Lenerd Louw embarked on a journey of self-transformation by taking the leap from the cliff of comfort and diving into the deep unknown. He tells all about it to Daniel Weinberg in this inspiring conversation about embracing surrender over control. Lenerd opens up about his struggle to leave a life of luxury in favor of one with true meaning and purpose, shaping him into the author, mentor, and coach he is today. He also talks about the beauty of orgasmic mastery in elevating one’s sexuality, the right way to manage your emotions and energies, and the benefits of not ejaculating – for at least 21 days.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Jumping Off The Cliff Of Comfort, Into The Deep Unknown With Lenerd Louw
On this episode, we have Lenerd Louw, author of the book Jump!, where he explores what it’s like to jump off the cliff of comfort into the deep unknown.
Lenerd, welcome to the show. How are you?
Fine, Daniel, and you? Good seeing you, man.
That is a proper South African accent. Are you in South Africa right now?
I’m in South Africa, south of Cape Town in Scarborough, a tiny little village right next to Cape Point Nature Reserve.
You grew up where in South Africa?
I grew up in the North in Johannesburg and Pretoria. I spent most of my life there, between the two cities. They’re quite close to each other. I grew up in that area, Northwest of Johannesburg, born many years there, where the Cradle of Humankind is, where a lot of old bones were found. There is very powerful energy in that area.
You end up in Cape Town in your lifestyle ways.
After Johannesburg, I was in the UK for five years in the ‘90s. I worked there. With the same group, I went over and started a big insurance group there. I was in my twenties and then came back a number of years still in Johannesburg, and then came down to Cape Town from 2009 to 2013, 2014.
Escaping The Life Of Partying
I’m going to set the scene here for the audience. Your book Jump! is one of the first books that got me on my journey. It made me to do the jump and make the jump. It was recommended to me by another gentleman who had also been through a similar journey. It was introduced to me as this is something you can read about this gentleman’s journey, and hopefully give you a little bit of inspiration for what you did.
I’m going to read the introduction for the audience to set the scene. We’re going to deep dive into Jump!. “In 2012, Lenerd is living the high life on Millionaire’s Row in Clifton Beach, Cape Town. As the successful CEO of an insurance company and part-time playboy, he appears to have it all. Gorgeous women, threesomes, ecstasy, and cocaine on demand. To Lenerd, something doesn’t feel right.”
“He attempts to drown the inner voice urging him to change his career, life, everything, by parting harder. By the end of 2012, a massive shift occurred. Lenerd resigns as CEO, sells all his possessions, and books a one-way ticket to Peru. With just a backpack and a heart full of unanswered questions, he embarks on what will become an epic five-year spiritual journey covering 5 continents and 35 countries in search of his own soul and meaning.”
“Many motivational speakers and gurus expound on the virtues of setting goals and believing in yourself to go, go, go, and get what you want. I was more interested in surrender rather than control. I want to fully see what existence has to offer. Once all the fearful internal chatter had died down, I was finally able to listen. Joining Lenerd on his journey from a hedonistic life defined by drugs and sex to find true spirituality and a sense of purpose. Jump! is a phenomenal true tale of personal expansion and awakening.”
He then goes on, “Louw follows his deeper calling, which he discovers is magical, and the result is one of the most accessible and life-changing inspirational books released in recent years.” To start with, the book was written, and it is a very fun read. I’m a reader, but it’s a weekend read. You’ll polish it on where to go because it’s got energy, momentum, etc. It also resonates. A lot of men find themselves on the treadmill of life, trying to get ahead financially, take care of their wives, children, and get to financial security, etc.
It’s very hard to jump off that because this is what we’ve been taught from a very early age about what the cycle of life is. Why it was inspirational was he’s someone who of similar age, who looks like did all the right things, ticked a lot of boxes, leadership role, financially successful, picking up lots of women, which is something that’s like, “Wow,” especially for men who are stuck in a marriage that they’d been challenged with. They’re like, “If only I had the courage.”
What I liked was the expression there, but where you said, it was more interested in surrender rather than control. Let’s start with what I recall from the beginning of the book. Everything is going your way. You’re living in a beautiful city. You’re working hard, you’re playing hard, and you’re reaping a lot of rewards in terms of you’re doing whatever you want to do. You’re partying. You’re having a good time. Life is great. What happened?
From the outside, it looked very much like life was great, but on the inside, it was quite a big turmoil. The book starts with chapter six, drugs and jacuzzis. From the outside, it is a beautiful picture, but then I also write in the book, I went into these dark places. It isn’t until moving down to Cape Town from Johannesburg in 2009.
I was enjoying what I was doing work-wise and having a lot of fun, and creating new businesses, direct insurance businesses, and in the advertising and marketing space. It was all perfect as it was, but then something different was needed in my life going forward. That was so difficult to explain then. It is still, in a way, a little bit difficult to explain.
I moved down from Johannesburg to Cape Town, a new job, out of a four-year relationship, and then landed in a different internal place, where it started happening to me. I would walk into the office. I came down here to start a new business for the guys, and I would walk in and I would feel as if I’m looking at myself from the outside. There’s a camera in the corner of the room. They’re looking at me living this life, and I didn’t feel in my own skin.
