• This is the final part of a short series introducing three archetypes that underpin our work as entrepreneurs, freelancers and professionals—The Artist, the Merchant and the Seeker. (They are also the subject of my book, coming out in June.)

    In part one I talked about the Artist, and how so many of us have our inner creativity trained out of us through our schooling, culture and resulting wounding.

    In part two I wrote about the dilemma of the Merchant. How can we bring our offerings boldly to the marketplace without selling out our depth or authenticity?

    This article is about the third archetype. The Seeker.

    Together, these three—The Artist, Merchant and Seeker—make up a triad that sits at the heart of our work. No matter the specialism, if you’re an entrepreneur in the modern marketplace, you’re standing upon the foundations of these archetypes.

    Examining them, and how they sit inside you, can be most helpful to the work at hand. In fact, I’ve found it most illuminating to myself and clients I’ve worked with. So much so that I’ve spent about 1000 hours writing a book about it!

    Our culture teaches us that we have to compartmentalise ourselves, that we can’t bring our full range and depth to our work.

    This is not only a false narrative (the marketplace has in fact already moved on) but holds us back from the greater transformation we’re all a part of.

    When we learn to integrate these dimensions of ourselves, in our own unique way, we’re able to find richer success in what we do, and deeper peace in who we are.

    And so in this article I want to speak about the Seeker in you, and the fundamental perspective it holds inside your work. We’ve been afraid to truly own this one for quite some time now. Yet it holds the key to our future.

    The Archetype of the Seeker

    The Seeker is the part of you that searches for truth in all its forms. The quintessential explorer on the path—they seek to discover the hidden secrets of this world.

    Whether it is the rational observation of the natural sciences or a mystical inquiry into the nature of your own mind, it is the Seeker that drives your quest for truth.

    This is a core dimension of our humanity. We cannot help but ask the big questions.

    “What is this world? Why are we here? Who am I?”

    Since time immemorial the Seeker was a natural and present part of our lives. Life was spiritual. Because we’d never considered the alternative. Our lives were spent in constant relationship to the gods and the spirits.

    One of the earliest professions we know about—the shaman—is a deep Seeker, able to traverse the pathways of reality bringing back knowledge and understanding. This is how we lived for most of our existence.

    It’s only in the last couple of centuries that we took an unprecedented turn as a people. We killed God and became rational-secularists.

    It’s this dissociation of mysticism and science that has both accelerated our amazing technological progress, and hamstrung the awakening of our greater consciousness. We’ve got into a twist, where rational science and spiritual mysticism are seen as contradictory, rather than two dimensions of the same seeking.

    Awakening to our True Nature

    My own path of seeking has taken me into extraordinary places over the last 10 years. I’ve explored things I never would have imagined, and realised truths I had attributed only to genuine spiritual authorities.

    But as each new expansion occurs, the whole thing feels simpler.

    “Oh yes. I remember now.”

    I remember some of why I came here this time. Which of course means I remember being here other times too. This has been quite a revelation to me, and helped calm an enormously confused part of me.

    In 2023 I had a series of awakening experiences. Even though I’m perturbed by the ease with which the term awakening can be thrown around nowadays, there really is no other way to say it. And I think it’s time we speak more of these things.

    One of the truths I awakened to was that spirit, and spirits, are very real.

    Consciousness really isn’t based in the physical world. When we die, we don’t cease to be. In fact, we return to and remember who we really are.

    This means there are beings who don’t have bodies. In fact, this is the true nature of all beings. Physicality is but one of our possible dimensions.

    So what we call “non-physical beings” are in fact real. And we can talk to them—if we’ve found the methods, and healed enough of our fucked-up nervous systems to do so.

    I wrote about some of these experiences in Meetings with Spirit Guides.

    It is quite a strange and wonderful revelation to discover that there are non-physical beings who we can communicate with, and who can wisely help guide us along our path. This is something that I would have called myself deluded for believing 10 years ago.

    For my birthday in 2023 they told me they had a present to offer me. They “spoke” as they always do, inside my own head, as though they were my own thoughts. But now I can (mostly) tell the difference.

    That night they spoke loud and clear through my heart that was cracked and open.

    “Would you like to hear about what is in your soul contract?”

    I felt amazed. And absolutely leapt at the chance! I’ve been fascinated by my purpose ever since I can remember thinking about life…why am I here? What’s my role?

    It felt like the most wonderful gift.

    They gave me a small list of things. Many to do with my intentions, and the challenges I came here to face. They dropped right into my core, and have shaped things ever since.

    One of the things they told me is not just personal to me. It’s also true for a great many of us.

    I came here in this life at Mother Earth’s invitation, to help with her great project.

    Project Earth: Collective Awakening

    There is widely shared prophecy, if you know where to look. We’re going through an enormous shift as a species and as a planet.

    But while the details are all being worked out in real time, and the future undetermined, there is a bigger plan.

    Earth herself (for she is also a being) has decided it’s time to awaken to a fuller/higher dimension herself. And that means us (the humans) waking up to who we really are. For we are the apex species—her most complex children—and so her awakening happens through our own.

    This is a remembering—something we used to know, but have forgotten. And it’s also an unprecedented evolution. For we’ve come such a long way since those early days.

    And we’re at a critical juncture. Right now. This phase we’re all living through is the meat in the sandwich.

    She invited enormous numbers of souls to come and help with this collective awakening process. There are hundreds of millions who volunteered to come and help. I am one. I suspect you are too.

    It can feel like an amazing idea before you’ve started. And then you get in the thick of it and wonder why on earth you agreed to do it. I often feel this way. When the challenges mount, and the whole thing feels hard as fuck.

    This is now a collective experience. We’re in the thick of the game, trying to resolve paradigmatic issues, in a world gone crazy.

    It is the archetype of the Seeker that plays a central role in this unfolding, and shows you the way through the swamp of confusion.

    How do we now walk the path of truth, given all the complexity and paradox we now take as given?

    What does the spiritual path look like? We can’t walk our ancestral one, for we’ve forgotten it, and the world is completely different, and our minds too smart. We can’t follow the traditional religious paths, because that’s what got us into the mess in the first place, and required us to “kill god” and start anew.

    We have to find new paths. Ones that help us integrate all we already know. And allow us to choose the way.

    Part of this new path, I believe, winds its way through our work. Not simply something confined to the monastery or temple, but as an explicit part of who we are and what we offer in the marketplace.

    The Seeker in our Work

    I remember when I first started creating businesses, we had to be careful with our revelation of the Seeker. Even in “progressive” circles anything too spiritually “out there” would see markedly smaller responses.

    In the early days my friends and business partners would talk about “trojan-horsing” it. Rather than leading with the spiritual/consciousness stuff, we had to smuggle it in.

    I became good at it, but I also resented having to do so.  

    This has already changed a great deal. Even in the last 5 years, I’ve watched the Seeker emerge boldly into our mainstream reality more. I’ve lost count of the number of prominent people I’ve heard speak about direct and profound spiritual truths on mainstream podcasts. People who would never have spoken about such things in public before, are unashamedly describing their deep spiritual experiences and their existential worldviews.

    I find this tremendously encouraging. For I hold a deep belief…

    It’s part of our work to discover the truth of our nature. To be a Seeker. And to share our discoveries with those on a similar path.

    This is not an adjunct to your job—something you do on the side or as a secret hobby. It’s a core dimension of your work, and the business you run.

    At its heart I feel this is about us truly owning our spirituality. No matter the content.

    This is still uncomfortable for many of us. There are real risks in the marketplace.

    Telling everyone you talk to mystical aliens could quickly erode trust you’ve built up. Even if it happens to be true. Because some stuff is still pretty fucking far out there.

    And yet, I think we’re all still running on old stories—ones that urgently tell us that it’s dangerous to reveal our spirituality and mysticism.

    It’s not surprising. Our ancestors were literally hunted down and killed for outwardly practicing the mystical arts—burned at the stake or tortured by the inquisition. These memories are still embodied in us, as forms of trans-generational trauma.

    But damn, if there’s ever been a time in recent history when it is safe to fully reveal our spiritual selves, it is now.

