• 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

    , , , ,

  • I don’t want to feel it.

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

    The feeling is me.

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

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

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

    You don’t want to feel it

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

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

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

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

    Much better not to feel.

    There are two fundamental ways to do this.

    One. You can rise above it

    Rise above the feeling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You will not find yourself this way.

    Two. You can sink into it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You cannot feel the feeing if you are the feeling.

    You will not find yourself this way either.

    The movement of the centre

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

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

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

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

    Up and out. Down and in.

    And in this moment it all comes together.

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

    It is in this feeling that you reside.

    This is where you live. All of you.

    This is where you’re closest to God.

    This is where you find yourself.

    Ewan Townhead

    , , ,

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

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

    Words are the magic through which we create the world.

    They are also the magic through which we obscure it.

    Words are names

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Names call forth reality

    “I can’t do it.” I say to myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But by naming it, I have made it true.

    True names create intimacy with reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Be mindful of what you name

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Ewan Townhead

    , , , ,

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

    You betray yourself.

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

    Except I don’t want to go.

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

    So I say yes.

    It doesn’t go well.

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

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

    The truth of your desire is felt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There’s conflict either way

    Arnold Mindell said:

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

    I choose conflict with the world. Every time.

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

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

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

    The truth is there, if you know how to look

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

    “Yeah, that sounds interesting.”

    “Sure, ok.”

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

    All of these mean no.

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

    Yes.

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

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

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

    No sweetie. Don’t do it.

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

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

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

    No.

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

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

    Ewan Townhead

    , , ,

  • She came too close.

    She presumed too much.

    She took what she needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    We violate these lines in different ways.

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

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

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

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

    “Sorry.”

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

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

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

    The alternative is to draw the line.

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

    “No.”

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

    Tell her with love.

    “No sweetie.”

    The line is drawn.

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Ewan Townhead

    , , , , , , ,

  • Speak the truth.

    What moves you. What perplexes you. What pisses you off.

    Whatever comes out. The more you say it, the more wants to come.

    Keep speaking, even if it’s just for you, to untangle the mess in your head, scribbled in a notebook and kept on a shelf.

    And then. More often than you’d prefer.

    Share it.

    Publish it.

    Give it to as many people as you can.

    Some will like what you say, and ask you to say something else, something more. Then you have one more listener. And one more person who might be touched by your words.

    Don’t do it to get attention – because you’re lonely and want people to look at you.

    Speak because you have something that you must say. That you want to say.

    Because speaking what is inside, changes what is outside. And then inside in return.

    And that’s what we’re here for.

    Ewan Townhead

    , , ,

  • Wish upon it. Pray to it. Follow it.

    Do not think you are it, or believe other people when they say you could be. Do not mistake the mortal for the divine.

    The proper posture is one of devotion. The star is not reached through fame, it is never reached. It is the source of divine potential, an infinite omega point to which we are endlessly beckoned.

    Where does your star call you? What do the heavens whisper?

    If you don’t know, you must ask.
    If you do know, you must ask.

    For your destination is that transcendent possibility, the unmanifest future that already rests within you. Just as the oak is already contained within the acorn.

    And when the light of heaven shines down upon you, you will reach toward it. Like the tree that grows steadily toward the sun. The reward is illumination. Of you and your extraordinary beauty. The price is the same.

    And you will shrink before its splendour, and the exposure of your own. This is only to be expected, for you are cradled in the innocence of one who has forgotten who you really are.

    This is not a fault to be corrected. It is the divine design of something we cannot comprehend.

    The star asks that you face it, and be guided by it. That you stand naked before the light, and follow the path it shows you.

    Ewan Townhead

    , , ,

  • Sometimes when I sit down to write these more instructional posts – the one’s where I’m trying to teach you something that practically helps you – I assume a position.

    I hear myself with this haughty voice in an upper-class English accent.

     “I, Lord Ewan, in my superior consciousness, and infinite generosity, I will impart the knowledge which you, dear muggles, have yet to command as I have. Now, listen carefully.”