What I’ve experienced before when I hear you speak like that is I’ve had an anxiety attack before, whereby you feel like you’re out of your body, looking down at yourself and the scene. Were you having anxiety episodes? Is that what was happening?
I never had anxiety episodes or what I thought would be anxiety attacks. As you explained it, maybe it was a form of it because if I was looking at myself from the outside, I wasn’t like having breathing things. It was so real. The essence of what I’m putting across is that the parting only started later, when I was in a four-year relationship.
That came to an end. I wanted children. I already had kids of 8 and 10. There was no compromise, but it was hard because it was the love of my life. It was a hard place. We then separated, and at the same time, that also a new business, everything new. All of this change has created this shift inside me where all of a sudden I felt, “I’m not in the right place now. I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.”
It didn’t make any sense. I distracted myself with the partying and so forth. It’s an interesting sequence of events, it wasn’t this guy partying in Cape Town and then out of shift. The cause of the parting was distracting myself from this inner voice that said I must do something different. It’s a bit subtle, but it is quite an important point.
A life without focus will distract you from your inner voice. Share on XBeing Vulnerable With Other Men
Were you able to share how you were feeling with other men in your life, or weren’t you at that stage?
No. That’s a beautiful question. I was going to talk about other men and men’s groups going through. I wish I had, man. I wish I had, in 2009, the circle of people, brothers, and friends I have now that I can talk to.
Why do you think you weren’t able to access that in that period of your life? Why do you think men in general find it challenging to access that treasure?
Firstly, in 2009, it didn’t exist, or at least it didn’t exist in my world. I was living in Cape Town in my circle. I think both of those are true. It’s much more now than in 2009. There was very little support for men available, for anyone available, but now much more. Also in my world, imagine I go into the business and I talk about these things to the guys in business, they wouldn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I was also the CEO of the business, the guy running the business.
You’re talking to your team about it, which doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in them in the business. If you feel like, “What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here.” That’s almost the loneliness of a leader. I read something the other day in America, CEOs like, I couldn’t remember the exact percentage, but it’s like 50% of them are depressed or 80% are depressed, and 60% are on antidepressants. I’m making up the numbers now, but it is pretty high in those regions. That’s it.
There was no one to talk to because the business environment I couldn’t. In my social environment, there was also no one really, because there was no one doing those things. There was no one doing any work in men’s work or men’s groups or so I had no access to any of that. A lot of my male friends were in Johannesburg. I didn’t make a lot of male friends in Cape Town. I made a lot of women friends. Many male friends. The women were partying and making love, having sex, sitting in a jacuzzi, looking at the sunset.
Going Through A Split In Personality
When you read that, that doesn’t sound so bad. I’m being facetious, but what I’m saying is when people read that, they’re like, “Lenerd, what’s your problem? You’ve got these amazing women every weekend, you’re a CEO, and you’ve got everything.” Tell me the turmoil when you describe the turmoil, because there are a lot of people who are aspiring to be or achieve that situation. What you say is that, on the surface, it looks great, but deep down inside, it’s not so great. Explain a little bit about the turmoil and how you felt inside.
In the first three chapters of the book, I talk very much about this beauty and the sunset and the jacuzzi, but then I also very quickly drop into the dark inner world that I was in and the turmoil I had. A big part of the turmoil was that something shifted. I had a beautiful path. The way I explained it is that my personality and my soul were on a path. I was doing what I needed to do, business and stuff.
It was time for me, at let’s say the age of 44 or 45 that I was roughly then, to be doing something else. The soul whispers were there, telling me that, but it didn’t make sense for the personality and the mind. That creates almost a split in a personality. You’re torn apart. You’ve got a strong inner voice saying to you, “You should change your life, and do something different.”
It doesn’t make what you did before wrong. Sometimes people get that wrong. They say, “I jumped out of corporate life. Corporate life was bad, and I jumped, and now I’m in a good place.” It’s not at all. The corporate or business life for me was good. I had a great time, but it got to a point in 2009 where those paths split. My soul was saying, “This is now a new route you need to go on.”
It’s not saying what that route is. It’s just saying, “There’s something new you need to do.” The personality was still on this path because everything I studied for, everything I worked for, as I said in a book, I studied three degrees at university. I work myself up in business. I live in South Africa. I’m a pale male in South Africa, being white and being a male in South Africa in 2009, you had a job. It’s the employment equity to leave a job in that space is a bit crazy because of the opportunities set up around that. The mind was going, “Why would you want to change, as you say, this beautiful picture? Plus, you’ve also got this thing happening with being single and being displayed by lifestyle and all of that.” That was hard because I couldn’t work it out. My mind was struggling with this context.
In the meantime, I was still having to be in business. In a business, Monday to Friday, it leaves you busy. Friday to Sunday, you’re on your own or you’re there. If you sit and think about it, which is probably the best thing to do that you can feel it and then decide. What do we do? We hear the calling and we try to distract it. We say, “No, we distract it.” One way of distracting from it, or a few ways, was what I did: the sex, drugs, and jacuzzis.