    This is an edge I am leaning into. And in this very article too!

    Because I think it’s one of the great invitations of our time.

    It’s part of Project Awakening. And it’s part of our work.

    Each time we reveal the true spiritual seeker in us, we make it easier for another to do the same.

    And each step takes us a little closer to the remembering of who we are, and what we’re doing here.

    If you liked this article, my book: Artist, Merchant, Seeker will be published in June. Get on my mailing list if you’d like to receive a free copy.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Nestled between the stress of overwhelm, and the safety of comfort, lies a sweet spot.

    A place where you’re stretched just enough that you must evolve beyond yourself, but not so much that you break under the pressure.

    An acorn knows how it works—it requires just the right blend of support and challenge to grow into an oak. Without the support of enough water and nutrients, it cannot survive. But without the challenge to ascend into the sunlight, it will also fail to reach the height of its maturity.

    The problem is, we’re more complicated than acorns. And so we must learn to recognize and navigate the stress zone and the comfort zone, learning how to settle into the sweet spot in between.

    The Stress Zone

    Running Coaches Rising I was not short on challenge. Leading a small business through its own growing pains is painful for the leaders and the people inside.

    After several years of consistent growth, Covid happened. It was amazing and terrible for us. We grew like crazy as everyone sheltered in place and discovered zoom. Then we contracted as the market saturated, and things started to go wrong. We had to steer the company through a new market. We no longer had the place to ourselves, we had to adapt. Alongside this, we needed to professionalise. Too many of our processes were based on people keeping stuff in their heads, and not enough was written down.

    The upheaval led to one of my business partners and co-founders leaving the business. Which upped the challenge levels immeasurably.

    Running such a business threw challenges at me on a daily basis. I not only had my own responsibilities and projects, but I was also helping our team with all theirs.

    I reached a place that’s common to entrepreneurs, where my endless to-do list produced the experience of being a hamster in a wheel, with never enough time to take stock and find my centre.

    I began to rely on the challenges coming at me, rather than seeking them out and choosing the trials I faced. And I became a good servant leader, working myself into the ground for the good of the cause.

    This is a masculine wound. The warrior who does not have the wisdom to stop, and wind down from the battle and actually feel himself.

    I became so used to being out of my comfort zone that at some point I just let go, and let the storm reshape me. It was messy at times, and yet it forced me to mature in profound ways.

    But it had a cost.

    The pressure was relentless and gave me no room or ground from which to use my inbuilt gifts—my artistry, creativity and transformational wisdom. And so, I “put them away for another day, when I had time.”

    Until my body stepped in and closed the whole thing down. I was forced to look at what I’d been ignoring.

    This is an example of too much challenge. Which results in overshooting the growth zone.

    The stress of responsibility, combined with the burying of my deeper gifts left me dry, tight and uninspired. I didn’t know how to find enough support for myself, and my growth stagnated.

    This is the stress zone.

    The Comfort Zone

    The opposite of the stress zone is the comfort zone. Something we all know intimately.

    This is where there is not enough challenge (and too much support).

    It’s a strategic form of threat aversion. You bed down where it feels safe, do all the things that you know are ok, and don’t take any risks. It’s like an antelope hiding out in the bush after a near thing with a lion.

    If the antelope had our “sophisticated” neocortex, it would spin all kinds of stories about the world, get stuck in its trauma, and become afraid to do anything that risks the lion finding it again.

    Real antelopes don’t do this. When their senses tell them it’s safe once more, they get up, hop off and continue on with their life.

    The comfort zone is a result of trying to create safety, by sticking to what you know. It feels like you’re being smart and responsible, not putting too much pressure on yourself. But like too much stress and challenge, it also misses the sweet spot.

    I have ingenious ways of staying in the comfort zone. When the goals and challenges feel big, I like to “calm myself down”, spending hours doing spiritual practice so I feel better. Or concocting more detailed plans and strategies that I hope will nullify the fear and insecurity.

    When stuck in the comfort zone, I stay where I am, like the antelope in the bush, waiting for a moment it feels safe to emerge. I diligently do things that I think make me feel safer.

    But the result isn’t real safety. It’s a particular brand of anxiety that doesn’t abate. It can seem like I’m supporting myself and taking care of myself, but really I’m hiding. Perhaps you recognize your own version of this.

    The incessant quest to create safety results in an experience that feels anything but safe, because it’s predicated on a mistaken belief. That one day it will be safe.

    This is the comfort zone. Which is a strange name for it. Because underneath all the strategizing, it’s anything but safe.

    Between these two zones of stress and comfort lies a third place—the growth zone.

    The Magic of the Growth Zone

    On the inside, the growth zone feels like the result of having taken a series of steps far enough outside of known territory, that I don’t even fully understand how I got here, or what’s going on. And yet it’s thrilling. The courage has made me do things that seem risky to the antelope in the bush, but as I do them, I start to feel more like the lion.

    I sit writing this having finished the manuscript for my book. I’ve dreamed of reaching this stage. And now I’m here, it feels so totally weird. I’m proud, and excited. And yet it all feels so unfamiliar. Like I’ve wandered out of the town I know so well, and I find myself in a place I’ve never been before. One I didn’t even know existed.

    I got here by following the call deep inside. The one that said “you must finish this book”. I knew it was true, though I had no idea how to do it.

    I did it by committing completely to the goal. And then every day, showing up to work on it no matter my mood. The inner voices were unequivocal in their caution. “How can you think you can do this Ewan? You have no track record.”

    Which is exactly the point. I had to grow to be able to finish it. The one that started the book was not the same one that finished it. And in order to become that person, I had to choose very carefully who I was going to listen to.

    “Don’t go that way!” Says the antelope.

    But in the magic of the growth-zone, resistance works like a signpost, pointing the way.

    One form of resistance is to be trusted (a genuine indication to head another direction). It’s your heart not wanting to go that way, but your mind thinking you have to. This is a kind of deadening resistance. It makes your heart sink, and your energy drop.

    The other kind of resistance makes your pulse quicken and your energy activate. It feels like fear, but is also excitement (if you can alchemize the sensations). Because it’s actually both—life force energy activating as the path lights up. This kind of resistance is like a neon sign over the doorway.

    “Scared as fuck? Step right through.”

    This is the feeling of being in the growth zone—working outside of known reality, risking all the things that keep you comfortable and seemingly safe.

    And in this way, do we grow, as the tree grows, becoming ever bigger and wider. The acorn fulfils its contract to become the oak. You and I fulfil the mission we came here with. To grow into the big and beautiful being we’re asked to become.

    Where is your resistance pointing you? What is the magic that is calling you inside the growth zone?

    Ewan Townhead

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  • This is part two of a three-part series leading up to the publishing of my first book—Artist, Merchant, Seeker.

    The book that will be released this Spring is about three archetypes, and how they form the basis of your work, no matter the profession or specialism you play in.

    These are very different archetypes, with entirely distinct ways of approaching the work of life.

    • The Artist is the creator in you, who makes things from the mysterious passions that light you up inside, forming artefacts of beauty that touch and move people.
    • The Seeker is the one who searches for the truth of this life, learning the nature of who we are and how the world works, bringing back wisdom that can be taught to others.
    • The Merchant is the trader in you, who offers the value you possess, in the marketplace, because mutual exchange benefits all of us, and propels our communities into richer lives.

    These are universal archetypes, and core to our work, but we tend to be native in one of these. And there’s one that feels foreign and unfamiliar.

    For me, and many of the people I work with, this is the Merchant.

    I’ve been long fascinated by the archetype. Because while it’s not native to me, I realised early on in my work life, that it was key. I couldn’t have named it that way. I just knew that if I wanted to make a difference in the world, in the way I felt called to, the path led through business.

    In inner city Sheffield where I grew up, Merchants were people with corner shops. I didn’t know any entrepreneurs. My social circles were filled with Artists, creatives and spiritual Seekers.

    My first business was high on idealism and low on know-how. Our one and only client was HolacracyOne who we helped to put on their first training events in Europe. At the first event, I asked one of the leaders, Tom Thomison what one business book he’d recommend I read (since I had never read one).

