ERP 183: The Return of the Gentleman, with Dr. Dain Heer
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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 183, “The return of the gentleman, with Dr. Dain Heer.” Before we get started in today’s episode, I wanna just invite you to take a moment and center into the intention, perhaps recognizing what you’re interested in as you listen to today’s episode. Maybe what’s in your heart, what’s on your mind, perhaps some support or insight or understanding your seeking.
The intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast is to help support you in further developing your relationship, knowing the landscape of intimacy can be tricky at times. It might evoke certain discomforts, or threats, or pains, and also encourages and nudges us to expand our capacity… So the conversations on this show are in support of that, helping you feel better-equipped, more supported, more prepared to have a successful, long-lasting intimate relationship.
If you want access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com click on Podcast and you can find all the episodes there. Again, today’s episode is 183, “The return of the gentleman, with Dain Heer. Let’s get started in today’s episode.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Dain Heer, a popular speaker, author and inviter to greatness and consciousness. Originally raised in the ghettos of Los Angeles and trained as a chiropractor, Dr. Heer is also the co-founder of a diverse range of businesses around the world. A conscious and creative thought leader, with a profound understanding of the power of personal creation, Dr. Heer draws upon his background and unique perspective to facilitate positive change in the world, and empower people from every culture, country, age and social strata to create the money, relationships and life they truly desire. Dain, thank you for joining us today.
Dr. Dain Heer: Jessica, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me!
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes! So you talk a lot about the return of the gentleman, and I know that we’re gonna be talking about this topic and I would love for you to just share a little bit about where you’re coming from and what you mean by gentleman.
Dr. Dain Heer: Well, yeah, because that has so many different connotations to so many people… But what I’m talking about — and here’s the interesting thing about this conversation; even though I call it “Return of the gentleman”, it applies to gentlemen and ladies. In other words, it’s not a conversation aimed at — well, it is aimed at men, but it’s also aimed at women. It’s not exclusive to men.
What a gentleman is, from my point of view, is somebody who actually likes the man looking back at him from the mirror, that he sees every morning. Somebody who realizes that your two options in life are not just to be an alpha male or a sensitive new age guy, but to actually embrace all of you. You can adore women, love women, enjoy having sex with women and still also fight for women’s rights. So what I’m talking about really is a more rounded version of us as men, and what’s possible for us to be the contribution to not only the women in our lives, but everybody else in our life also, and at the same time be willing to be a contribution to ourselves.
There’s so many resources for women out there, and I’m so grateful that there are so many conversations women can have, but there’s so few resources for men who desire to create a different possibility in their lives, and be a different person in the world.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. And before we move into the discussion around a man’s experience and the masculinity that we may be focusing on today, and how it shows up in relationship and some of the considerations there, when you’re talking about a woman and being a gentleman, what do you mean there?
Dr. Dain Heer: Well, I would refer to them as gentlemen and ladies. I know that sounds a little archaic to some people, but it’s the same thing; a true lady knows who she is, she has a strength about her, but she also has a connection to the emotional vulnerability and personal vulnerability. It’s the same thing with a man. Essentially, it’s a similar conversation for both.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha.
Dr. Dain Heer: It really is about having a different conversation than what most people are being exposed to right now.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It’s so interesting, as I’m listening to you describe your definition of gentleman and a lady, it feels very full-spectrum, well-rounded, and being able to integrate and have access to more parts of themselves, but also be very intentional and aware around the choices that they’re making… And for me that feels like a more conscious, aware position to be in, that takes a level of development. But can you help me, just on an aside, around the choice around embracing those two terms, that as you say, can have an archaic or more of an old school association?
Dr. Dain Heer: Well, a long time ago, a true gentleman was somebody that had a sense of honor within himself, and also did his best to care for and look out for others… And we think of a gentleman as somebody who opens a door for a lady, or dresses well. Those aspects came out of an honoring, and I love that you brought up the consciousness aspect, because I’ve been doing this work for the last 19 years called Access Consciousness; and this really stemmed out of the conversations I was having with younger and older men that were in class, and younger and older women that were in class, about what they didn’t see as the resources to find out how to become more well-rounded, more conscious.
So if we talk about the gentleman thing, this idea of opening a door for a lady, for example, my friend Gary, the founder of Access Consciousness, my business partner and best friend for 19 years – he was in New York one time and he went to open a door for this lady that was walking in, and she hit him with her purse and she said “I can open my own damn door!” And he was like “Wait a minute, I’m doing this as an honoring of you. I’m doing this to contribute to you, not because I see you as less.” And in the world we live in right now, we’ve got so many judgments of what is right, what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, and we’ve really tipped the scales. The pendulum has swung really far, if we look at the #metoo movement, and so many of the other things.