How long was this period of something’s not right, or the split, as you describe it? How long did you have to live like that until you decided to make a call?
Four years.
Four years like that in that term?
Yeah. It started in 2009. The voices were softer. It was like there was something off. By 2010, it was getting louder. “You shouldn’t be doing this.” By 2011 or 2012, it was really loud.
What does that mean, though? When you say loud, are you not sleeping? Is it constantly on your mind? You talk about the chatter, which we always talk about the itty bitty shitty committee that is spinning stories in your head. What does that mean for you?
It felt like I was totally not myself. I was feeling almost as if I wasn’t in my own skin. I must say I wasn’t sleeping badly. Whenever things get tough, always sleep well. I thank for the grace of God for that. From being a very confident guy, I became very insecure, very uncertain about myself, because I knew what I did before, and I was good at it, but now I’ve gotten to the space where there’s something out here.
That made me doubt myself and less confident. Also, the business was affected, not doing that great. I was getting bored with the business of what I was doing because it was a copy and paste of a previous business that I was doing for people. It was like, “This is boring.” I had this voice that got louder and louder up until December 2012. This is basically 3 or 4 years. It got to a maximum when I had what I call my crashing Clifton Beach walk, which I can expand on if you want to.
Please do explain.
It was December 2012, which is interesting, then later, when I was in South America, I came across the Mayan calendar, and December 2012 was a profound time in the space of humanity and in the timelines of this planet, but we can get to that later. In December 2012, I was at my place, which was on Clifton, staying at this one place, two houses behind Clifton Beach. I would walk down the steps, and I would be walking on a Saturday on the beach.
I don’t know if you’ve been to Cape Town, if you’ve been to Clifton Beach, and you know the beauty of it. You walk on the white sand and the sea. I can see the sea from here. It’s like this azure blue, then Table Mountain is up there, majestic Table Mountain, and then you’ve got Lion’s Head over here. I’m walking on the beach, and I’m looking at all of this, and I cannot explain to you exactly what’s going on in my mind. I’m looking at all of this and I go, “This is like a brochure in a tourist magazine. This must be beautiful. I can see that.”
Logically, this is beautiful, but I cannot see the beauty in it. It wasn’t as if my breath was taken away and I was there for an hour or two, like two minutes became two hours at all. I walked for five minutes, and I was like, “I’m pretty bored.” I looked around and I go, “I can see that people can see it’s beautiful. I didn’t see the beauty.” That’s when I knew I was fucked. Do you feel me?
Absolutely, you were numb.
I was numb. That’s when the realization hits home. I cannot even see the beauty in that. I’m bored. I’m so disconnected. I’m so numb. I’m in pretty deep shit.
You weren’t doing any therapy or anything like that at the time.
No. I suppose I also grew up in this space with therapy. I did see one. I went for one session with a psychiatrist. My friend said, “You look a bit dark, go and see this lady.” I went to see her. Once again, it’s such an indictment of these professions in general. I had a session with her, and she was asking me some stuff. She had a little elephant there. “Is this elephant evil or not?” or whatever. After that, it was basically, “You’re not clinically insane. Bye. Enjoy your life.”
Fuck that. Maybe I wasn’t clinically insane, but I was in deep trouble. I needed someone to say, “Go join some men’s groups or read The Seat of The Soul or do stuff.” I was in a tough place. It’s not that this woman couldn’t see that, but her job was a psychiatrist, “Is this guy mad? Do I need to give him medicine?” I’m happy she didn’t give me any fucking antidepressants or anything because I was taking a lot of other drugs. I didn’t want to take any antidepressants.
That was the thing. Years later, I was like, “God, that’s crazy.” To answer your question, I wasn’t in therapy at all, or any antidepressants. I was very much trying to figure it out all on my own, which is so crazy because there’s so much support and help available, at least now. This walk was where it hit home. After five minutes, I went up to a house, called some people, and had a party, because there was too much to be sitting with this numbness and this connection and being bored, so I needed a distraction. However, the message hit home. I immediately knew it. We had the party, but I knew something had shifted. The next morning, I knew. I was surrendering. You were talking about surrendering earlier. I tried to control this.
Selling Everything And Taking Off
You decided this on your own. You said it doesn’t sound like you discussed it. You went, “I’m done.” What made you think, “I need to quit, sell everything, I need to take off?”
I talked clearly in the book about that. After December 2012, I realized, “Fuck, there’s a big change.” I then went, “Okay.” I almost overnight stopped partying, taking alcohol, drugs, or anything. I never took a lot of alcohol at any point, but also that many drugs, but it was always enough to enable the sexual activity, if you know what I mean. I stopped. I went, “I need to find out what I should be doing.” This voice has been saying to me, “I should be doing something different.”
I went, “What should I be doing?” There was no answer. For a week or two, I was like, “Okay.” I’m now opening myself up to, “What the hell?” As you say, there was no one to talk to. That’s why I’m so passionate about not just men’s work, but people coming in circles together and being able to share stuff, because I wish I had a circle to share this with. I had to work it out all on my own. After two weeks, I changed the question and I said, “What should I do to find out what I should be doing?”
