• This is a new kind of material for me to share. Because the core teaching I want to give you doesn’t come from me. I was taught this by my spirit guides, and one in particular. Which just still seems like a strange thing to say for me.

    I can say though, that as I’ve imbibed these teachings I’ve also realised that I intuitively knew it all along. I’d read spiritual texts on this kind of matter, knew some theory. But being taught it felt more like a kind of remembering. Part of me already knew and has always known, but the larger part of me was still scratching my head.

    It’s a teaching that goes right at that fundamental question…

    Who am I?

    I hope it illuminates more of who you are.

    Teachings on the two selves

    Daphne is a short and beautiful, like a tantric mystical farmer weaving her love through her brilliance and endless bubbly wisdom.

    Or at least, this is how she appears for me, and the name she has given me to call her. As a non-physical being she of course is not that one character. She is simultaneously all her various lives and experiences – she is her whole self. But like my other guides, she shows up as if she was the character in one of those specific earthly lives. She says Daphne was her last life here. She had nothing more to do here after that. It’s a life she’s told me a lot about.

    She brings this exquisite mix of grounded wisdom and spiritual love, all infused in pleasure and kindness.

    This is what she told me about the nature of self. She says this is universal truth, told in a particular way.

    “In my language words, sounds and the things themselves are all one. Practically this is a phonic language – the sounds of the words carry the same sound as the actual thing – its unique harmonic vibration. And so when you say a word you are in fact saying the name of the thing, which then calls that thing to you.

    In my culture we would talk about the two sacred selves that each of us is.

    So you can think of yourself as having two selves. You have many more, but the fundamental distinction – the base duality – is in these two.

    The first is the small self, the one in this body with these parents and this name. And the other self is the big self, which is none other than God.

    In English, the names for these selves are Me and I Am.

    Me is the English name for the small self. Me is the little one, the small self who is trying their best to be a good person.

    The name for the big self is I Am, because you can add any other name of any other thing in the universe, and if you contemplate it long enough or deeply enough, you’ll find it’s true. For example “I am the light.”

    In your rational psychological world, “me” is the real self — the ego. You are Ewan, this is who you are.

    In spiritual terms, you are not your ego. You are consciousness itself. This is a fundamental tenet of all your mystical systems.

    However, your world has not integrated these two truths together.

    For us the sacred duality was self-evident. For this is of course the nature of things here on Earth – that we live inside of duality. We are here as a small one – Ewan who worries about things and doesn’t like fish, yet we are actually a big one – you as soul, a self-aware sovereign slither of oneness.

    It is this dual self that gives all of the ingredients required for the incarnation game.

    When both are held as sacred, it is in the distinguishing between them, and then the integration of them, that “awakening” happens.”

    I’ve sat with and absorbed this idea for two years now. And I think at its root, it’s alchemy.

    Here in the physical earth realm, we are bound by duality. By design. And so the solution to the apparent problem is to play with and from, the duality itself.

    The transformation happens when the pair of opposites creates a third thing. The prima materia is used up, and now we have novel new light – increased consciousness. We have integrated an earthly experience into our soul. We have evolved in a fundamental way.

    This is a different worldview than the one that says we must transcend the ego, or indeed the one that says we are only an ego.

    Me – the small self

    Daphne continues…

    “So Me is the name for the sacred small self. It works like any name, if you call it, it’s owner comes to you. So if you’re feeling scattered, discombobulated, like you don’t know where you are, you can say this name like a mantra.

    “Me.”

    This can feel a little odd in English. English confuses these two selves in interesting ways.

    For example, the self that feels hungry and grumpy is of course the small self. So the correct grammar would be.

    “Me feel hungry and grumpy.”

    Which is of course incorrect in English. Unless you’re a child who hasn’t learned the “right way” yet, in which case, that’s exactly what you say.

    English tends to infantilise the small self. This is a mistake and removes the awareness of its sacredness and divinity.”

    I’ve been part of so many spiritual circles over the years that see the small self as the problem: the thing that needs healing, that is based on limitation, that is simply an illusion. Those things are all true, from a certain perspective. Yet what Daphne’s teaching has really done for me, is to return the small self to its rightful sacred status.

    It’s us. We are the divine child playing at the incarnation game.

    This world may be illusory. It’s not actually what it appears to be. And neither are we. But we are not an illusion. Me is not an illusion. It’s the very real and sacred experience of being human.

    Problems and language traps

    We’re very confused about all of this as a culture. This confusion is revealed by our language and the way we use it.

    For example. In spiritual or self-development circles, we often talk about maturation as going beyond the ego – transcending it. Things like…

    “When you truly transcend the limitations of your ego, you will know God.”

    This is a true dimension of the pathway to self-realization. However, already we’ve run into a language problem.

    The word ego in this context comes from Freud. Except, he never said it, because he was writing in German. What did he say?

    “Das Ich”.

    Which translates literally as “The I”.

    The “I” — the self — the subject who’s looking out at the world. Freud’s term is already a 3rd person objectification of the self.

    The I.

    But our English translation goes one step further. It then objectifies the 1st person self – “I” – into an object — “the ego”. We end up with a very abstracted and objectified perspective. And the thing we’re actually supposed to be examining?

    The self. You. Me. The thing that is closest to your experience in every single moment.

    Our culture teaches us to marginalise the small self. In fact, if we spend too much time making things about “me”, we have words for that. Selfish. Egocentric. Narcissistic.

    Yet so much of our work as now people is to help the little ones inside. This is why we need so much therapy and self development.

    In the end though the small me is actually not so small. In fact the more you grow up the little ones (always with love, never without love), the bigger Me gets. And Me can get pretty big.

    The big self and the master key spell

    Ultimately, we’re not just these small selves that we appear to be. We’re souls – inseparable and conscious parts of source itself – we are source. This is hard to remember down here (the point of the game).

    It is to help play this game and erode the mistaken identity that we’re given these different names. Daphne describes the name of the big self like a spell – a master spell that carries deep power. It’s a key to manifestation magic – a spiritual technology that helps things come to be.

    “I Am is the name of the big self, because you can say anything else after those words, and it is true. This is the secret of the higher self, to imagine is to be.

    In other words, anything you say after this spell becomes true (in some way), and truer the more you say it.

    Which of course cuts both ways.

    I am the light and love of consciousness

    I am fucked-up and my life is shit

    Equally powerful spell. Very different outcome.”

    In our modern world, we use the negative form of this magic casually and regularly. We condemn ourselves with all kinds of powerful hexes. “I’m no good at this”, “I’m never going to be happy” etc.

    The creative form of this magic is simple, and deceptively potent. What’s the thing you want to use the master key to become?

    The goal is to feel what’s true in your soul, and yet feels untrue in your self-concept.

    “I want to be a painter.”

    Ok, so you say as a spell, several times a day, for x days…

    “I am a painter.”

    Do it like a meditation. Say it with presence and intention. And and notice, and watch what happens to you when you say it. Acknowledge it. Say it again.

    If your soul wants to be a painter, and little Me feels like she can’t draw for shit, then it’s the perfect alchemical process for you. To forge a higher truth through the fiery resistance of the ego. As you say it, all the parts of the Me that don’t believe it, will pipe up to point out the apparent contradiction.

    “I am a painter.”

    “Ha you! You wish.”

    “I am painter.”

    “You definitely are not! You’re a loser.”

    “I am a painter.”

    “But I really don’t feel like a painter!”

    You keep saying it, and like a child trying to wiggle out of an argument, the small self will change it’s tune.

    “I am a painter.”

    “Maybe.”

    “I am a painter”

    “Ok, yeah, I guess I am.”

    “I am a painter.”

    “Yes, ok. I just wish I was better.”

    “I am a painter.”

    “…”

    “I am a painter.”

    “OK I am. It’s my style, I don’t know how I do it. It just comes out.”

    “I am a painter.”

    “Yes. I am a painter.”

    Over time, the two selves find equilibrium in the truth you are manifesting.

    The mantras I’ve taken on have been working me in exactly this regard. I’ve had guidance to find them. They’re things that I can feel my soul is asking me to claim, but which little me feels he has no right to at all.

    Saying them often makes me feel like a fool. One I’ve been working with for the last year is about my reclaiming my inner sovereignty and agency. I say “I am the King.” I feel foolish even sharing this with you! Which confirms it’s working.

    So whenever I remember, I just say it to myself a handful of times. And when I say it, of course all the parts of me that don’t feel kingly pipe up.

    “You’re not a king. Get back to the fields peasant!”

    They’ve become better natured over time. More like jovial hecklers and less like mean judges.

    And the spell works. Slowly, over time.

    Here are some more tips from Daphne…

    “The best way to use this spell is always to remember that it is simply a spell. Words carry power. Yet they are but a slice of the whole magical pie.

    Words that are read aloud like a good boy in class carry some power.

    Words that are spoken from the heart, honestly and sincerely carry all the power you need.

    Be careful what you ask for. While genuine affirmations are always manifested, the form is entirely out of your control.”

    The integration of self

    So often I feel so small. The world feels really big and scary, I feel so inept and ill-suited. I can try and muscle my way out of it. “I can handle it!” I proclaim, getting a tighter grip on the stick, remembering how big and strong I am, and putting aside my childishness.

    It doesn’t work in the long run. It’s just a cover. I end up using increasing effort and energy to “hold myself together” while inside I’m of course still feeling small. This is what many spiritual gurus and world leaders do. Which ironically enough, makes them very egoic!

    The other way doesn’t work either. Despite all my spiritual training, just “accepting the smallness” and “allowing my feelings” seems to leave me feeling smaller than when I started. And even more in touch with the feeling of intense vulnerability and trauma that incarnation seems to elicit.

    The alchemy I believe, lies in the integration and simultaneous embodiment of both selves. To allow myself to feel small, to embody the feelings of fear and pain. And to remember I am big, to embody the expansive soul truly am.

    For we are each both of these selves. In every moment.

    And we have collectively forgotten who we ultimately are – each a divine spark of the One, the source of all that is. Each of us a soul who chose these experiences to come and learn from, such that the One may know itself through the Many. So that the big can experience itself through the small.

    We really do need to wake up to who we really are. The soul. The One. “I Am”. The spiritual path is correct in this respect.

    Yet we must not make the mistake of our spiritual culture, and exclude the little one from the journey. That’s us too. I’m me. You’re you. And these little separate selves are so deeply sacred.

    Together they create the human being.

    Me — I Am.

    Ewan Townhead

    , , , ,

  • This is written for the empaths – those whose sensitive hardware can make this world feel so loud, confusing and overwhelming.

    I wrote this guide because I’ve struggled to survive in this world as an empath. And I know I’m not the only one. I’ve grown tired of seeing my empathic nature as a liability that I must compensate for. This is a common experience for empaths.

    And yet, as this story will reveal, the problem lies not in the intensity of the world we live in, nor in our own apparent design faults.

    I believe the way to truly survive as an empath in this world, is to realise none of it has design faults, and that the same capacities that seem like such liabilities, are in fact super-powers that are waiting for you to unlock them.

    The way to do so? A journey into yourself of course.

    Who is the empath?

    Empath – one who has a high capacity for feeling/sensing. The root of the word empathy means to be “in feeling”. This is a universal human capacity. An empath is one who has a particularly high capacity for the felt experience of reality.

    You’re born this way. In fact, it’s something that you already are as a soul (most likely). To become an empath takes a great deal of work on the part of the soul. Lifetimes of lessons. So, in the grand scheme of things, you could think of yourself as “high level” in this particular ability (which is a good counterpoint to the common feeling of it being a disability).