    I read it—Verne Harnish’s Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. It was the first book on a long path of self-learning. I’ve read a lot of business books since then, though I’ve probably spent more hours listening to business leaders and entrepreneurs on podcasts. And even more time learning through the direct experience of running businesses.

    I’ve studied the Merchant deeply, because it’s a place I have resistance, struggle and allergy. My native instinct is to steer away from the corrupting influence of the marketplace—to keep the dharma pure.

    So, in this article I’m going to reveal the heart of the Merchant archetype, and decode the dilemma that so many of us struggle with—how to embody its power without falling foul of its shadow.

    The Heart of the Merchant

    I love archetypal work, because it takes us to the root and heart of things. It helps us see the underlying code, as distinct from the infinite expressions we see around us in the world. This has been particularly important for me with the Merchant archetype.

    At the heart of the Merchant is a relational ethic—one that drives them to do good. They orient by what in the modern world we would call value. We use a sophisticated monetary system to track value and enable us to exchange it.

    For this is the central move of the Merchant—to trade in value, such that both parties benefit.

    If the thing I sell you is worth more to you than the value you’re paying, and the reverse is also true for me, then we’ve created extra value. More goodness, that didn’t exist before our exchange.

    This is a first principle of economics. When you take that principle, and build systems that allow and encourage it, the world becomes wealthier. Our modern culture is a living example of this.

    When this principle is channelled through an open heart it produces mutual thriving, progress for the community at large.

    When the underlying strategy is employed through a closed and wounded heart, we see instead into the Merchant’s shadow.

    There’s an idea I learned from Joseph Campbell. That you can see what’s centrally informing a society, by who creates its tallest buildings.

    It used to be castles because we were informed by conquest. Then it was temples and cathedrals because we were ruled by the gods. Now it’s skyscrapers because we are ruled by commerce.

    We are currently living through peak materialism. The Merchant sits at the height of his power.

    We are all reaping the unprecedented benefits of this. I am writing this, and you are reading this, on machines that were total science fiction not too long ago.

    And yet, as Gandalf teaches us, you cannot hold the ring of power without being affected by its corruption.

    The Shadow of the Merchant

    The shadow form of an archetype is what happens when it uses its power for dark aims, when the power is corrupted.

    The Shadow Merchant uses the power of trade, innovation and persuasion to win, at the expense of others. The move is driven by greed—an insatiable striving for more and greater. But the hole is never filled, and the scale of the enterprise never enough.

    While the heart of the Merchant’s ethic is mutual benefit, in its shadow form, this becomes singular benefit. And so, if the Merchant can win—at the expense of their customers, suppliers, or the environment itself—they will.

    In its darkest form this becomes gross deception, where the promised value the Merchant is offering does not even exist. It’s a scam.

    To live in this world is to live in the glory of the Merchant’s light, and the corruption of its shadow. For both are loud and present.

    And yet the shadow is not simply collective. I say this, in the (forthcoming) book…

    “The Shadow Merchant—if you’re willing to look—is plain to see. It’s all around us, cleverly using its power with greed, making profit at the expense of the wider good.

    Seeing this, though, can lead to a tragic mistake. Faced by the ugliness of the Merchant’s shadow, and not wanting to perpetuate its immorality, we then throw out the Merchant as a whole, declaring the whole game corrupt.

    This puts the Merchant in our own shadow—tucked away, where we can’t see it, and don’t use it. This then creates an internal suppression that robs us of our power to help and succeed. For the most precious and valuable work will do no good if it is not offered in the marketplace.”

    The Dilemma We’re Facing

    This, I think is the crux.

    It’s so easy for me—and so many people I know—to see with wide open eyes, the shadow of the Merchant, and resist its power. We fear being corrupted. Selling out. Selling our soul.

    And so, we’re stuck in a dilemma.

    Keep it pure and hide at the outskirts of the marketplace.

    OR

    Sell out in order to enter the centre of the marketplace.

    Faced with this choice, most of us choose to keep it pure. Anything rather than sell out.

    But the problem is the question itself. The dilemma itself is based on a false premise. That it’s either one or the other. It’s not. So, what’s the third option?

    It starts with integrity and honour. Don’t sell out.

    But neither can you avoid the act of selling itself.

    Rather, you learn how to courageously sell the value you possess, embodying the heart of the Merchant, without violating your ethical code.

    Though even knowing this doesn’t fully dissolve the dilemma. Even if we can choose to trade with integrity, why do so many of us still keep to the margins?

    In my experience, the story comes back to us, and our own insecurities.

    It’s easier to condemn the slimy marketplace and play it safe on the margins, than it is to step boldly forward, and be a stand for your own integrity.

    We fear we’re not strong, conscious or smart enough to work out how to do it ethically and effectively.

    This manifests as a feeling of insecurity—not fully believing in the value we possess. Or as a feeling of incompetence—unsure how to play the game in a way that works ethically and practically.

    This is central to the work I’ve done with my coaching clients over the years. It’s often the reason people come to me.

    The Merchant’s dilemma is not really about commerce and corruption. It’s about our own self-doubt.

    We doubt that we have enough value. Or enough mercantile competence. So, we play it safe. But the result is helpful for neither us nor the people who would really benefit from what we have.

    The solution is to find your own Merchant’s heart, trusting that your integrity will not be compromised. This same integrity is what will help you stand out in a marketplace full of shadow.

    I still remember writing the proposal for the people who became my first coaching clients twelve years ago. They were (lovingly) bugging me, asking when I would make a proposal for the work we’d talked about doing.

    I was filled with self-doubt, incredulous that I had the skills to help these amazing entrepreneurs, or that I could charge the amount of money I wanted to. I felt incompetent, unsure how I would help them with the marketing goals they had.

    It took me several days of writing, agonising over the right wording, trying to craft the offer to feel powerful, honest, and appealing. I remember sending it off, utterly unsure what would happen, but resolute in the knowledge I’d played my hand as best I could.

    I got a short email back very quickly “Yes, Ewan! We’re in”.

    This is the heart of the Merchant at work.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Despite what our calendars tell us, now is a wonderful time to engage your new year energy.

    I know we’re in March, and our “New Year” was supposed to be two months ago, but as I’m going to explain, this tradition is actually a relic of bureaucratic decisions made a long time ago. We’re running an old calendar that doesn’t align very well with the natural cycle of time.

    When we re-align with a “natural” calendar, something based on deep time, our actions and energy can work in tandem with the phase the world is actually in.

    This is particularly pertinent to the practice of goal setting and new year planning.

    For over a decade now, I’ve relished the new year tradition. I love the downtime over Christmas, and then the invitation to mark the passing of the year.

    I’ve developed my ritual over the years. It starts with a deep review of the year just passed, with particular attention placed on my wins, successes and appreciations (gratitude is important for me to counter the “never enough” voice).

    And then my favourite part—a deep enquiry into my vision for the year ahead. What do I want to create? What is it that wants to come through this year?

    In more recent years I’ve learned how to then take all this, and “call it in” spiritually.

    What I realised this year, is that January 1st is a really fucking weird time of year to do it.

    Time cycles and ancient bureaucracy

    There is a cycle of deep time. Something that is built upon natural and real events, rather than the more arbitrary models our human culture tends to run on.

    This natural cycle is based upon the actual events that create our global year. It’s the time it takes for the Earth to fully orbit the Sun. This creates our seasons, our solstices and equinoxes. There is nothing arbitrary about this cycle.

    We start our year on Jan 1st, which does not align with this cycle. It’s close to the Winter Solstice, but not really. Why do we place it here? The Romans. Whose ancient tinkering is still coded into the way we think about time.

    Originally, the Roman New Year began in March, which was their first month. The period between December (the final month) and the beginning of the year was left as undefined “winter” time. This is something many pagan cultures did.

    In roughly 700 BC, the Roman calendar was upgraded from a 10-month to a 12-month system. January and February were added, and a 355-day year standardised.

    This screwed up the order, and the numerically named months got out of sequence. September comes from ‘sept’—seven. But where does it fall in our calendar? That’s right, ninth. The same issue goes for October—December. Oops.

    Gradually, more changes were brought in, including the moving of the New Year from March, back to January. This was a key move that is of course still preserved in our calendar.

