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

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

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

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

    The Stress Zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But it had a cost.

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

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

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

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

    This is the stress zone.

    The Comfort Zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Magic of the Growth Zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Scared as fuck? Step right through.”

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

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

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

    Ewan Townhead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Depths are Here to Teach Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Surrender to the Descent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    How to Go to the Bottom of the Well

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

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

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

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

    Close your eyes.

    And trust God as you’re taken down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Ewan Townhead

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

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

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

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

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

    Different types of fuck

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

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

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

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

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

    “Yeah…fuck it.”

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

    “Fuck that. No way.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Fuck off.”

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

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

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

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

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

    “Fuck that.” My body wanted to say.

    “OK Mrs Shaw.” I said instead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The energy at the root of creation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Ewan Townhead

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  • 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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  • 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 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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  • It was quite some time ago now that Moses ascended the mountain, and returned with a set of rules that changed the world.

    Don’t steal.
    Don’t fuck your friend’s woman.
    Don’t talk shit about God.

    If we strip any modern cynicism we may have about such religious doctrine, what I think we see is that his commandments represent something extraordinary. They are higher truths, seen in a transcendent moment, that can then be encoded, and remembered when one returns to “ordinary reality”. And thus act as a pathway back up, slowly, toward the higher truth.

    His commandments (or Gods depending upon whom you attribute authorship to) changed the world. They enabled our ancestors of the time to divert themselves away from the chief problems (sins) of the time, and live a more wholesome life.

    But times have changed.

    The great sins of our times are not what they were. My great challenge is not to refrain from the irresistible urge to steal my neighbours donkey. Moses’ commandments have done their job. We have new problems that we must learn to overcome.

    I believe that one of the great modern sins, for which we need new commandments, is that of distraction, specifically digital distraction.

    So here are 6 commandments for a new digital age.

    1.  Thou shalt not be a digital narcissist

    The wonders of the world are not a backdrop for your Instagram selfies. The privilege to travel the world is not supposed to be used as a means for enhancing your social media profile.

    I visited Stonehenge recently. One of the world’s most important megalithic sites—an absolute wonder of ancient engineering and astronomical observation. It’s formation perfectly aligns with the setting sun at Winter Solstice, and the rising sun at Summer Solstice. We know that people from all over the British Isles travelled to Stonehenge to participate in the most important ceremonies of the age. This majestic site oozes significance.

    And yet as I stood marvelling at its nature, breathing in the power of the place, I was distracted by the people around me. They would pose for selfies, seeing these great stones in the little pixelated screens of their iPhones, and then turn and walk away without actually looking at the stones!

    The unprecedented power of the social platforms we have been given access to, are not best used as stages for our own digital narcissism. The fulfilment does not come from the performance you manufacture, crafted from carefully posed selfies in front of Notre Dame, but of the spiritual substance that you draw in as you walk its hallowed nave.

    You can communicate to untold numbers of fellow humans from this platform. Share what can change us. Not what makes you feel more special.

    2.  Thou shalt not incessantly pull the lever on the smart-phone slot machine

    Let me just check again…

    Even though it’s only been 17 seconds since I last checked Facebook, …maybe there’s something good there now. The elusive comment that makes my day worth living. The fiftieth “like” that will banish the cloud of meaninglessness from my mind. Or maybe I’ve got a new whatsapp message that will prove that I am actually loved after all.

    So we keep pulling the lever on the digital slot machine, hoping for a jackpot. Pulling out our phone, and going through a patterned cycle of checks. If you pay attention, you may see that you have an ingrained loop. Mine goes something like this.

    1. co.uk/sport to check if there’s some new football news.
    2. co.uk/sport, just in case they have news the bbc doesn’t.
    3. twitter to see what latest outrage has been committed by the politically correct gestapo.
    4. youtube to see if there’s a new Jordan Peterson upload, or ultimate fail video.
    5. Nothing? Start the cycle again. After all, it’s been at least 2 minutes since I checked BBC sport.

    What’s your cycle? When you’re checking out of the present, and open up your internet browser, or pickup your phone, where’s the first place you go?

    It’s the new addiction. Hunting the little dopamine hit that is injected into our neurochemistry when we find some interesting new article we can feel smart from pretending to read. The little oxytocin boost from 3 more likes on our Stonehenge selfie.

    I watch over people’s shoulder on the Amsterdam metro, circling through their own digital loops.

    Facebook. Whatsapp. Instagram. LinkedIn. Repeat.

    And then even if they give up and return the phone to their handbag, I can measure it in minutes before they whip it out again and start again from the beginning.