Now, I’m so grateful what’s coming out in the #metoo movement is coming to light – it should – and at the same time, the gentlemen of the world like myself and the guys that I know, it’s like, to say we’re frustrated about it or angry about it… We’re probably even angrier, because it’s been done in the name of men. So we’re at the great philosophical question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, is the man still wrong?” and the answer unfortunately in today’s age is yes. There are a lot of truly kind, truly caring, truly potent, powerful men who have no sense of how they can be them and be in the world at this point.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. And I think what you’re also speaking to – maybe I’m hearing it incorrectly – is when there’s so many things to pay attention to externally, whether or not it’s expectations, or attempts to do the right thing but it’s not coming from this place of integrity or honor, it loses the intrinsic or the authentic expression, because we’re so either afraid or needing to please, or having to be mindful of getting into trouble, or our own impulse… There’s so many things to talk about here, so I wanna bring it back, but – am I hearing you right, that there’s this kind of inner honor that you’re really trying to hold space for, and also hold space for the development of having models and curriculum and materials for people to engage that can help them with this process?
Dr. Dain Heer: Yeah, I’d say you’re getting it spot on. And what you talked about with the honoring and these ideas of us trying to do the right thing, but it seems like it’s something external to us and we don’t know what it is – what this is really about and what I’ve found is when people get in touch with who they truly are, when they give up the ideas of “This is right, this is wrong” and they start asking “What will this choice create?”, and they start getting in touch with who they truly are, that’s when a gentleman shows up as a gentleman, and a lady shows up as a lady.
Now, are all the men on the planet gentlemen? Hell no. We all know this. We know there’s some horrendous people out there in the world, and what we’ve gotten to in this day and age is we put it into the idea that men are wrong and women are right, or women are wrong and men are right, and we look at these people doing abuse and we say “Oh, those are men.” No, those are not men; those are assholes. And we have people that are that way that are male and female.
Growing up, I experienced an intense amount of physical and also sexual abuse at the hands of women… And so I will have women tell me “It’s men that do the rape, it’s men that do the abuse”, I’m like “Um, not true. It’s PEOPLE that do that”, and this is what we need to look at. And we desiring a different world, a different possibility in our lives can make a different choice if we recognize this is not men and women that are this and do this, this is people who are making choices to be this way, and now how do we deal with this situation?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. And I would add, just for my own lens to what you’re saying, that when people are engaging in destructive or harmful or violent behaviors, oftentimes it’s coming from a very distorted sense of self, or even an injured or trauma place in them. I had a client tell me – and I love this; it stuck with me – that “Hurt people hurt people.” And I’m not trying to be reductionistic here, but I do think there’s a lot of truth to that. So many of us get caught into what feels like a sense of belonging, or what’s attractive with all the social media and everything, and there’s this desire and we’re trying to fill something… And I think a lot of the times the origins of that on a deeper level are very significant, so I just wanna hold space that even when people are behaving in ways that are very harmful, oftentimes they’re not even coming from a place of health.
So if we’re gonna pivot the conversation towards health, and this fuller, more authentic, honorable place for a man, as we’re framing this conversation, and that there’s not as many resources… I mean, I can just tell you, Dain, in my earlier years in my helping profession I ran a team program and have done a lot with youth, and there was this one teen camp that we were at, and we had family groups… And just really getting in touch with some of these middle school boys for whom being able to cry was like “I don’t get to do this! I don’t get to do this. I don’t get to feel, because it’s not okay at home, it’s not okay at school”, and even having to confront bullying, and just even — people on this show have heard me talk about what a supporter I am for men’s development, and that often times when we’re talking about intimate relationships…
I had a guest who quoted that the biggest instigators for divorce are women, and their biggest reason is a lack of emotional intimacy, and that so many times women are wanting their man in a heterosexual relationship to be more accessible in their emotional world… And yet, perhaps from an evolutionary standpoint, they don’t have the same experience or the same practice in flexing those muscles. I also have gotten a lot of messages around vulnerability [unintelligible 00:13:48.19] supposed to be.
So there is a real loss in the public sector around how to be (like you were talking about) the alpha man, or how to be in a place of power, wanting to feel wanted, and helpful, and making a difference, and then also with their partner, spouse perhaps even, to be able to access this emotional world… And this is just a difficult setup. I guess I would love to hear what you have to say about all this.
Dr. Dain Heer: I’m with you. It’s an extremely difficult setup. And yet, what I’ve found is it’s simpler than we might think for us to start accessing us. As you said, hurt people hurt, and to a certain degree, you can’t judge anybody else until you walked a mile in their shoes… And then hopefully you’re not judging them anyway, because judgment never works. Judgment is always a killer. And so the thing is most men and women are walking around in such a degree of self-judgment, and as you said, the emotional intimacy – men haven’t been taught to flex that muscle. But it’s interesting, because we have these ideas of masculine and feminine, for example, but to try to put a lady into a box of “Oh, she’s just feminine” is ludicrous. She has masculine characteristics also that she’s been taught are wrong and bad to be, just like a man has feminine characteristics that he’s been taught are wrong and bad to be.