    Why did they do it? In short—ancient bureaucracy. It had administrative advantages, and allowed them to better prepare for that Spring’s planned military campaigns.

    Which all results in some funky karmic energy still running through our New Year’s magic. As Dr. John Churchill says, we’re still running on empire time.

    A natural quarterly cycle

    As our world heads ever more frantically down the technological rabbit-hole, I feel many of us are called to a re-integration with the natural timing of things. To align with the deep code in our bodies with the cycles of change, expansion and contraction.

    We’ve got most of the right practices, we’re just doing them at the wrong time.

    Rather than follow an old calendar designed by an empire looking for military expansion, I believe we are being asked to remember and realign with the natural calendar that Earth provides.

    This is a calendar that is based on deep time—the actual passage of our planet around her Sun. The solstices, and the equinoxes are natural delineations of time given by astronomical and astrological reality.

    We adhered to this natural calendar for so long we don’t even know when it started. Though the solar alignment of many ancient structures gives us a clue as to how deep this knowledge went.

    And according to the natural calendar, now is a wonderful time to activate your new year energy. As we approach the Spring Equinox (March 21), and new life is sprouting all around us, the natural world is literally inviting us to join the growth party.

    From the perspective of natural time, this makes much more sense as the “start of the year”, and something that many cultures practiced for millennia.

    Making it real

    If you already have a plan for your year—you know what your goals and intentions are—then this is a great time to call it in, commit to it, and feed your soul juju into its bubbly excitement.

    If you don’t have a plan and you’re unclear what you’re aiming at this year, then this is also a great time to do that work. You haven’t missed the boat. You’re just in time.

    What is the essence of this practice?

    • The purpose is to get clear about your goals and intentions. This is what sets your aim for the journey ahead.
    • Source them from as deep a place as you can find. Take your time, let the truth come through you.
    • Write them out in a short list—get specific with your language. Shorter is better, distilling down the essence into simple language.

    Don’t ask AI to generate all this for you. What makes the process powerful is the struggle and learning as you translate what’s inside you into words. The result is infused with your own creative effort and is what sets the tone for the year ahead.

    My favourite way to “sign off” on my yearly plan is to do so in ceremony.

    After I stir up the magical field, I say out loud what my goals and intentions are. I call in the spirits of change, asking for help and guidance as I commit to the path for the year ahead. This is an embodied practice too—feeling the desire in my body as I speak, including the doubts and fears, declaring the commitment in my heart.

    This brings it into the present moment—making it a real and embodied declaration.

    There are many ways to do this kind of ceremonial commitment. The form is less important than the authenticity—making it your ritual, following your intuition. What makes it powerful is the pouring of your sincere intention into the vision.

    New life is sprouting all around. What wants to be born through you and your work this year?

    What will you create?

    I will be taking the goals and planning I did on December 31st, refining them into my plan for the next year, and invoking the spirit of Spring to help me create it.

    Would you like to join in?

    Ewan Townhead

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  • There is a deep art to the work you do. No matter the form, no matter the specialism, your artistry and creativity are crucial for meaningful work.

    Creativity, I believe, is a function of the Artist within us—the archetypal character that makes something from nothing. We all have it inside. It’s what connects us to our innate creative power.

    Unfortunately, many of us are trained out of it, or even worse, don’t believe we have it to start with!

    How we kill creative genius

    There’s a fascinating study done by NASA in the 60s, exploring levels of creativity and innovation in people (they wanted to hire more creative engineers). For some reason, they used the same test on a bunch of kids, to see how they’d do. What they found was amazing.

    98% of these 5-year-olds scored as “creative geniuses”. The highest level in their model.

    But as they retested them over time, the creativity level steadily declined, until as adults less than 2% of those same people scored as creative geniuses.

    This of course begs the question: what the fuck happened in between?

    Well, school happened. And our assimilation into the culture that designed the schools.

    At school, we’re taught that work consists of a series of tasks which are put in front of us. We must complete the task, which means “getting it right”. The list of sums, or the drawing of a flower. We know it’s complete, and we got it right when the teacher says so.

    In my school, this was literally built into the workflow. When I was done with my task, I would get up, walk across to the teacher’s desk, and show her what I’d done. She would then check it and tell me if it was right or not.

    We are trained to take tests – the object of which is to get the right answer. The right answers according to whom? The people who make the test of course.

    “OK children. This morning we’re all going to make Mother’s Day cards.”

    We’re shown how to make a correct Mother’s Day card, which involves lots of reds and pinks, flowers and hearts. This is demonstrated to us through the materials we’re given to make these cards. You guessed it – red and pink paper, and pictures of flowers and hearts. The text for the inside of the card is displayed on the board so everyone can see.

    We know we passed the test when the teacher says, “ah that’s lovely”. We know we failed if she says, “that’s very ‘interesting’, but you were supposed to put hearts and flowers on it”.

    And so, day after day, year after year, we spend our childhoods being indoctrinated into the idea that life is about getting the right answers on the test.

    This is how we kill our creative genius.

    Creativity comes from the Artist inside

    Creativity does not want to be assessed according to right or wrong, it’s trying to get outside the box that the test came in.

    There is no “right form” for a piece of writing. There is no “correct” way to make up a story.

    Our creativity comes from the spirit of an archetype—the Artist—something we all possess inside. It was there when we were 5 years old. It’s still there now. And it contains the deep code that allows you to reach beyond the known world and create things you didn’t know you could make.

    This capacity is particularly important for us as entrepreneurs (people who make a business from the things they’re both good at and called by). For it is the Artist in us that expresses our deep creative power.

    The growth of a business involves the forging of new pathways. It means doing things you’ve never done before.

    And you’re here in life to do something that’s never been done before. Not the way you do it. And without the Artist inside, it’s almost impossible to find the path.

    So often we’re shamed in the creative act as children, and we learn to bury the Artist inside. As adults on our career pathway, we’re usually taught that art is “outside the business scope”.

    But it’s always here.

    It’s inside you right now. It’s the part of you that knows how to just make something, without a clear idea of what you’ll end up with. This is the magic of the Artist archetype—to channel things from beyond you into forms that surprise even you.

    The art that we create touches others, moving them through some indefinable sense of beauty. And it teaches us to see something new, even though the thing is often hard to name.

    Following the creative impulse

    Are you conscious of the Artist in you? Do you recognize your own artistry?

    Maybe you read these words and think “I’m not an artist”. This is common, and understandable. But it’s not actually true. You are an Artist—you possess this archetypal power. But perhaps it is not fully activated. Or it’s sitting dormant, waiting for you to wake it up.

    What ‘crazy’ idea wants to come through you? What’s the idea you’re already holding, of something you want to make?

    Perhaps it’s a teaching program on a topic you feel really moved by, but don’t know how to structure. Perhaps you want to write something or sculpt something. Maybe you want to create a strategic plan for your business. There is an art to all of these things.

    The Artist is moved to create. You feel it in your body—a feeling of excitement, fear and possibility.

    Can you feel the impulse? It’s in there somewhere, fizzing with glee, hoping you’ll pick it up and run with it. It may be subtle. You may need to quieten and still yourself to be able to feel it.

    The thing with art is, you don’t know where you’re going to end up. And it’s easy therefore to dismiss the impulse as impractical or silly.

    That’s our cultural code still at work, telling you to get back to the “right” work with the “right” answers.

    Creativity doesn’t follow this code. It’s taking you somewhere much more surprising.

    Trust the impulse. Follow it. See what comes out. See what you create.

    You don’t have to act on every single one! But if you act on none, you will never find out how creative you really are.

    If you’re feeling courageous, you could even tune in right now. Actually take a moment, and tune in…

    Feel your own body. Notice the sensation of the impulse. Then ask yourself “what do I feel moved to create?” And see what shows up.

    What’s the thing you want to make?

    Feel it. It has life energy. If you want, you can ride the impulse and see where it takes you. This is the creative power that the Artist gives you.

     

    This is part of a series of articles about the Artist, the Merchant, and the Seeker—core archetypes that underpin entrepreneurial work.

