• You want to make it don’t you? That thing that’s been nagging at you for weeks or years.

    It feels big. It’s tugging at your sleeve. It won’t leave you alone, although you do your very best to ignore it.

    “Create me!” It says, so innocently. As if it were the simplest thing in the world.

    But simple it is not!

    The stakes are high. Your sense of self is on the line. Your level of self-worth will be appraised. Because this thing is not just a cool idea, or a part of your career strategy, it’s the thing your soul wants you to create.

    I know you know what it is. And if what I’m saying is starting to irritate you, then you definitely know what it is.

    So what are you waiting for?

    You’re waiting until you feel stronger.

    You’re waiting until providence arrives to help you.

    You’re waiting until you have more of a cushion to fall back on.

    You’re waiting until you feel ready.

    Because there’s this point in the future, when things will be different. Right?

    You’ll be braver, or more prepared. You’ll have more experience. Or maybe a bunch of people will ask you to make it, so you’ll know it will work. You’ll have evidence that it will work! You’ll feel inspired!

    Better to wait until then, when you’re ready.

    None of this is actually true. But it’s the only story your mind can spin that will protect you from the truth. It’s the only way it can spare you the humiliation of admitting that actually, you’re scared.

    Who wants to admit they’re afraid, and bottling it!?

    No, much better to justify the whole thing to yourself.

    You’re not ready

    God. You’re so tired of believing it all. And believe it you do.

    You believe it in the moment you load up Facebook, or pour another glass or wine, or turn on the TV, rather than turning toward your soul, and at least hearing what it wants.

    “You’re not ready.” The fear whispers.

    You believe it when you notice you feel jealous about everyone else who seems to be so on mission.

    “It’s fine. You’re not ready to be like them anyhow.”

    You believe it when you just diligently get on with your tasks, and go through the motions.

    “Yes, better to just stick to what you’re good at. You’re not ready yet. Just wait.”

    He’s so sure of himself. He is adamant about the risks at hand. He seems so strong. He has so much authority. It’s no wonder you’ve followed his advice.

    But it’s not working. Under his leadership, you’re suffering. He promises much. Much never delivers.

    Go gently. But go.

    So, what are you waiting for sweetheart?

    I know. It’s fucking scary. That’s a good sign. It means you were right, and this is indeed the call of your soul.

    But you’ve got to be brave. Ok?

    Don’t push yourself too hard. That will only get good old fear freaking out again. You need to look after him too.

    Take it easy. Go gently. But go!

    Otherwise you’ll be waiting until it’s safe. And it will never be safe.

    What’s the first step? The first tiny step. The smallest step you can imagine.

    If you can’t do even that, just write down what it would be.

    “If I were to follow the call of my soul, the first small step would be…”

    Pin it on your refrigerator. And keep looking at it. Breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.

    That’s it. That’s your first step. You just took it.

    Say “well done.” Say it out loud.

    Then take the next step tomorrow. Or next week. Just make sure you keep moving.

    The speed at which you progress is not the point. Moving is. This is how we feel good about ourselves. This is what tells us we’re doing the right thing.

    Look with honest eyes, at what it is you are called to create. And then watch yourself as you move slowly toward it.

    That is the feeling of being on purpose.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • I don’t want to feel it.

    Whatever the fuck it is, I don’t want to get close to it – that feeling lurking inside. Because I know it changes everything.

    The feeling is me.

    The feeling is my actual experience of the universe, in this moment, as I let the tingles creep over the outsides of my hands, and my spine starts to uncoil of its own accord, and the buried grief from a lifetime ago yells to be acknowledged.

    The feeling is everything. The unfiltered phenomena of life in this skin on this earth, under these stars.

    And encoded within the feeling is everything I am. And everything I don’t want to face.

    You don’t want to feel it

    It is understandable. Life is a shockingly visceral affair. There’s a lot of it, and not very much of you. It plants itself inside your body, pulls on your nerves, weighs down on your shoulders, plucks at your heart strings, squeezes at your guts.

    It’s understandable you don’t want to feel it. Because if you choose feeling, the result is non-consensual. Once you peel off the hardness and shake out the stuckness, you are then plunged into feeling itself. All of it.

    You don’t get to choose what you feel, and what you don’t. You can’t let in the nice stuff and keep out the painful. It’s all or nothing.

    Easier to stay numb. Safer to veg out. Simpler to maintain that you are nothing more than the ideas in your mind, and the job that you perform, and the identity you’ve been given.

    Much better not to feel.

    There are two fundamental ways to do this.

    One. You can rise above it

    Rise above the feeling.

    You can do this through calming breaths, positive mantras, or simply arguing with the utility of feeling in the first place.

    You can seek out the holiest of holy spiritual ideals, and float above yourself on a cloud of love and unicorns.

