we have the the valiant
and the internal resolve to say,you know what, I'm going to man
up and take care of this beast in my life.
And in that way, life is the initiation.
Like to me, there's no point of our now I'm initiated, right?
To me, that's a game of the ego.And the moment that I say I'm
(08:19):
initiated, I've actually lost because I failed to recognize
that like I'm through 1 tunnel. But there's something else
that's looking me in the eyes already.
So for me, business is the initiation, family
relationships, the whole piece. Yeah.
So it's not a single event, it'sa progression a a chain of
multiple challenge opportunitiesto that you turn into
(08:39):
initiations for your own expansion.
Absolutely, yeah. Cool.
Mark, I've heard you speak aboutaligning the gut, the heart, and
the mind. How does that triad impact daily
lives and decisions? It's a valuable question.
(09:00):
I'd say for me, the real shift was that journey of from boyish
tendencies into manly tendenciesand earning my own masculinity.
And what I mean by that is, likeI've spoken to 50 year olds,
they're still very boyish in their tendencies and the ways
that they relate to life. They can be fathers, but they
can still be very boyish in the way that they show up for life.
(09:23):
And for me, one of the big pillars is about where we
resource ourselves from. So a man typically has enough of
a solid foundation to resource within himself.
And that doesn't mean that I don't look outside for
inspiration, for ideas, for feedback.
Absolutely. I've solid man in my life.
And as the old saying goes, ironsharpens iron.
But before I do any of that, I'll take a moment to consult my
(09:46):
own genius and give myself the opportunity to take the seat of
the throne of my own life and take a look at how I'm relating
to my Kingdom and everything that I'm creating.
And so this concept of the threeminds being the gut, the heart
and the, and the brain, what I, what I've learned through
spending time with indigenous cultures is that we actually use
those three in reverse. And for the most part, we only
(10:08):
consider the mind to be a brain and the heart.
Maybe in some like conscious men's circles, people will speak
about it and then the gut is very rarely spoken to.
But the way that they look at them through an indigenous lens
is that the gut is actually the first brain.
Like that's the closest to the umbilical cord, right?
So that's where we know life themost intimately.
That's what we were given life. And so that doesn't speak to
(10:31):
emotion. That speaks to all the subtle
feelings that we can't name, Like when someone slides you a
deal and you go, yeah, that feels good.
Or something about that. I don't know what it is.
I can't put in words, but for some reason I feel off about it.
Right. That's that gut instinct that we
largely numb out, partly due to dietary habits, partly due to
the fact that we convince ourselves that it's nothing more
than a feeling. And I should think about this
(10:51):
longer, but you shouldn't. Like you already had the
instinct and the more you think about and ponder on it, what
I've come to appreciate is that the more you open up the karma
of that thing. So I give you a perfect example
where I invested money in something that felt like that
and then I ended up in an 18 month hold of my money not
coming back to me and experiencing more of that same,
(11:13):
same energy, that same karma, right?
Whereas I should have just been better off being like this.
Do I want this in my life? A seesaw?
Not really. I'm good, right?
And then the heart is about the emotional center.
That's, that's about actual emotions, that's about giving
ourselves the capacity to de armour all, all the strength
synthetically that we put on ourselves and actually allow
(11:34):
ourselves to feel life. Because regardless of whether we
are a man or a woman in this world, we have a heart.
And the heart feels and like there's beautiful studies from
heart math that speak about the fact that the heart process is
40,000 times more information than the mind.
So it's not even up for debate. Like, you've got a heart, it's
beating, you better use it, right?
And then the third one is the mind.
What I love about one of the indigenous practices that I was
(11:56):
taught about the mind is they actually say that the only time
that they'll ever use the mind is under 1 instruction to cast a
beautiful thought. And I thought, well, what, what
a change to the way that we use the mind in the modern world.
Most people stress themselves out, freak themselves out,
(12:18):
create an illusion upon an illusion about fears, thoughts,
doubts and judgements from what they received from social media,
friends, colleagues, family, whatever it may be.
Whereas for them, it's like, no,you just live in the gut and the
heart. Make sure you feel good.
You make sure you don't get blocked up with emotion.
And then if you're going to spend some time up here, just
make it beautiful. That's it.
(12:38):
I love that it's so simple and powerful, and usually those are
the best truths of of the world.I think that how we go the human
and experience our ego want to make things complicated because
we want to think we're so complicated and difficult, but
the the simple truths take us a long way.
So I know you've worked with indigenous people in multiple
(12:59):
continents. What are some of the the
commonalities that really stood out to you and and that you saw
as like universal truths across all the the all of your
experiences? I'd say the big one is ceremony
and that's something that we don't have in the in the modern
world almost entirely. Like we have kind of half
(13:19):
manufactured ceremonies of graduating high school or
graduating university or like a bachelor's party, but they're
not really ceremonies. They're kind of like moments of
past like that. Where is it ceremony for me?
Like if I was to answer in one line, what is the ceremony?
It's about celebrating life. And so I know people have all
these ideas from like they watchmovies and like stuff about
(13:41):
vampires on that's this isn't anything fantastical that I'm
speaking about. It's about good people gathering
around the fire and knowing how to celebrate life.
So it's like that. There's a meme that floats
around from time to time that says when you you when you're
sick and you go to an IndigenousDr. and you ask them, how do I
(14:01):
get better? They ask you a simple question.
When did you last sing? When did you last laugh?
When did you last dance? And when did you last play?
Because they know if you haven'tdone any of those four in a long
enough period of time, then yourheart hasn't been expressing
itself. And that's the centre of your
life. And so a ceremony is nothing
more than coming into contact with those four elements.