    My book on these archetypes will be published this Spring.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Life is a series of ups and downs. Anyone who’s lived one and thought about it will attest to this universal truth.

    Sometimes life feels amazing. We’re in flow, high on the joy and achievement of what we’re doing. It seems as though the gods have aligned, and we’re flying along the causeway of purpose.

    Sometimes life feels fucking hard. We’re pulled down into the fear, grief and resentment, wondering why on earth nothing is going our way. It seems as though the world has conspired to fuck us at every turn.

    It’s the dance between these polarities that defines in large part, the human journey.

    We come here to learn. To incarnate in Earth School is not for the faint of heart. It’s no picnic. Earth is like a melting pot of our galactic diversity. And things never stop changing here.

    This is quite aside from our current predicament, living inside a culture that has drifted further than ever before from the spiritual truth of who we really are. We’re carrying generations of trauma from centuries of heinous abuse and violence. Our technology has outpaced our wisdom so far, that we’re actively destroying the biosphere in which we live. Uncertainty is at unprecedented levels, far higher than our neurobiology is built to handle.

    It’s not an easy place, or time, in which to be alive as a human.

    The Depths are Here to Teach Us

    If you think of the lows as the wrong way, and try to escape them or avoid them, because you think you need to be up higher, then you will miss the point entirely.

    For the lows are teaching us something that we can learn in no other way. Why else would an enlightened and immortal soul willingly choose to come and incarnate down here in this severely limiting and scary experience? Because it’s an incredibly potent form of learning. You get the message, deep down inside you, forged in the midst of dense struggle. It’s embodied learning in the most literal sense.

    The infuriating truth is that, if you keep running into the same wall, it’s because you haven’t got the message yet. Infuriating to the little one in us, who rails and whines, baffled by the unfairness of it all.

    “Why does it have to be so hard? I’m trying so hard and then this happens! I’ll never solve this!”

    We choose this. And whatever wall you keep banging your head against is the one you knew you were coming here to work out. You wanted to. In fact, you were excited to come and take on the challenge.

    Though it’s a lot easier to feel excited and capable when you’re an enlightened soul on the other side. It’s a lot fucking harder when you’re Ewan, or Jim, or Janet, wondering how on earth to get through it.

    We don’t want to descend. Our culture does not value it—we’re taught that it’s better to be flying high than down in the dumps. But a culture that refuses the journey of descent produces leaders and stories still captured by their own shadow.

    If we were to trust our inner compass, we would climb all the way down to where the clues and directions lie.

    Surrender to the Descent

    Over the last couple of years, I’ve developed a practice of “going to the bottom of the well”. It’s been forged in those low moments.

    When I’m in the “life feels fucking hard” zone, and the dark clouds form up, I stop what I’m doing, and face the pain. And I allow the ‘negative’ emotions to pull me down into the truth of the moment.

    To do this I have to contend with my conditioning, which wants to resist this descent. It’s dark, it’s scary, there could be all kinds of monsters down there (says the little voice inside). At the very least it’s going to hurt or feel really unpleasant.

    I have a hundred patterns which want to distract me or pump myself up and push it away.

    Instead, I choose to trust the deeper knowing, which has no fear of the dark, which knows it’s all just different dimensions of source, of God.

    So, I allow myself to fall, to descend right to the bottom of the well.

    When you allow yourself to fall right to the bottom of the well, you encounter a whole bunch of feelings, sensations and experiences which are challenging to be with. This is the point. This is the stuff you’re desperately trying to remain afloat on top of. Using increasing energy to keep yourself away from.

    When you learn to just be in the pain at the bottom, you’ll begin a healing process. For when the dark comes into the light, it begins to transform.

    But what I’ve found most powerful in this practice is this…

    At the bottom of the well, there are messages written on the walls. They’re messages that you can’t receive anywhere else. You can’t hear them higher up in the hustle and bustle of life. Only here, only down at the bottom of the well can you fully receive them.

    How to Go to the Bottom of the Well

    So how do you do this, practically? Here’s what I suggest.

    The next time you feel yourself being pulled down into the dark, make a choice to do so consciously and with intent. This is the first challenge—to be conscious enough to notice you’re already feeling low, and then choose to trust the fall.

    Find a quiet and safe space where you can make the journey.

    Light a candle. Put on some evocative music. And get on the floor. Getting on the floor is important. It’s the physical representation of “down”. Get on your knees and put your head on the floor, or lie flat on your back. If it’s really dark, curl up like a foetus.

    Close your eyes.

    And trust God as you’re taken down.

    Let go. Surrender. Allow yourself to feel all you are feeling. Let thoughts drift past. Allow your body to soften to the feelings you fear.

    If you feel scared, just allow yourself to be afraid. If you feel sad, just allow that grief to move you. Let your body move as it feels. Just stop clenching, and allow the feelings to do what they will through your movement.

    Breathing is important. Keep breathing. This is what allows everything to move. Breath is the spirit that adds light to the mixture.

    And then listen for the messages. Watch your thoughts for things that really speak to you.

    There’s a knowing that is available here. Open yourself to it.

    It may not be easy to hear. You may want to turn away from it. Keep surrendering.

    The more you let go, the more space there is for wisdom to enter. Watch for it. You might hear it, as a voice whispered. You might see it, like a dream image in your mind’s eye. You may just feel it and know.

    And then take your message, and nurture it. Like a small ember that can light a fire that burns through the wall you keep banging your head against.

    Remember it. Write it down. Tell the story to someone you trust. And let it do its work.

    And if you don’t get the message? Never fear, another invitation to the bottom of the well will come around before long.

    This is the gift of the dark. To show us what we don’t want to admit or cannot bear to see. But only in the light of this insight can we find the path forwards.

    And as you learn to appreciate these gifts of the dark, and you become accustomed to the trip down to the bottom, it will become much less scary. Indeed, it will become a super-power. A capacity to access deep knowing and higher wisdom that is found in no other way.

    It gives you a structural integrity that can hold the whole of you. It allows you to find the way into the higher reaches of yourself. For as Jung said, “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

    Befriend the descent into the dark and it will teach you all you need to know about the higher path forwards.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • It’s been humbling to have realised just how much I live life out of my head. I know I’m not special in this regard, it’s pretty much the norm. But still, it feels confronting as fuck.

    As the years of body practice have finally started to pay off, and I’ve learned how to feel the inside my whole body, I’ve discovered the parts of my archetypal energy I’ve been suppressing all these years.

    The opposite of living in your head is living in your fuck. I mean this technically. If you map the energetic centres of your body from top to bottom, the head centre (6th chakra) is opposite your sacral centre (2nd charka). They are a binary pair in certain respects.

    When we descend our attention down into the 2nd centre, we feel the energy of fuck.

    I was brought up to believe it was just a bad word – a swear word that describes a naughty thing. The English have all kinds of social rules about stuff we all do but agree not to talk about. Fucking is very high up the list.

    Different types of fuck

    The energy of fuck is simply the energy of creation, the natural act of birthing and making something new. It’s built into the organic structure of every living thing we know about.

    Fucking requires two to make a third. In animals this means a male and a female. One is the fucker, and the other the fuckee. They both create the fucking, but from opposite ends of the spectrum.

    Fuck energy therefore is your (literal) birth right. But it isn’t just about physical fucking though. Sex is the physical expression of deeper energy codes.  The root energy itself is applicable (and necessary) in many walks of life.

    It’s the part of me that pushes through my resistance to send the message I’ve been putting off for days. “Fuck it, I’ll do it now.”

    “You can’t say that to them!” The protectors inside protest. “That’s a huge risk!”

    “Yeah…fuck it.”

    It’s good for cutting off the possibilities you really don’t want too.

    “Fuck that. No way.”

    Or to put it another way, fuck energy is unambiguous. It knows what it wants and doesn’t. It’s “fuck yes!” or “fuck no!”. There is no “fuck maybe!”

    It’s also the part of me that helps me combat the over-empathising my mind likes to do amidst conflict. I’m so used to seeing thins from the other’s point of view, and getting myself all twisted up.