    Perhaps this fact helps relieve you of some sense of fault – the idea that you’ve messed up your own nervous system, or you’re just built wrong. It’s actually quite the opposite.

    In our current world culture, empaths are often people carrying significant trauma. Indeed it can seem as though the two are fused, or caused by each other. That’s kind of true.

    It’s more like we’ve set up this trial for ourselves as incarnated beings, where we’re lovingly forced to struggle in some particular way with these capacities – and through walking into pain time and again, we force ourselves to learn who we are and where our gifts truly lie. The one doing the forcing – who set this thing up? You.

    We’ve got to go through these trials to be conscious of those gifts. To claim them and therefore wield them with consciousness, remembering who we are.

    To be an empath in today’s world is no easy feat. Especially if you want to make a splash with your contributions – make a difference. Our culture neither trains us well to use these gifts, nor creates conditions where empaths thrive. Indeed, our rational culture usually sees empathic abilities as soft, weak, fragile, dramatic etc. The modern world occurs as loud and often overwhelming. It’s easy to become entwined in victim stories about all of this. And to feel misunderstood and defective.

    Part of my own challenge has been to admit to myself how sensitive and empathic I truly am. It doesn’t really go with the outfit I’ve been trying to wear in the world. But as I’ve got over myself (and into myself), I’ve come to see, with increasing grace, the power and blessings of these capacities. And that it is in fact possible to reach a place of harmony in your relationship to the world, where you feel like you’re navigating the ocean of life, rather than being drowned by it.

    The following four principles are I believe, universally applicable to empaths. The first two are more like skills or capacities, the second two more like strategies. They all require practice.

    If you want to make a difference, use the gifts you possess and feel empowered in the journey rather than overwhelmed by its magnitude, these principles are keys that help you unlock yourself.

    One — Learn how to self-regulate

    I believe this is the core survival skill for an empath. Because as an empath in this world, you’re going to get knocked out of equilibrium (and your self-sense) a lot. In other words, you’re easily triggered!

    Something happens, and suddenly you’re feeling all this stuff in yourself, and in the other people around you, and it’s hard to tell whose is whose and what is what. Your head spins, your body goes into fight, flight, freeze. It’s all so much!

    This happens principally because you feel a lot — you experience a lot of impact from the things that happen – it really resonates inside of your body-mind. Add in all that trauma your family line has been carrying for generations, add in all the ways you were fucked up as a child, add in all the karmic lessons you wanted to come and face, and you get a powerful mixture just ready to trigger and overwhelm you, greasing the descent into “here we fucking go again”.

    This is all happening in a post-covid world where things seem the same but are definitely not. It’s like the gods switched the energy field of the planet when we were all in lockdown, creating a pressure cooker of what’s not working, thinning the veil and spotlighting all our unconsciousness.

    This all adds up to a potent dojo for self-regulation practice.

    Self-regulation is the capacity to find equilibrium in your own nervous system, in the moment.

    One of my teachers Michaela describes it like a sheet of thick handmade paper. Your nervous system is the paper, and through your upbringing, it got all screwed up and bent out of shape.

    You can meditate in the forest for 3 days and smooth the whole thing out, and it all looks flat. But the moment you walk back into the world, and someone says that thing again, those same crease lines show up once more.

    You can’t change the crease lines says Michaela. You can’t get rid of them. But you can learn how to smooth yourself out. This is the capacity for self-regulation.

    When you know how to do this, you can smooth things out as or after they occur. This empowers you to work with the challenges and trials your life is throwing at you, rather than feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of all the fucking feelings.

    This can only be done in the body.

    It takes a lot of work, or at least it’s taken me a great deal of work to get to a place where I’m (at least) competent.

    It can only happen in the body because that’s the location of the actual hardware, and therefore all the latent capacities and buried traumas. You can’t talk or think your way through this.

    You have to go down and in, and come bottom up. There are a hundred different approaches. My own path has involved a lot of embodied yogic/tantric practice, lots of bodywork (a kind that teaches you how to self-regulate), different kinds of relational practice, psychotherapy, shamanic healing.

    Whatever the method that works for you and your being, the key is to spend time exploring the felt sense of your own body, and particularly the places you habitually don’t feel. I think it helps to do this in a safe space, on the mat or with a professional.

    The key to empowerment here is developing the capacity to self-regulate in the moment. This is the power move. You have enough self-awareness to be able to notice yourself getting activated (or that you’re already activated), and enough skill to change your emotional and energetic state — regulating your own nervous system.

    This actually requires a kind of “going with it” (rather than against it), allowing the energy to flow without swamping you.

    In other words, you notice when you’re getting swamped, and know how to get your head back above the surface.

    I think the most basic form of this is to pause and take a breath (or three). It’s like a remembering – “oh, I can slow myself out of the tailspin”, which opens up the space around you, rather than fixating on the rabbit hole you’re feeling sucked down.

    When I do this now, it kicks into gear a whole lot of instinctual things I do with my body, breath, energy and feeling. These are things that I’ve developed over time non-rationally, lying on the table with my bodyworker Markus, or exploring on the floor of my practice room.

    However you develop this capacity to self-regulate, I believe it’s the first key to surviving this world as an empath. Without it, you’re liable to be a victim of overwhelm. With it, you’re empowered to explore the intensity of your experience, uncovering deep understanding about the nature of yourself, the world, and your place in it.

    Two — Develop your boundaries and barriers

    Boundaries and barriers (which are different) are the second survival capacity for an empath. They combat our deep tendency to get entwined and lost in the feeling state of everything happening around us, putting our attention on everyone else, losing touch with our own self.

    A powerful empath walks into a room, and whether they’re conscious of it or not, feels the whole thing. Their nervous system is set up to tune into the emotional and energetic state of the place and people. They literally feel the room.

    A skilled and conscious empath can distinguish between their own energetic state, and that of others. Through regulation of their own nervous system, they can become a beacon of higher consciousness, even changing the energetic state around them.

    Without the capacity to create boundaries and barriers these situations often result in an experience of overwhelm and suffering. The tumult of emotions, unsaid feelings, unconscious behaviours and intertwining energy fields results in a confusion for the empath, who cannot tell whose is whose, and falls into the same old story that the world is too loud and too much.

    The root solution to this challenge is boundaries and barriers.

    Boundaries

    Boundaries are about expressing to someone else, where the walls of your castle lie.

    “No, I don’t want you to talk to me like this anymore.”

    “No, I’m not going to do it.”

    “No, I don’t want you to come closer.”

    Your boundaries are in a sense, natural—they are what lie at the edge of your own kingdom. They have an “authentic” location. However for many of us (and especially empaths) they’re often hard to locate. It often takes someone trying to cross one, to show you where it actually is. And the moment they do, you feel it.

    Boundaries are fuelled in part by the energy of anger. Not aggression. But the natural anger that protects your sovereign space. Your own ability to say ‘no’ is connected to the predator in you who is quite happy to kill a possibility or create a wounded reaction.

    It’s an explicit naming of where the line around your territory is. And when someone then respects that line, you create an experience of safety and sovereignty for yourself.

    Boundaries come from a lot of relational practice – finding and owning your “no” with the people in your life.

    Declaring a boundary – saying no – always starts with feeling the truth of it inside yourself. It’s a body sense before it’s a decision. For example you can ask “does my body want to be in this room right now?” Yes or no? That’s a felt sense, not a rational decision.

    The higher level practice is one of truth telling – being so sovereign that you only say yes to the things you genuinely and somatically feel a yes to, and saying no to all the things that you don’t actually want to do. That puts the cat among the pigeons.

    Barriers

    While a boundary requires a naming – an actual communication of where the line is —barriers are done without a word. It’s the thing you do on an airplane or a bus when you just close yourself to the people around you and sit in your own space.

    It is always and already in your own sovereign power to actually own your own castle. Your energy field. This can be done in a moment.

    The goal is to seal yourself up in your own energy field. The feeling is like becoming denser – your own self is more concentrated in your bodily location.

    This is the opposite to the common state of an empath – having your feeling sensors out all over the room and world.

    Instead, you just sit in your own bubble. I’m me. I’m here.

    I do this by imagining myself contained in an energetic bubble, the feeling of just being me, sitting in the sphere of my own energy.

    It helps me feel at peace, safe, contained. I have the ground and space to follow my curiosity. I am protected from the intensity of the world around me. I can regulate the input and output.

    Barriers stop other people reading you, or unconsciously reacting to you. It’s not invisibility, though people in public places will probably pay much less attention to you. It’s more like you’re just there doing your thing, and then they can just do their thing.

    Barriers are also what protect you from psychic phenomena. A shaman or spiritual healer must have strong barriers to shield and protect them from the negative effects of any work they may undertake.

    In its most simple sense, strong barriers are the result of just being in your own energy field. When you inhabit all the different parts of you, and you know who you are, nothing comes in that you don’t know about, or consent to. The barrier becomes a perfect membrane that allows you to be you, and everyone else to be everyone else.

    Three – Be conscious of your energetic diet

    What you take in is what your body then has to digest. This is obvious in the case of our physical diet. The food we choose to eat is what our body then digests. This is equally true for our energetic diet – the relational input we’re receiving — the ideas, feelings and stories we take in.

    As relational beings, empaths are disproportionally affected by the quality and nature of the relationships they have. All the people who you have regular contact with impact your nervous system more deeply than most. Meaning: positive nourishing relationships feed you deeply, and negative draining relationships cost you highly.

    I think of this like relational energy input. Our system is designed to feel deeply, therefore each relational connection is attended to with a lot of consciousness (whether we’re aware of it or not!).

    And there has never been a time in known history when humans had quite this much relational connection in our daily lives. Unfortunately, most of it is connection with people we don’t know. For example, all the people suffering in a far-off country. Or the political leaders in such a such place. And these connections are mediated through screens in our pockets or on the desk.

    None of this plays to the strengths of an empath, who is designed to feel deeply, and influence the people who are around them.

    So, a key to survival is therefore: consciously limiting your nervous system input. Restricting the amount of relational connections you’re actively engaged in reduces the empathic load on your system. You don’t have to be connected into quite so many dramas.

    For example, I have realised reading the news is a net negative for me. As I tracked my experience after reading it, I realised that it resulted in my feeling worse 100% of the time. Never once did I flip onto the headlines, read about the carnage, and then feel better and more positive about myself and my day.

    My current practice is a 20 second skim of the headlines once per day. This seems to keep me informed about the facts, without getting infected by the polarised, vitriolic drama-porn.

    I can’t say where you should draw the line for yourself. I can say that I strongly encourage you to draw one.

    The same principle applies to personal relationships. Which are the connections that are a net negative for you? When you add it all up at the end, does it cost you energy or give you energy? Do you feel more alive and grateful after talking with someone? Or more tired and pessimistic? Your energy-body doesn’t lie.

    Empaths are built for relational connection. We’re so sensitive to the nuances of things, we feel natural compassion for those involved, and we think about it while we’re doing other things.

    What’s your inventory of relational connections that feed into your nervous system?  Which ones feed you? Which ones drain you?

    Four – Healing is not optional

    Empaths are generally carrying a whole bunch of trauma. It doesn’t really matter where it comes from, or what it is – the result is a great deal of difficulty and discomfort with being in the body. To be in a full feeling state for an empath, means being in touch with all the things that are hanging out down in the depths.

    So we learn to cope with the pain in our bodies. Our world – with it’s brilliantly powerful market system – has created an unprecedented variety of disembodiment options. From sugar packed foods, to drama filled TV, to addictive super computers running our social media input, the market has created a million ways for us to distract us from ourselves, and numb our feelings.