A lot of the people I work with, a lot of the people that I know – they tend to be the sensitive men of the world, who once again, they truly have a lot of power; they have a lot of capacity to embrace others emotionally, they have a lot of capacity to create, but they’ve been taught that if they show emotion, then they’re gay. And even gay men have been taught “If you show emotion, you’re gay, and that’s wrong”, and it’s like “Wait a minute…” We need to have a different conversation that realizes masculine and feminine are traits that we all possess; how do we get in touch with what’s true for us, so that we can not only honor us, but honor others? And when we do that, we start to create a sense of fulfillment in our relationships, because it’s not about “This person outside of me fulfills me.” Both men and women get into that trap.
We essentially have a large number of co-dependent relationships where we’re looking for someone outside of us to fulfill us, but we all know on some level that it doesn’t work… And what I’ve found is when people become — I don’t know if we wanna call it self-actualized; what I would say is as they become more conscious and as they become more aware of who they are, and are okay with it, what starts to happen is we’re told “Oh, if you focus on yourself or if you like yourself too much, you’re gonna become self-serving, self-interested and arrogant.” I’ve found the exact opposite. When you actually get in touch with who you are, you become more of a contribution to others, because now you actually have something to contribute, and you’re not running around with your batteries empty all the time; you actually have a sense of being there, and knowing that you as a being are a contribution to others.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. And is there anything that you can speak to – I’m sure you can – about what some of the principles or teachings are for men that are perhaps identifying with the way you’re speaking, and recognizing the importance of this, but perhaps don’t know what this looks like, or where to turn? Because I know a lot of men do a lot of sports together stereotypically, or do a lot of physical activity together, but maybe don’t drop into that feeling place. Or perhaps they feel the masculine drive in them, but maybe they are sensitive and don’t wanna be coming on too strong with others, or hurt anybody else. Maybe they’re even afraid of their own power… It just feels, like you said, like a lack of resource and a lack of place to get the support.
I know that there are men’s groups out there and there are really amazing people doing amazing workshops and those types of things like yourself… But for somebody that’s listening, and maybe just recognizing “I struggle with this”, can you give us some tips around what to think about in this way?
Dr. Dain Heer: Yeah, absolutely. Well, number one, as we’ve already spoken about, realize that we do have few resources as men; most of us have never been taught what it is to truly be us. So the first thing I ask people to do is think about or write down the top ten judgments you have of you as a man, and then look at where did you buy that earlier in your life… Because these judgments — little kids don’t come in with judgment; it’s something that we teach them, unfortunately.
So if you’ll write down these judgments and go “Okay, where did I buy these, and from whom?”, what you start to recognize is a lot of your make-up of how you’re supposed to be and not supposed to be came from mom, came from dad, brothers and sisters, friends, teachers… All kinds of people in our lives influence what we think we should be, can be, can’t be, and how we have to be, and also what’s right and wrong. Unfortunately, we have these tools in Access Consciousness that are about undoing those judgments, number one; that’s one of the simple steps that we take, and then we go off from there. They’re just a little beyond my ability to explain right now.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, so just to pause real quick… Is that on your website and people can access that, or is that a paid —
Dr. Dain Heer: Yes, absolutely. I’ve got over 300 videos on YouTube that are free, that are tools people can access. If they go to the Return of the Gentleman website, there are videos there; on my website, DrDainHeere.com, there are videos there that start to walk you through this process of using some of these tools… And it’s all free. So people can start getting this way of — number one, getting out of judgment, and realizing that what we do is we spend such a significant part of our lives judging ourselves, for everything… Not just our relationship to the world as a man or a women, but our friendships, our relationships, money, body, sex etc. For most people it’s a constant state of judgment.
So if you can get the sense of having bought that before, there’s something called a clearing statement that we use, and you can just release it, and it goes back to the point of wherever it started and undoes it. It unlocks it by undoing the polarity of it. So that’s one way, one beginning.
And then the other thing you wanna recognize is that vulnerability, from my point of view, is the new power in the world. And vulnerability really is being there, standing there, warts and all, not having to hide any part of you, not having to make any part of you wrong, and realizing you’ve got some cool stuff going, you’ve got some stuff you’re still working on, and it’s okay. And you don’t have to hide any of it.
Now, that doesn’t mean you meet people and you tell them your deepest, darkest secrets, like “Hi, I’m Bob, and I just want you to know that…” It’s not that, but it’s where you’re willing to be present with it yourself.
One of the other things that I get people to do is I ask them “Okay, so what are you keeping so secret from you that it’s stopping you from enjoying your life? And what are you making so secret that if anybody found out about it, you believe it would be the worst thing in the world?” And that’s just for you to start looking at where you’re hiding major aspects of you. Because in order to keep any secret, you basically have to put an energetic wall around it, and then anything that might come into our world – or anyone that might come into our world – that might expose that secret, we need to make them go away.