    “Well, I can understand why she feels that way. I didn’t help when I did that thing. She just got really frustrated.” Which is all well and good, except it often disassociates me from my own experience and emotions, clogging up and confusing me.

    “Oh, fuck her.” I say to myself as I retreat from the kitchen and take some space to rediscover my centre again.

    Fuck energy doesn’t seem to hold grudges. It’s in the moment. “Fuck her”, in the moment. And then when I’ve felt through myself fully, I can own the anger and the hurt and open my heart to her experience more genuinely.

    As a man, I’m much less comfortable being in the receiving end of the fuck spectrum. When things are really challenging, and shit is falling apart, I can feel like I’m getting fucked by life. At the worst moments I feel like the innocent victim in some horrible abuse story. In my rare moments I feel like the lover of the Gods, who is opening themselves to the penetration of a deeper truth.

    Fuck energy is also at the root of boundary creation. Like, shit is going down, and someone won’t get out of your face.

    “Fuck off.”

    Although fighting fire with fire can tend to flare the other’s “fuck you” energy in return, which then makes a big explosive mess.

    The incontestable truth is the one that simply comes from your own core – “fuck no”.

    The pure energy does not make the other at fault. It’s not about them, it’s simply you claiming what’s true for you. This is felt directly in the body. The feeling of “fuck no” and “fuck yes” are loud if you’re present enough to recognize them.

    The energy rises from your pelvis and lower belly. Just send your consciousness down there for a few moments, let the whole thing relax and drop. It’s right there.

    This is not generally something we tend to do in normal life! I was trained from a young age (like most of us) to exclude this energy in my body. “Now be a good boy Ewan, sit at your desk and do your work.”

    “Fuck that.” My body wanted to say.

    “OK Mrs Shaw.” I said instead.

    We’re trained by our culture to suppress it most of the time. And with good reason. Fuck energy used without consciousness awareness, through a wonky nervous system can be very destructive.

    Fuck energy can be scary. It’s powerful. We’re not taught how to play with it safely. And the fear cuts both ways.

    To feel violated by someone else’s fuck energy can wound us deeply.

    To have our own fuck energy rejected by someone else wounds us too.

    Many of us carry trauma from situations with a lot of unconscious fuck, whether our own, or those of our ancestors. Society has been successfully fucking up our nervous systems in this regard for centuries now.

    But used with consciousness it is the energy of creative change itself.

    The energy at the root of creation

    Fuck energy is creation energy. And that means it actually works both as creation and destruction. That’s why kill energy comes from the same place. And why fucking is also what creates the biggest miracle we know – the birth of a new being.

    A woman’s body runs a creation/destruction cycle on a monthly basis. It creates the nurturing conditions for a new baby to enter, and when it’s not used, tears it all down again and bleeds it out.

    There is an inbuilt polarity to our experience of this energy. Biologically it’s modelled for one to fuck, and one to be fucked. On the level of energy, we’re made of both, and can channel the power of both.

    Therefore, you can also think of your own fuck energy existing on a spectrum between two poles.

    Masculine fuck energy is required if you want to make a splash in this world of ours. This is true regardless of your gender. You have to penetrate the market, open up the space of possibility, and spread your work in the world.

    And yet, as we can see, so many are also burning out on that yang determination to keep smashing through walls, competing for the prize, attaining alpha status. Our society – for so long modelled on the power of the masculine mode – is coming apart at the seams.

    Feminine fuck energy is required if you want to receive the bounty and beauty of this world of ours. This is also true regardless of gender. You have to open yourself to what’s present, surrender to what’s entering you, meet life and work with love and acceptance.

    I believe the deeper invitation is tantric—to integrate the polarity of fuck in our stories, our bodies and our energy. To realise that you can penetrate the world, and fuck it, from love. This is everyone’s right through their own free-will, regardless of biology. And to realise that you’re also being fucked by the world. This is everyone’s right too—to open and to receive what is already being given.

    In other words, the integration move is to learn to fuck and be fucked.

    This begins with allowing yourself to feel your own fuck. The word carries the energy quite brilliantly. If you want to explore your own fuck, just say the word to yourself, out loud, then keep saying it and notice what that name calls forth in your own body and feelings.

    If you want to increase the intensity, try running your hands over your hips, glutes, belly, groin, genitals, pelvic floor – where fuck is rooted. Feel your body respond to your own hands. Notice your experience.

    This energy is vital for a life of creative expression and joy. It’s all your own sovereign energy – the thrust forward into life to search for your desire, the leaning back into life, receiving the beauty you yearn for.

    So find your fuck. And to learn to play both sides. To be both fucker and fuckee. And enjoy the fuck out of the experience.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Today marks a threshold for me.

    After a five-year hiatus, a deep journey into business leadership, some life-changing events, and several months of preparation, I’m re-opening my coaching shop.

    I feel so grateful and happy to be here once more.

    But to explain why, I need to tell you a story.

    When you drift off track

    Have you ever noticed that life has this way of helping you out when you drift off track? It throws stuff at you to help you find the way again. The twist is that the help doesn’t always feel helpful at first. It can fuck things up, make it harder.

    And yet help it is, and back onto the path it ushers us, whether gently or forcefully.

    Over the last year, I’ve been given a deep lesson in this principle. Because boy did I drift off track.

    It’s easily done. And in fact (and perhaps infuriatingly) it turns out that drifting off track is also the path too. Because all the detours you take and the circles you spin in, are of course part of the journey. We have to go off track to rediscover the track.

    It was in 2020 when I finished up with my last coaching client. I knew I needed to step back for a while. I loved my clients. They were feeling deeply served. Yet, somehow I couldn’t fit myself into the same box anymore, and didn’t know what the new box was.

    So I stopped coaching. And I stopped writing.

    I always planned to come back to it when things settled down and got easier. Which (spoiler alert) never came!

    This was the same year I stepped in as co-owner and co-leader of Coaches Rising, a company two friends of mine had founded together, and for which I’d run the marketing since 2014.

    Coaches Rising is an amazing company. It was an early pioneer in online programs for coaches, creating advanced coach trainings on transformational topics, led by world-class faculty. Thousands of coaches take its training programs every year

    Growth and divorce in business

    2020 and covid turned out to be a big year for Coaches Rising. As the world sheltered in place and turned to the internet for social connection and deeper experience, our programs exploded.  And my coaching fell firmly out of sight as the workload increased.

    Then in the autumn of 2021, one of my partners (and co-founder of the company) told us he wanted to step out of the company and move onto new things.

    None of us had expected this, and we went on a steep learning curve as we learned how to do “business divorce”.

    One of the things divorce means, is a difficult negotiation of value where the party that’s leaving inevitably thinks the company is worth more than the party that’s staying.

    Alongside this is the emotional letting go, and the gaping hole that this person leaves behind in the work of the company.

    This takes months. And meanwhile, there’s still a company to run. Any business owner who’s been through this experience knows how hard it is.

    We made it. We remained friends on the other side. We all moved on.

    Which for me and Joel (the remaining co-founder) meant the challenge of taking the company into a new phase.

    I should say who Joel is, because he is not simply the founder of Coaches Rising, he’s my soul brother. We moved to Amsterdam together in 2008 in search of “conscious community”, and we’ve long been each other’s first phone call when the shit hits the fan.

    Business leadership and soul pain

    It was a big change for both of us.  We took on new roles and responsibilities, we started to revision the company, we hired new people for our growing team.

    Some people say you should never go into business with your friends. I feel the opposite of this. I only want to do it if I can do it with friends.

    But it does come with its challenges! And Joel and I had them.

    We had wins, we had losses. We navigated challenges. We matured parts of the company that greatly needed it.

    I learned more than I can write here. Things like…

    • How to create and read profit-and-loss statements, so we keep our fingers on the financial pulse of the company.
    • How to lead a team – empowering others to do the work allowing me to direct from higher up (rather than just doing everything myself).
    • That I have a tough and resilient soldier inside who doesn’t stop and will give everything for the cause.
    • How to turn off the worry voice when I get up at 3am for a piss, so I can get back to sleep rather than lying awake stressing.
    • How to take stinging feedback without collapsing or defending (so you can actually hear it and grow from the experience).