    The way out is of course through – down into and through your own body. And to learn to re-associate yourself with yourself means facing what you’re carrying.

    Whether it is coming to terms with what happened to you as a child, or unravelling what your family lines gave you, the healing of ourselves is a key part of the journey. The same gifts that make an empath feel challenged in life also hold the key to superpowers. The route to both the healing and the empowerment is through the body.

    I think therapy, and more traditional healing modalities are important, and often necessary. I think some of the most direct healing methodologies are shamanic and energetic – ones that work with the energy and life force of things, returning them to their rightful place.

    I confess, I used to think “healing” was woo-woo and dumb – something for folks who did unicorn mantras because they couldn’t hold down a career.

    Then my guides started facilitating me through shamanic healing processes, and I experienced the undeniable and strange power of it all.

    I don’t think you can survive in this world as an empath without committing to your own healing journey. The conditions make it impossible – you will suffer indescribably if you try.

    This is partly to do with the level of trauma we’re tasked with clearing as a species, and partly with the way the mechanics work. The healing journey not only knits up the wounds you carry, and reintegrates your sense of self, it teaches you, indeed shows you, where your deeper gifts lie.

    You came down here into this life with a particular purpose. And if you’re an empath then you also came here to help with the big collective purpose of healing up the millennia of trauma we’ve all built up. And specifically, you might well have volunteered to come and heal your own particular family lines, and childhood experiences.

    If you feel like that’s bullshit, and no one would willingly choose the amount of suffering you’ve had to endure, maybe it says more about how evolved you actually are as a soul, that you would choose to come and transmute it all. You must have the chops for it—some really big chops.

    Healing and integration create space for super-powers

    The dysregulated empath lives a life that is constantly on the edge of overwhelm. Things in your life swamp you, or threaten to. And so we’ve all learned to cope, find strategies that make it more manageable. Most of these are compensation strategies. They seek to make up for the short fall on one end, with more extension on the other. We think we’re too fucking fragile, so we heavily invest in the tough exterior. We’re scared of people disconnecting from us, so we work extra hard to be nice and likeable.

    The foundational fear is that it all becomes too much. Too much for little you to handle.

    These four principles are a basis for surfing the waters of life, rather than constantly drowning in them.

    As you develop the root ability to self regulate in the moment, the conscious you comes present. The one who can act in the face of the wave, rather than floundering. This gives a fundamental experience of empowerment.

    Boundaries and barriers are what teach us to distinguish between self and other, and to root in one’s own self first. These are both things empaths usually struggle with. This rooting in self further empowers you in your own sovereignty.

    As you’re able to regulate, keeping your feet in your own self, you get more choice about the waters you surf. So often we get so used to feeling overwhelmed, we don’t notice that we keep picking relational connections that actually overstimulate us. It becomes a weird kind of comfort zone. Choosing our energetic diet is like the hero choosing to walk their own path, knowing where to go and where to avoid.

    This entire process is a healing journey. It takes you into the heart of yourself, and all the ways you struggle to interface with life. The sooner we accept that, and commit to our own healing, the deeper the wounds we are able to reknit. And they go deep. Generations back. Incarnations back. And of course back into the deep pains of your own childhood.

    Healing is not optional. And it’s also not something you need to complete before you move forward. You don’t need to fix your brokenness first. It becomes fixed as you walk the path and engage with life.

    The integration of your own body and mind using these principles leads to a potent possibility for the empath: the use of their super-powers for the greater good, and the flourishing of their own life.

    The central shift is described beautifully by my body worker Markus. Once you learn how to self-regulate, you can begin to navigate. The capacity for regulation increases your opportunities to explore your sensations with curiosity and openness. To navigate the territory rather than be overwhelmed by it.

    The world on the other side feels fundamentally different. One of possibility rather than liability. There is a switch in outlook.

    Less: I’m a sensitive empath who is struggling with the overwhelm of this world that doesn’t understand me.

    More: I’m a highly developed empath who chose to come here to learn and help by doing my thing.

    Or in other words, less victim, more beautiful, awesome being.

    As the victim stories in me continue to melt and evaporate, I have experienced first-hand, capacities and powers that come online. Here are three that I believe are common for empaths.

    One – The super-power of intuition

    Empaths, as deep and sensitive feelers, are built to work intuitively. This is a powerful ability when unleashed. Unlike the thinking mind (which our culture generally considers the true mind), the intuitive mind is plugged into the territory of experience, rather than the map of experience.

    To think your way through a problem requires mapping the territory, making assessments based on past experience and knowledge, then running the different scenarios through your simulating imagination. This is the superpower beneath our culture, and therefore also it’s limitation.

    The intuitive mind does not think through the problem, it plugs into the territory – the actual energetic experience of it – and gains direct knowledge about it. With skill (knowing how to be pointed in your intention) and discernment (knowing what is noise and what is signal), your intuition can lead you to answers that according to the rational thinking mind, we have no right to know.

    This can be applied to the most practical of situations. When for example, considering an invitation to an event, the thinking mind can spend a long time computing the different rationales, considerations, possibilities. But when explored intuitively, you get direct data from the body.

    If you imagine being there, in the room, your body will tell you how it feels about it. It will know things about that place that you have no consciousness of.

    If you chase the gift of intuition further along the tracks you arrive at what we’d now call magical abilities, physic gifts. These are still treated with scepticism by our modern culture. They are, however perfectly native, and increasingly impatient about being let out once more.

    Two — The super-power of non-physical communication

    One of the root abilities of a shaman or psychic is their access to non-ordinary reality. While modern culture only believes in physical reality, there is a whole variety of worlds and dimensions accessible when you know how to look. As an empath, you have a particular sensitivity to the subtle dimensions, allowing you to sense what many would never notice.

    You can sense the actual spirit of a thing. And if you can sense it, you can communicate with it.

    A tree doesn’t have a mouth that physically talks, and they don’t have a neo-cortex that (we believe) enables them to think. However, through non-ordinary reality, you can absolutely talk to a tree, and discover it has a mind too.

    The same goes for spirit guides, deities, ancestors, celestial bodies etc.

    These abilities are sometimes called the “claires”: clairvoyance, clairaudience etc. These are the different channels through which we can communicate in this way. Some people “hear” in non-ordinary reality, a kind of telepathy with other beings (I am like this). Others “see” the non-ordinary realms in image, shape and colour. As an empath, you certainly “feel” the other dimensions.

    Underneath the survival strategies of the empath lies the ability to sense deep into reality, to know things our culture doesn’t even believe in.

    Three – The super-power of space change

    An empath has the capacity to walk into a room, and feel the room — to feel the energetic and emotional currents that are flowing through all the people and beings in that space. While in an untrained empath, this leads to overwhelm and overload, the integrated empath does something else. They don’t seek to tolerate the soup of sensations; they consciously influence the space.

    Without saying a word, you are able to consciously change the energy of a room or situation. This begins with changing your own energy, expanding your own field, earthing down into the core.

    The funky gunky feeling can be cleansed and cleaned. The tension acknowledged and given air to breathe. The darkness and negativity dissolved into light and love.

    Whatever you feel like your current level of skill may be, know that your hardware sets you up to command this level of influence. A fully empowered empath is a master of spatial energy, conducting the flow of the moment through their own body-mind.

    The practice is one of feeling yourself in your wholeness, then expanding to include the wider room in the same way you feel yourself. For example, feel yourself as a being of luminous love, sit in that direct experience, then expand the field of love to include everyone around you.

    This can radically change a conversation, or a room, or a situation.

    Closing thoughts

    Writing this has been a healing experience for me – to see how far I’ve come. I often don’t find this an easy world to be in, given the level of my sensitivity. And I know how deeply many of us struggle with these same challenges.

    Many has been the day I’ve railed at myself and God over the difficulty level of the game.

    “Holy fuck, why does it have to be this hard!?”

    Sometimes now, my guides will reply. “You’re finding it hard Ewan? Then make yourself soft.” Which is good advice for an empath. For in that softness lies all exquisite sensing ability that gives us such power.

    I feel it now as I imagine you reading these words. The softness. The compassion for us, and all the struggles we’re encountering.

    So I send you love and blessings, wherever you are fellow empath. I hope this has helped you in some way, as you walk your journey. If you ever get lost, feeling drowned by the near infinite possibility? Go down and in.

    Your body knows.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • The first time I met one of my guides, I had no idea that’s what he was.

    He was a strange, hooded figure that showed up in a “journey” during my first weekend shaman workshop. The workshop was full of people I’d tried my best to avoid in life – tribal yoga pants and feathery spiritual auras abounded. I smoked cigarettes on the break and reassured myself I was different.

    There were no psychedelic substances involved. It was based on the simple power of the drum and rattle. I was clean, clear and sceptical.

    The figure I met (who later turned out to be a guide) was like a half human-half reptile, hooded and carrying a staff. He sat me down in front of a fire, in a cave next to a great underground lake and stared into my eyes. I don’t even remember if he said anything, but I remembered him.

    The practice I was taught during the workshop – soul flight – is a foundational practice of shamanism. You journey to the other realms, and there meet with spirits who guide and heal you.

    I did further training that year with the same teacher in England. And then I went home and experimented for two years.

    Voices through the Veil

    I was riding home from the park. I’d been seeking council from “hooded-shaman dude” (who by this point I’d worked with in a number of ceremonies). It had gone deep, but now I was done and heading home for dinner.

    As I coasted along I “melded” with his memories. And suddenly I was riding a horse across a savannah in a magical landscape. The significance of both the scene itself and the fact I was melding memories, was running through my body. I felt alive. The wind was no longer cold it was magical. The movement of the ground under my feet was the dry sand under the horse’s hooves.

    Then he did the thing that was the pebble that started the landslide change in my worldview. He spoke directly into my mind—like a call being patched through straight to my brain, with an accent.

    He teased me.

    “You know it is pretend horse, right?”

    He made me literally laugh out loud.

    I can’t fully replicate his humour in writing. It’s in the absolutely perfect timing and tone of his jokes. Like when someone lands the perfect line and it strikes right in your weak spot, but it feels really good and opens your heart. He did that.

    And then I knew. Because I can’t do that to myself. The point of that perfect joke is that you don’t see it coming. I hadn’t, and now I was really laughing.

    Something opened then and he really started speaking to me. Inside my mind, like all the other voices do, but now I knew it was someone else, and the signal got really clear. We began to have a back-and-forth conversation as I cycled home.

    And by the end of the bike ride, I was starting to get a bit freaked out. I asked him to “please leave me alone and stop talking to me!” Which he did, and my mind returned to its normal “alone” feeling. Which was a relief. Like stepping off the rollercoaster.

    I knew things were going to be different though.

    *

    A couple of days later I sat on a bench in the forest, and we started talking again. I’d done some integration, I’d re-assured myself I wasn’t doing something terribly wrong, and I’d decided it was time to have a frank conversation.

    There’s something about me. I fundamentally trust people’s hearts. And, I have an incredibly sensitive alarm system for stuff that is off-key or dissonant. It’s a capacity I’ve tuned and cleaned over the years.

    And here was a particularly weird new challenge. I was readying myself to talk with an “imaginary friend” who wore a hood and seemed to have a crocodile’s tail protruding from the back of his cloak (though it’s hard to tell sometimes in dream time). My rational guardians were on fucking edge.

    “This is fucking weird Ewan. And you know it! Test this fucker out.”

    And yet while I trusted the cautionary advice, what was really curious was that my alarm system was not going off. This is a pattern which would repeat itself many times – the rational alarm beeping, my intuitive trust knowing it was right and true.