Men coming together in circles have the opportunity to share their experiences and discover that they are not alone in facing their struggles. Share on XThe answer was quite clear. Clear out all of the old to make room for the new. It was the knowing. When I say a voice, it wasn’t like someone talking in my head. It was a deep knowing. The knowing dropped, “Clear out the old.” I went, “That’s interesting.” That’s what I did. I resigned from the job. I broke up with a girlfriend for a year, because the last year, I was in a relationship and we also broke up. I sold almost all my stuff. I gave everything away. I sold all and gave everything away, bought a backpack and a one-way ticket to Lima in Peru. I was like, “Let me go find out.”
Communicating The Change With The Kids
You have two kids at this time. How did you communicate that to your kids? That’s also a big decision. It’s like the importance of getting you to be the best version of you, which is the mission at this point where you’re at. There is also the “I have these kids that need me in a way,” but they need the best version of you as well. How did you explain that to the kids?
You’ll see not just that explanation, but in the next five years, I was around the world. The children played a key part. A very tough aspect of this whole thing was exactly my relationship in this place with them. Firstly, I had a chat with my ex-wife and we have a great relationship and we’re allies for life. She’s the mother of my kids, and so we got divorced when the kids were 2 and 4.
We had been divorced for a long time. After the divorce, it was always good and very supportive of each other, which is beautiful. I had a conversation with her and I said, “This is something I need to do.” She was supportive. I also had a chat with the kids. They were supportive. What did help was that I was divorced and that I was living in Cape Town, and they were living in KwaZulu-Natal.
She asked me, “Could they move there?” We’re both living in Johannesburg, but she wanted to be more in a rural setup north of Durban. I would see them every second weekend, but then I would fly every 2 or 3 weekends up and see them in the earlier years. I would see them on holidays. They would be with me in Cape Town. However, by the time this journey started happening to me, they were much older.
They were already 14 and 16. I was going less to Durban and Natal to see them because they were so busy. They have busy lives. They’re doing sports and they have to study for exams. I was only at an event, not going up so much. They were coming for holidays to me, but not so regularly up there, and mainly because of them. Even though the crazy party time, whenever they would come to me, I wouldn’t party at all.
No women at my house. There was no party. I would be with my kids for two weeks, even through this crazy storm. That was always a big priority for me. That made it easier, the fact that they were older. If they had been 8 and 10, that would have been tough. The fact that they were older made it easier. However, the first year was tough because I was in South America. I don’t know how long I was going to go.
I thought at least three months, but maybe a year, but I will get them out for the holidays. Being in South America, the soccer World Cup was happening, and my ex-wife was a little bit nervous about them flying on their own to South America. I was super nervous flying to South Africa after 3 or 4 months because I knew I didn’t want to stop my journey. I realized I had to at least do a year. That first year was extremely difficult.
I had to make that call, so I called them. My son was always pretty cool, like all boys. My daughter, it is a bit more tender for her. I had a chat with her, and this beautiful 13-year-old or 14-year-old said to me, “Daddy, I’ll miss you, but you must do what you must do. It’s important to look after yourself. This is the right thing. This is the right thing for you.” That was tough. It meant I didn’t see them for that year. It was tough. I then saw them in December. We met in Europe, at Christmas and New Year.
My ex-wife and her husband were also there. We spent Christmas together, all of us, and then they traveled with me for two weeks. Right through the five years, they would come and visit me every school holiday, and we would stay in bar stalls and backpack for 2 or 3 weeks, seeing different places in the world.
It turned into something, even though I didn’t see them every day or every second weekend, but the times that we had were so present. You’re not busy with work on your phone. It’s three weeks. The three of us often book one room in a hostel together. We’re all in one room. The quality time and the beautiful time we had then, from the age of 14 to 19, I was grateful for that.
Booking A One-Way Ticket To Peru
Tell us about the journey. You made the big decision to take the big jump. Now, take us on the journey. You say, “I booked a one-way ticket to Lima, Peru,” but what’s the plan? This is where it comes into the surrender versus control. Are you saying, “I don’t know. I’ll see. I’ll take every day as it comes and I’ll work it out on the fly?” What’s the plan?
There was no plan.
It’s consciously no plan.
That was a big part of my journey. I’ll give you a bit of the backstory. I thought when I left, I was going to go to New York because it started with, “I’m going to go out to New York. I’m bored with this business because I’ve done a few of these. Everyone has started to do direct business. It’s getting a bit boring, let’s go and find new things.” I was going to go there and maybe study at university a bit. That was where my mind was thinking of going then.
You weren’t breaking the mold. You were just seeing if you could copy and paste it somewhere else in a different environment. That’s how you were originally thinking.
That was an initial thought. The thought before that was surrender, resign, give everything away, and then, “What shall I do?” and then it was, “What makes sense?” The mind goes what the mind knows and goes back in the past, “You’ve been in business,” and then the mind goes, “Go to New York and go check it out there.” I looked at the temperature chart and it was minus two fucking degrees.