And then the other question is “What is it you think is so bad, terrible, vicious, mean and awful about you that if you exposed it, you would lose everyone and everything?” When we start talking about the secrets, that’s a bit of an intense question to ask somebody… But what you start to find is so much of what is locking people up is the secrets they believe they need to keep… And they don’t need to tell anybody else, but they need to get present with that secret themselves. Most of us have a lot of them. And when you do, what happens is now you get present with it and you’re no longer avoiding it. Now what happens is you don’t have to hide so much of you from other people.
What that begins to do is it begins to create this place where you can start to be vulnerable with yourself and start to have a sense of ease navigating your world, because you start to then find out what’s true for you… Because for every secret you have to keep — see, today’s secret is tomorrow’s lie. My best friend Gary said this at one point, and I went “That is brilliant.” So what you end up having to do in order to keep these secrets is you have to not only tell lies about you, but you are in a constant state of lying to you about you. And this is what I’m looking to change, so that we can actually get a lot more present with us, a lot more vulnerable with us; that’s when the transformation starts to occur.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. So just recognizing that there aren’t a lot of supports and that we are battling a lot of messages around who we can be and who we can’t be, number one. And number two, really unpacking, and not necessarily purging, but just getting really clear on “What is it that I’m holding? What is it that I’m hiding and carrying around?” and all the judgments, and being able to really have inventory and inquiry around that, and then possibly through some of your exercises and the facilitation that you and the Access Consciousness offer, allow people to work that and have some understanding “Where did I get that? Where did I pick that up?” and then having a way to process it to clear some of it. It’s just really powerful.
I have a question – do you feel like people need support to do this, or to be in community or a sense of brotherhood around this, or is this something people can do individually? It sounds like they can…
Dr. Dain Heer: Yes, exactly. I would say it’s both. They can do it individually, and I know a lot of people that have primarily done a lot of this online, and I get emails from them saying “Thank you so much. I read the book, I did the exercises in there, I did this thing about secrets, and oh my god, I’m starting to like me.” That’s also why I wrote the book, because I wanted people to have something with them that has a lot of these tools, a lot of these conversations in it, but also it walks them through to the other side, basically.
And let’s face it – if a book truly contributes to your life and changes it, that’s probably miraculous. I say that with the caveat that there’s a lot in this book, and reaching out and actually having support is a massive gift. But people have to be willing to choose that and be ready for that; in the meantime, it’s like, do the work, see if it resonates with you. Because the people that facilitate Access Consciousness have a different point of view, which is to never judge, never make right, never make wrong, and undo the right and wrong that is sticking so many of us. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist in most of the world. Most of what you get from any form of processing or anything else is the reason and justification why it occurred to you, so you’re not wrong, rather than recognizing the power that you had to be able to choose it and live through it, and recognize that if you’ve experienced these things and you’re still putting one foot in front of the other, you have a tremendous level of potency.
So most of what’s out there unfortunately is about trying to get you into right and out of wrong, but that’s the other side of the same coin. It’s the other side of the same coin of judgment. What I’m looking at getting people to is the awareness of “right and wrong are both judgments.” When you can live your life from gratitude, from honoring, from joy and from trusting yourself, from vulnerability with yourself and from allowance with yourself -and allowance is where everything going on, everything you’ve chosen, everything anybody else chooses is just an interesting point of view. It’s one of the biggest antidotes that we have to what is sticking us right now… And there’s a really simple tool people can use, which is just get the energy of some upset that you’ve got, something that occurred in the last few weeks that you still haven’t let go of – just get the energy of it; and for most people it shifts a little bit even that first time, and then now to whatever the energy is, you go “Interesting point of view. I have this point of view.” And it usually shifts again, and then “Interesting point of view. I have this point of view.” “Interesting point of view. I have this point of view.” “Interesting point of view. I have this point of view.”
That one tool starts taking away the polarity that we’re functioning from in these areas, and it can start changing things right now for any upset that you have, because what you’re doing is you’re taking it out of the positive and negative, in alignment and agreement, which is the positive polarity, which is “Oh, this is right” or “This should have happened to me”, or the negative polarity, which is the resistance and reaction… Where somebody goes “You’re a jerk” and you go “No, I am not!” Well, if you hadn’t aligned and agreed and made it real in the first place, you wouldn’t need to resist and react. So if somebody says to me “You’re a jerk”, I go “Thank you.” It’s a different way of living.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. So I wanna ask – with people that are engaging with your process and they’re recognizing and accepting something that’s true for them; they’ve unpacked and maybe done some clearing of the judgment, and the hiding and the secrets, and they get in touch with that authentic experience and accept it, do you find that people – or a man, in this case – is willing to take that risk and start practicing and moving through the world or relating from that more authentic? …just a learning curve almost, little by little, and then it starts to develop? Is that what you see?
Dr. Dain Heer: Yes. And I also see that with using these tools, the learning curve, or shall we say the results curve, is really steep, because of the way that it goes back and changes the fixed points of view that you have from the past by asking to destroy and uncreate the fixed point of view, and then rerun this clearing statement, which goes back to the point of creation of whenever that was created, whether it was last week or a hundred billion years ago (it doesn’t matter), and asking it to dissolve.