    So, I dived in and I asked him some really fundamental questions. I wanted to know who on earth I was talking to, and how deeply I could trust this strange character.

    I wanted to get a read on him. My intuitive capacities were in trust, but my map of the world didn’t have a good explanation for what was happening, and who he was.

    “Are you alive?”

    “Of course. I am talking to you aren’t I?” He enjoys my questions. Like a loving school master encouraging a student. “But not in the way you think of as alive”.

    “Do you have a name?” I ask him. I can feel his presence, as though he’s sitting next to me on the bench.

    “Yes. But I will have to teach you some things to tell it to you.”

    He then proceeded to show me what “names” were to him, in his life. They were really quite different to ours. He showed me how to visualise it. I closed my eyes, and I found myself sitting in a big stone chair and carved into the rock around me are symbols. He points to the ones above me.

    Above my left shoulder was a strange beast head, lizard like.

    “What is this symbol on the left?” I ask him?

    “This is a dragon.” he says.

    Above the right shoulder was a symbol I definitely knew: a moon.

    “OK, and so what does this have to do with your name?” I still hadn’t grasped it.

    “This is my name. Or at least one I am giving to you to call me with. But you must read from the other perspective.”

    I stood up, took a few paces, and looked back at the bench where he was sitting. I could see the symbols above his shoulders.

    “Read left to right”. He pointed first to one symbol, then the other. “My name is Moon—Dragon.”

    Well fuck. I was amazed and delighted. How fun! A name made from special symbols. I loved it.

    But fuck. My rational alarm system could foresee the implications already. I was going to be one of those people who talk to spirit guides with weird names. Fuck, fuck.

    “Were you once alive as a human?”

    “Yes.”

    “How long ago did you live?” I ask him.

    “How do you measure time?” He replies.

    Well, that was a bloody good question.

    I did my best to draw out some diagrams in my notebook that explained about solar years, and then how we wrote numbers.

    After a bit of back and forth, and number sequence translation he gave me the answer…

    “Moon—Dragon died 39,327 years ago”.

    Well, that was a lot more precise that I was expecting.

    *

    Over the following months he showed me how to do things. Little rituals in the woods. The key was to be like a child. Which is more accurately: ‘be child you’. This is where the innocent knowledge of the other side already exists, and where we instinctively know how to “play with the spirits”.

    And concurrently to all of this I was fiercely analysing my experiences with scepticism and logic. I wrote regularly in a “magic journal” where I would attempt to secularize my experiences and make sense of them without relying on anything I considered woo-woo hoodoo. In other words, could I rationally explain my irrational experiences?

    In retrospect I can see that it’s mostly my mind catching up. The experiences were real and deeply meaningful. Which my soul knew, but which my model of reality and its egoic keepers, were still trying to salvage as the boat went down.

    Awakening to the World of Healing

    Moon—Dragon was the first of four primary guides that have introduced themselves to me.

    I say introduced themselves, because they gave me names to call them, and they told me about who they were and what they were here to help me with. But these are just names for my ease. Souls don’t really have names.

    I needed their names to help me develop intimacy and trust with each of them.

    It was in January this year that things went to another level, and where that trust was to be utilized.

    It started with a (delayed) trip to Turkey to meet up with a very old friend with whom I had discovered a shared fascination with all things magical.

    The delaying of the trip is a story for another time, but let’s just say it was an unplanned initiation into shamanic healing, through my own transgenerational trauma.

    When I got to Turkey, we spent 5 days catching up while visiting Göbekli Tepe and other ancient temple sites. We talked magic, we reached for it. And when I returned home, it showed up.

    I was innocently performing a simple ceremony that one of my other guides had showed me. And then in the midst of it all hell broke loose. She guided me through a spontaneous healing session – one that I had been trained in technically by my shamanic teacher in England, but which I had never actually performed.

    Before I knew it my world had been changed once more.

    I had been dispossessed of a certain family illness that I had hitherto had absolutely no knowledge of, and which turned out to reveal some very interesting results, once healed.

    For that was the real world-changer. I had discovered what healing really was.

    Honestly, I’d had little interest in “healing”, even though I had trained in many methods of shamanic healing, I felt it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t drawn to it. In a sense, I didn’t believe in it.

    This was the real stuff though. What shamans call “direct experience”. I’d already tasted the depth of information possible through my guides. Now I was having direct experience of their healing power.

    This ceremony was the first in a series (that’s till continuing). I’ve been led through a kosmic network of esoteric knowledge, all revolving around my own healing process.

    Chapter one was lineage work. Trans-generational illnesses. Each one took me back into the lives of one of my ancestors and (often) a moment in their lives when something got all wonky.

    My task was to travel back in time, through the astral passages, and heal it. Which I did (I think!). At least enough to get me to chapter two, which is still in operation as I write these words and concerns the traumas of my own childhood (which inevitably lead back into my family history once more).

    I didn’t know any of this was possible.

    I had no idea guides could actually facilitate ceremonies. For that’s exactly what they did.

    “OK Ewan. Just feel your heart. Do you feel how much I love you? It’s your choice. There is no rule. Feel yourself and your own truth.”

    When I was feeling scared, they’d reassure me.

    And when I had no idea what I was doing, they simply talked me through the steps, just like a workshop leader would. Except they were talking to me inside my heart-mind, and the scenes around me were of other times and spaces.

    “Now comes the healing, are you ready?”

    “Yes.”

    “OK, take a breath – yes. Now let yourself dissolve into the moment. Ready? Turn to your left and meet it.”

    It was almost never what or who I expected it to be. It was always simple and beautiful. And something I could never have found alone. Each one changed me in some way, though it’s hard (mostly) to say how. The combined effect however is undeniably different. More me.

    The (Meta)Physics of Guides

    My worldview on the other side of these experiences is different. Some parts of reality map have been re-written, and huge new swathes of what I now know are “real” have been sketched in.

    Here are a few travel notes.

    We’re definitely not alone. In fact, some of the voices in your head, that you know well, are none other than your own guides. They hide out, covertly doing good.

    When we die, we don’t die. The opposite. We return and remember who we are, which is an eternal soul, with a lifetime of lifetimes of memory.

    This one—the soul (me without the amnesia)—is also the one who planned out a great deal of what I’m now living through incarnation. Certainly not all of it (soul plans are just that – plans, which have a whole lot of potential for going “off-map”), but the key stuff? Oh yes.

    The stuff I repeatedly bang my head up against was all anticipated and “set-up” for me to learn through. Those are (by definition) the particular challenges that my character in this life needs to learn through, in order to unlock the higher character upgrades. That’s how the system is designed to work.

    Incarnation in this three-dimensional reality is a choice (for sovereign choice it always is). Certainly not all souls choose to do so. Why? It’s intense! Particularly here in Earth school – Gaia is a particularly potent and challenging spot to come and play. And particularly now!

    Coincidence?

    Certainly not for me (as I found out), and indeed for many of us who are discovering there is more to this “reality” than meets the eye. That the “fantasies” we love to see in movies are not actually so fanciful.

    Who and where is a guide?

    They’re not in this world I see and touch. My shamanic teaching tells me they exist in “non ordinary reality”.

    Most directly, they are souls who have chosen not to incarnate, and instead play the role of guide for those of us down here in the physical world.

    They live in a different dimension to us, one outside of physical limitation. They are in effect, all-seeing and all-knowing. But they are not gods – their power is incredibly limited (here in the physical).

    Their power is in their guidance of us, for they see the whole picture, and the great web of possibilities. They know our hearts inside and out, and what we’re here to do.

    When a shaman or psychic “talks with the spirits” they are (usually) connecting with their guides. In many traditions, the guides are the ancestors (which is usually literally true of course). The Christian name for them is guardian angels (though they are not in fact angels at all).

    They are specialists at guiding us. In fact, it’s their job or more precisely their role. They help us walk our own evolutionary path. There’s no “control”. There is no coercion.

    Quite the opposite.

    The purpose of their role is to guide us in our own sovereign choices. And at the same time, to guide toward the soul path (the things we planned to do, but may have forgotten about, or be scared to face).

    Some things guides are not

    The kinds of guides I’m talking about here are our personal guides – specific to us. We each have (at least) one.

    This is different from, for example Jesus. Who is not my personal guide. He is a soul in the category that the esoteric schools call the “ascended masters”. He’s up there doing his thing with Buddha, Merlin etc. They are beings who are available for communication with anyone who wants it (if you can receive such high frequencies)! But they’re not specific to you like your own guides.

    You could think of it this way. If you want the most direct coaching on this life incarnation—what you’re here to do, and who you’re remembering you are— then you’re going to get maximum effectiveness with your own guide team.

    If you can’t find them, Jesus is like a “universal guide” that anyone can use. Kind of like if you forget your gym clothes and need to borrow one from the shared box.

    So your personal guides won’t be “famous”. If Jesus is telling you that you’re the special one and you’re the only one that can hear him, then you’ve definitely missed the point, or the identity of the actual speaker, and therefore the implications of your own egoic grandeur.

    They are also not “one person”. Souls are of course not “one person”, they are beings who have lived thousands of lives, and remember them all. So restricting them to a name, or a particular person is useful but not quite true.

    Guides also regularly show up as collectives. “They”.

    Some psychics and mediums don’t have differentiation between their individual guides. They are simply and always a collective. Sometimes even without names. “The guides”.

    Others are personally guided by their own ancestors or relatives. The grandmothers and grandfathers. Even someone who knew, when they’re on the other side, they’re the “transcendent version” of themselves.

    Guides are also most definitely not gods. Any soul on the other side looks, feels and sounds completely enlightened to us. Because they are—by our standards. But they are definitely not gods.

    Guides are not the answer to everything either. But they are a game changer. Here are some of the reasons why.

    Understanding the Utility of Guides

    Imagine a cast of enlightened masters who sit on your guidance council, and whenever you’re unsure of what to do, or where to go, or who you are, or what’s true…

    You can go and ask them.

    And they’ll answer.

    They are an access portal to your soul power. They help you understand where your true power lies, and gently ease you away from the mistaken assumptions you’ve made as you’ve stumbled along unguided, and developed habits that while necessary to create, are now the obstacle that is the way.

    They are so good at guiding you because…

    One. They live outside of time and space.

    As souls not bound to the physical dimension of reality, they are not bound by time and space. These are very challenging concepts to write in language. Their awareness and consciousness are not limited to a single point of time and space (like our embodied consciousness), thus, they are able to see all spaces, and all times simultaneously.

    This is utterly minding bending to us, but utterly normal to them.

    The result is that they see it all. In English we would say they are omniscient – they see everything. Therefore, you can trust that wherever they’re guiding you, they’re working from a complete data set.

    They really do see the whole game board. And they’re “non-physical entities” (which is a rather ugly term), which means they’re not limited by matter. They can “be” anywhere, because “where” (spatial location) is a construct they live outside of. This means…

    Two. They see the purpose of everything.

    This is the nature of their dimension in fact, and where the whole “outside of time and space” thing starts to bear fruit. They see the purpose of the movement of things (beings) through space and time.

    Why do we evolve and change? What is the purpose of life? Where are we heading? Why is life so damned challenging!? Why does something exist, rather than nothing?

    They see it all. Like a great mirrored river delta, they see why one molecule of water flows from here to there. It is self-evident from their perspective.

    Purpose starts with the end in mind. Literally. It’s hard coded into the deep structure of reality. When you see the whole game board—why the river flows into the ocean, and its circular life—then the neuroticism of the water molecule who “doesn’t know if he’s on purpose”, is easily solved.

    “Keep going little watery one! You’re doing great!”

    This is often the spirit of the answer they give me when I ask them the question I’ve asked them most over the last few years.