    As a friend used say “there’s no cheese down that tube”. You will not find what you seek. The sense of achievement that the dopamine urge tempts you with. The feeling of social inclusion that the oxytocin craving promises.

    Each pull of the lever increases the urge to pull it again next time.

    Put down the phone. Raise your eyes. Soften your clench. Notice the world around you.

    3.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s social media profile

    It doesn’t do any good my friend.

    We’re wired to seek the top of the social hierarchy. We want to “master our craft” and be “seen for our gifts”.

    Jordan Peterson brilliantly describes the sad state of affairs we now find ourselves in, in the digital age. Before the internet, it wasn’t so hard to be top of your tree. Being the best yogi in the village isn’t so hard. Being a regional expert on post-structuralism intersectional theory is attainable. The competition is relatively thin. The rewards of reaching the top within your grasp.

    Now we live in a world where we’re connected to almost every other competent human alive. The hierarchy now no longer tops out at the borders of the village or town. No matter how good you think you might be at your particular craft, opening up YouTube and having a quick search will reveal the prodigy that does stuff that you couldn’t even imagine, and has the 2 million views that proves it.

    Feeling insecure about the state of your work? The longing for the dopamine will take you onto your Facebook feed, where you will discover posts from your friends that depict the amazing client they just signed, or the workshop they just crushed. You’ll see all your friends having an amazing time…without you.

    The promise of dopamine has provided the opposite. You feel even worse that when you started. No problem. Just open up the next app in your cycle. Maybe there…

    No. The goal is self-realization. Emphasis on self. Not “having what she’s got”, not “better than him”. Self improvement. Or in the wise words of Dr. Peterson, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.

    This is much more easily achieved when you’re not constantly snooping on the successes of others through their social media profiles.

    4.  Thou shalt not perpetuate political outrage

    No matter which side of the fence you find yourself on—the social justice crew, working to level the playing field, or the secret intellectual web that is trying to keep back the tides of madness—don’t stir up the shit any further.

    Incessant outrage about the state of the world, penned in 140 characters does little to move the conversation forward, and will more likely simply irritate you and derail the more important work that you should actually be doing.

    Making yourself righteous by pushing off the wrongness of the “other side” is not noble. It’s shit stirring. It’s dehumanization. It doesn’t help us weave this unprecedented complexity into a human story that makes sense to us.

    But spouting your passionate condemnation of the madness of this leader, or that policy does help with something big. It helps give you the feeling that you have something important to say. It helps you feel like you’re making a difference. You’re not. But it covers over the hole in your true desire to make a difference.

    So instead, go make a real difference.

    5.  Thou shalt not sell your attention to the highest bidder

    You may think, that you are the valued customer of Facebook or Instagram.  In fact, you are not. You are the product. The customers are the advertisers, who are offered your attention by the platform.

    Attention is precious. And every time you mindlessly lose yours in the never ending scroll of the news feed, you have sold yours to the highest bidder.

    In 1997, IBM’s super computer Deep Blue achieved a world first. It beat the world’s best chess player Gary Kasparov. It was a triumph of Artificial Intelligence over the human mind.

    What you may not know is that the Facebook Newsfeed, and YouTube’s recommended videos are also run by A.I. And power of this A.I. is hundreds of times more powerful than the computer that beat Kasparov. The Social Media A.I. has one objective only, to capture your attention for as long as possible.

    So, every time you log onto Facebook, you’re playing attention chess against an some of the most powerful A.I. ever invented. And you don’t even realise it.

    Your attention  is so much more valuable than its commodification for online advertisers. What could you use it for?

    6.  Thou shalt befriend airplane mode

    Every phone has one. It’s designed for—as the name implies—use on airplanes. It turns off your Wi-Fi and phone signal. It stops all contact with the outside world.

    We’ve never lived in such a connected world. Your ability to disconnect is what sets you apart from the masses. This is Cal Newport’s “deep work”—the space where free from distraction, you focus on the work that really matters to you, and create something meaningful.

    When you sit down to do something important, tune out the world around you. Looking at your phone because your mum just whatsapp’d you to ask about the summer vacation plans does not help you do the deep work.

    Try this. When you go to bed, put your phone on airplane mode. And don’t take it off until you’ve done at least an hour of focussed work the next morning. If you’re used to checking your messages as soon as you open your bleary ideas, this may feel uncomfortable. It’s your reliance on outside stimulation. The good stuff comes from inside. Give it a chance to speak before you connect with the entire planet.