    You can drink five espressos a day, and drown out the feeling with a heroically full schedule.

    You can craft a superior and grandiose throne for yourself from which you can condemn and banish this feeling.

    You can do many of these at once! You may even be able to do it for years, decades. Some do it right until the bitter end. But bitter then you will be, for you will have spent your entire life in evasion.

    Because the feeling is none other than experience itself, which is none other than God, who is none other than you.

    And so as you rise above yourself, you ascend to a plane unearned, and thus pull rank on God himself, and claim that you know better than he, what should be felt, and what should not.

    You will not find yourself this way.

    Two. You can sink into it

    There is another way to wriggle out of this inconvenient problem of feeling. The relief of the full bodied collapse.

    Fall. Fall so fully into the feeling that you become it. Let it consume you and pull you down into its dark and warm embrace.

    Let the feeling becomes so full that the line between you and it dissolves as you become One.

    When you emerge once more, you may feel grateful. You might call it catharsis. You might even have paid workshop leaders to take you into this experience so you can feel like you’re making good progress toward finally healing yourself.

    You can spend a very long time looking for yourself in the intensity of the feeling. But it will not provide what you seek.

    For while you may believe you have honoured the feeling by communing with it so fully, what you have actually done is to have merged with it.

    You have unplugged your consciousness from awareness, and relieved yourself of the responsibility of experiencing the feeling. You have collapsed the boundaries and returned to the infancy in which there is no difference.

    You cannot feel the feeing if you are the feeling.

    You will not find yourself this way either.

    The movement of the centre

    First, drawing in the fullness of breath, to fill your chest and dilute the dry nameless pain. Bringing to life what you don’t want to feel.

    Then, slowly releasing the fullness of breath, to empty yourself and return to the silence. Reminding yourself that you are more than what you can feel.

    First, expanding up and outward, giving you a higher perspective so you can lead the chaos of life as it happens.

    Then, hunkering down and inward, bringing you into contact, so you can surrender to life as it happens.

    Up and out. Down and in.

    And in this moment it all comes together.

    The heart, held in the centre, delicately moving back and forth, regulating the flow of life.

    It is in this feeling that you reside.

    This is where you live. All of you.

    This is where you’re closest to God.

    This is where you find yourself.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • We do something no other animal does. We speak and think in words.

    It is this ability that gives us such incredible power, for we can imagine something in words, that doesn’t exist in reality.

    Words are the magic through which we create the world.

    They are also the magic through which we obscure it.

    Words are names

    They’re the names that we gave to the things around us. Table. Me. Sad. Mountain. Eat. Tree. You. Sun. These things had no name before we learned to speak.

    Perhaps the names we gave things were arbitrary. Perhaps the fact that we called water, water and not fart is complete chance. Someone called it a random sound, and it caught on, and now we’re stuck with it.

    I suspect not. I suspect there is a subtle connection between the sounds of things and the nature of things. The name water does sound rather like the bubbling of a mountain stream. At least, it sounds more like that than fart.

    Regardless, now the names are old. Water is definitely water. Sad is definitely sad. Beauty is definitely beauty. The names are deeply embedded, and when we say them, we call forth the spirit of the thing.

    We now know this from science. The mind does not distinguish between the real thing and the imagined thing. To a thirsty person, both real water and imagined water increase their thirst.

    The line between the names and the things themselves is not so clear as we might believe.

    And so by our speaking a thing’s name, we call it into existence.

    Names call forth reality

    “I can’t do it.” I say to myself.

    I’m going back through my journals, trying to identify the key threads from my life over the last year. I have this inkling that if I can find them, it will help me untangle my present reality. Pages are spread out all over the floor. There are a lot of words to sort through.

    “It’s too hard, I can’t do it” I say to myself again.

    And as I name this world, it arrives, like a loyal dog to greet me, and give me what I asked for. And lo and beyond, I find that the task is indeed beyond me, that I in fact cannot do it. And the little loop in my mind links up. I said the words, and reality confirmed their truth.

    But this is where our magical ability to name the world gets confusing.

    Because we can say things that are in fact, not true, and yet the world of those names will spring forth as if they were.

    My statement “It’s too hard. I can’t do it” was not an accurate observation of reality. It was a prediction.

    I have predicted the future, and determined that no matter what I do, I cannot find what I am looking for in these journals of mine. The task is beyond me.

    But by naming it, I have made it true.

    True names create intimacy with reality

    I take a deep breath. I pause. I try again.

    “I’m afraid. I’m afraid I can’t find what I seek.”

    My body and mind relax, as if I’ve just said the magic password.

    What I just said was true for me. I accurately named the experience that was already happening. And now my whole body has softened, and I feel in tune once more.