    “Am I on track – on the soul path? Am I doing the right things?”

    “Yes, you are on right track Ewan. Keep going!”

    This is a complete game changer.

    Whenever the existential doubt clouds your life, and shit gets hard, and nothing seems to be working the way you thought it would, then you can just go and ask straight up. And they can give you a straight up answer. And it will be true (or at least exactly as true as you need).

    Three. They have no judgement.

    None. It doesn’t exist in their reality (its actually exclusive to ours). For judgement to exist, it must be fed by its twin flames of fear and pain. When you see everything and its ultimate purpose you are no longer governed by these things, even though it is hard for us to imagine such a reality.

    No, your guides will never judge you. They will never punish you. There is zero retribution in the “afterlife” if you don’t do what they say.

    The one and sole purpose for their guidance of you is love. They love you deeply, utterly and unconditionally. This is their motivation in its entirety. And the most loving thing they can possibly do in their 5th dimensional reality? Help you be you. This means…

    Four. They are the perfect coach for you.

    In fact, you mutually chose each other before you were even born (well, some of them at least). They know you – the very heart of your soul. They have complete access to your embodied memories from every single moment of every single life you’ve ever lived (outside time and space remember). And most importantly, they know what you’re here to do specifically.

    They live in the purpose realm, where the purpose of everything is revealed. And they’ve signed up to coach you specifically in achieving the purpose you came here to live.

    They coach you away from distraction (the false path) and toward the golden path of purpose (the direction your soul decided to go in this life).

    They know when to be gentle and when you need to be challenged. And because it’s all done through unconditional love, it’s unbelievably skilful guidance. Because they’re not just coaching you toward your mission objectives. They’re coaching you toward yourself and your own awakening. They can do this because…

    Five. They know how to unlock all your magic powers.

    Because they know you inside out, future and in past, they know exactly how to unlock your soul gifts (and of course in particular, the one’s you’re set up to awaken in this life).

    They principally do this by helping to plug you into your own inner knowing and being. Then they guide you (at the pace you want) along the path, down into the shadows where the roots of your gifts lie, through their illumination and unfoldment, and into the fruiting of your magical powers.

    This used to be the norm, back in the day. It was the most unremarkable thing for folks to be chatting along with their guides and doing magic. It’s only because of our current cultural location on the great archetypal wheel, that we find this utterly remarkable (or outrageously preposterous).

    They can do this for you, in this moment in history precisely because this dimension of ourselves has been culturally hidden (supressed). In other words, we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be as a culture on the cusp of a great remembering of our magical nature.

    This is all to say that they are a game-changer

    They change the game the game of life, in which we are all players.

    Imagine playing a deeply immersive multiplayer VR computer game. And you’ve been playing this game for years.

    And you discover a secret setting on your console that dials you into a team of other folks who are outside of the game (think outside the matrix), know the game inside and out (they’re ex-players, total pro league), and are signed up to help you play, specifically.

    They know the cheat codes. They know your character strengths and weaknesses (and those of everyone else). They have all the walkthroughs for the missions and quests. They know every line of every piece of code. And they know the actual purpose of the game – which is not what the payers take it to be!

    Would this change the way you played the game?

    Well, when you realize that this “imagined game” is the actual imagined game, and that imagination itself is one of the master keys to the deep code of the game…it will.

    The Astral Keys and the Initiate’s Path

    Why am I really writing this?

    First for me. This article is me coming out of the closet to myself. There’s nothing like writing it down to make it real! And simply the process of doing so has changed me further.

    It’s also of course, a coming out of the closet to you. In the specific case – you dear reader – and in the general, to the public world at large. I am very aware of taking this step.

    Most honestly though, this is for us.

    The collective soul-plan is getting stuck into a whole new chapter of our story.

    We’re getting the astral keys back – the ones that give us direct experience of the world of spirit and soul. Our world is going to look very different in the coming decades. And holy fuck is it intense and challenging down here right now. For all of us. Difficulty level 10 and still rising.

    I have come to understand that the capacities that will be a foundation of that new world are essentially magical — things our culture doesn’t believe in, but which many of us are currently awakening to.

    In other words, I know I’m not the only one.

    And so much of the path ahead has to do with our togetherness, a community not created upon old empire structures, but a tribe—a soul family. To bring back the magic that was lost to us, we have to remember who the original teachers are—the guides, the spirits.

    So may it be.

     

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • As the events of the world continue to deepen into an unprecedented state, I have been sitting with the question of service.

    What is it to serve in these times of crisis?

    How do we give what we have—if indeed we have space to give—in the midst of these extraordinary times?

    My thoughts crystalized last week as I sat in ritual by the fire outside my home. During my vigil I listened to a question and answer session with futurist Jordan Hall. And it was in one of his answers that things started to come together.

    He provided a mytho-poetic frame that helped me make sense of the strong intuition that I wrote about in my previous article—that this was a time to double down on the change work that so many of us are dedicated to.

    And so it this article, I will extend those ideas, and speak to the question of service, leaning on the scaffolding that Hall provided.

    For I continue to feel a deep conviction that not only is there a great opportunity before us, but that the changes that can be made are considerable.

    But to answer the question of how we are asked to serve in these times, we must first understand the dynamic of change itself.

    The Hero’s Journey

    Mythopoetic maps give us—if we are able to grasp their nature—the blueprints for the deep dynamics of reality.

    The mythopoetic map that charts the nature of change is the Hero’s Journey.

    This journey at its essence, is the consensual adventure through the cycle of Order and Chaos, such that the old is destroyed, and the new can be born.

    The Hero in the myth leaves the Order of their village—stable society and life—because of a call from beyond. When they consent to the call, and step outside of what they know they enter the domain of Chaos—the trials and initiations that stretch them beyond their competency, preparing them for the culminating fight with the mythical dragon.

    The dragon is the symbol of what the adventurer is most afraid of—whether consciously or not. It is Chaos condensed into a great enemy who seeks the Hero’s destruction.

    But it is through the fight with this dragon that the Hero is reborn. The old self, the one that lived in ignorant bliss in the village, is slain. And from the ashes of the old, the new arises. The Hero, is simultaneously destroyed and remade.

    As they come to terms with who they now are, the inner transformation becomes complete. They integrate the unconscious gifts and treasure that they recovered by facing that which they were most afraid of—the dragon— and become a new whole.

    And now, changed, they return to the village—to Order, to society— ready to serve in a whole new way.

    This is the journey of individual transformation.

    It is not a single journey. It is a constant cycling of Order and Chaos. If we are sensitive to invitation, it is the process by which we are constantly re-made.

    This journey occurs on micro-scales—the process of learning a new skill, feeling the pull to try it, coming up against your incompetence, facing the heart of your fear, and coming out the other side more skilled than you were ready to engage anew.

    This journey also operates on existential levels. These are the great times of change, when we must face the very notion of who we are, and have great swathes of our identity destroyed, such that the truer aspects of ourselves have the room to grow and become real.

    For those of us dedicated to the path—to becoming who we are asked to be—this cycle is part of the work. A foundational aspect of our job.

    This is the way we are change, and become agents of change in the larger world.

    But we live in unprecedented times. The territory we live within, and must travel through, has changed fundamentally.

    Chronos and Kairos

    The ancient Greeks had two words for time, Chronos and Kairos.

    Chronos is linear time. It is chronological. It proceeds in an ordered and predictable way from before to after. This is “business as usual”.

    Kairos is the time between time, the pregnant moment. This is the time when Chaos descends, time bends, and what was normal falls apart.

    As I listened to Hall last week by the fire, he said something, which struck me deeply. The more I’ve thought about it since, the more I realized he was absolutely right. His point was this.

    For those of us whose work is dedicated to change, Chronos is a time of limited return-on-investment. The structures of Order are tight, leaving little room for the crow bar of transformation to find purchase. Everything is working. Why would we need to change?

    But when the time of Kairos begins, those structures crack and crumble. The openings are created. The deeper and wider transformational work has the conditions it needs to gain purchase.

    That time is now. For we are living in a time of great Kairos.

    And now, the Hero’s Journey is flipped on its head.

    During times of Kairos, Order and Chaos are reversed. Now, the village from which the hero comes—society at large—is in the domain of Chaos. The Order of society has disintegrated, and the mythical village is in disarray.

    And so the Hero now makes a different journey. This time it is to leave the Chaos of society so as to build new Order out in the hinterlands, at the edge of what is known.

    The old structures have come to the end of their lifetime, and the new order that will replace them must be built. This building will be done by those who did their preparatory work—the myriad individual hero cycles—during the previous time of Chronos.

    Your choice amidst the crisis

    We are in crisis. The time of Kairos has begun, and the world is falling apart.

    How can your serve?

    There are two essential roles. And your fit for each stems from your relationship to the crisis.

    The word for crisis in Chinese contains two separate characters. One of them is the word for threat, the other the word for opportunity. It is this difference that points to the difference in our role.

    How are you relating to this crisis?

    Are you anxious and afraid? Are you struggling to keep your head above water, whether psychologically, economically or otherwise? Are you plugged into the air of fear, struggling to see the end, and hoping that help comes soon?

    If so, then Kairos has thrown you into the individual hero’s journey I outlined above. The one that asks you to face your own inadequacies and fears. The invitation is to face that which you’ve spent peacetime avoiding.

    Now is the time to find help from those who are resourced. Now is the time to get support and help as you venture into the depths of yourself in search of the stability that eludes you. Maybe it’s time to take a good hard look at the way you create money. Maybe it’s time to really face the fact that you’re not doing the work you feel called to. These are the questions that want to be gently encountered, as you do the short-term work of finding Order amongst the Chaos that this crisis has erupted into.

    How best can you serve yourself?  Put your own oxygen mask on first. Always you first, then you build the strength to help those immediately around you—your friends and family.

    And then there is the second role.

    If instead, you are predominantly tuned to the opportunity frequency of the crisis, then your role is different. Are you excited by the chaos that is ensuing? Does your energy rise as you consider all the things that could change as a consequence of this crisis?

    If you’ve done your work during Chronos—if you’ve run through the hero cycles that strengthen and empower you, then now comes the time to jump into the breach.

    If so, then Kairos is inviting you into the breach.

    Now is the time to step in.

    For the underlying cracks in the Order of society have become great gaping fissures. And you have juice to give—power and skill that you’ve diligently developed—how are you called to give it in service?

    I’ve spoken with friends and peers over the last few weeks who have been doing exactly this—stepping into the breach. My friend Mark trained 500 yoga teachers to take their classes online. My business mentor Rand has gathered his community of CEOs each week to explore how they can go on the offense, in service to their customers. My partners and I in my other business are mobilizing to offer our community resources to deepen their own leadership.

    I feel the tremor in my legs as I consider the things that have been slowly percolating over the last year. I feel that unmistakable sense of vulnerability as I too prepare myself to step into the unknown—the places that I have feared to tread.

    How about you?

    What is your role?

    How are you asked to serve during these times of crisis?

    Is your deepest service to bed down, get help, and tool up?

    Or is your deepest to service to stand up, step out and help build the new?

    Ewan Townhead

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  • What extraordinary times.

    How quickly everything has changed. As our governments desperately try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, we are left in the liminal space between spaces. The old world has ceased to function, with all the privileges we have become used to. The world beyond it cannot be seen yet. It will not be the same place. Normal is gone.

    And so we exist here, in a world between worlds.

    We have committed to a strategy of suppression—to lock down society and thus slow the spread of the virus, so our limited health care systems can handle the influx of those in critical condition. This enables us to save as many lives as possible. The cost is economic and social. As our human systems are starved of the interaction they require, they begin to atrophy and disintegrate.