(14:22):
And what I see is that they light a fire.
They'll bring some instruments, some songs, they'll share some
good words, they might share some insights and things that
they learned. And they'll then have to be in
good relation and in being in good relation.
To me is this really simple teacher teaching of where they
sit in a circle and everyone's voice is equal, right?
(14:43):
In a world where like how many Instagram followers you have and
what title you you achieved means something and that, well,
that means nothing. It's extremely liberating to be
able to sit around a fire and learn as much as you do from a
six, six year old as you do froma 66 year old.
Marco, what inspired you to create the Mara Project and and
what what is the Mara Project? Yeah, the The Mara Project is my
(15:07):
best effort, giving people a bridge to have more direct
experiences in life. So like, we're flooded with
information, right? We can learn anything that we
want, but most of us, we learn stuff and then we never actually
apply it. And for me, the real value of
life is in direct experiences. So Mara for me is an honouring
of that, learning how to get outof left brain, right brain,
(15:27):
thinking out of duality, black and white, and learning how to
come into union with life. Mara itself being a conjugation
of that Ma It may be like motherMama madre.
It's etymologically rooted in somany languages as an association
to the mother and then RA just like the rays of light, the
sunlight or even the Egyptian God RA.
(15:49):
So it's that union of energies coming together.
And so Mara Project was my benefit of doing that and I
expressed it through some physical products in the way of
some beautiful plants that I found.
A hero product is Dragon Breath actually got the bottle right
here, which it's probably the most unique sensory experience
that you can have. You you spray this in your mouth
and it gives us gash of sensation and flavour and
(16:13):
cleansing to your mouth. That is really unique.
So for me, that's about just being bringing people into
presence. When I speak about direct
experience, it's the kind of stuff where you go wall like
this is life. Yeah.
And people putting people into contact with that.
So there's some physical products, some books that I've
written, and I run some retreatsas well.
Yeah, I, I, I want a second and third, this notion of direct
(16:33):
experience because, you know, everything I do on a daily basis
is something I made fun of for years until I tried it.
And then, wow, this works. I feel the results, right.
It's, you know, judge your fruits of something.
Not, not what someone else said,not a blog post, but yeah, dive
into this life and experience itmore.
And then you'll, you know, you'll find that the path that
(16:55):
supports you most. I I find how do you select some
of the sacred sites that you take pilgrimages to?
What it do you you know, is it ameditation, a calling?
Is it that you always go to the same place?
How does that work? It feels like more that they
select me to be honest with you.So I went through a period of
nine months of silence during myspiritual sabbatical when I sold
(17:17):
everything that I earned about five years ago and booked a one
way ticket to Mexico. And that nine month period of
silence for me was about hearingthe whispers of life.
And now I say that some people and I, I can see on their faces
that alliance is like poetic or like some spiritual, but it's
really not like when you look atwhen the researchers went out to
speak to the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the Bushmen
(17:40):
found it stranger. The researchers couldn't hear
the echoes of the stars and theywere saddened by it.
And to most of us in the modern world, that's a concept that
we've never even heard of, the capacity to actually hear the
echoes of the stars. But they lived their life
according to that, They navigated according to that,
They knew how to move according to that.
So to them, it wasn't a foreign concept at all.
They could actually hear that vibration and tune themselves
(18:02):
according to it. And for me, that nine month
period of silence was my way of saying to life, hey, I'll zip it
for a period of time, but I wantto know where my feet land and
where where my next point is with that level of clarity that
I never questioned the steps in my life again.
And so now I very much feel likethese sacred sites, they, they
speak to me and they call me in,in ways that like it's an
(18:25):
orchestration far more intelligent than anything that I
could create at the level of my mind.
It's more like coming into harmony with the divine flow,
with the universal flow of life.And so many of them have been
pilgrimage sites where I've visited and revisited many
times. And some of them like I'm here
in Serbia right now. I just got invited to 1.
I didn't even know that it was asacred site until I showed up.
(18:47):
And then I got speaking with theowner and I said, hey, by any
chance do you like have this particular spot here that you
consider like a living altar, a special tree, some rocks,
somewhere where I can just go spend a bit of time, get some
thanks, get to know the land. He's OK.
Actually, we do. And he walks me over the
mountain. I couldn't believe what I saw.
The exact same logo that I carryon the back of my T-shirts of my
(19:09):
branding, which is this little diamond pattern right here.
They had this huge art piece of that creator that's hanging from
the tree and come to find out that that's actually the the
symbology in Slavic mythology, which is very mostly forgotten,
but there's still remnants of itaround that in Slavic mythology.
(19:31):
That was actually the symbol forthe goddess of fertility and I
happened to be carrying it on all my bottles.
Happens to be the energy that I'm working with, happens to be
the design that came to me through, call it inside
inspiration, meditation, whatever you want.
But at the same time, when I sawthat and I got shared the story
of what it was, I encountered that as just the ancestors being
(19:51):
very clear in their guidance andhow they're supporting me.
That, that's amazing. I, I, I love synchronicities
like that, that just, yeah, prove you're in alignment with,
with what you're up to and, and where you're headed and all
that. So good for you.
For people that don't feel able to travel, is there a way to
connect with sacredness? Wherever your environment is.
(20:15):
Yeah, absolutely. I'd say it starts with the
simple things, you know, like every single moment could be
mundane or sacred when we think about it.
Like if I just, if you just go sit in an open field or again,
just light a candle and sit in your house, it would seem like
every moment's the same and quite mundane.
(20:35):
But if you actually pay attention to the fame, they've
actually flickers once the same.It's always slightly different.