This is where so many of us know that we should have choice, and then there’s a brilliant day where people realize they actually do have choice… And what this does is it starts putting choice back in our hands. It allows us to undo what has been our make-up that hasn’t been working for us. And what I’ve seen is the gentlemen that have embraced this – it’s like within days, or I would say within hours, they’re starting to feel better about who they are, and within days they’re starting to have a sense of actually having this thing called “them.” And I get this feedback from people where they say “I don’t know where I lost me, but I feel like I’m having me again.” And the feedback that I get from the ladies that are in relationship with these gentlemen – I cannot tell you the number of emails I’ve gotten from either girlfriends or wives who say “Thank you so much for writing this book. My husband’s doing it and I feel like I have the man back that I married. I don’t know where he went, I don’t know why, but I’m so grateful to have him back. We’re happier than we’ve ever been before.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Beautiful. And you keep referring to your book… Which book are you referring to?
Dr. Dain Heer: [laughs] That book – The Return of the Gentleman book.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. Wonderful. I’ll make sure to have the link on today’s show notes, so people can easily access that.
Dr. Dain Heer: Thank you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: You’re welcome. Do you have a story, or — I know you’re giving us with some of these testimonials a better place to connect with what can happen… Do you have a story that can help people relate a little bit more? Because I know we’re talking concepts and it can be helfpul for somebody to have an example.
Dr. Dain Heer: Yeah, absolutely. Well, there was one gentleman who came to one of the classes I was offering, and it was really funny, because it was a two-day class, and he sat there in the middle row, with his arms crossed, for the first several hours of class, like “Why am I here? This is a bunch of gobbledygook. I’m not a girl, I don’t do this kind of work.” And I said to everybody, “By the way, if your girlfriend brought you here, I am so sorry… But if she did, maybe there’s a reason for it, maybe she likes you, and you’re welcome to leave at lunch if you want to.”
And then we went to lunch and we came back, and he said he’d had a conversation at lunch, because he had opened — he had actually opened the book and read a page, and he said “Oh my god, I realized that when I was a little kid I was sweet, I was kind and I was sensitive, and I felt much closer to my mom than my dad. And my cousins made me wrong, my dad made me wrong, and so I decided I was gonna toughen up. At 11 years old I started toughening up, and I’ve been tough ever since, and I’ve had a wall around me ever since. And my girlfriend – she’s been with me, and she has been in allowance, as you call it. She’s been patient with me. I don’t know how she’s put up with me, but she saw something in me that nobody else did.”
And when he got this awareness of what happened at 11 – we did some work in the class – later that day he came up to me with tears in his eyes and he said “Can I give you a hug?” and I said “Yeah.” So we’re hugging there, right? Two men, hugging, crying… And he said “I didn’t realize that this is what a man could be, but I now realize that I can be this, and not only that; what I see is the future for my relationship with this beautiful lady is something I never thought I would see. I was trying to be my dad, I was trying to be what everybody expected of me, because nobody ever showed me that I could be a man like this.” And I was like “Oh my god, thank you.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No kidding. That’s so, so powerful. You know, as a supporter of men’s development – and I recognize my own masculinity; I very much agree with you… But I also wonder sometimes, as much as I can support and really invite the expression that might be more authentic to — let’s say I’m working with a man and his version of it; because if I’m working with a couple, I’m very aware that I’m a woman, quite possibly his partner is a woman, and we’re two women in the room, and trying to invite that his expression or his experience might look a little different. And that sounds like “Oh, different…”, and I don’t mean it like that, but just that it doesn’t have to look like maybe how I’m expressing, or how his wife is expressing… And when you’re talking about this story, I feel as though there’s something really powerful that perhaps you in that workshop, being a man, giving space for this topic, for this exploration, has a real powerful resonance that I don’t know that a woman can spark as easily. What do you think about that?
Dr. Dain Heer: Well, for me, my point of view is if you’re being there present with him, without judging him, that is the spark that’s actually required.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, I see that, I see that. There’s so many men that have been like “I don’t have emotions”, and then through our work together he accesses his emotions, he expresses, they do really powerful work… So I feel that to be true. But there’s also something more — I don’t know if it’s collective consciousness, but there’s something about what it means to be a man, like you’re talking about, and men being in relationship with other men… Do you feel like that’s significant at all, or no?
Dr. Dain Heer: Well, to a certain degree, for certain men. But I would say what I look at is the gift that you are being as a great example as a woman who is not judging a man. We have so few examples of that as men. Let’s also recognize that most of the men that are gonna be interested in this conversation – it’s probably 50% of the men that are gonna be interested in this conversation… And they will take the information wherever they can get it, male or female. Because men haven’t been entrained in the same way that women have.
Women tend to have the idea that “I can get much more from a woman because she understands my story, she understands my struggle.” Men have mothers that — the idea is mothers are supposed to care for us; I don’t know that it’s the same, because I’ve heard this from a lot of women, “Oh, I need to get this from a woman”, and I’ve heard from a lot of men “Wow, it was so wonderful to be in the presence of a woman who wasn’t judging me.” So I think it’s a little different than even we think it is, in that men… They have this thing where to be in the presence of somebody who doesn’t judge them, when they’ve been judged their entire lives for being the creature that they are – that can be so healing.