    The scariest part perhaps, is that we have no exit strategy. We do not know how long our isolation will last, nor what state the world will be in when we emerge.

    And yet amidst the deep uncertainty, fear and contraction, I sense a great invitation. It’s one that shows itself to me as I descend beneath the surfaces of the news cycle and the inconvenience of my family being shut up in our little house.

    It’s an invitation that I hear echoed in the gnosis of my friends.

    It’s an invitation that has deep archetypal roots and collective implications.

    The collapse of what we know

    It was late January that I had a session with my astrologer Mark Borax. I asked him to give me a reading on the coming year.

    Astrology was something I had deep suspicion about just a few years ago. But as I have relaxed my New Age allergies, the symbolic truths it is able to draw out have become deeply important to me.

    As I listened, amongst the collection of gold nuggets that were for my personal journey, Mark spoke to the great theme of the year for all of us. This year, 2020, is a hugely significant year astrologically. The significance is created by a planetary pattern has not been seen for 4000 years.

    This is what he said.

    “The old world order is disintegrating. And what needs to replace it is a new dream of what can be. This process—of dismantling the old world structures and replacing them with structures, stories and ideas that are healthy and whole—is going to reach a state of huge intensity this year.”

    Prophetic? It has felt so for me.

    Jordan Hall, in this excellent article speaks to this theme from a meta-systemic perspective.

    We have driven our human systems to fragile extremes—obsessed with short term gains, we have eroded their resilience, exposing them to the possibility of mass collapse in the face of black swan events—things we do not see coming.

    And boy, did we just get ambushed by one hell of a black swan.

    We can look at this as an accidental tragedy with no meaning. Or we can look for the deeper archetypal theme—as Mark showed to me—and see the great invitation.

    This virus is a harbinger of the collapse of the old world. It is speeding the work that has been gathering steam for some years. And now, as we stand before the great unknown, it is inviting those of us who are called, to deepen our work and contribute to the building of the new world. This is the gift amidst the chaos.

    The great collective call

    We have been plunged into a great collective transformational journey. The kind that cycles throughout time, eternally. The kind we each embark upon as we journey from what was, to what could be. But this is of a different ilk. It has been thrust upon us—all of us—simultaneously. All are at risk. Each underlying weakness exposed.

    We are being shoved into the gauntlet of deep change. It cannot be avoided. We cannot bury our head under the duvet and hope it passes. We have no choice—the great collective call is echoing out around the world. We cannot escape the cycle.

    This is the first phase of the great cycle of the hero’s journey. The call to adventure. It is a journey that will change us irrevocably—if we embrace it. We have been given no choice about its arrival in the world. It is here.

    The only choice is whether we consent to the journey and walk into the unknown with conviction and courage, or whether we are dragged kicking and screaming, crying out for the nanny of society to save us from our fear, desperately numbing ourselves to the deeper invitation.

    For there are in fact two viruses in operation. The first is the one featured in every news headline—Corona. It is a highly infection and aggressive virus that overloads our physical immune system and exposes any underlying weakness in our body.

    The second is a psychic virus of fear and panic. It is at least as infectious, and it’s spread is outdistancing corona by degrees of magnitude. It is spread through our communication channels and behaviour. It exposes any underlying weaknesses in our psychology, economy and society.

    The fear that this second virus spreads is not something to be rejected. It is an invitation. It is showing us what my friend Andrew calls “the flinch”—the particular way we recoil from life and brace against that which we are unable to tolerate. This fear can be a gateway, pitilessly highlighting the places we contract, and pull away from life. And yet they are the very same places that we must encounter if we are to accept this great invitation amidst the chaos.

    Together, these viruses are accelerating the disintegration of the old world. It cannot endure. To hold onto it ever harder will increase our suffering, and entrench our incompetence. For the purpose of this cycle is to make us ready for what comes after. We are being offered a future in the new world, but to reach that destination we must journey through the trials and transformations that kill the old, and birth the new.

    It’s time to double down on the deep work

    The severity of what we now face can be met with equal fortitude. As we stare down the barrel of months of social isolation and mass disruption, a space opens up.

    I spoke with my sister last week. Her work as a DJ is reliant on joyful gatherings of large groups of people. She can no longer do this work. Millions are in similar situations, robbed of the life blood of their work.

    And yet as we spoke, she told me that she could feel the invitation within the crisis. Her dissatisfaction for her work, and the yearning for deeper contribution and meaning were being thrust into the spotlight, as she stared at a calendar with nothing on it. What did she really want to do?

    This is the personal quest amidst the great call to adventure.

    What plans, ideas or callings have you been sitting on, that you couldn’t or wouldn’t action? As the old safety is eroded, the path is laid clear for you to take a risk, and follow that which is closer to the soul of what drives you.

    Can you hear the deeper invitation, the higher calling? It’s here, right now, in the centre of you. Feel it in your heart. You are needed. Your work is needed. How can you contribute? What service can you offer to us in the midst of this chaos?

    As I write this, I am caught, in the same spotlight. The plans I have been slowly working myself toward, juggling the sensations of excitement and resistance, announce themselves in my consciousness.

    “It’s time to double down Ewan. Build it.”

    This is the clear message I keep hearing, every time I sense deeply—that this is not simply about enduring the storm, or “getting on with work”. It’s time to double down on the deep work. This is the moment. The great opening.

    And so our task now is to listen to what is asked of us. To hear it with as much presence as we can muster. To tune the dial of our attention to the signal of a deeper calling, letting the noise of fear subside. Not repressed or denied, but felt as the anxious potential for what lies before us.

    And when you find that frequency—or perhaps you already know exactly what is asked—the invitation becomes real.

    The invitation is to embark upon the heroic journey that will rot away the old habits, reliance and assumptions, and create the fertile soil from which the new world can be built.

    This is the start of the journey. The mythical moment that the evil knight enters the castle and lays down the challenge to those gathered.

    You have been asked to embark upon a quest.

    Will you accept?

    If you do, and I do, and all those who can hear the call amidst the cacophony of panic and misinformation do, then perhaps we will be able to look back on this momentous time not simply as the catastrophe is surely is, but also as the time we stood up, and set ourselves upon a new course that led towards a new world.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Underneath the clench that maintains the dominant posture, lies a sea of feeling and imagery that contradicts who you believe yourself to be.

    That is why you must clench—tighten your gut, armour your heart, squeeze your asshole—because to discontinue this habit would be to plunge yourself into the underworld of the present moment, where the rest of your being—the aspects that you are thus far unable to tolerate—resides.

    It hurts to let go.

    That’s why you hold on so tight.

    Rather the reliable experience of a stiff manageability, than the disruption of a loosened body-mind. Rather the relief of floating above the sensations in a mental world of ideas, worries and dreams, than sinking down into the enormity of what you do not yet know how to embody.

    But it is through the pain that is felt, when you fill out into the fullness of the softened body-mind that you will discover the opposites of consciousness that can be woven into a posture that holds the whole.

    To find the centre—the middle of existence—you must include the extremities of the polarities upon which everything is built.

    To inhabit the heart of the human experience, you must simultaneously reach up into the heights of your foresight, and sink down into the depths of your memory.

    To inhabit the centre of this moment you must simultaneously reach forth into the world with the right hand of agentic penetration, and invite in the world with the left hand of permeable affect.

    Or at least, this is a good place to start.

    As the muscles of my stomach let go, and the floor of my torso softens, there is uncovered, a great wobbly fear—sickness, as though I have eaten a rotten meal. The sensation is of exposure, of such detailed apprehension that I can barely stand it.

    “Run!” cries the ego.

    But I have come this far, and the prospect of returning to the clench feels even worse.

    I do not know how to banish the pain, and the nausea. I do not know how to morph the tension into opening.

    So I sit. In the midst.

    How convenient it is that there is such a multitude of pain-killers. The phone in my pocket that plugs my mind into the social matrix. The cigarettes on the table that give me temporary relief from the crucible of creative tension. The habitual self-flagellation that comes from the story of all the things I am doing wrong.

    I can ingest each and every belief and story—maintaining the ignorance of one who dare not feel the realness of the moment.

    But it doesn’t work does it? It just perpetuates the lie. It simply numbs the sensation of life. It blinds us from the eye that sees the golden thread, that leads from the mind trap of striving to be accepted, toward the wholeness of soul-incarnate.

    “Please God. Show me the way.” I utter, seeking the mythical key that finally delivers me from my suffering.

    And then something softens.

    It is not the mythical key. It is the presence that I was clenching against feeling.

    I feel Him—that archetypal expression of what is divine in each of us, my own true self, the soul manifest. He is right here. Beneath the eternal spin of the narrative world. Inside the feeling of my body, in this chair, in this moment, in this world, under these stars.

    He moves, as I move. The soft undulation of a body that has been tied into conformity for too long. The sensitization of a being that feels he must deflect the harsh inputs of an urban world.

    The sudden smile, as my eyes soften, and I notice the swaying of the trees, and the shape of the houses, and the gift of the consciousness that is able to apprehend all of this.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • I must confess, I am slightly obsessed by the future.

    I think about it all the time. Both mine—how I’m going to achieve all the dreams I have, and what it would be like to live that future? And ours—how on earth are we going to make it through this very odd moment we’re in the midst of? And what will the world my own children live in look like?

    The obsession seems part of me. The driving force that counters my instinct to hunker down, go back to sleep and hope it’s all better when I wake up.

    But this is my nature. Indeed, it is our nature.

    We are beings who live in time—who can choose to forgo the impulses of the present, in service of a brighter future that exists only inside the dream.

    For any of us who seek to walk the soul path, and to manifest the potentials we hold, the dream of the future is what we travel toward. The work cannot be done without this. It’s a fundamental dimension that we exist within.

    The problem is that the journey toward the future we dream of, is one that is not well managed by the rational mind, and our conventional ways of making plans and goals.

    For me, the conventional goal-setting approach provides mountains of fodder for the hungry bear inside whose goal it is to ensure I stay anxious and painfully watchful:

    “Am I on track? Am I doing enough? Am I good enough? Is there a silver bullet that would make it all come true? What’s the strategy? Damn it Ewan—you need a strategy!”

    It doesn’t work.

    Rather, the practice of dreaming the future is one that must be approached in a different—indeed, mystical way.

    It is a practice of embodying the future self.

    The amazing transformation of the butterfly

    The butterfly has long been help as a symbol of the transformative process. With good reason. The journey the little caterpillar makes, from its innocent munching of leaves, through the magic of the cocoon, into its emergence as a beautiful new being, is an amazingly apt metaphor for the journey that you and I make as we transform our own consciousness.

    We move from the innocence of our younger self, through the magic of metamorphosis, into the majesty of one who can now soar higher than we were previously capable.

    However—as I discovered some years ago when I studied this biological process—there are even richer layers of symbology that reveal critical aspects of our own transformative process. I want to share those with you, for they set up the idea of the future self beautifully.

    Do you know what you would find, were you to slice open a chrysalis just a single day after the caterpillar had entered it?

    You may think, as I did when I was first asked, that you would find a caterpillar slowly growing wings and antennae.

    You would not.

    In fact, were you to look, you would find that the caterpillar is no longer there. What you will find instead, is goo.

    The little leaf muncher has decomposed into slime.

    Before the new can grow, the old must disintegrate. The potential of the future must be grown from the materials of the old. But for that old material to fertilise the new, it must decompose. It must turn into goo.

    For you and I to become a fuller and truer manifestation of our soul’s potential, we must allow the old self to disintegrate and die. For it is from this decomposed self, that the new is born.