And so for me, it comes out to bringing more sacredness into my
life is paying attention to the finer details of life.
And for me, the question was, how can I bring more ceremony
into my life? How can I make everything that I
do sacred? And it started with a simple
thing. For me, a simple practice was
(20:57):
every morning I'd pour myself a glass of water.
And the very first thing I'd do is I just have one good thought
with that water before any notifications, before I went
rushing around, before I did anything else, I said one
moment, like, I don't have to sit there and do any kind of
like posturing or anything like this.
No, just water in my hands, evenif it's a thank you, if nothing
(21:19):
else. And 30 days in, the ripple
effect of that is profound. And I can't speak to it, but
what I can say is like with 70% water in the body, 90% in the
brain, it does have a ripple effect.
But it's one of those direct experience pieces, right?
Like I can sit here and convinceyou for days and share countless
stories of people who've come back and told me like, wow, that
thing actually worked. But I can't tell you how it's
(21:41):
going to work for you because it's going to be rather unique.
Because water always finds its own course according to what we
need and what we require. So your sense of life?
How can ancient practices help men stop checking the boxes,
stop putting on the armor, and really redefine masculine
strength and vulnerability? I'd say the first one is by
(22:08):
accepting the concept of successwill start to change.
And what that looked like for mewas I realized that a large part
of the stress and pressure I wasexperiencing in my life was
because I hooked myself onto this idea that I'm only being a
man if my business is growing. And if it's not growing, then
I'm failing, right? And that's a never ending
(22:30):
journey. My business can always grow
because it's an infinite. It's a beast of infinite
potential. Yeah, I do the rocking show
example. I ask myself, at the end of my
days, what's going to be the thing that I'm most grateful
that I did in my life? Is it going to be the fact that
I diverted every single moment of my days to growing my
business? Probably not.
It gets to a point where it's like, cool, I get this, and I
(22:52):
can play this game, but what else is important for me in the
game of life? Well, for me, success is how
many beautiful sunrises and sunsets I can see.
And that's something that I wasn't port in seminar rooms, in
conference rooms. It's something that I came to
terms with by going for a run along the beaches of Sydney in
Australia and realizing, well, Iactually feel more enlivened by
(23:13):
this than all the successes I'vehad in my business up until that
point, right? And so these indigenous
practices, they help us come back to the reality of it's
really important. Like actually knowing how to
grow my own food was really important for me.
So I spent seven years on a farm, I've planted 16,000 trees.
They gave me a connection to life that like no words will
(23:33):
ever do justice for. But when I go out in nation,
people go to me like, how did you observe that?
How did you see that? Well, you, you, you spent close
to a decade in nation. You'll learn a few things.
Get your knees, knees and hands in the dirt.
Chop with Gary Water is the old saying guys.
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
If there's a man listening who really hasn't started any sort
(23:57):
of spiritual journey, personal growth, but he's feeling that
I'm missing something that you described in in your life in the
beginning, what are some simple steps they could take to start
tending that that temple within?Yeah, sure.
I'd say the most direct point ofaccess that can Pierce through
any of the thoughts and the mindand they they can get us into a
(24:20):
direct experience is breath work.
And I'm not talking like Wim Hofstyle thirty 4015 minute
sessions. I've got a very simple piece on
my YouTube actually it's 22 breaths, right?
So you can be done with it within 3 to 5 minutes.
And what it will give you, isn'tit an experience of direct
connection to yourself in a way that you don't know it and it
works every single time. All you got to do is apply it
(24:41):
and give it a solid effort. So I'd say that breath work for
starters. And 2nd to that, I'd say feet on
the earth. The amount of people that I
speak to that are gung ho for biohacking and, you know, stuff
that they pick up of Joe Rogan and other big podcasters.
And then when I speak to them and I say, when's the last time
you put your bare feet on the earth?
They can't tell me. It's like, that's cool.
(25:02):
We can spend all the thousands of dollars and learn all the
science and do all that stuff, or we can just put off here.
Yeah, awesome. So with all of your globe
trotting and writing and leadingand guiding people, what are you
looking forward to? What's spending more time, more
time with people in person? Really, really my inspiration
now is the retreats that I'm doing and being able to offer
(25:25):
more direct transmission. For me, I consider myself
nothing more than just a guy that enjoys spending time in
nature. I've crafted the life that I
have because I really enjoy being around the fire, being in
beautiful natural locations and taking, taking people along with
with me that I can share the memories with.
So that's what's really excitingto me.
Aside from that, just working onon my business for now, because
(25:49):
it's like a fledgling business, right?
And I'm seeing more and more theimpact that it has in people,
especially our hero product. And so I want to get get that
out there and do my best to get it out there in a way that is
aligned to natural law. And when I say law, I say like
LORE, right? So following the rhythm of the
business, recognizing that this thing was born through my
(26:10):
devotional walk through my pilgrimages.
And so it very much has a spiritof its own and I want to learn
how to be in good, good relationship with with that
spirit and allow it to spread its wings.
Marco, if you had unlimited resources, what would you like
to put in place for men? Greater culture around the
(26:30):
transformation of boy to men. More, far more education around
it, far more conversation aroundit and more than anything, more
direct experiences so that men can, so the boys can actually go
go through that process and become men and to, to provide in
a way that it can be like an ongoing brotherhood, right.
So it's not like a once tough experience.
(26:50):
It's a place where we continue the the the anvil that we
continuously come back to to keep refining average.
With all the talk of direct experience, is there one thing
you wish more men knew? Yeah, but it's on the other side
of the greatest darkness. There's that old quote that says
(27:13):
The Cave we feel to enter holds the treasures we seek.