And yes, there’s a different dynamic if a man presents it, maybe, but for me, it’s like — my sense is, for those of us that are facilitating people, like, I don’t put myself out there as a “man.” I put myself out there as a facilitator of consciousness. And as that, because I don’t define myself as just a man and I don’t define myself as though my masculine traits are greater than my feminine traits, I look to embrace all of it. So what that does is it creates a space where people have the sense that everything they are is included, whether they’re male or female. So for me, that’s part of my target, but also my presentation – and when I say presentation, I mean how I choose to show up – depending on the person, I would say for the large majority of men that are going on this journey, they’re just grateful to have somebody that is presenting them tools without judgment, that are designed to get them to find out what’s true for them.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. Okay, so as you’re talking, it sounds like the space of authenticity and being able to get in touch with real deep truth, and as this example that you’re sharing, with this gentleman that was able to feel the safety of accessing more of what’s true for him, and remembering being little, and his character and his nature, and recognizing some of the messages and how that had an impact on him, and then the compassion for his girlfriend who’s really seen that in him and been patient for him, and just the healing and the transformation around that – it’s so, so powerful.
Dr. Dain Heer: To have somebody who is truly present and connected with themselves, but is also not trying to pretend that they’re perfect; you know, that vulnerability that I spoke about before, which is “Here I am, warts and all. I’m not perfect, and I’ve gone through a lot of stuff, and I’ve managed to change a lot of stuff, and here’s how you can change it if you have any of this going on…” I do think it is vital that we actually have role models.
There are certain men in the world that exemplify this. I think Hugh Jackman is a great example… And I say that because I went to his concert a month ago or a couple months ago with my girlfriend, and here’s this man who is up there, honoring his wife, acknowledging his wife; they’ve been married for 20-some years… And one of the things he said I thought was so wonderful — a lady from the audience yelled out something like “I want you!”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs]
Dr. Dain Heer: And he says “Well, you don’t stay married for 25 years in this business unless you learn to say no.” It was so cool. It’s such a great example of somebody who’s being him, who hasn’t succumbed to all the things that he could have. But to the extent that we can be that for other people — and this isn’t just for those of us who are facilitators, it’s for all of us living on this planet. We live on this planet together, in all kind of different gender roles, gender ideas, at this point… We all live on this planet together. What makes one right and one wrong? Nothing, except people’s judgments, which is why I say, the biggest thing we’ve gotta do is get out of judgment of ourselves and others, and if we do that, we will be a space that invites others to get out of judgment of themselves.
One of the other things – one of the most seductive things in the world is when somebody sees you with no judgment. When you somebody sees you through the eyes of no judgment, it’s like, you just wanna melt into them and stay there forever, because it feels so nice. If we just did that with each other, just that one thing, it would change how everything goes in every interaction we have.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, and it feels like it echoes your earlier point around acceptance. Even in this example you’re talking about, of the concert – somebody could make a joke that was a little demeaning… You know, he made that okay, that it was a flattering expression and that was okay, but also to be okay with “I have boundaries, and I say no”, and it’s still with that place of acceptance and non-judgment.
This kind of pivots me — and you’re already kind of answering the question, I think, how this shows up in relationship and intimacy. I’m interested in hearing if you have anything additional to say… Because it sounds like what you’re saying is when we can be in a place of non-judgment with others, that that in of itself is such a healing space, and also modeling and almost it evokes a sense of safety to express more fully, that then that continues to offer more of the development of that, and that we can all be examples for one another, and healing space for one another… Is that right?
Dr. Dain Heer: Absolutely. And it starts with the no judgment. From my point of view, there’s five elements to intimacy. There’s honoring, there’s trust, there’s allowance, there’s vulnerability and then there’s gratitude. And honoring means to treat with regard. When you treat yourself and others with regard and have that honoring for them, that also is an element of intimacy. Trust – you can trust that somebody will be exactly the person that they are, and at the same time you can trust you to be who you are, and know that you’ll have your own back.
Allowance is what we spoke about before, where everything somebody chooses, including you, is just an interesting point of view. And there’s vulnerability, which is where “Here I am – I’ve got cool stuff, I’ve got stuff I’m still working on, and I’m present with all of it. I’m not hiding any of it from myself, and nor do I need to put any of it on you as though it’s your job to fix me.” And then gratitude for self and others… Because you can either have these five elements, or you can have judgment. They don’t co-exist. Gratitude and judgment don’t co-exist, vulnerability and judgment don’t co-exist, honoring and judgment don’t co-exist… We can either have these five elements – the honoring, trust, allowance, vulnerability and gratitude – or we can do what most people have learned to do, which is judge.