    This is not a pleasant process. For it is experienced, literally, as death. It hurts. Who you considered yourself to be—the identity you held as “you”—ceases to be so.

    I have long railed against the fashionable glorification of the transformative process, as if it is something that can be enjoyably enacted during a weekend workshop. While in truth, it is a slow, destructive process which ushers us through pain, grief and disorientation—inevitable feelings when in the proximity of death.

    The caterpillar’s disintegration into goo is a powerful image for the death of the old.

    But the symbology of this amazing process of the butterfly does not end there.

    If you were to cut open the caterpillar itself, before it enters the cocoon, you would discover something else incredible.

    Already inside the caterpillar are proto-wings and proto-antennae

    In other words, the future butterfly is already present inside the caterpillar.

    And so it is with you and I.

    Your future self already resides inside you in potential form. It is not simply something that is created—manufactured from nothing according to your own will and determination. Your future self—in proto-form—is present in this very moment as you read these very words.

    And if the future self is already inside us, then it is one who can be contacted and indeed, felt.

    This practice—of feeling the future self in my own body-mind—has been one of my most important practices over the last couple of years. It’s worked me on deep, deep levels.

    Imprinting the Future Self

    One of the most ancient practices we have, reaching right back into the pre-religious shamanic traditions of the world, is that of merging with other beings. Or, if you need secular language for this—embodying archetypal forms.

    In the tantric lineage that I’ve studied in with one of my teachers Michaela Bohm, it is called deity yoga—inviting the archetypal form of a particular deity into your body, and sitting or moving as that deity.

    I have practiced this with Jesus, sitting as Jesus, allowing his nervous system to replace mine, so I can feel as him. Replacing his thoughts with mine, so I conceive of the world as he does.

    And where I have also practiced this deeply, is sitting as my future self.

    It’s quite a trip. I can do it now.

    Despite thirty-six-year-old Ewan sitting here in this seat in this coffee bar on the Beethovenstraat in Amsterdam, I can call in “future Ewan”. He enters my body-mind, and without conscious effort, things move.

    My spine straightens.

    My eyes soften and take in more of my visual field.

    My lips curl into a little Buddha smile.

    I involuntarily take a big juicy breath.

    And when I stop and look around, the world is a different one than that I saw but a minute ago.

    It’s so much more beautiful. The background music becomes something I playfully move to in my seat, rather than the distraction it was previously.

    The colours get richer.

    My work feels more like a gift—a container for my own curiosity and expression, rather than an onerous yoke that I must carry without whining (something I’m not generally predisposed to do).

    And from this place, I can examine questions, or decisions, that thirty-six-year-old Ewan is struggling to resolve.

    The angst over my own stuttering writing practice is easily solved from here.

    “Just write” future self says.

    “Sit down. Turn off your phone. And write.” He’s kind, wise and penetrating.

    “Stare into space when you get stuck. Don’t think about the quality of the completed piece.” He instructs.

    It’s more than his words that touch me and change my state. It’s the truth of them, the truth that is not arrived at through careful rational consideration. But one that just penetrates me instantly, because I know it to be true.

    “Thank you.” I say.

    And he goes back to his ephemeral home in the potential of things. And I come back to the present. Thirty-six again. Mildly angst ridden again.

    But the smile remains.

    And the back is a little straighter.

    And I know what I have to do. The words flow.

    The transformative power of the future self

    The caterpillar doesn’t have to worry about whether it will fulfil its potential and become its destiny. It instinctively enters its chrysalis. It becomes the butterfly without conscious effort. It simply follows the biological path laid down by its billion ancestors.

    But the path is rather more fraught for you and I.

    This is the great gift and curse of humankind. Our potential is not predetermined, nor biologically constrained. But neither is it inevitable.

    The process of becoming the fully manifest soul is the work of a lifetime, or indeed many.

    The future self inside—the potential you hold in proto form—is but a blueprint. It does not prescribe its ultimate form. But it does carry a unique archetypal imprint. That is, when I tune into my future self, he does have a particular quality. He’s recognisable. He’s like this, not that.

    And somewhere deep inside I know him. I recognise him. For I can see the innocent roots of his brilliance in my childhood. I can feel the seeds of his power in myself, here in this moment.

    Knowing him enables me, whenever I choose, to short-circuit my egoic programming, and align with a deeper truth. I can call him in, in those moments when confusion and self-doubt are blinding me, and look instead through his eyes.

    “Oh, this is what you want me to see?”

    “Yes” he replies. “Got it?”

    And that momentary peek through the veil gives me my compass reading, and I know how to proceed. And he’s here with me, gently, subtly.

    As I practice this over time, I find myself moving more directly toward his actual manifestation in my life. He sets the direction, pulling me toward his beauty and power. And the alternative navigation—the one that stems from my egoic desire to “be enough” or “get recognition” is gradually weakened. The path toward soul becomes clearer, the path of egoic justification led trodden.

    For as I wrote in The Game of Soul Goals, it is the setting of goals that set you down the path toward soul manifestation are what keep you playing the infinite game of life. But to do so requires a compass reading of the soul. Or, as I am suggesting here, an imprint of the feel of the future self.

    How to meet the future self

    Perhaps you already feel them inside you. Perhaps through your own practice and path you know the feel of the one, who lies in the future, as a glorious embodiment of all that you are.

    If so, then the practice is one of inviting them inside. Allowing their imprint to fill you from the within, like a ghostly form stepping into your body and filling you up. Do this as often as you remember. For doing so builds those proto-wings and turns them from potential into reality.

    If you cannot feel your future self—if you have no reference point for the proto-wings inside, then there are a host of practices that will help you do so.

    The methods I find most powerful are gnostic or shamanic practices which I will not describe here, since they require a deeper transmission and instruction than I can convey in a few words.

    However, there is a practice that is more easily performed, and which I have found very potent.

    In her interview with Tim Ferriss, Debbie Millman shares this wonderful practice. You can do it alone—it’s not technically challenging, though it can be psychically challenging. I’ve done it with a number of clients. If you engage with it deeply, it will give you a sketch of the future self.

    The practice goes like this…

    1. Carve out some quality solo-time. A calm and beautiful setting helps.
    2. In a notebook, write the date of today, 10 years in the future. For example, 29th January 2030. I find the simple contemplation of that number catalyses something potent.
    3. Then write—in the first person—an account of that day in the future, when you have soul-manifested everything you could have dreamed of in the preceding 10 years. This is not an exercise in envisioning what is appropriately attainable, or based on ego-goals. It is the realisation of your sacred dream.
    4. Give it lots of detail. Where do you wake up? What do the bedsheets feel like? What occupies your mind and heart upon waking? Who are you with? What does the world look like through the eyes of this self? What’s exciting you? What are you working on? Who do you pray to? What do now understand, that your self 10 years ago did not.
    5. You write something like a novel, where the protagonist is your dream self—the one you fantasise about becoming. And in this story, you get to paint a picture of that dream world. Remember, you must write in the first person.
    6. Don’t aim low. You write to get on the inside of this future self. Don’t play it safe. Write out a day in the life of your dream self. Don’t use your mind. Let it come through the heart.
    7. Write as much as you can/want. 10 pages is better than 1. Write 100 if you’re moved to. More depth and detail means more psychic impact.

    This exercise will give you a picture of the future self. When you allow the writing to come through your heart, you let your soul speak.

    For the one that comes through the dream is the one that is already inside, in proto-form.  And when you are able to put a pin in the map of the future, and know, in symbolic form, toward whom you are travelling, it changes the journey fundamentally.

    Happy travelling.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • For the last three Christmases, my family and I have played a wonderful board game called Pandemic Legacy. The “standard” game pits the players—who constitute a collaborative team, rather than opponents—against a lethal virus which is threatening the world with extinction. The objective of the game is to keep the virus from spreading, and find a cure.

    The “legacy” editions of the game are some of the greatest board games ever made. Each time you play the game, a larger meta narrative develops. The entire game is played across 20 or so individual games, each evolving the story, and changing the game. New characters are discovered, rules change, viruses mutate, clues are discovered, conditions get harder. It’s amazing fun.

    It’s a wonderful metaphor for the game of work in this modern age of complexity and unprecedented change.

    And so as I sat on New Year’s Eve outside my house beside the fire, working on my goals for 2020, I realised that I had started to think of my goals, like Pandemic Legacy—as a game that changes as it is played.

    The objective of the game

    The objective of the game of work is to unfold your soul—unwind its potential— into actuality. To create a life forged from the blueprints held deep inside. To become who you were born to be, and contribute what you were designed to create.

    There is no obvious end point to this objective. It cannot be clearly achieved. It is not a measurable goal. It is what James Carse calls an “infinite game”.

    Most of the games we play in life are the opposite—finite games. The goal of these games is to win at the expense of others. Make more money than your neighbour. Get more twitter followers than Stormzy. Commune with more unicorns than other shamans. They are zero-sum. The game is over when you’ve accumulated enough of the limited elements to beat your opponents.

    The most important games are infinite games. The objective of an infinite game is to keep playing the game.

    This is the game of soul-unfolding. You keep playing. It has no ultimate destination. There’s always another layer, another lifetime.

    This is the context for goals. The game objective is soul-unfoldment and embodiment. The game goals are what keeps you moving along the soul path.

    Setting soul goals

    As I sat with my notebook beside the fire, I thought afresh about goals, and what this new year, indeed this new decade, held in store.

    Goals and I used to have a rather fractured relationship. I thought they were constraining prisons that blocked creative emergence. They thought I was a lazy schmuck who was too scared to put my balls on the line.

    We respect each other now. We work together. And as I sat writing beside the fire I once more enquired into their nature.

    A goal is a conceptual stake that you plant in the ground of the future, and aim your life at. It’s something that—as far as you can tell—moves you along the soul path.

    Some people like setting modest goals, targets they’re confident they can hit. The goal of the goal is to achieve it—they fail if they don’t.

    Some people like setting impossible goals, something that looks utterly unattainable. The goal of the goal is to blast apart their conceptions of what is possible. They fail if they attain it (and discover they aimed too low).

    My neurotic insecurity doesn’t do well with impossible goals. I’m still building the muscle of discipline and conscientious work. So I create goals which are attainable. But (and this is the key) in order to attain them I have to change.

    This is a soul-goal.

    The goals constellate into a whole which—if achieved—will be completed by a man more soul embodied than this man now, writing these words.

    Ewan(2019) isn’t capable of pulling them off. I have to become Ewan(2020) to do so.

    And I check—carefully—that Ewan(2020) is someone that is soul-embodied, not ego-inflated. Let me explain this. It’s also key.

    The place from which we source goals determines the path the goals will then lead us down.

    If I create goals that pump my self-esteem and help me feel superior, then the man at the end of that path will be narcissistic. If I set goals that protect my insecurity and maintain safety, then the man at the end of that path will be a coward.

    If I set goals that further the work I know I’m here to do, which put me face to face with that which scares me existentially, which force me to embody those capacities that call out to be integrated, then the man at the end of that path will be more soul-manifest.

    The rules change as you proceed

    The nature of a soul-goal is that it requires transformation. The current self is insufficient to accomplish it. The muscle of the future self must be exercised in order to attain it. The very act of setting the goal, and perusing it launches you along the path toward greater soul manifestation.

    And then? You dynamically steer as you move through the actual territory of life. Reality never measures up to our concept of it before the fact. This is very important. It allows for the possibility that you realise that the goal you set wasn’t in the right place.

    We can set goals with the best of intention—the deepest conscious presence—and then reality can change the game on us half way through.