It's a beautiful guide to a degree.
But I'd say our greatest fears, they don't show up as fears.
They're not the ones where we go, oh, I'm afraid of that.
No, they're the ones where we completely sideline ourselves
from thinking about it. And we'll minimize it or we'll
put it, put it away and lock it up in the back door to a degree
(27:34):
that we wouldn't think about it.So for me, one of my greatest
fears that I went through recently was when usually when I
lean into like a pilgrimage or like a ceremony or a
professional experience, I kind of have a sense of who I am
going in and kind of who I'll beon the other side.
I don't know for sure, but I have a sense.
And I remember going through this one where I was so afraid
(27:55):
to lean in because I actually didn't know who Marco was on the
other side. And I said that's where the
magic is, right outside the comfort zone, outside of any
comfort that I've had thus far. So it was the pieces stretched
me more than anything else. And I'd encourage men to go
valiantly in pursuit of that because it's never what we
(28:17):
believe it that it is. Marco, what's the best way for
people to connect with you and keep track of all the things
that you're up to? For sure Instagram was the best
place and I've got all my links to everything there in my buyer
it's just meet Marco M EE TMARKO.
Excellent. I love the work you're doing.
I love more people being broughtinto the ancient wisdom and the
(28:40):
indigenous tribes and ceremonialwork.
You know, it's it's initiations right to passage had a
tremendous impact on me. It was the IT was 2016.
I did my first initiation with amodern mystery school and also
with the mankind project. So I felt like I was finally
stepping into my spiritual truthand my masculine truth.
And, you know, nothing's been the same since that.
(29:03):
So again, more people need to know about all the various
options out there. And this world is, you know,
littered with the sacred places that you can really have a, a
truly magical experience with. So again, I'm so glad of the the
work you're out there doing and and bringing people to these
spots. Appreciate it.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for joining us everybody.Please visit realmenfield.org.
(29:25):
See the blog post for this episode, which have all the
various links and resources discussed.
If you've done all the things you're supposed to do, yet still
feel like something is missing in your life, I invite you to
book a free Clarity call with me.
We'll explore what you want and what's in your way.
Visit theandygrant.com/talk and until next time, be good to
yourself.
What happens when you've checkedall the boxes for being a
successful man and still feel that something is missing?
Hello and welcome to Real Men Feel.
I'm your host, author, coach andhealer, Andy Grant.
Please visit theandygrant.com tolearn more about me.
We have conversations that most men are not having, but that all
men and the women who love them can benefit from.
My guest today is Marco Petrovic.
(00:20):
Marco is a visionary world explorer and two time best
selling author who bridges ancient wisdom with modern
living. He leads transformative retreats
to sacred sites worldwide, aiming to awaken the soul
through rituals and ancestral connections.
Today, Marco shares about his willingness to drop his armor,
to sit in silence for nine months, the one thing we should
(00:41):
use our mind for, and how grief and betrayal were his doors to
powerful transformation. Let's do it.
Hello Marco, and welcome to RealMEN Feel.
Thanks Andy. Great to be here.
Mark, I'm really inspired, intrigued by the work you do and
the sacred sites and the initiations and all these
things. So what were the pivotal moments
(01:01):
in your life that cause you to embrace being a a modern day
Mystic? I'd say it was an awareness that
the life that I've been fed by the modern world have a sense of
incompleteness to it. And the way that manifested for
me was I followed the typical model of what it means to be a
successful male in the Western country.
(01:22):
So I was raised in Australia. That's where the Hexan comes
from. And, you know, I started off
straight out of high school as apersonal trainer.
I, at the age of 19, was making more money than some of my
friends combined in a week. And so I was doing well as far
as material sense goes. And, you know, I drove a nice
car, had a nice body, like, oh, I checked all the boxes, so to
(01:45):
speak. Yeah, There was a part of me
that felt significantly out of touch with life, and it was a
part that I couldn't name at that point in time because I
wasn't even aware of what it wasthat I was missing.
But as life does like, it leads us down a pathway that gives us
the insights that we need. No.
So what manifested for me was I started to understand, you know,
(02:08):
topics of. And these are topics that to me
at that point in time was in thecategory of I don't know what I
don't know. Right.
So we've got that category is completely in our blind swap.
And to me, that was like the world of the inner realm,
introspection, meditation, personal insight through
reflective practices, through prayer, through connection.
(02:30):
And that was a completely new world to me because I was raised
to be, you know, a man, right? So I look at the world
externally and I put on my armorwhen I step out the door and I
go. And I forged my way.
And it was those experiences that led me down this path.
Of what? What you tell this is a modern
Mystic. Was there a single dark night of
(02:52):
the soul and you just became aware suddenly?
Or was this, you know, a slower process of various steps?
How did it? How did it unfold?
I wouldn't say there was one dark night of the soul moment.
There was definitely key points of impact.
I'd say a blessing in disguise was actually my mother's
passing. And I only learned how much of A
blessing it was later on in life.
(03:13):
So she passed about, this is now11 years ago, so in my early
20s. And at the time when she passed,
you know, there was a lot of sadness around the fact of like
this person that I've known to have in my life around every
breath and around every meal that we eat to always be there
is no longer here. And all the experiences that
(03:34):
I'll miss that I was looking forward to her being there for
such as, you know, like at my wedding to witness my children,
you know, all those important milestones of life.
And I experienced her passing both with sadness and grief, but
at the same time a lot of beautyand love and grace.