    It is when the unnamed reality, and the named reality fit with one another, that our experience of the world feels good, and the doors of the moment open, allowing us to witness what comes next.

    Now the fear has been named, it goes back to sleep, nestled into me, and I return to the pages on the floor.

    And then I don’t know where the time has gone, and I wake up to find a whole map laid out, with timelines, and themes.

    Be mindful of what you name

    Because what you say will become your reality. It will become true.

    If you narrate the script of your own self-delusion, then deluded you will be.

    If you name the misery that you think you deserve, then misery you will be given, and you will feel deserving of it.

    If you name yourself as the same person you’ve always been, that that person will you remain.

    Or, you can attend to the actual feel of the moment, and watch as experience bubbles forth of its own accord. And as you watch, you can simply name what arrives.

    Tree. Birds flying. Smile. Loneliness. My heart opens. Ache. The feel of life itself. Ahhhhhhh.

    As I name things in this way, I am like Adam, naming what the divine mystery gives me in each and every moment.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Because the moment that you agree to something, when in truth you don’t want it, you betray something.

    You betray yourself.

    “Yes sweetie, I’ll come to that party.”

    Except I don’t want to go.

    I would be absolutely clear about this fact if I actually looked inside and felt myself. I don’t do this. Because I know it’s really important to her. I know everyone there expects me to attend. I don’t want to seem rude. I don’t want to let anyone down.

    So I say yes.

    It doesn’t go well.

    People ask afterwards “is he ok? He didn’t seem himself.”

    Yes, he’s well. He just betrayed himself a little.

    The truth of your desire is felt

    Some tell us that desire is the root of suffering, and that if we give up our wanting, we will become enlightened. Or that wanting is selfish and greedy, and good people give to others and do what’s expected.

    Others tell us to follow our bliss, to do whatever we want, that this way we will create heaven on earth. They say we deserve our hearts desire, and we shouldn’t let anyone get in our way.

    Neither of these forms of wanting are what I am referring to. Because I think neither of them are true.

    The truth of your desire – of what you really want – is not a momentary whim. It’s not the child’s desire to have that toy now! It’s not the kind of want that needs to be met – the grasping that the Buddhists rightly tell us leads to suffering.

    It’s not even something you really get to choose.

    The truth of your desire is felt. It’s already in there, in your body-mind, before your social filters get hold of it and pass it through the appropriateness test. It’s whole, real. It’s given to you, a feeling of organic attraction that simply has you want to move closer.

    The feeling of desire could be simple and calm. It could be mountainous and overwhelming. It could be big enough that it includes all kinds of smaller things that you don’t want. What makes it true, is that you feel it. It’s not an idea, or a logical conclusion, or a fearful aversion, it’s real, and true.

    So when you’re asked to commit to something, and you don’t feel this truth of desire, why would you agree?

    There’s conflict either way

    Arnold Mindell said:

    “When you are true to the world, you come into conflict with yourself, and when you are true to yourself, you come into conflict with the world.”

    I choose conflict with the world. Every time.

    Or at least I should – when I remember that it’s a choice, and I remember that my own truth is true, and I can feel that pillar of strength that seems to wind all the way down into the earth, and all the way up to God.

    When I remember all that then I’ll choose conflict with the world.

    It’s backing myself and what I want, or its backing everyone else, and agreeing to what they want. It’s conflict either way. Pick your poison.

    The truth is there, if you know how to look

    It’s in your whole body. The whole feeling of yourself, from the highest capacities of your mind, through the vulnerabilities of your heart, into the simple knowing of your gut.

    “Yeah, that sounds interesting.”

    “Sure, ok.”

    “Well, yeah, that would probably be good.”

    All of these mean no.

    The truth of your desire is conspicuous. It’s a resounding and unmistakable signal. It doesn’t have any flimsiness to it. It emerges from inside, rooted, simple, true.

    Yes.

    When you feel it, you know it. It’s as if a bell is struck, and the note makes your entire being resonate with the truth of it.

    You may not like the truth. It may be inconvenient. It may grate against your sense of moral obligation, or appropriateness. It may mean you have great conflict with those around you.

    Maybe the consequences of acknowledging your truth feel too costly, and so it seems easier to lie to yourself, and acquiesce.

    No sweetie. Don’t do it.

    Don’t agree when you know it’s not what you want.

    Because if you do you’ll only sabotage it anyway. You’ll ensure you have a miserable time, or everyone else has a miserable time. Or you’ll regret it afterwards.

    Or worse, you won’t notice any of these things, and you’ll go through life gradually betraying yourself piece by little piece, until you don’t even know who you really are any longer.

    No.

    Don’t do anything you don’t want to.

    This way, you’ll spend your entire life doing only things you do want. And who doesn’t want that?

    Ewan Townhead

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