December.
January 2014, and I’m an African, so looking for something is not going to work. I need to stay in the Southern Hemisphere at least until mid-year. I went to either East Asia or South America. It was, in the end, flipping a mental coin, but I was always super interested in the Incas and the Mayans and so on. I said, “Let me go to South America and I’ll spend four months there and then I’ll maybe do the New York thing.” Needless to say, I never went to New York and I have never been, maybe I’ll still go one day, but that’s not important anymore. The journey took me away. I ended up in South America, and then it started hitting home. This is much more than just looking at new businesses. I’m now on a different journey of awakening.
I want you to try and expand for the audience when you say that, when you talk about the awareness and the connecting with yourself. Go a little bit deeper into what that means to you.
I arrived in South America, and I was still in a space of allowing for the new to come in. I had no idea what I was going to do, or what I was doing. I don’t go to a spiritual awakening at all. I was not like, “I’m resigned.” I was like, “This is not working anymore. I need to do something new.” In hindsight, I can explain it in today’s terms, but not taking you to where it was in January 2014 to know how I felt. How I felt then was I have absolutely no fucking idea. I’m going to throw myself out there. I’m going to throw myself into a continent where also with their language also doesn’t work, because if you’ve been in South America, English doesn’t take you far there.
Same with Portuguese.
African is my home language, and it also wouldn’t take you very far. Spanish is what you do there. This was out of my comfort zone. I started learning Spanish at the university there. A long story short, I then got sick with parasites. I lost a lot of weight. I went from a lean fit 82 to 72. I was probably in the best shape of my life before I left there because even though I had these party days, I was training hard.
I was in good physical shape. With the parasites that brought me to even more to my knees. Now it’s not the stuff in Cape Town, but also parasites brought me to my knees, and I was like, “Let me see.” That then led me to shamanic work, emotional expression release work. I started in a village in Guatemala, San Marcos, a little village on the lake in Lago de Atitlan. It was a beautiful lake there with some volcanoes around it. I came across emotional expression release, to hitting cushions, and then I became aware. I realized I’d been blocking my emotions for a long time.
Your question about the awakening and the rising of consciousness and all of that. The practical terms, it started with me connecting with my emotions. I’ve been blocking it after the girl for four years, whom I broke up with, as I told you, with the kids, and having more babies.
Awaken your consciousness by connecting with your emotions. Share on XI blocked my emotions, and I went like, “I don’t want to feel anymore because it’s hard on the heart. Let me block my emotions. Before, growing up in South Africa and most countries in the world, especially English-speaking countries, we were also taught as boys not to drop into our emotions, especially boys. For me, it was like I woke up in the moment. I went into my emotional world. I went into my inner world.
The more I went into my inner world, the more I went into self-awareness. The more self-awareness, the higher my awareness of the outer world became. My consciousness and vibration went higher. I started seeing more, realizing more. It was less a roll-on effect that led to work across loads of different areas, from sexuality to India, Dalai Lama meditation, crystal, and the whole thing has been for over five years.
Tapping Into The Masculine And Feminine Energies
Let’s talk about the same gentleman who advised me to read your book, who also spoke about the intro one-week course? You talk about it in your book as well. What’s the course called again?
International School of Temple Arts.
Yeah, but what’s the name of that first week?
They call it the Level 1 Spiritual Sexual Shamanism.
How would you explain that? It seemed like quite a profound experience for you, as you wrote about in the book, and this gentleman also talked about how much it impacted him. What is it that you go through or learn there at a higher level, which is not taught to us in our upbringing? Why is it something that seems to have such a positive impact for both men and women to come into their male and female energy, which is what I got from the explanation of understanding the masculine and the feminine, etc? Why do you think that’s so profound? Why is that not experienced or taught to more of us in general?
First of all, shout out to Hadar for connecting us in this beautiful, synchronic way. He’s a dear brother of mine. I send him lots of love. It is profound. When you’re in this seven-day course, you continuously go, “Why the hell haven’t I been told this many years ago? Why in high school, primary school, and university are we not being taught these things? This is such basic stuff about our being, ourselves, our personalities, and our interaction with other people.”
It’s basic stuff. We learned about algebra and English, and geography, but we’re not getting taught about any of this, which is insane. It was beautiful. I came across it in Hawaii in January 2015. I went to a tantra festival there. That was my first tantra festival. From there on to the seven-day residential training. It covers so many areas. It goes into the guilt, shame, and fear around sexuality for us to start lifting it.
We have exercises of emotional release where you’re not punching cushions, and you’re releasing your emotions. For the first time in a circle there, I found after 30 minutes of doing that with 50 other people in a room with music playing loudly, sitting back in a circle, and I went like, up until then I’ve heard you can take energy. You can feel it in your hands. I was a left-brain guy. I studied law, I studied business, economics, and all of that.
I was like, “Unless I can feel and touch it, it ain’t real.” It sounds crazy. Now, for me to say, “That’s where I came from. I came from that.” When I sat at that circle and I went like, “I shared in the circle,” I went, “I can feel it. Even doing it now, I can feel this ball of energy between my hands.” It brought that home, for example, that can drop into your emotions in a moment, you’ll drop into your emotions, your emotional body can start vibrating.