    I’m sorry. It’s my way of covering my own insecurity. It’s been a life-long habit.

    Because in reality, the topic I’m going to tell you about here (honestly, like all of the things I write about) is one I still consistently trip over. I’ve studied and practiced marketing for 7 or 8 years now. And yet I’ve always done so with a slight begrudging tolerance. And I wrestle with it continually.

    I have some nasty marketing allergies. Perhaps you do too. And if you do, I want to offer you and I some anti-histamine.

    Because marketing – when done right – is powerful as fuck. And too many of us are turning away from that power, because we don’t know how to grasp it both honorably and effectively.

    If that resistance to wielding the power of marketing is something that affects you, then I hope this article will help.

    So here are five of the most common marketing allergies and beliefs I see. And how to heal them, so you can get on with the work you’re here to do.

    (And you may notice that a lot of my imaginary marketing examples have do with sex. It’s apparently on my mind a lot at the moment.)

    1. Marketing is immoral and manipulative!

    “Buy my six secrets to sandwich sex and you too will have the life of your dreams”

    And if I’m feeling lost, desperate, and a yearning to have the kind of sandwich sex I fantasize about, I grasp onto the promise. And if the promise does not match the reality, I feel played, tricked. You told me I’d have the life of my dreams! And I did everything you told me to, and I’m still impotent. The cheese and Gherkin baguette alludes me still.

    Marketing – like any form of communication – can indeed by manipulative. But simply because we have a lot of internet-marketing vacuum salesmen, it does not therefore mean all marketing is manipulative.

    Let’s think of a scale. On the extreme right is manipulation. A deliberate inflation and misrepresentation of the truth that is designed to generate maximum short term sales.

    On the extreme left is apology. A contracted deflation of what is offered, to minimize sales through fear. I’m afraid that my product is not worthy or good, and so I downplay it. Which is just as manipulative, it’s just bent the other way. And incidentally, this is often far more comfortable a manipulation for those of us with marketing allergies.

    The centre point is persuasive translation. I’m going to be honest first and foremost. I’m not going to deliberately misrepresent the truth. I am however, going to try and persuade you of the value of my offer, in language that you can understand.

    You have to spell it out, and convince them of the potential value. You have to overcome their limited understanding, and educate them.

    “Why would I need to buy a jewel encrusted butt plug? My regular rubber one is fine. It does the job.”

    “Well, you probably don’t need it. But my experience of this plug is really different. When I use it, I feel like a queen. It feels regal and classy, and it helps me overcome my shame of using such a “seedy” thing in the first place.”

    “Oh, that sounds cool. I like that. Ok, I’ll try it out!”

    2. Marketing is inauthentic and shallow

    If I market myself, I need to put on some kind of persona. I need to look like those other chaps who are great at marketing. With snazzy squeeze pages and red arrows, and bold promises that sound too good to be true.

    So much of marketing is outward focused. I call this deterministic marketing. It’s what we normally think of as marketing. We determine who our target customer is, we determine what our product is, we determine what our brand is, and then we go out and enact strategies that get those target customers to be attracted to the brand and buy our stuff.

    As I’ve written about before, there are real problems with this approach, particularly if you’re at early stage of your business. But even if you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, this approach often runs into inauthenticity anyway.

    Because if you spend all your energy trying to determine the right models and brand for your customers, it can be easy to forget your own self, the way you naturally show up or say things. Which is why you need to counter-practice with the flip side of marketing.

    Revelational marketing is the practice of showing yourself as you are, and allowing the tribe that naturally fits you, to find you. It’s the opposite of determinism. It’s surrender to current reality. Reveal who and how you are, and see who organically resonates.

    Both are important. And when you marry the ideal (deterministic marketing), with the real (revelational marketing), you get a very powerful partnership.

    Many ‘experts’ teach only deterministic marketing, and it can indeed look very inauthentic. Probably because it is. It misses the subject. You.

    Show yourself, over and over again, and you will discover deeper and deeper layers of your own authenticity, and the way you creatively want to market your offerings.