    I grew immeasurably, learned deep embodied and practical lessons about the art of business. I discovered strength I never knew I had.

    And then I burned out.

    First I got sick, and couldn’t shift it for weeks, kicking around in bed feeling guilty about all the other people who were running the ship.

    I went deep. I asked for guidance, I had a long hard look at myself. I listened to the answers I received. I hired a new person to run the operations of my marketing team — I started to create more space for myself.

    And then I got even sicker—a reoccurrence of a chronic condition I thought I was over. One evening a year ago, it all came to a head. I still remember it vividly…

    I’m on the floor of my cabin, using all my spiritual and somatic skills to try and surf the extreme pain and fear I’m in.

    I surrender. I let myself fall, all the way to the bottom of the well.

    And there amongst the pain, I hear the truth.

    “Ewan, you have to stop.”

    She said it with deep love and great urgency.

    I heard it in the centre of my heart, and it broke me open. I was burned out. And I had to stop.

    This was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to admit.

    I thought I was immune to it. Too self-aware and self-sovereign to fall foul of such a thing! Right up to the point I realised I already had.

    But admit it I did, which lead to some vulnerable conversations with Joel and the rest of the team. I felt ashamed – like I’d failed. And I felt completely and utterly exhausted.

    So, I took time off.

    The first months took me so deep. Into the core of myself and all the knotted trauma that I was oblivious to. My practice got deep too. I spent many hours on the mat. I faced some of my most hidden and vulnerable parts. I learned how to unwind my clenched and exhausted nervous system. Which involved lots of body practice, lots of baking, and lots of playing around the house with my son.

    Most importantly, I began to see the elephant that had been standing in the room all along.

    Truth that sets you free

    If you’ve followed my work for a while, you might know that I see the entrepreneur as being made up of (at least) 3 core archetypes – the Artist, the Merchant, and the Seeker. This is a map that came out of me, and also one that guides me.

    It was my business mentor Rand who helped me see the elephant.

    We were talking one afternoon. I was messy. Confused.

    “What led you to this?” He asked.

    I fumbled around for a while before he turned my own map upon me.

    “You’ve overdosed on the Merchant, and you’ve suppressed the Artist.”

    The truth. I’d been killing myself for the cause, being a business leader. And I’d left my art behind.

    Our conversation gave me the most powerful of experiences—like I was caught and freed at the same time. I couldn’t escape the truth. And yet it opened the way.

    I knew I couldn’t go back to the same thing– soldiering on, hoping one day to have enough time to get back to “my work”.

    I knew I had to reclaim and recommit to my own art – my writing and coaching.

    Joel and I had some difficult and very honest conversations when we met to talk about the future. It was a process that took us both deep into truth. And at the end of it we agreed to part ways.

    So, we went through another business divorce.

    But this time it was me leaving. It’s challenging enough to go through this with any business partner. It was made so much harder for me when the person I’d normally call to counsel me, is the one sitting on the other side of the negotiation table.

    These things are rarely easy, and it takes time, but we did it with generosity, honesty and grace.

    So indeed, life has this way of helping you out when you drift off track. It’s just that the help doesn’t always feel helpful at first.

    Back on the path

    From burnout to break up. And then back onto the path. But of course, everything is different now. As Heraclitus said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

    I feel different in (seemingly) paradoxical ways. Stronger, and also more sensitive. More driven, yet more relaxed. More confident, and also humbler.

    And as I said earlier, the thing about drifting off the path, is that it’s also part of the path. My detour took me through a deep period of Merchant training. My knowledge of business has tripled during the last 5 years. And I feel blessed to be able to bring all that experience into the work I do helping entrepreneurs.

    The irony is not lost on me. The fact that I repressed the deep call to coach people, by running a company that trained coaches.

    And yet, over the last few months as I’ve re-visioned my work, put pieces together, re-written this website, and started writing and coaching again, a feeling has returned that I feared was lost.

    It’s the feeling of being where I’m supposed to be. “This is why I’m here.”

    Back on the path.

    And so, it’s with great delight and deep gratitude that I can say…

    My shop is open for business again

    What does this mean?

    I’ll be publishing regularly here on this blog (if you want to know when new stuff comes out, make sure you’re signed up on my mailing list below).

    And I’m opening my coaching shop again.

    So if you’re interested in coaching (or know someone who is), I’m taking on new clients.

    If you don’t know what kind of coaching I do, I coach entrepreneurs—freelancers and founders. I work at the intersection of business, spirituality and creativity. I’m part guide, part advisor, and I help you walk your path, growing your work and business in the way that calls you.

    You can read more about coaching here.

    If you made it all the way to the end here, thank you. Your presence means a lot to me.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • For as long as I can remember I’ve had dreams. My mind seems to naturally conjure future visions of how amazing things could be.

    This is a double-edged sword.

    On the one hand, it’s a powerful imaginal capacity. It underpins key parts of my mystical and shamanic work. It allows me to understand and see other people’s visions (great for coaching people). It gives possibility to life.

    On the other hand, it’s easy to conjure the picture of something, and way harder to actually create it here in the 3D. This can lead to a habit of living in my magical imagination, rather than doing the work in the physical world.

    Therefore, I’ve spent many years studying and experimenting with different approaches to “realizing your dreams” or “reaching your goals”.

    One of the most important conclusions I’ve drawn is that this endeavor is best seen as a journey — not just as a nice metaphor, but because it most closely resembles the actual territory.

    So, if like me, you can struggle to bridge the big picture vision, with the small practical steps, this is for you.

    How on earth do I do this?

    The voices start chattering. All the worries and challenges spiral into an imagined nightmare.

    “It’s too hard.”

    “I’m not good enough”.

    This kind of stuff normally comes up when I’m thinking about the thing I always think about. How to step deeper into the arena and dare to boldly show my hand. I’m holding an image of a glorious potential. As I conjure it my soul and heart hum to its tune.

    But today, like other days, the negative voices seem to be winning out.

    We all know that they’re not to be trusted as the authorities they profess to be. We all wish they’d pipe down and get in their place. They feed the doubt.

    “How on earth do I do this?”

    Which is just a stone’s throw from “I can’t do this.”

    So let’s map this out. For as I said, I’ve come to believe that these things are not simply metaphorical journeys. The structure of the journey is embedded in the way our body-mind works with this stuff. I think this is because they both have the same deeper root, the transformational cycle from which they’re both modelled.

    Here’s a way of looking at it.

    Corners you can’t see past

    I see a future vision, of how my life could be. It comes to me in a moment of calm perhaps, or a heightened state of consciousness.

    Insight. Seeing.

    I’m inspired—the vision lights something up and I feel a bubbling excitement.

    Then, perhaps the next day, I sit down to start working on it. And I realize how big or hard it feels. So I stop. From my limited perspective, it looks like it’s a long way off, in fact it’s so far off I can’t even see it. The vision euphoria starts to wane, and the quest seems more difficult and less appealing.

    If I were to zoom out and see like the eagle sees, I would be able to see a winding pathway that leads from my starting location all the way through the landscape to the location of my vision. In fact, I might see an entire root system of pathways, spreading out from here to there.

    Now when I zoom back in again, and view this through the eyes of my human self, I see a forest of trees before me. I remember the route I saw from above, and now I see a pathway running out in front of me. But I can still only see so far. At some point the pathway bends and I can’t see past it.

    I can’t see past the corner.

    Once again, this is a metaphorical truth embedded in the life journey. It’s the way our human mind makes sense of travelling through time and space.

    The corner is the future location that you can’t see past.

    For example, “I know I’ve got to get on a plane and go to this thing. But I truly have no idea what to do when I get there.”

    That’s the point that you can’t see past.

    The only way to navigate the journey is to take the steps along the pathway, until you reach the corner, at which point your view will open up once again and you can work out your new heading.

    The reason the vision you seek can feel so far away and so impossible, is that it lies around 11 corners.

    I can’t see past the 1st corner, let alone the 11th.

    I can’t see it, because the person who walks around that 11th corner is different to the one standing here. He’s the product of having walked around the preceding 10 corners. And been changed by each of them.

    So, the gameplan in its first instance, is to focus on the steps, and not the corners.