How I experienced that beauty was realizing that when she was
(03:55):
no longer there, some of the thepieces of the way that we relate
because we all have our ideas ofhow we should live our lives,
right? Our parents have a certain idea
and I have my own. And those themes that I didn't
agree on with her and where I would previously argue with her,
I realized I no longer could because she wasn't around.
And the deeper insight that I gave you was that actually all
(04:17):
those arguments was her best effort of expressing her love to
me. And so that cracked me open in a
way that I still kind of expressing words.
And it had me look at life in a completely different way,
realizing how much time, energy and effort I'd spent doing this
with her butting heads, rather than taking a moment to look at
life from a slightly deeper lensand appreciate how much love it
(04:39):
takes to have a child that goes against the grain and still keep
showing up for him. Right.
And so I'd say that was one of the big moments.
The reason why I say it was a blessing in disguise is because
I later learned through studyingvarious indigenous cultures and
and initiatory practices that for men, one of the key
processes for a boy to become a man is actually have separation
(05:01):
from women all together. And so for me, life kind of
gifted that to me by the passingof my mother, which then led me
on this quote UN quote soul searching journey of being a
modern day Mystic. And many times I found myself by
myself entirely. Or do you surrounded with with
elder men? Is it common for grief to be an
(05:22):
opportunity to to dive into a spiritual journey?
I'd say so. I'd say it largely depends on
how he made it right in that my greatest initiations in life
have been through the darkest and most challenging times, so
the passing of my mother is one of them.
The feeling of abandonment by a mentor and a teacher who
(05:44):
promised to do good on his word and then turned his back and did
the exact opposite was another. You know, all these experiences
where we can experience extreme shock and trauma.
Shock is like, if we look at it from good and bad, the way I've
experienced it is shock is bad if I stay stuck in it.
It's good if I can see the greater effect of that ripple in
(06:06):
my life. And what I mean by that is shock
would be me continuing to speak about the sadness and grief of
my mum's passing and never actually integrating that
chapter of my life into understanding the blessings that
that it gave me. Because for everything I lost, I
gained something, right? I gained the opportunity to get
to know myself in a way that I didn't.
I gained gained the opportunity to get to know life in the way
that I didn't. In the same way with like, you
(06:28):
know, a mentor or a teacher abandoning me.
Like these relationships that are really close indeed to us,
that's usually where the greatest levers for
transformation are. And when I say it's how we meet
it, it's about me asking the question of how is this
benefiting me in my life? And until I can bring it to a
point where I can look at that person in the eyes and say,
(06:48):
thank you, I love you. By realizing the the degree of
blessing that I got, then I haven't come to peace with it
yet. And to to me, it's ultimately
that, you know, it's easy to point the finger and say, ah,
this person did that to me or whatever.
But it takes a real man to be able to look at the demons in
our lives and make them our best.
Friend, I, I wanted to ask you how important rites of passage
(07:12):
and initiations are. But but already I think you I, I
at least used to have a rather formal definition of what those
were, but it seemed like you're any challenge in your life
you're talking about as an initiation.
Yeah, absolutely so. How important are they and can
they be? Are they kind of self chosen?
Self-described. Yeah, I'd say that absolutely
(07:34):
self chosen. The piece to it is that life
will inevitably bring them upon us.
It's a question of whether or not we pick up the sword, right.
So if we look at it through a mythic lens, like the hero will
have a challenge, whether it's the dragon in the castle,
whether it's the town bully thatpicks on him, whatever it may
be, the hero will always have a task to show up to.
(07:57):
It's a question within us whether we have the the valiant
and the internal resolve to say,you know what, I'm going to man
up and take care of this beast in my life.
And in that way, life is the initiation.
Like to me, there's no point of our now I'm initiated, right?
To me, that's a game of the ego.And the moment that I say I'm
(08:19):
initiated, I've actually lost because I failed to recognize
that like I'm through 1 tunnel. But there's something else
that's looking me in the eyes already.
So for me, business is the initiation, family
relationships, the whole piece. Yeah.
So it's not a single event, it'sa progression a a chain of
multiple challenge opportunitiesto that you turn into
(08:39):
initiations for your own expansion.
Absolutely, yeah. Cool.
Mark, I've heard you speak aboutaligning the gut, the heart, and
the mind. How does that triad impact daily
lives and decisions? It's a valuable question.
(09:00):
I'd say for me, the real shift was that journey of from boyish
tendencies into manly tendenciesand earning my own masculinity.
And what I mean by that is, likeI've spoken to 50 year olds,
they're still very boyish in their tendencies and the ways
that they relate to life. They can be fathers, but they
can still be very boyish in the way that they show up for life.
(09:23):
And for me, one of the big pillars is about where we
resource ourselves from. So a man typically has enough of
a solid foundation to resource within himself.
And that doesn't mean that I don't look outside for
inspiration, for ideas, for feedback.
Absolutely. I've solid man in my life.
And as the old saying goes, ironsharpens iron.
But before I do any of that, I'll take a moment to consult my
(09:46):
own genius and give myself the opportunity to take the seat of
the throne of my own life and take a look at how I'm relating
to my Kingdom and everything that I'm creating.
And so this concept of the threeminds being the gut, the heart
and the, and the brain, what I, what I've learned through
spending time with indigenous cultures is that we actually use
those three in reverse. And for the most part, we only
(10:08):
consider the mind to be a brain and the heart.
Maybe in some like conscious men's circles, people will speak
about it and then the gut is very rarely spoken to.
But the way that they look at them through an indigenous lens
is that the gut is actually the first brain.
Like that's the closest to the umbilical cord, right?
So that's where we know life themost intimately.