We live in a world where we expect people to do what we want them to do, and then we judge them if they don’t, we get angry at them if they don’t, and it’s why we have greater than a 50% divorce rate in the entire developed world. Because what happens is you’ll see somebody, you’ll see them when you first get together not through the eyes of judgment, but through the eyes of possibility. And then what we’re taught to do is we start judging small things, and then the judgments build up these walls, and that’s the wall that people feel between them when they get to the place where they break up if they can’t find a way to break the wall down.
If you are with somebody, there’s something you liked about them in the first place, or some reason you chose to be together with them. So if people would, one of the things I suggest is destroy and uncreate everything your relationship was yesterday, every single day. We’ve had people do this that were married for 25 years, and there was one lady who came to class and she got this tool, and it was their 25th anniversary. She went home that night and when he said “What would you like for our anniversary?”, she says “I wanna destroy and uncreate our relationship every day” and he went “What? You want a divorce?” and she went “No, no, no. I love you so much! I want our relationship to get greater.”
And so they sat there every morning, over their coffee, and they said “Okay, let’s destroy and uncreate everything our relationship was yesterday and before, so we can start fresh today, recognize we’re choosing to be together. Let’s let every one of our judgments, our projections and our expectations of each other, of ourselves and of our relationship go now.” And then they used the clearing statement that I’ve talked about before, and it was amazing. I saw them three months later and they both said “We are happier in our relationship than we’ve been since we first got together 25 years ago.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yaay!
Dr. Dain Heer: Yaay!
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know, it’s fabulous. That’s wonderful. Well, I have one more question, if you have time… Do you have time?
Dr. Dain Heer: Sure!
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay. So as I’m listening, I would imagine that for two people to be kind of on the same page, or have a value for this… So what if somebody is listening — I can just hear… Let’s say perhaps in this example a wife is listening to this episode and she’s recognizing perhaps that her husband struggles with some of the things you’ve been talking about, and her very desire to want him to be authentic could even be a form of judgment, especially if she’s not getting her needs met, and that could very easily turn into criticism… What would you recommend to her as the listener?
Dr. Dain Heer: That’s a great question, and I’m glad you brought it up… Because a lot of us have this point of view that our partner needs to be on the same path with us, or we don’t have a successful relationship especially if somebody is doing counseling or therapy or personal development of any sort… But that’s not actually true. What I say is if your partner supports you and they don’t judge what you’re doing, and they allow you to do it without giving you flack, be grateful for this person you were brilliant enough to bring into your life, because they’re actually a contribution to your life. And even if that’s not the case, let’s say — okay, so two other things in addition to that.
One is if you’re with somebody who is judging you constantly, and you can’t change it, what you wanna do – or if you’re at that point in your relationship where you’re like “I don’t know if this relationship is working”, what you wanna do is you wanna write down the eight things that would have to change for the relationship to work for you, and be real honest and real vulnerable with yourself; you are not to share this with your partner, this is for you. Write down the eight things that would have to change for the relationship to truly work for you. In other words, what eight things would have to change in them, or in how they present. And if them changing those eight things is like a leopard changing its spots, realize the relationship is already over.
So you wanna recognize that, and then you wanna ask “Okay, is there anything that I can do to make this relationship work? If not, what would it take to have us in this with ease, or what would it take for us to change this with ease?” Because we don’t very often ask questions, we come to conclusions. But a question always opens up another doorway of possibilities. So that’s one of the two scenarios.
Then the other one is if you have somebody and they’re not in a constant state of judgment of you, they’re just not on the same path, they don’t necessarily get this personal development stuff that’s so valuable to you, what you wanna do is you wanna work all of those things that I said on your own. Destroy and uncreate the relationship every single day, destroy and uncreate every projection, expectation, separation, judgment and rejection that you have of you, that you have of the relationship, and that they have of you, that you’re aware of, and you wanna do this every single day. Go to theclearingstatement.com. That’s where this clearing statement is, or the other websites that we’ve mentioned already… And work it on your side.
Because what we don’t realize is we all know — we’ve all heard that it takes two to tango, it takes two to create a relationship, it takes two to destroy one… But what happens is when you start to get out of the judgment and the rightness and the wrongness of the fixed points of view that are creating walls between you, it creates a space where your partner can actually access that, and the space and the relationship changes… And what we don’t realize is our dynamic of relationship is created by the space or the lack of space that we both have, because we both bring something to it.
So if we just use the “Interesting point of view” example from before, let’s say your partner comes home and they’re sort of stressed out and they kind of deliver snide comments about something… And in the past — a lot of people function from the tapes that they have created around relationships, and most of those are things that we bought, by the way… So he delivers a snide comment; that’s his tape number 247. You go into tape 358 to respond to it, and you know this, and you’ve been doing it for years… Well, if you actually use these tools and you get to “Interesting point of view”, what’ll happen is he’ll deliver his snide comment, and rather than you going into your tape that is your response to it that you’ve used for years, your automatic response system, now you go “Interesting point of view. I have this point of view. Interesting point of view. I have this point of view. Interesting point of view, I have this point of view”, and you may not respond at all. Well, what’s that gonna do? That’s gonna change the dynamic.
