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

    You betray yourself.

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

    Except I don’t want to go.

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

    So I say yes.

    It doesn’t go well.

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

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

    The truth of your desire is felt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There’s conflict either way

    Arnold Mindell said:

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

    I choose conflict with the world. Every time.

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

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

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

    The truth is there, if you know how to look

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

    “Yeah, that sounds interesting.”

    “Sure, ok.”

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

    All of these mean no.

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

    Yes.

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

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

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

    No sweetie. Don’t do it.

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

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

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

    No.

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

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

    Ewan Townhead

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  • She came too close.

    She presumed too much.

    She took what she needed.

    I’ve spent my life trying to keep her happy, making sure I’m giving her what she needs. There’s something in my base-code, an algorithm that says her emotional well-being is my responsibility.

    So when she’s unhappy, my code tells me it’s my fault. And I must comply with her demands.

    She’s not a specific woman, she’s woman, and when she calls, I must answer.

    It’s taken me years, but slowly, through much work, with much help I’ve learned to see underneath my programming. And underneath it exists a line. A demarcation between she and I.

    I don’t know precisely where the line comes from. But if I pay attention, the feeling of its violation is unmistakable, like an enemy coming into home territory uninvited.

    And I’ve learned that the line is mine. One to be spoken.

    “No. I don’t want to give you what you want. Back you go.”

    The violation of boundaries is a universal human experience. It’s the inevitable consequence of the fact that we are separate, and yet yearn for union.

    We violate these lines in different ways.

    He is an expert at overt violation, rough and physical, he just grabs what he wants, brutally shoving dissent out of the way. She is an expert at covert violation – subtle and emotional – she schemes and manipulates, sliding past dissent unseen.

    It took me years to notice that she violates too. I thought it was just him. That’s what I’d been told, but it wasn’t true.

    “You always do this.” She says in that voice that cuts right through into my shame. “I hate that you don’t think of me first. I’m wondering if you actually love me at all! If you did, you’d give me what I want.”

    The average man is not a good player in this emotional game. He thinks in simple terms. He’s clumsy in the emotional world and crumbles in the face of her power.

    “Sorry.”

    He drops his head, beaten by her shaming, he tells her he’ll do better next time, and be a good boy.

    Or he desperately fights back, closes his heart, refuses to swallow the shame, pushes it back at her with force and aggression, defending himself behind his shields and armour.

    Both tactics end up in the same place. The place where we’re alone, and hurt and ashamed. Both of us. All of us.

    The alternative is to draw the line.

    It’s there, waiting for you to take its implicit truth, and create its explicit form. The line is real. Its existence is the very definition of self-love.

    “No.”

    But don’t forget to keep your heart open. Maybe she doesn’t know where your line is. Maybe you’ve never told her before. Maybe you’ve never told yourself before, and the line is just newly acknowledged.

    Tell her with love.

    “No sweetie.”

    The line is drawn.

    And then, magically, I can see her as if for the first time. The woman in my head dissolves – the one who always does this to me – and the woman in front of me appears, real and human.

    There she is, the woman on the other side of the boundary.

    She’s beautiful. I can see that now. Now that I don’t have to desperately defend against her attack.

    I see her now as her. I see her unique being, her good intentions, her imperfect actions. She’s like me, but different.

    And now I’ve shown her where she can’t cross, I have all the space in the world from which to love her.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • It began to dawn on me, the innocence of my heart.

    I was biking home from a date with a woman. It was sweet. Surprising. Confronting. I’d fallen for something in her. And then I’d got a little burned. More than my rational mind said was appropriate.

    “Dude. C’mon You don’t even know her. You’re overreacting here. Wtf?”

    But it hurt. My heart ached. I felt foolish.

    From somewhere inside, a breath came. A moment. I smiled inside and gave myself a dose of self-administered love serum. I relaxed. And then another voice spoke to me.

    “This is your super-power Ewan. You’re pure. You never doubted you were loved. Your parents wanted you so deeply. They had a lot of fun conceiving you. You have an innocent heart; you just love people. It’s powerful. And it’s also your greatest challenge.”

    I watch the cheesiest shit on TV and start quietly blubbering.