That's what we were given life. And so that doesn't speak to
(10:31):
emotion. That speaks to all the subtle
feelings that we can't name, Like when someone slides you a
deal and you go, yeah, that feels good.
Or something about that. I don't know what it is.
I can't put in words, but for some reason I feel off about it.
Right. That's that gut instinct that we
largely numb out, partly due to dietary habits, partly due to
the fact that we convince ourselves that it's nothing more
than a feeling. And I should think about this
(10:51):
longer, but you shouldn't. Like you already had the
instinct and the more you think about and ponder on it, what
I've come to appreciate is that the more you open up the karma
of that thing. So I give you a perfect example
where I invested money in something that felt like that
and then I ended up in an 18 month hold of my money not
coming back to me and experiencing more of that same,
(11:13):
same energy, that same karma, right?
Whereas I should have just been better off being like this.
Do I want this in my life? A seesaw?
Not really. I'm good, right?
And then the heart is about the emotional center.
That's, that's about actual emotions, that's about giving
ourselves the capacity to de armour all, all the strength
synthetically that we put on ourselves and actually allow
(11:34):
ourselves to feel life. Because regardless of whether we
are a man or a woman in this world, we have a heart.
And the heart feels and like there's beautiful studies from
heart math that speak about the fact that the heart process is
40,000 times more information than the mind.
So it's not even up for debate. Like, you've got a heart, it's
beating, you better use it, right?
And then the third one is the mind.
What I love about one of the indigenous practices that I was
(11:56):
taught about the mind is they actually say that the only time
that they'll ever use the mind is under 1 instruction to cast a
beautiful thought. And I thought, well, what, what
a change to the way that we use the mind in the modern world.
Most people stress themselves out, freak themselves out,
(12:18):
create an illusion upon an illusion about fears, thoughts,
doubts and judgements from what they received from social media,
friends, colleagues, family, whatever it may be.
Whereas for them, it's like, no,you just live in the gut and the
heart. Make sure you feel good.
You make sure you don't get blocked up with emotion.
And then if you're going to spend some time up here, just
make it beautiful. That's it.
(12:38):
I love that it's so simple and powerful, and usually those are
the best truths of of the world.I think that how we go the human
and experience our ego want to make things complicated because
we want to think we're so complicated and difficult, but
the the simple truths take us a long way.
So I know you've worked with indigenous people in multiple
(12:59):
continents. What are some of the the
commonalities that really stood out to you and and that you saw
as like universal truths across all the the all of your
experiences? I'd say the big one is ceremony
and that's something that we don't have in the in the modern
world almost entirely. Like we have kind of half
(13:19):
manufactured ceremonies of graduating high school or
graduating university or like a bachelor's party, but they're
not really ceremonies. They're kind of like moments of
past like that. Where is it ceremony for me?
Like if I was to answer in one line, what is the ceremony?
It's about celebrating life. And so I know people have all
these ideas from like they watchmovies and like stuff about
(13:41):
vampires on that's this isn't anything fantastical that I'm
speaking about. It's about good people gathering
around the fire and knowing how to celebrate life.
So it's like that. There's a meme that floats
around from time to time that says when you you when you're
sick and you go to an IndigenousDr. and you ask them, how do I
(14:01):
get better? They ask you a simple question.
When did you last sing? When did you last laugh?
When did you last dance? And when did you last play?
Because they know if you haven'tdone any of those four in a long
enough period of time, then yourheart hasn't been expressing
itself. And that's the centre of your
life. And so a ceremony is nothing
more than coming into contact with those four elements.
(14:22):
And what I see is that they light a fire.
They'll bring some instruments, some songs, they'll share some
good words, they might share some insights and things that
they learned. And they'll then have to be in
good relation and in being in good relation.
To me is this really simple teacher teaching of where they
sit in a circle and everyone's voice is equal, right?
(14:43):
In a world where like how many Instagram followers you have and
what title you you achieved means something and that, well,
that means nothing. It's extremely liberating to be
able to sit around a fire and learn as much as you do from a
six, six year old as you do froma 66 year old.
Marco, what inspired you to create the Mara Project and and
what what is the Mara Project? Yeah, the The Mara Project is my
(15:07):
best effort, giving people a bridge to have more direct
experiences in life. So like, we're flooded with
information, right? We can learn anything that we
want, but most of us, we learn stuff and then we never actually
apply it. And for me, the real value of
life is in direct experiences. So Mara for me is an honouring
of that, learning how to get outof left brain, right brain,
(15:27):
thinking out of duality, black and white, and learning how to
come into union with life. Mara itself being a conjugation
of that Ma It may be like motherMama madre.
It's etymologically rooted in somany languages as an association
to the mother and then RA just like the rays of light, the
sunlight or even the Egyptian God RA.
(15:49):
So it's that union of energies coming together.
And so Mara Project was my benefit of doing that and I
expressed it through some physical products in the way of
some beautiful plants that I found.
A hero product is Dragon Breath actually got the bottle right
here, which it's probably the most unique sensory experience
that you can have. You you spray this in your mouth
and it gives us gash of sensation and flavour and
(16:13):
cleansing to your mouth. That is really unique.
So for me, that's about just being bringing people into
presence. When I speak about direct
experience, it's the kind of stuff where you go wall like
this is life. Yeah.
And people putting people into contact with that.
So there's some physical products, some books that I've
written, and I run some retreatsas well.
Yeah, I, I, I want a second and third, this notion of direct
(16:33):
experience because, you know, everything I do on a daily basis
is something I made fun of for years until I tried it.
And then, wow, this works. I feel the results, right.
It's, you know, judge your fruits of something.
Not, not what someone else said,not a blog post, but yeah, dive
into this life and experience itmore.