    Steps along the path

    Pick the direction (which implies the destination) and see the pathway. See the steps that follow on from one another, and end up at the corner you can’t see past.

    I go in a North-Easterly direction, get across that muddy river, up the bank on the other side to the tree line, then I can see how to tackle the big hill.

    Or, I’ve got to finish the copy drafts, find some new images, get some feedback, work it over again, upload everything to WordPress then I’ll be able to see how to announce this thing.

    I know enough about the direction and path that I can take. I know the steps that get me to the next corner. And then it’s a case of take those steps. The first. Then another. Then another. Taking consistent steps is much more important than the size of them.

    I learned a profound lesson from Jordan Peterson about this. The steps you commit to must be small enough that you can actually do them (over ambition raises the risk you in fact do nothing). The telltale sign of an appropriately small step is that you feel kind of stupid aiming for it.

    “Like really, that’s all I have in me?”

    Jordan describes a man who he worked with many years before whose life was a big mess. His first goal was to tidy his room (which was also a big mess – go figure). That was his corner – having a tidy room. And his first step? All he could manage for the first week, was to take out the vacuum cleaner, put it by his door, and look at it every day.

    That was the first step for him. The one he could take and did take.

    The work of the manifester

    The work is to keep seeing the next step, and taking it even when it seems stupid, and especially when you feel stupid for struggling with it.

    Even one step each day adds up to something bigger than you might think. As the seemingly meagre rhythm stabilizes, you find your groove and start to notice the sensation of momentum.

    This is when you feel like you’re being pulled along (not simply pushing yourself forward). Like a river current that adds its power to your movement.

    And before too long you’ve reached the first corner. And then you’re around the next few corners, and things look quite different.

    So, if the vision feels too big, or the challenge too great, and you don’t know how on earth you’ll ever get there…just head for the first corner. Take the steps, especially when you feel a bit stupid for lowering your targets.

    Trust that the one who keeps taking steps, is the one that makes it to the next corner. And trust that the one who has made it there, will be equipped get to the next.

    Until you realize you’ve reached your destination. And you can enjoy it for those glorious moments, until the next journey calls your attention once again.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • My upbringing gave me a very strong narrative about business: it’s corrupt and corrupts good people.

    It took me many years to unwind this story and reintegrate the archetype of the Merchant back into my worldview and life.

    It’s been a great lifeline for me, when I’m feeling like a shy artist, or entrepreneurial imposter, to remember the ethic of the Merchant. Giving the value and goodness you have is what makes things better for all of us.. And to not do that, for fear of this or that, is essentially selfish.

    This is a good antidote for any of us who can tend to hide away our light, for fear of what might happen.

    The archetype of the Merchant

    The Merchant is in the business of goods and services. Modern economic theory names this “value”. Which is a powerful, though somewhat dry notion. The deeper quality is “good” or “goodness.”

    This is the transcendent ethic at the heart of the Merchant, to offer goods in service of the greater good.

    It’s hard to appreciate this sometimes, given the scandalous ethics that so much of our actual global marketplace currently embodies. Nevertheless, beneath this cultural shadow is the deeper ethic of providing value, of creating goodness.

    Here’s the basic mechanic.

    When I provide you with something that carries high value for your particular circumstances, and you give me something back which is also highly valuable to me, then we both end up better off. The amount of total value is higher after our exchange. We’ve done something good for each other; we’ve created goodness that didn’t exist beforehand.

    Back in the day, this was pretty simple stuff. I’ve got goats, and you love goat sausages. You’re a baker, and I have no time/skill for making bread (I’m looking after all the goats). So we create an agreement, where I swap you my goat sausages for your bread. We’re both richer as a consequence of the exchange.

    We’ve both done something good for one another, and received that goodness back. The result is a net profit on both sides of the goodness equation.

    Our society is fixated on money as the metric of value. It’s so hard for us to imagine a world in which this wasn’t the case, that we’ve ended up falling foul of the shadow of money.

    The shadow of money is that it purports to be the goodness itself – that it itself is the value. While in fact, it is the measurement of value. We’re mistaking the sausage for the stick that measures it.

    Why is this important?

    Because understanding it unlocks a new level of freedom for the entrepreneur who doesn’t know how to “bring in more revenue” or the freelancer who wants to “make more money”.

    Magic dashboards

    Imagine a metrics dashboard that would show you the current status of your business. And the big window at the top says “Goodness provided to people this month”. (Rather than our actual metrics dashboards, which of course feature “income” or “revenue”.)

    It’s a magic dashboard, so it can actually measure the total value of all the things you’ve done. There are countless things that make this number go up, but which have no financial exchange attached.

    An hour on zoom with someone, helping them out with their thing. Sending out a productivity cheat sheet to the folks on your mailing list. Messaging someone with the idea that popped into your head on Thursday. Getting out the barbeque and cooking up some goat meat sausages for your friends and family.

    These things would all pump the numbers in this imaginary value dashboard. If this thing actually existed, you could measure your success by “goodness created” rather than “money earned” (or God forbid, “number of social media likes”.)

    I like this idea. It casts the game of business into an entirely different light. The goal is giving goodness, which by the law of the merchant’s code, and a result of his skill, results in a receiving back of reciprocal goodness.

    In other words, over the long term, as you saw your “goodness created” go up, you’d also see your revenue (monetary income) rise along with it. For the two are of course deeply related. Since, at the energetic root of the merchant’s action lies the exchange of value, which creates extra value.

    The filling of one extra goat intestine with fresh meat is no skin off my nose…it’s “cheap” to me. Yet the convenience of munching on your tasty bread with no extra effort expended, is really quite valuable to me. So the swap creates extra value that hitherto didn’t exist. That’s the equation at the root of commerce.

    Our culture has made it exceptionally easy to do. Because money fills a second role for us, alongside it’s “measurement of value”. It is a “store” of value. In other words, I can “store” the value of my goat sausages in the form of money. Classically this was coins. Everyone valued the metal the coins were made of, and so could safety “sell” the coins again in the future.

    We barely even use coins any longer. Our money is now digitalised, such that I can swap it for unprecedented numbers of things with unprecedented ease.

    And that’s of course where the shadow of money rears its ugly head. We shoot for money being the target, the goal of business and life. Forgetting that the point is the sausage, or the deep satisfaction that comes from doing what you’re really good at, knowing it really benefited someone else.

    Playing a good game

    The goal is to create goodness. Doing what you’re good at and giving that goodness to others in the form of goods or services.

    Even “non-professional” goodness counts! Calling your mother to catch up can create more goodness than brainstorming a new business strategy.

    One thing to remember however is that you create a great deal of goodness when you start with what you’re good at. Where is your value? I’m assuming you don’t make premium goat sausages. So what is it?

    From the ethical perspective of the merchant, selfishness is when you don’t proactively offer your goodness in the marketplace.

    I know a great many “old souls” (this one included) who struggle to fully present their value in the marketplace, because they don’t want to be pushy, or they feel like imposters. While from the inside this can feel real and important. From the outside it results in your goodness being withheld from people who would benefit from it. Which is indeed a form of selfishness.

    So the perspective shift is from “how can I make more money?” to “how can I create more goodness (value)? Even if you do want to create more money, the metric I suggest you optimise for is ‘goodness created’.

    If you want to be strategic about it, you can ask yourself “how can I create goodness for the people I want to work with professionally?” This helps you funnel your goodness toward the people you want to build your business for.

    It’s a lot easier for someone to say “I’d like to pay for more of the goodness you’re already giving me.”

    Another way of looking at this is that it’s a practice of generosity — of giving your goods, without a strategic objective of return. The law of the universe seems to handle the returns (you’re not in control what they are).

    This is a form of reciprocation. Humans are wired to reciprocally return generosity. Indeed, many people feel guilty if they’ve been given a kindness and haven’t returned one.

    The real payoff though, is the shift of focus from the stick to the sausage. The point is the goodness. The practice of doing what you’re good at, and of doing good in the world. This makes us feel useful, like we’re making good on the gifts and plans we came down here with.

    You get to be good to people. Live a good life. Which feels so good.

    Ewan Townhead

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