    What’s really needed is the deep work

    The work that comes from deep inside you. The stuff that only you can create. The stuff that is the product of deep, focussed and dedicated hard graft.

    And the entire interconnected world is available to receive it, if you create it.

    The great sin that has arisen to counter-act this interconnected freedom is distraction. In that moment, when your work really requires you to sit in the uncomfortable paradox, the problem that you don’t yet know how to solve—it’s so much easier to just pick up your phone and relieve the pressure.

    Just this once. I’ll rest for a moment.

    And then you surface some indeterminate time later, infected by the successes and outrages of everyone else, dulled by the passive surfing on a tiny screen, robbed of the moment of tension that had within it, the creative seeds for something new, something deep.

    Choose differently.

    The world desperately wants the deep work, to help us steer through the addictive distractions of a digital world.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Don’t keep your mouth shut

    If you don’t speak, it won’t go well for you.

    It’s a risk – saying it loud. The thought inside that just won’t go away, not matter how much you try to dismiss it.

    “Hey man. I know you’re telling me you’re committed to this new venture. But sorry, I just don’t think you are. Your words don’t ring true to me. I think you’re kidding yourself.”

    Because maybe you’re wrong.

    Maybe he’ll be pissed at you, and attack, verbally or emotionally.

    Maybe he’ll be really hurt and feel betrayed by you.

    Maybe you’ll feel rejected, and it will sting and you won’t know how to make it better.

    Maybe you’re totally off the mark, and you end up looking like an ass.

    It’s a risk.

    But it’s not like it’s not a risk to not say it.

    If you keep your mouth shut, the effects are not benign. If you don’t give voice to the unspoken words inside, they’ll start to eat away at you.

    Every time he talks about his new venture (that you don’t believe in), you won’t be able to participate. You won’t actually be with him. You’ll stay silent or politely say what you’re expected to. Or you’ll quietly judge him for lying to himself.

    And each time you turn down the chance to speak the truth, the trust you have in yourself is eroded a little more.

    That vital relationship between thought and action becomes a little more estranged. Your conviction becomes a little bit more flaccid.

    The truth is created through words

    The truth is formed by speaking, it’s created through words. We’re narrative creatures. We always tell ourselves a story about what’s happening – what the world is. We can’t not do this.

    There’s no such things as truth before language. Things just are. It is the split between the territory of existence, and our maps we make of that same existence, that creates simultaneously the possibility for truth and for its opposite.

    And so we live in two worlds.

    We live in the world of babbling streams, and rustling leaves. The world of fleshy touch and sweaty odours. The world of rock, brick and tower. We live in the territory.

    And we live in the world of the ideas of those things. The shape of the names. The interpretations of the notions. The grammar of thought. The hierarchy of abstractions. We live according to the map.

    And because we straddle these two worlds, we can contradict ourselves.

    I can say things that are untrue. I can give words to a world I do not actually live in. I can mistake the name for the thing itself. I can mistakenly believe that the thing is more authentic before I name it.

    It is a central function of life to mediate between this paradox.

    And thus the alignment between the map I hold and the territory I walk, can skew, and I will find that “the world doesn’t make sense”.

    The slide down into hell

    The truth is not simply what is provable or objective. It’s what we collectively believe. And so as he tells himself he’s committed, and you stay silent, it perpetuates his story.

    His truth becomes the dominant narrative.

    And you both start to believe it.

    You must have been wrong. Your sense was off. Because look, he keeps talking about how great his new venture is, and you keep not saying anything to contradict him.

    Each layer of apparent enthusiasm he utters further buries that thing you thought was true.

    And if you were wrong in this instance, then maybe all those other “inner feelings” you have are wrong too?

    In fact, maybe all that inner world you experience is wrong – all those things you believe, or love, or dream of one day creating – maybe all that is untrue too.

    The trip down this slippery slope is shorter, and more frequent that we like to believe.

    At the bottom of the slope is nihilism.

    Nihilism is a philosophical belief that nothing has any intrinsic meaning or underlying truth. Nihilism is not just a conceptual idea though, it’s a place. I’ve been there.

    In the pit of nihilism, it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t say. It makes no difference.

    Because there is no truth.

    There’s no deeper code. No deeper meaning. It’s all flat, empty, pointless. It doesn’t matter what you do. Because there is no point.

    The pit of nihilism has become a very popular residence in today’s world. A lot of people slid down into it, and don’t know how to get out.

    To get out you have to believe in a higher order. You have to believe in universal rules. Things that cannot be broken. Truths that cannot be deconstructed.

    You have to believe in Gods that cannot be killed.