And then you'll, you know, you'll find that the path that
(16:55):
supports you most. I I find how do you select some
of the sacred sites that you take pilgrimages to?
What it do you you know, is it ameditation, a calling?
Is it that you always go to the same place?
How does that work? It feels like more that they
select me to be honest with you.So I went through a period of
nine months of silence during myspiritual sabbatical when I sold
(17:17):
everything that I earned about five years ago and booked a one
way ticket to Mexico. And that nine month period of
silence for me was about hearingthe whispers of life.
And now I say that some people and I, I can see on their faces
that alliance is like poetic or like some spiritual, but it's
really not like when you look atwhen the researchers went out to
speak to the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the Bushmen
(17:40):
found it stranger. The researchers couldn't hear
the echoes of the stars and theywere saddened by it.
And to most of us in the modern world, that's a concept that
we've never even heard of, the capacity to actually hear the
echoes of the stars. But they lived their life
according to that, They navigated according to that,
They knew how to move according to that.
So to them, it wasn't a foreign concept at all.
They could actually hear that vibration and tune themselves
(18:02):
according to it. And for me, that nine month
period of silence was my way of saying to life, hey, I'll zip it
for a period of time, but I wantto know where my feet land and
where where my next point is with that level of clarity that
I never questioned the steps in my life again.
And so now I very much feel likethese sacred sites, they, they
speak to me and they call me in,in ways that like it's an
(18:25):
orchestration far more intelligent than anything that I
could create at the level of my mind.
It's more like coming into harmony with the divine flow,
with the universal flow of life.And so many of them have been
pilgrimage sites where I've visited and revisited many
times. And some of them like I'm here
in Serbia right now. I just got invited to 1.
I didn't even know that it was asacred site until I showed up.
(18:47):
And then I got speaking with theowner and I said, hey, by any
chance do you like have this particular spot here that you
consider like a living altar, a special tree, some rocks,
somewhere where I can just go spend a bit of time, get some
thanks, get to know the land. He's OK.
Actually, we do. And he walks me over the
mountain. I couldn't believe what I saw.
The exact same logo that I carryon the back of my T-shirts of my
(19:09):
branding, which is this little diamond pattern right here.
They had this huge art piece of that creator that's hanging from
the tree and come to find out that that's actually the the
symbology in Slavic mythology, which is very mostly forgotten,
but there's still remnants of itaround that in Slavic mythology.
(19:31):
That was actually the symbol forthe goddess of fertility and I
happened to be carrying it on all my bottles.
Happens to be the energy that I'm working with, happens to be
the design that came to me through, call it inside
inspiration, meditation, whatever you want.
But at the same time, when I sawthat and I got shared the story
of what it was, I encountered that as just the ancestors being
(19:51):
very clear in their guidance andhow they're supporting me.
That, that's amazing. I, I, I love synchronicities
like that, that just, yeah, prove you're in alignment with,
with what you're up to and, and where you're headed and all
that. So good for you.
For people that don't feel able to travel, is there a way to
connect with sacredness? Wherever your environment is.
(20:15):
Yeah, absolutely. I'd say it starts with the
simple things, you know, like every single moment could be
mundane or sacred when we think about it.
Like if I just, if you just go sit in an open field or again,
just light a candle and sit in your house, it would seem like
every moment's the same and quite mundane.
(20:35):
But if you actually pay attention to the fame, they've
actually flickers once the same.It's always slightly different.
And so for me, it comes out to bringing more sacredness into my
life is paying attention to the finer details of life.
And for me, the question was, how can I bring more ceremony
into my life? How can I make everything that I
do sacred? And it started with a simple
thing. For me, a simple practice was
(20:57):
every morning I'd pour myself a glass of water.
And the very first thing I'd do is I just have one good thought
with that water before any notifications, before I went
rushing around, before I did anything else, I said one
moment, like, I don't have to sit there and do any kind of
like posturing or anything like this.
No, just water in my hands, evenif it's a thank you, if nothing
(21:19):
else. And 30 days in, the ripple
effect of that is profound. And I can't speak to it, but
what I can say is like with 70% water in the body, 90% in the
brain, it does have a ripple effect.
But it's one of those direct experience pieces, right?
Like I can sit here and convinceyou for days and share countless
stories of people who've come back and told me like, wow, that
thing actually worked. But I can't tell you how it's
(21:41):
going to work for you because it's going to be rather unique.
Because water always finds its own course according to what we
need and what we require. So your sense of life?
How can ancient practices help men stop checking the boxes,
stop putting on the armor, and really redefine masculine
strength and vulnerability? I'd say the first one is by
(22:08):
accepting the concept of successwill start to change.
And what that looked like for mewas I realized that a large part
of the stress and pressure I wasexperiencing in my life was
because I hooked myself onto this idea that I'm only being a
man if my business is growing. And if it's not growing, then
I'm failing, right? And that's a never ending
(22:30):
journey. My business can always grow
because it's an infinite. It's a beast of infinite
potential. Yeah, I do the rocking show
example. I ask myself, at the end of my
days, what's going to be the thing that I'm most grateful
that I did in my life? Is it going to be the fact that
I diverted every single moment of my days to growing my
business? Probably not.
It gets to a point where it's like, cool, I get this, and I
(22:52):
can play this game, but what else is important for me in the
game of life? Well, for me, success is how
many beautiful sunrises and sunsets I can see.
And that's something that I wasn't port in seminar rooms, in
conference rooms. It's something that I came to
terms with by going for a run along the beaches of Sydney in
Australia and realizing, well, Iactually feel more enlivened by
(23:13):
this than all the successes I'vehad in my business up until that
point, right? And so these indigenous
practices, they help us come back to the reality of it's
really important. Like actually knowing how to
grow my own food was really important for me.