By dropping your emotions, your emotional body will start vibrating, not just your physical body. Share on XIt’s not just a physical body. We’ve got an emotional body, also. We’ve got an erotic body, got a light body, a dark body, so much. When I say awakening, what I mean is we are awakened to these things. If you think we only got this body, then it’s one level of awakeness. You become aware of the other parts, then your level of awareness increases. When your emotional body is vibrating, it’s also so much easier for your sensual, erotic, and sexual body to vibrate.
Also, so much for you to, not just yourself, but with other people, feel the connection, and feel the connection with nature. It brings you so much more connected to life and to the world. If you go back out to the Clifton Walk, where I couldn’t even see the beauty, imagine that jump for me one year later from that guy on the beach, now sitting there like shaking, vibrating, and feeling everything around me. The universe got my attention.
The Catalyst To Return
If you read the book, you had such a diverse experience around culture, food, plant medicine, sexuality, consciousness, and nature. It was a very Disneyland-type of experience. Five years and then you pull trunks. You get to a point where it’s like, “I’ve done what I needed to do. Now it’s time to go back home, settle?” Tell us the thinking there, then I want to talk about what change in you. You are now coaching men’s groups. There are a lot of things you’re doing now off the back of this journey. First, once you’ve had five years of experience, what’s the catalyst that tells you again that it’s time to return?
First, I came back to South Africa.
Is it for a visit?
Every year or eighteen months, I would be here for a month or 2 or 3. The reason was also that my parents were getting quite sick. I would come so that I could spend some time with them. First, my dad, and then later my mom. I had visits back and forth. I would also see my kids, and we have some time here. That was at the end of 2017 and early 2018. It was another visit in a way. It was like, “I’m coming back.”
As I arrived here, “Maybe I’ll stay a bit longer this time,” or “Maybe I’ll stay.” What then happened is this calling to write a book. When I say calling, I don’t know if it’s the right word, but I then started writing this book. For that year in 2018, I was also traveling in South Africa in an Airbnb at a place for a month or two, or place on a cheap place on the beach somewhere, and staying there. I was all over the country.
The West Coast down into the Garden Route, all over in the North, writing the book for that year. That year was also spent traveling around, but dropping deep into the writing of the book. The book came out of me over the five years that I shared on Facebook, but it got quite a following. It wasn’t even before I left the country, but my good buddy and my ex-partner said, “Please go on Facebook so we know you’re still alive. You’re in South America in the jungle. Give us a note every now and then.”
That was a beautiful gift from them because I then started sharing on Facebook some of these stories. I was talking about masculine and feminine integration at my first festivals, Hawaii and Easter’s Day. I’ve started writing. I didn’t realize it, but this became me starting to write because now you have to formulate the words, and I put it up there, and I was writing about complex concepts like that, and I was also writing about ejaculation and orgasmic mastery for men. I became, in a way, a writer. Out of that, people were saying, “Wow.”
Later on, with what people were saying, I started feeling, “I think this could be a book.” I was following the breadcrumbs. In South Africa, I was writing the book, and I’m still following the breadcrumbs, and then the book got published. I was very blessed that it was traditionally published in all the bookstores in South Africa, also on Amazon, Audible, everywhere. Out of the book, people were starting to ask me questions about things. Out of that, it led to more men’s work.
The short answer to your question is that it wasn’t planned at all. It was following the breadcrumbs, surrendering to life in a way before, as the one guy in my bogey journey said, the one guy, the facilitator, “Before I was living life and now life was living me.” I landed in South Africa, traveled around writing the book, the book got written, and people asked questions about the book. I give some thoughts of guidance on it, it expands more, and I’m following it where it’s going. I’m still there.
The Power Of Orgasmic Mastery
You’re now a coach. You do personal coaching, one-on-one coaching. What do you focus on with coaching? The men who come to you, what are they predominantly looking for, would you say?
I do broad what I call a three-month mentorship, which is on everything, the physical, emotional, erotic, mental, bodies, all of it. It’s almost like, in a way, a shortened version of my journey around the world, and taking people through that. That is something I also do. I never saw this coming. I didn’t go, “I’m going to work with men.” If you asked me that ten years ago, that was the last thing I would do. I would be working with women. I would have never said that. It’s so beautiful. Now, as I said, it took broadly all those bodies, but I also very much love doing or specializing also the sexuality part with men.
Expand on that. What does that mean?
A big part of it is that I do, for example, these 21-day journeys with guys called Orgasmic Mastery for 21 days. We don’t ejaculate for 21 days. You don’t watch porn for the 21 days. You have a morning routine, a bit of breathwork, and gratitude sessions. Before looking at the phone for this hour, you don’t look at your phone, and you want to add agreements. Essentially, those 21 days take them to become orgasmic mastery. They learn that orgasm and ejaculation are two different things. You can become a multi-orgasmic man, but much more than that, you learn self-love.