    This is fact confused me for a long time. I can never know exactly how the reality of the future will play out. Indeed, the deeper the transformation—the more I walk the path of the soul—the less sure I can be of where I can end up.

    A cynic (and I flirted with this for many years) may therefore conclude that goals are both pointless (due to the unpredictable nature of emergent reality) and harmful (for they constrain the “pure” emergence through our mental conceptions of where we “should” be.)

    This issue took me a long time to untangle.

    I remember sitting in a car with a man I was staying with in Dallas some years ago. He was a very successful business man and was grilling me on my business goals.

    I mumbled my way through lofty aspirations that I hoped would satiate his challenge, while actually revealing the fact I didn’t have any clear goals.

    “Well that doesn’t work, you need to have goals.” He replied.

    “But I can’t know what the future holds, what if things change?” I argued back.

    “It’s very simple.” He said. “You plant a stake a ground and you go at it—hard. And if you discover it wasn’t in the right place, you move the stake, and then you go at it—hard.”

    While we indeed cannot expect our conceptions of emergent future to be accurate, the coin has a second face.

    It is the great human gift to be able to manipulate time—to conceive of the future, and sacrifice the present in service of creating that future. This is what separated our hunter-gather ancestor, who lived in the blissful ignorance of the present, to our famer ancestor, who planted his seeds, and suffered in the present for a better future when the crop would be harvested.

    Our predictions of the future may be insufficient, but it is our job to make them nonetheless, and in doing so, discover that we can indeed create the future. And while it may not be what we always expect, if we are able to stay in touch with the soul’s guidance inside—the voices that call out and activate our deep yearning—the path is one that transforms us into something greater.

    The goal is not the point. It is not the win-condition of the game.

    The win-condition is to keep playing, learning, and unfolding the soul.

    This is the infinite game.

    But the goal is what drives you along the path. The goal is how you continually play the infinite game.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • I grew up into my adulthood reading Ken Wilber. His “map of everything” changed my life. He was the first writer to explain reality to me in a way that made sense. I founded my first 3 businesses based on it and the community that had formed around it.

    I dropped my “devotion” to his work a long time ago now, but I periodically find ways where the biases I developed from his framework have been holding me back from certain domains of reality.

    One of the most powerful ideas in his work is that of the pre-trans fallacy. The idea is that anything that follows a developmental trajectory will in some general way go through three stages.

    For example, the movement from pre-egoic consciousness (early childhood), to egoic consciousness (normal adulthood), to trans-egoic consciousness (genuine spirituality).

    The problem however is this…

    Pre-egoic consciousness and post-egoic consciousness can look the same, because they’re both “non-egoic”. And thus we make a duality.

    Ego. Non-ego.

    Ego bad. Non-ego good.

    When actually, teaching “ego” to a child is really good! But ego when you seek to go beyond the conventions? Not good at all.

    Thus we tend to confuse “pre” and “trans” because they’re both “non”. This is the pre/trans fallacy.

    The specific version of the pre-trans fallacy that Wilber often talked about was that of rationality. That is, both our tendency to read “spiritual authenticity” in superstitious pre-rational childishness (new age movement) and to dismiss genuinely trans-rational truths as woo-woo nonsense (rationalist atheism).

    He mentions Freud and Jung as examples of this. Freud tended to collapse trans-rational dreams down into pre-rational “sex issues”. And Jung was more likely to elevate pre-rational childishness into trans-rational symbology.

    At some point this year I realized that the stuff I’ve gotten really interested in over the last few years is essentially “pre-rational” (nonsense). Mythology, shamanism and alchemy—stuff I always thought of as pretty darned weird.

    And I also realized why the idea of “pre-rational” had confused me. I’d read it to mean “therefore not to be taken seriously”.

    But I’ve experimented with taking it really seriously, and…holy fuck.

    I’ve been stunned by the power in these “pre-rational” disciplines. Not that there isn’t a shit ton of new age retro-romanticism in these circles (there is), or that it isn’t in need of some upgrading and integration (it is). But damn. Sometimes it really does feel like I’ve discovered magical powers.

    I have become a devoted practitioner of shamanic soul-flight—the travelling, through the mind’s eye, into the imaginal archetypal realms. There I have met a whole pantheon of odd characters—arch-angels, fairy princesses, dragons, dead sages, religious figures. I ask them for advice. They show me stuff. So far, none of it has steered me false. And some of it has been genuinely life-changing.

    Could this be a clever way of accessing my own “inner-wisdom”? Maybe. Except that the tricky thing is this. The archetypal realm—the world of the dream, myth and archetypes is found by going deep inside. So it is “inner-wisdom”. But it is not “mine”. That is, it’s certainly coming from beyond my mind, beyond the ego, beyond the rational.

    The fuller proof is this. I’ve taken other people’s big questions to my guides, and asked them to show me what is happening. I see weird stuff—things I certainly wouldn’t have thought of myself. And when I share these images and teachings with my friends, they’re blown away. Extreme accuracy. Potent impact.

    I’ve also experimented with “energy magic”. That is, impacting people near me with my “intention”. Some weeks ago I was sitting in the park and a young couple sat down near me in the midst of a bad argument. She was pissed off at him, and he was looking limp and powerless. As I tuned into what I felt their deeper selves wanted to happen, I started quietly talking to them and sending the intention of those words over to them.

    “He loves you. He loves you so much. Show him you love him too.”

    And then almost instantly she stopped firing off her anger, and for the first time since they’d sat down, she looked at him and smiled flirtingly. By this point however, he had become like stone, unresponsive, and he couldn’t see it.

    “Get him to touch you.” I whispered. “Make contact with him, get him to touch you.”

    And as I watched, she reached behind her, picked up a bottle of sun cream, handed it to him and gestured for him to put it on her back.

    What is this but magic? At least according to our dominant rational doctrine.

    It’s quite the journey exploring it all.

    My scepticism is alive and kicking (I’d have it no other way). And I am mining the cognitive dissonance that occurs when I experience magic on the one hand, and on the other, hold a map that says it is impossible.

    But most of all, I’m finding it all shockingly potent, and marvellously fun. And the more I talk about it to people around me, the more closet magicians I find.

    Maybe you’re one too?

    Ewan Townhead

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  • The goal for many of us now is not what is used to be. It is not simply the attainment of a respectable job. It is not simply a good stable marriage and two kids.

    The goal is now—for a growing community of us— to self-actualize.

    The imperative is nothing short of soul-realisation, that slow and onerous path that leads through all of the things we least want to look at, toward that which we yearn so deeply for. To become who we really are.

    It is relinquishing the mistaken notion of who we should be, and instead devoting ourselves to the authenticity project.

    It is the descent into our original nature—the embodying of our natural heritage. And the accent into our highest self—who we are called to become.

    This is the path that lies before you and I.

    And it is one, whose course I believe we must now follow. This is the responsibility of our privilege—the hero’s journey of our time.

    And yet by nature of seeing this soul-path, and opening up the potential to walk its course, we simultaneously open the way along another path.

    The shadow of privilege

    Every omega has its delta. Every genius has its shadow. Every quest has its challenge. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

    In each way that we make possible a great good, we create the potential for a great ill. At the moment the ship was invented, so was the shipwreck.

    As the height of opportunity reaches high into the heavens of our new world, so the slide down into hell lengthens to balance the polarity.

    We have never been so free to discover the divinity of life, so protected and provided for, so encouraged and enabled. As the straps of conformity have frayed and rotted, we have been released to rise into the heights of self-realization.

    But these rotten straps of conformity were holding us back from more than self-realization. They were holding us back from the fall down into the pits of nihilistic insignificance. That horrible affliction where we do not matter and have no place.

    For the natural opposite of soul-driven self-realisation is a dark reality indeed—the absence of intrinsic meaning, the arbitrary nature of existence. The pointlessness of Being.

    This is the monster at the bottom of every dark mood. The spectre of the possibility that we are in fact insignificant. That it doesn’t matter, that whatever we do, it doesn’t matter. Because there’s no deeper origin, no higher destination.

    It is the germ of darkness that infects us when we turn away from what we know is most important, and fall into the self-doubt that we must supress with doughnuts or Netflix.

    The famous story goes that the world is resting on the back of a turtle, which in turn is resting on the back of a great turtle, ad infinitum. It’s turtles all the way down.

    The story of nihilism is that the world is resting on nothing. Randomness. Arbitrary form based on random context. There is no pattern to things. No great story that we are the protagonist within.

    We are simply the clever ape, who made up a world of language and clever objects to distract us from the horrendous truth that we are an accident of random mutations.

    There is no deeper truth. There is no deeper code.

    And what else can we do in the face of such a story but fall into the depths of apathy? For what is the point of doing anything, when there is no point to anything? What is the point of striving harder for the attainment of this year’s goals, when there is no actual goal to life?

    This is the world when the deeper code and the higher nature are stripped from it. When God and Soul are cleaved from the body of the world, and we are left in the empty expanse of empty cups and Instagram likes.

    The temptation of ignorance

    I’ve long thought about the scene in the Matrix where Cipher betrays Neo because he just doesn’t want to be in the real world any longer. He says “plug me back in to the matrix—take me back”. In other words he’d rather have ignorant contentment, than cold hard reality.

    I can relate.

    Especially in those inevitable moments when expectation presses down on me, I get into unhelpful habits, and things just don’t seem to go my way.

    “Why does this feel so hard? Why do I feel so unsafe?”

    Because the path of self-realization is hard. Is isn’t safe. That’s why we don’t happily choose it, and why so few embody its truths.

    The darkness of nihilism is the opposite of soul-realization. And so by choosing the path of soul-realization, you make the experience of nihilism a reality you must face.

    Nihilism is enacted when you turn away from the truth—from the brightness of your divine nature, and the illumination of your shadow.

    The soul path is choosing the light, including the light in the dark—the sovereign facing of the contents of the dark road.

    Walking the path of soul means facing the dark voluntarily­, and viscerally. For it is in the darkness that you find the treasure that can be offered in the light of the world, and of the marketplace.

    There are two paths

    The sin of nihilism is insidious. It’s right there in your pocket. The never-ending newsfeed. The next click. Then the next. Just one more. OK, one more.

    Until there is no one clicking. There is no awareness. The hard-won consciousness of your twenty first century self has been subsumed in the great collective mirage of ego.

    We are pulled out of this moment—deep time—into the superficiality of the headline, the promise that maybe this time, the click will fill that existential hole.

    This is the sin of superficiality and wilful blindness. Of putting our hands over our ears and pretending we don’t hear the deeper voices. Of numbing our bodies so that we don’t have to feel the pain of something out of alignment.

    It’s the price we pay for having freed ourselves so radically from the material necessities of survival, and opened up the path toward self-realization.

    Let us join hands

    Liberation is not found inside the cheesecake that smothers the feeling of tension. It is not uncovered through the espousal of social ideology or maintaining a glossy Instagram feed.

    It is found in the opposite direction—in becoming quiet enough to hear what is beneath the static of social media. It is in feeling ourselves, perhaps for the first time, and in encountering the urgency that each of us feel.

    The path is right there before us.

    It takes discipline to step out onto it each day. An inch is enough.

    It takes faith to keep stepping out, even though the destination is unclear.

    It takes courage to face the obstacles—the very things we have spent eons avoiding, and which trigger our deepest vulnerabilities.

    But this is what it takes.

    This is what separates those who will help build the new world, from those who will exacerbate the darkness out of which it will emerge.

    But the terrain is poorly mapped. The path unclear upon the ground of the new world.

    Perhaps if we were to join hands, and show each other the way, we might discover the promised land which we cannot help but yearn for.

    Ewan Townhead

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