So I spent seven years on a farm, I've planted 16,000 trees.
They gave me a connection to life that like no words will
(23:33):
ever do justice for. But when I go out in nation,
people go to me like, how did you observe that?
How did you see that? Well, you, you, you spent close
to a decade in nation. You'll learn a few things.
Get your knees, knees and hands in the dirt.
Chop with Gary Water is the old saying guys.
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
If there's a man listening who really hasn't started any sort
(23:57):
of spiritual journey, personal growth, but he's feeling that
I'm missing something that you described in in your life in the
beginning, what are some simple steps they could take to start
tending that that temple within?Yeah, sure.
I'd say the most direct point ofaccess that can Pierce through
any of the thoughts and the mindand they they can get us into a
(24:20):
direct experience is breath work.
And I'm not talking like Wim Hofstyle thirty 4015 minute
sessions. I've got a very simple piece on
my YouTube actually it's 22 breaths, right?
So you can be done with it within 3 to 5 minutes.
And what it will give you, isn'tit an experience of direct
connection to yourself in a way that you don't know it and it
works every single time. All you got to do is apply it
(24:41):
and give it a solid effort. So I'd say that breath work for
starters. And 2nd to that, I'd say feet on
the earth. The amount of people that I
speak to that are gung ho for biohacking and, you know, stuff
that they pick up of Joe Rogan and other big podcasters.
And then when I speak to them and I say, when's the last time
you put your bare feet on the earth?
They can't tell me. It's like, that's cool.
(25:02):
We can spend all the thousands of dollars and learn all the
science and do all that stuff, or we can just put off here.
Yeah, awesome. So with all of your globe
trotting and writing and leadingand guiding people, what are you
looking forward to? What's spending more time, more
time with people in person? Really, really my inspiration
now is the retreats that I'm doing and being able to offer
(25:25):
more direct transmission. For me, I consider myself
nothing more than just a guy that enjoys spending time in
nature. I've crafted the life that I
have because I really enjoy being around the fire, being in
beautiful natural locations and taking, taking people along with
with me that I can share the memories with.
So that's what's really excitingto me.
Aside from that, just working onon my business for now, because
(25:49):
it's like a fledgling business, right?
And I'm seeing more and more theimpact that it has in people,
especially our hero product. And so I want to get get that
out there and do my best to get it out there in a way that is
aligned to natural law. And when I say law, I say like
LORE, right? So following the rhythm of the
business, recognizing that this thing was born through my
(26:10):
devotional walk through my pilgrimages.
And so it very much has a spiritof its own and I want to learn
how to be in good, good relationship with with that
spirit and allow it to spread its wings.
Marco, if you had unlimited resources, what would you like
to put in place for men? Greater culture around the
(26:30):
transformation of boy to men. More, far more education around
it, far more conversation aroundit and more than anything, more
direct experiences so that men can, so the boys can actually go
go through that process and become men and to, to provide in
a way that it can be like an ongoing brotherhood, right.
So it's not like a once tough experience.
(26:50):
It's a place where we continue the the the anvil that we
continuously come back to to keep refining average.
With all the talk of direct experience, is there one thing
you wish more men knew? Yeah, but it's on the other side
of the greatest darkness. There's that old quote that says
(27:13):
The Cave we feel to enter holds the treasures we seek.
It's a beautiful guide to a degree.
But I'd say our greatest fears, they don't show up as fears.
They're not the ones where we go, oh, I'm afraid of that.
No, they're the ones where we completely sideline ourselves
from thinking about it. And we'll minimize it or we'll
put it, put it away and lock it up in the back door to a degree
(27:34):
that we wouldn't think about it.So for me, one of my greatest
fears that I went through recently was when usually when I
lean into like a pilgrimage or like a ceremony or a
professional experience, I kind of have a sense of who I am
going in and kind of who I'll beon the other side.
I don't know for sure, but I have a sense.
And I remember going through this one where I was so afraid
(27:55):
to lean in because I actually didn't know who Marco was on the
other side. And I said that's where the
magic is, right outside the comfort zone, outside of any
comfort that I've had thus far. So it was the pieces stretched
me more than anything else. And I'd encourage men to go
valiantly in pursuit of that because it's never what we
(28:17):
believe it that it is. Marco, what's the best way for
people to connect with you and keep track of all the things
that you're up to? For sure Instagram was the best
place and I've got all my links to everything there in my buyer
it's just meet Marco M EE TMARKO.
Excellent. I love the work you're doing.
I love more people being broughtinto the ancient wisdom and the
(28:40):
indigenous tribes and ceremonialwork.
You know, it's it's initiations right to passage had a
tremendous impact on me. It was the IT was 2016.
I did my first initiation with amodern mystery school and also
with the mankind project. So I felt like I was finally
stepping into my spiritual truthand my masculine truth.
And, you know, nothing's been the same since that.
(29:03):
So again, more people need to know about all the various
options out there. And this world is, you know,
littered with the sacred places that you can really have a, a
truly magical experience with. So again, I'm so glad of the the
work you're out there doing and and bringing people to these
spots. Appreciate it.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for joining us everybody.Please visit realmenfield.org.
(29:25):
See the blog post for this episode, which have all the
various links and resources discussed.
If you've done all the things you're supposed to do, yet still
feel like something is missing in your life, I invite you to
book a free Clarity call with me.
We'll explore what you want and what's in your way.
Visit theandygrant.com/talk and until next time, be good to
yourself.
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