They learn how to self-pleasure without masturbating, without even going straight to the groin. You can touch your arm and think how beautiful your arm is. They learn what the areas are in your life that you’re losing energy with, be it pornography, social media, XYZ, watching too much news, anything. It leads to a deep journey within. I call it the Orgasmic Mastery, but it’s a massive, deep journey within, and a lot of guys realize it’s much more than the sexuality part.
What’s the ejaculation piece? Why is that so important? Not ejaculating for 21 days, why is that key to the program?
Most men are addicted to ejaculation. That’s a strong word to use in a strong term, but that’s my belief. We often ejaculate because we’re stressed. As teenagers, we ejaculate very fast, and most of us have been taught it’s wrong to do. There’s a lot of guilt and shame around it when you do it. You ejaculate every day or a few times a day. No one has taught us that as we get older, it depletes even more of our energy.
Ejaculation is beautiful and lovemaking is beautiful, but most men don’t realize that you don’t have to ejaculate every time you make love. You can make love and not ejaculate enough. A lot of beautiful energy is running through your body, and you can make love ten minutes later again and still have it the next day. There’s a big piece around ejaculation, which is that with every ejaculation, there are like 300 million sperm cells that leave your body.
This is the essence of life. This is the essence of that great life. It’s the best part of your body that goes. If you do it in a dirty sock five times a day, you’re depleting so much of your energy. Now, there’s nothing wrong with ejaculation. Ejaculation is beautiful. Once again, it is about awareness. Is it good once a week, or is it good seven times a day for my body and how I feel?
Once you get to feel your body, you realize that, after 2, 3 days of not ejaculating, your energy shoots up. Maybe now your frequency is once a week or once in three weeks, or once every three days. There’s a big body hack that’s associated with it and energy levels. There’s also lovemaking. If you make love with your partner for 2 minutes and ejaculate, as opposed to 20 minutes or 2 hours, the connection is not the pleasure, but also the heart connection with her is so much better, and her enjoyment is also so much better.
It also increases the heart connection with the partner. There are so many benefits to this. The crazy thing. Twenty years ago, a year or two after I got divorced from this love of my life, we made love a lot, and I started becoming what you would call a multi-orgasmic man. There was no one to talk to you. I couldn’t say in the boardroom, “Guys, how often do you ejaculate when you make love?” Men don’t.
I remember in the book you were talking about having sex for three days and not ejaculating until the end of the weekend. It is like yoga.
Exactly. That’s it. One doesn’t even have to be. Anyone can do it. There was no one to talk to because, as you say, only on a Sunday night ejaculated. I cannot in a boardroom and say, “Guys, do you also?” It’s not going to work. You will probably get fired or something. When I went around the world, I ended up at that first Tantra Festival in 2014 in Hawaii. I came across other men who do the same. I went, “Wow.” This is an ancient practice, Daoism and Tantra, from 3,000 years ago. This is not new. This has been there for many years.
Somehow, my body remembered how to do it. I’m blessed. It’s the grace of God. The Tantra circles, I realized, “This is a practice that has existed for a long time. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been doing it for 20 years.” From that place, once again, people ask me questions. Now I share that, and I don’t want to persuade anyone to do it, but I want to make everyone aware that this exists.
What Happens In A Tantra Festival
Before we finish off, tell me what happens at a Tantra Festival. It sounds like everyone gets naked and has lots of sex, but I don’t believe that’s what happens at the Tantra Festival.
No, not at all. I suppose you can if you want to.
What is a Tantra Festival?
My first experience of Tantra, maybe I’ll give you my experience as I arrived there in January 2014. It was an ecstatic dance. At the dawn of evening, it says, “No alcohol or drugs allowed and no talking on the dance floor.” I went, “How the fuck am I going to dance with at least having one beer?” I went, “Okay.”
Everyone is sober, not even weed or anything. You would be dancing and enjoying your body, and you can fall on the ground and roll around, and stuff that in a club, people will think you’re crazy. It’s full expression. You can be yourself. You can be in a moment. There are things that I experienced, like eye gazing, you may come across it. You don’t know what you like, sitting with someone for two minutes, looking into their eyes.
The first time I was like, “What the fuck is this?” It sounds very basic, but it’s very deep. It’s those types of things. It’s a lot of eye gazing. It’s a lot of workshops about loving yourself, dropping into your own space, your own heart space. There’s so much more than sex and nakedness. Tantra is a way of being aware, being in the present moment, being with yourself, and loving life.
Answering Rapid-Fire Questions
I could talk to you for a very long time. Many stories. I finish off every show with a quick-fire questions. I will shoot. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?
Probably my first girlfriend. I was only 21 when I made love the first time, and I turned up to that at first girlfriend for four years, and I broke up. We broke up in a way that I would like to say sorry for. I was not so disconnected from my emotions. We broke up and never spoke to her again or her parents or so. I feel bad about that. I would like to apologize for that. I wish I knew then what I know now to be with my emotions, even though it’s hard.
Have you ever tried to reach out to her?