    I listen to a particular song, and my whole chest creaks and tingles and I remember times when I felt the way the song feels.

    I fall for women before I even really know them, and my heart opens, and they receive me, and sometimes I don’t notice that I’m about to get hurt. And maybe they are too.

    So I want to speak about the heart. My heart. Our heart. The most beautiful thing God ever created. It has one simple mechanism, the eternal mechanism.

    To open. Or not.

    The heart is the centre

    The place where heaven and earth meet. The only place we feel the beauty of separation and intimacy.

    And behind it all – the elusive primal memory that we’re not mortal. We come from on high, angels fallen. Not because we turned dark, but because here in this human life we find the only place where we connect with one another. We meet because meeting is gifted to us through our agonous separation.

    This is the only place where we can taste and live life. It’s different up there. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is right. Nothing is separate, nothing is together.

    But you and I sweetheart, we are mortal. We will die. We know it, and it is that urgency that drives us toward our own realization.

    “Your heart is the centre young one. That is where mortality and divinity meet. It is where your true nature is held.

    And it will break. A thousand times before it finally opens. It may take you a thousand lifetimes. It may have already taken more.

    But this is why you chose to come here. Why you chose your parents; you chose this life. Because it is the most precious gift that can ever be given.

    To love, to hurt, to merge, to break-apart, to entwine in something never before felt.”

    I’m sorry I wasn’t there more

    It hurts. I can’t help but open to her. She’s so beautiful, and unique, and soft, and loving. She beckons to me, like the mother I never had. I want to go to her. Love her. I want to suck at her nipple, and feel safe. Hold her in my arms and tell her everything’s going to be ok.

    And it hurts when she leaves me. When I’m all alone. And I return to the doubt. Maybe I’m not lovable. Maybe it was a mistake, and I have to be alone now.

    I miss her. It was the most powerful 3 years of my life. She changed me. And I’ll love her forever, she who captured my heart. A woman so beautiful, I still cry when I picture her and all we shared.

    I’m sorry dearest, that it had to end like this. But didn’t we have fun? Wasn’t it beautiful?

    And all the women I was with before her, and the ones who stand before me now. A harem of sacred women, who have taught me that which I could never know. And loved me in places I dare not see.

    Thank you. With everything I have.

    I’m sorry that I wasn’t there more.

    Yet, He knows this is the most wondrous of gifts

    “This is what you asked for my boy.”

    “Yes. I know. I prayed for it. The trial of the heart. And yet I squirm and whine. Because it’s hard. And I have to reveal myself, and sometimes I’d rather be in bed, with the covers over my chin.”

    “And isn’t that the innocent dignity that all of you have? To be scared of what you dare not fully love. Isn’t it the most wonderful of gifts? To be in human form, with the unique invitation to feel another. To make love with another. To unify the two hearts of God, into this one Heart.

    “Do you miss it J? Being here?”

    “No. Because I am It. I am You. I am Here. There’s nothing to miss.

    And yes, I miss it. I miss the taste of Mary on my lips. Her Being entwining me in the love I never imagined could exist. She says she doesn’t mind that her story was lost and horribly twisted. But I feel so sad that people have forgotten that it was Our Love that changed the world.”

    “I think we’re realizing that now J. I think those of us who are treading the path you marked for us can feel that. This is not the solo path. This is the relational path, con-joined love. Divine partnership.”

    “Thank you youngster. My heart is opened by your words. And I’m so proud of you. Never forget that I love you.”

    “I do forget. I’m sorry J.”

    “I know. And you are always already forgiven my love.”

    Never stop your heart

    I know he feels what I feel, more than I do. He feels it all, and that’s why I love him. Because his anger is given without agenda. And his devotion is given without condition.

    He sees the future, he is the future. And he’s chosen me, like he’s chosen you, as the disciples of a very different world. Not one of his making. One of Our making.

    I love you.

    I don’t know you, but I love you.

    Even though I’m afraid to really tell you, I do. I love you. You, who are reading these very words. For you show me how beautiful we really are.

    Never stop.

    And I’ll promise the same.

    Let us open one another, like a Heart cracked by the fingers of God.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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