Nature’s Masculine: The Power of Alertness and Instinct

In our last article, we explored how the cultural obsession with control breeds anxiety, disconnection, and suffering.
Underneath this pattern lies a much older, deeper layer—rooted not only in culture, but in nature.
This layer is what we often call the masculine—not in terms of gender, but in terms of energy.

Masculine energy, across traditions and ecosystems, is defined by its action-oriented qualities: direction, structure, focus, and protection. It is the outward force, the assertive current, the spear instead of the bowl. In Taoist philosophy, it’s the yang to the feminine yin – a dynamic that balances and completes itself in relationship, like day to night or movement to stillness.

To truly understand this energy, it helps to look beyond culture and into nature itself — where the masculine expresses as alertness and instinct, a vital force that shapes life and survival. This natural masculine energy shows us how protection and presence live in balance before it becomes distorted by fear or control.

Not long ago, I spent a few days by a quiet lake and watched a goose family. The mother was close to the six baby goslings—guiding them, feeding them, nurturing. But the father goose held a very different posture.

Usually a few steps back, he kept his head high, scanning the surroundings. Not panicked—just alert. Still. Ready.

This kind of alertness is the natural expression of masculine energy: protective, directional, focused. A vital instinct—essential in the animal world, and still present in our own wiring.
To notice danger.
To hold the perimeter.
To take action if needed.

But unlike animals, humans often forget to rest.

The goose softens when the danger passes.
The lion sleeps under the tree.
But we? We stay on edge.
We stay alert. We stay on guard.

And on top of that, we live in a world that constantly tells us we’re under threat. The world has never been safer—and yet we are more afraid than ever.
Media, politics, and algorithms keep us in a state of nervous anticipation.
We are sold fear—because fear sells.

And this fear has consequences.

When Masculinity Gets Hijacked

Masculine energy — meant to protect — easily becomes something else in a world obsessed with control. It becomes a performance: the strong leader who never cracks, the provider who never rests, the professional who never lets emotions show. The protective alertness, once meant to serve life, slowly becomes a prison.

Cut off from softness, from rest and from trust, we get stuck in a loop of scanning, bracing, predicting and acting:

Staying ahead.
Staying in Control.
Staying “strong”.

This is where toxic masculinity emerges — not from maleness, but from masculine energy cut off from balance. At the core, it is masculinity locked in overdrive. Protection turns into control, and alertness becomes paranoia. Action, as a consequence, grows out of aggression.

This individual pattern scales. It shows up not only in households and companies, but in governments, economies, and ideologies. Entire cultures have been built around this unbalanced masculine—states shaped by dominance, economies driven by conquest, relationships ruled by control.

One might, carefully, even raise the thesis that this is the very root of many of today’s most extreme leaders and violent regimes: a deep disbalance between masculine and feminine energy, both personally and politically.

When fear rules the psyche, it manifests in violence. When protection becomes aggression, it doesn’t just defend boundaries—it creates battles. Fear that is not met with self-awareness quickly becomes projected onto the other, and the need for control turns into war.

The Body as Battlefield

This chronic state of alertness is not only living in the mind, but does something to the body. It keeps the nervous system locked in a near-constant fight-or-flight state. The muscles tense. The breath shortens. The heart rate stays elevated. The mind scans for threats that don’t exist.

The nervous system, built to move between stress and rest, gets stuck in survival mode. Cortisol and adrenaline flood the system. Inflammation builds. Digestion slows. Hormones misfire. Sleep becomes light and restless. Emotional expression narrows and motions flatten or explode unpredictably.

Over time, this imbalance fuels chronic conditions that we see spreading rapidly these days — cardiovascular disease, burnout, autoimmune disorders, digestive issues, migraines, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression.

This is a systemic trauma pattern that touches every body shaped by control culture.

When the body is treated like a machine instead of a living ecosystem…
When feelings are seen as threats…
When leadership is built on suppression…
When connection is replaced with control…

Sickness, insanity, and war are the result.