I haven’t in so many years now. I thought about it the other day, but I have been thinking about it, and even her parents. I don’t even know whether they’re still alive. They were always so welcoming and wonderful to me when I was there. Even a year after we broke up, I should call them and say, “Thank you for your hospitality.” I never did. You’ll never know, maybe I’ll bump into them, or maybe they’ll listen to this, and then I can say thank you and sorry.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
I’m proud of eventually, at least, always listening to the inner voice of my truth. I’m proud of the jump from 2013 that I made, and also my divorce. I struggled for the last few years before I eventually did it. It was the best for me. It was the best for Diane. It was the best for the children. I’m proud that I eventually sometimes distract myself, but I eventually do listen to my own truth. I’m very authentic with myself.
When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting it least?
It was probably at the village on the lake in Guatemala, where I was down with the parasites, and also emotionally, and had nowhere to go. The lady of the lake there, who then spoke to me and taught me emotional release, and got me in the direction with some of the workshops I did then. This was like the turning point that then led to reading the Seat of the Soul of Gary Zukav, there at the lake. That time at the lake.
Can I ask you to clarify, is the lady at the lake Gareth’s partner?
Yeah, it is actually.
That’s Lady of the Lake, okay.
I wouldn’t have even thought about that before if someone had asked me, but as you asked me that question, that’s what came up organically for me now. That time at the lake was the time when I didn’t expect any help there. I was pretty much broken and almost like, I think I said in my book, fixing Humpty Dumpty and putting him back on the wall again. She’s been a beautiful being.
What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?
It’s probably my dad. I think both of them are in the present moment, but then specifically my dad, to be with what is in front of you, what you’re doing now, to do that at the best of your ability, and to be with what you’re doing now. Future plans are cool, but be with what you do now and be with the present now as much as you can.
Presence?
Yeah, very much presence and enjoyment of life, to enjoy the small things in life and be present with yourself and nature, and other people.
Future plans are cool, but always focus on the present. Enjoy the small things in life. Share on XFinally, Mr. Jump, what is your superpower? Not being able to ejaculate for 21 days in a row. Let me tell you, when I was reading about you having sex for an entire weekend and it was for hours. It’s not like a little muck around here and there. It’s like hours of love making as you describe, and being on hold, that’s a superpower. I don’t believe most men have that power. That’s a superpower. I think you can learn it, maybe, but it’s a superpower.
Maybe you answered my question for me, but more esoteric.
Give me your esoteric answer. I think that it’s about.
By the way, I’m actually on 106 days of not ejaculating.
You made love in between those 106 days.
I have. Yeah. The last time I ejaculated was 23 February, just around the corner. We had a workshop a few weeks ago, and it came up. I went, “When did I last ejaculate?” I counted it back now. It’s 106 days, and I haven’t planned it to be that. It’s just that it’s flowing with that. I have made love in between. I do self-pleasure regularly. I masturbate regularly.
I also have wet dreams, but in my wet dreams now, I breathe the energy up, so that’s not wet, it’s a sexual dream, but it’s so automatic in my body now that I dream it up. The other day, I had a genital orgasm, but it wasn’t wet, and no semen came out. It was a full genital orgasm without ejaculation, which is proof that the orgasm and ejaculation are totally two different things. We don’t know that as men. I don’t know. Maybe that’s my superpower.
I’ll put that down as a superpower.
Let’s put it down as a superpower. I was thinking of business days. I work well with people, and I can get the best out of people. I think that’s a superpower. Maybe this one is more of a superpower. Let’s go with that one.
It’s a superpower. Lenerd, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I’d love to continue the conversation. Honestly, I loved your book. I highly recommend that anyone who’s listening go read the book. It’s a very fun, inspiring, and it will open your mind to what’s possible. This concept of surrendering control. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Daniel. I love this chat. It was beautiful. So organic, so easy, and so in flow. Thanks, brother.
Important Links
- Lenerd Louw
- Lenerd Louw on LinkedIn
- Lenerd Louw on Facebook
- Lenerd Louw on Instagram
- Jump!
- International School of Temple Arts
- Level 1 Spiritual Sexual Shamanism
- Seat of the Soul
About Lenerd Louw
I love life. I love deep connection. I love sex. I love food. I love nature – all joys of being alive in a body and I believe that we’re here to experience all of life fully and wholeheartedly.
My vision is for people to know what it means if your whole body is vibrating with LIFE and is connected to all life.
My wish is for everyone to express and live their sexuality freely, without any shame, fear, guilt and disconnection. My wish is also for men and women to each integrate and embrace the masculine and feminine aspects within themselves.
My 20 year long experience of being a multi-orgasmic man is the rich knowledge base from which I share my experience and expertise in semen retention and in transforming one’s sexual energy to serve any area of one’s life. I want to lift the veil of confusion around sex and ejaculation and educate people about orgasm and ejaculation being two different things. While I am a hetero-sexual man, all men can benefit from my work.
As a successful businessman with 30 years experience, I understand the connection between money, sex and power. My spiritual journey of learning and awakening of the last 15 years has brought me to deeply drop into my heart and understand consciousness and the interconnectedness of it all. I am a bridge between the ‘mainstream’ and the evolution into a higher consciousness.