    One of these I learned from watching Jordan Peterson’s (incredible) biblical lecture series. It goes like this…

    When you speak the truth, it is good.

    Creating divine order

    It may not feel good. The receiver of your truthful speech may not like it. You may not garner the results you were hoping for.

    The receiver may be a lover, a friend, a client. It may be you. It may be “the world”. Regardless of who it is, when you speak it, and when it is indeed true, then your act is good.

    It has furthered the human project. The naming of the nameless. The existential intimacy that comes from bringing the map and the territory a little closer together. Participating in a moment that is a little more filled with the light of consciousness.

    But “good” in the highest sense may not equate to “good” in the immediate sense.

    You might damage a friendship. You might traumatise your lover. You might lose a client. You might antagonize the world. You might reveal to yourself a contradiction that you’ve protected yourself from for decades.

    It’s a risk.

    But never forget. It’s not a risk to not speak.

    It’s risk either way.

    One leads down the slippery slope into the pit of nihilism, meaninglessness and misery.

    The other leads through the gauntlet of the world into the higher orders of consciousness and integration.

    You must choose constantly.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • My father just left on a train. He’s been visiting me, and now he’s going back to where he lives in England.

    And all of a sudden, it reminds me of the time when I was a child. When he left, moved away, and never came back.

    It still hurts, all these years later. I hide my tears behind my sunglasses.

    My father is the one who taught me to feel deeply. He was a therapist and encouraged feelings. He taught me to show my pain when I was hurt.

    Then I was sent out into the world – “the world” at the age of five, being Lowfield Primary School. And there I discovered, much to my shock, that showing I was hurt didn’t work the same way.

    When I showed I was hurt at school, people withdrew from me. Or even worse, they teased me. I learned a new lesson.

    Don’t show that you’re hurt. Don’t show that you’re in pain.

    It makes people uncomfortable.

    People don’t know what to do around people in pain. It confronts them with the reminder that in fact pain does exist, and they in fact carry it, but don’t want to feel it.

    If you show me your pain, then there it is. It’s between us in the space, in us. And we can no longer deny the existence of it.

    That’s how we work. If we’re in connection with someone, we feel what they feel. This isn’t just therapeutic theory, it’s neurological fact.

    And so when you feel pain, I feel pain too. And if I’m someone that tries to avoid pain as much as possible, then I’m not going to be particularly appreciative of what you’ve just done.

    “Thanks so much. You’ve just made me feel the pain I don’t want.”

    Dealing with the feeling of pain

    From this point I have a variety of options.

    I can freeze up, and numb myself. I don’t know what else to do, it’s all too much, and so as the overwhelm takes over I find myself finally relaxing.

    The pain dissipates, along with my awareness of you, and my body, and what’s happening around me.

    I go into a kind of peaceful daze. This is the body’s fall back option when pain is too high. It’s the same system that kicks in when an antelope gets scragged by a lion and goes limp.

    Or I can run.

    I don’t like what you’ve made me feel. It’s way too uncomfortable. You’re weird, or dangerous. So I’ll disconnect.

    The running away may not be as dramatic as it sounds. It may be a subtle severing of the connection we had, and a polite announcement that I must be “moving along now”.

    Or I can attack you.

    I can take my pain, the pain you’ve made me feel, and I can throw it back at you.

    “Oh are you going to cry about it? What a pussy.”

    It makes me feel in control again, and I become focussed on your pain, and making sure you won’t hurt me like that ever again!

    Or I can take a breath.

    And do something we’re not really wired to do. I can face the pain.

    Pain is a doorway

    Who wants to feel pain? Who wants to voluntarily open up their body-mind and welcome in the feeling of being hurt?

    Why would anyone prefer that?

    “Ok, I can either hit you with this giant fucking hammer. Or I can not. What would you prefer?”

    Why would you choose the hammer? Why would you choose the pain?

    Because to choose its opposite – to choose the suppression of your felt experience – is to choose to supress the moment itself.

    To choose to feel pain is to choose your human experience. For in the pain is the very reason that you resist life. In the pain is the secret design specifications for your greatest gifts.

    What hurts you is a doorway, if you dare to open it, that leads you down into your deeper nature.

    To be worthy of wielding your greatest gift is the result of facing your deepest pain.

    And who knows when that pain will visit on you. And when that opportunity will be gifted to you. When that doorway opens for a moment.

    In a chance conversation with a stranger.

    In the innocent reading of a passage in a book.

    In the vulnerable confession to a client.

    On a train platform. Watching my father ride away once more.

    Ewan Townhead

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