It begins inside:
The nervous system at war with itself.
The mind policing emotion.
The heart walled off from vulnerability.

What starts as internal disconnection becomes physical illness.
What begins as emotional suppression becomes burnout, breakdown, and disease.

This inner war scales outward. It becomes policy.
It becomes values.
It becomes war rooms and weapons.

When millions are taught to fear softness and glorify domination, we don’t just get stressed bodies—we get stressed nations.
Militarized minds.
Institutionalized fear.

This is how the inner war becomes the outer one.
And the longer it remains unhealed, the more the sickness spreads—from the individual body to the collective body of the world.

Masculine Energy Without the Armor

The point I want to come to is not about questioning masculine energy. Not at all.

It is not about rejecting the masculine, but about inviting it into maturity.

The masculine at its core is not the problem. What causes harm is when it operates without balance, without integration, without choice.

The immature masculine is reactive. Fear-based. Gripping.

But the mature masculine—what does that look like?

• It knows when to act—and when to allow.
• It knows how to hold space—not just take it.
• It offers direction—not domination.
• It brings structure—not rigidity.
• It leads through presence—not pressure.

We don’t need to get rid of masculine energy. We need to ground it in wisdom, and balance it with its counterpart.

A New Masculine: Leading with Love, Not Fear

So—what would it look like to let the masculine evolve?

The raw, survival-based masculine is always scanning, always calculating, always bracing for the next threat. But when there is no real threat, and the body still can’t soften, then protection becomes control. Control becomes rigidity. And rigidity turns into relational, emotional, even physical warfare.

What if it could mature?

• What if, instead of silencing emotion, it made space for it?
• What if, instead of fearing vulnerability, it honored and protected it?
• What if leadership didn’t mean leading alone—but leading in relationship?

This is the mature masculine.

Not less strong, but more present.
Not colder, but more rooted.
It doesn’t collapse in the face of mess. It stands steady in it.
Not a lone hero trying to fix everything, but a grounded team-builder.

This kind of leadership doesn’t come from power over.

It comes from power with. Integrated masculine energy supports.
It creates structure for life to flourish. It becomes the riverbank, not the flood. The holder of space, not the ruler of it.

Because control rooted in fear leads only to more fear and disconnection.
But control rooted in love becomes something else entirely:

Guidance.
Wisdom.
Leadership.

We need leaders who can hold the room and hold themselves. Leaders who can make decisions without disconnecting from the heart. Who can feel deeply, without collapsing.

The Significance of the Maturing of the Masculine for World Politics

The journey of maturing ones masculinity is not only personal, but deeply political. Fear does never stay small.

When embodied in leaders—presidents, dictators, CEOs—it becomes strategy. It becomes war. It becomes the justification for violence.

Immature masculine leadership creates a world of defense, conquest, and competition—always preparing for attack, always dominating or being dominated. It believes safety comes from force, not from presence.

Fear-driven control does not create safety, but escalation.

This is how wars begin: not just on the battlefield, but in the boardroom. In the trauma responses of powerful people who have never learned to soften. Never learned to integrate. Never learned to lead without fear.

We need a different kind of leadership. Not just in governments or corporations, but in homes, in hearts and in the way we relate to ourselves and each other.

Imagine what could shift if those in power were no longer driven by trauma, ego or reactivity – but by presence, empathy and love?

Imagine what could shift if power was not equated with domination, but with deep, relational responsibility?

The maturing of the masculine may be one of the most urgent spiritual and political invitations of our time – and it is a collective task which is not only for men.

The world doesn’t need you to be harder. It needs you to be deeper, to soften your heart. To hold power with presence. To act without disconnecting. To protect without controlling. Strength is not diminished by softness—it is defined by the capacity to include it.

Let us evolve from domination to devotion.
From suppression to stewardship.
From fear to fierce love.

Let us become guardians, not of control, but of life.

And in doing so, may we lead our world not through fear, but through presence, wisdom, and wholeness.