And what it will tend to do is when you get rid of your resistance and reaction, they don’t have anything to fight against… And most of us unfortunately have learned to create relationships based on some element of fight or some element of trying to be right and the other partner wrong. And when that dynamic changes in your world, it has the chance to change in their world too, and they may sit there dumbfounded, not knowing what to say to you… And because this has been going on for years, they may have no idea what to say. And you look at them, you smile and you go “You know what – I love you so much.” And you either give them a hug or you walk out of the room and just let them stay there dumbfounded.
But we have the capacity to change — when we change our dynamic in the relationship, we have the capacity to change both sides IF we’re not doing it to try to change them. This is one of the biggest things that people try to do in a relationship – they know another possibility exists, so they try to change their partner so they can have this possibility. If you get the sense and you’d like a different possibility, change you. Don’t try to change them. Get into allowance of them where everything they choose is an interesting point of view, because anything else is judging them for what they’re doing and what they’re choosing. And then when you present to them, when you show up with them, in front of them, with no judgment, then there’s a different possibility available in their world, because there will actually be space for something different now.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. So if a woman is recognizing her man struggles with being a gentleman – as far as your terminology is we’re using here – then just her being in a place of non-judgment and allowance is a way to shift and support his possibility?
Dr. Dain Heer: And hers.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And hers, yes.
Dr. Dain Heer: I think one of the dynamics that is often not discussed in a relationship is we keep thinking if we can change them, then we can have more of us. No. If we have more of us, we don’t need to change them anymore. And I don’t know about you, Jessica, but I’ve been in a few relationships where people wanted to change me. And just because they wanted to change me, I absolutely refused to change. Now, had they not wanted to change me, I desired those changes on my own, and I (of course) made them right after I left the relationship… Now that they weren’t going “You’re bad because you don’t do this.” Now I’m like “Hey, I’d actually like to do this.” But if you can be in the relationship and still not do it to try to change the other person – it creates a totally different dynamic. And this – dare I say, ladies – is one that is huge; it’s so different than most of what is done out there, and even most of what is talked about. So many of the ideas of feminine power, and reclaiming your feminine power, it’s like “Yaay! Be strong, be loud, ask for what you want! Demand what you want! Change this person!” I have a totally different point of view. Your greatest power and potency is your allowance for others, and your lack of requirement for them to change for you to adore them anyway.
I know probably a lot of people out there are going “You’re crazy, man! You don’t know what you’re talking about.” However, for me, the relationships in my life, both with my girlfriend and so many of the people – we have almost 400 employees in our organization right now – and using these dynamics… And then also the thousands of people that are using it around the world – I truly see this being a totally different way, but a far more effective and a far more empowering way of being in the world, that creates a different dynamic for every relationship to have space to be the greatness that it can be.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, and if you can take a moment to share how people can get in touch with you… You’ve already mentioned it, but just again, to reiterate the places that people can access your videos, and curriculum…
Dr. Dain Heer: Yes, you can go to my website, which is DrDainHeer.com. From there, you can access all of the videos that we were talking about. Or you can go to ReturnOfTheGentleman.com and explore that. Also, like I was saying before, I’ve got over 300 videos on YouTube. If you search on my name, there’s some great tools there. And I started creating those because I was getting such change from Access Consciousness that I hadn’t from anything else I’d tried, and I tried a lot of things… And I really wanted to pay it forward. So I started many years ago making these videos, and it was just so much fun. I still keep doing it from all these places around the world; I’m like “Here’s a tool I’ve just found! Check this out! Try this!”
For me, this is all born from the sense of there is a greatness within us, and there’s also a possibility for changing the things in our relationships, in ourselves, in our lives, and truly, by extension, in our world, that we would like to change… And it’s a lot easier than anybody thinks if you have the right tools that actually address what truly needs to be changed, and you don’t spend so much time on things that aren’t getting us anywhere.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Beautiful. Thank you so much for being a guest today. It’s been a pleasure to have you.
Dr. Dain Heer: Jessica, thank you. I am very honored to be here with you, and I’ve gotta say, the conversations that you’re bringing forth, and that space of truly desiring to empower men and women is different and it’s a huge gift. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to today’s episode. I hope you have gotten some value and some inspiration and some support in navigating some of the aspects that relate to gender, especially as we’re looking at a man’s experience, and perhaps not having a lot of model or example around how to really feel expressed, particularly in the emotional realm. He’s offering us some tips, some recommendations around just people in general, but also a man, to look at the messages that we’re often operating with; the judgments, the secrets, the hiding… And really work with that, and process that to get to a place of non-judgment, and to be in a place of more authentic expression. As we do that, there’s so much transformation that can occur in that.
Again, if you’re interested in accessing some of the things that Dain mentioned, you can visit today’s show notes. Again, episode 183, “The Return of the Gentleman, with Dain Heer.” Again, that can be found on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find that episode closer to the top.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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