    3. Marketing is trashy and cheesy

    “Hi, I’m Yousef Yaffle, CEO of yousefyaffle.com, and today I want to tell you about my new free ebook: “Seven steps to conscious consultant success sex” (actual value $74,497). Sign up below for free, and you too can fuck your clients consciously, and make six figures, and lose 20 lbs, just like I did.”

    I literally gag sometimes when I read people’s marketing pitches. It’s the snob in me. I’m an artist, and aesthetically ugly prose makes me turn my nose up, and climb up on my high horse.

    It can be a bad habit.

    I sometimes shy away from really pitching people. I shy away from owning my own value. I hide behind a sheen of mystery, because to my artistic mind it feels so much cooler.

    But marketing does not have to be vomit inducing. What’s the alternative? Beautiful originality. Not the same old landing page. Not the same old hook. The same images of folks standing on cliffs with their arms out.

    But here’s the kicker. You do have to learn the rules before you break them. I see a great many folks who want to already do ‘next paradigm’ marketing when they haven’t even succeeded with traditional paradigm stuff.

    Philosopher Ken Wilber would call this a pre/trans fallacy. There’s a developmental direction to learning. When you’re new to something, you don’t know the rules and best practices. You’re pre-conventional. Before conventions. This is step one. Then you read some books, get some coaching, and learn how to run a product launch. You learn the rules. You get the conventions. This is step two.

    And then you can break them. You can be trans-conventional. Beyond conventions. You know the rules, and you consciously break them, the final step.

    The problem is that step one and step three – ‘pre’ and ‘trans’ – can look very, very similar, because neither one is conventional.

    And there are a lot of people claiming to do conscious, authentic, new paradigm marketing, but they’re not. They actually don’t know what they’re doing, because they haven’t gone through the hard yards of learning the core principles of marketing, and understanding why those conventions have existed for a long time.

    You do have to learn the art of copywriting, and communicating the benefits of what you offer. You do have to learn the nature of strategy, and how to build pathways that your tribe can follow. You do have to learn the art of headline writing, and calls to action.

    Marketing doesn’t have to be cheesy and pukey. It can be intensely creative and beautiful. But if you don’t learn the rules before you break them, you’re curse will most likely be ineffectiveness. An artistically original sales page that doesn’t help people buy your thing is beautifully useless.

    4. Marketing promotes greed and selfishness

    Because it’s designed to generate revenue, sales, and money….for me!!!

    Unfortunately, so many of us still have bullshit neo-marxist narratives around money.

    “Money is corrupt, or evil. If I earn more of it, I’m taking it away from someone else who may need it more than I do. Me earning money creates inequality.”

    These stories are based on a shitty understanding of economics, and they really get in the way of you making a difference to the people that need you.

    I apologize for any rudeness and condemnation you find in my words. I’m still disidentifying from my own bullshit money narratives! And there’s a wee-bit of resentment still, that I believed them unquestioningly for so long.

    Because money is not what we think it is.

    Money is a neutral indicator. It’s like feet and inches. Except it’s not measuring physical length. It’s measuring value. As I get better at coaching, I put my prices up, because I’m creating more value, and it’s worth more to people. It keeps everything in balance and flow.

    But still the narratives of greed and selfishness swirl.

    “It’s selfish of me to market my stuff. I don’t want to annoy people, be too salesy, have them slam the proverbial door in my face.”

    And that’s part of the game. You will annoy some folks. Especially the ones with strong anti-money narratives. They might send you rude messages.

    The antidote to the selfishness story is this…

    Who are you not to tell people about what you offer? What if your stuff could really help someone, but they don’t know about it, because you didn’t want to self-promote?

    A friend told me a story. He was at a conference for spiritual teachers. And one of the shallower and gregarious teachers had latched onto some very interesting folks who had asked for help. He was pitching his stuff to them shamelessly. And another teacher, a deep and honest one complained to my friend. He condemned the self-aggrandizement. And my friend chastised him.

    “You would be a much better teacher for those folks. But they don’t know about you, because you’re sitting here with me feeling disgusted. And they’re gonna end up working with that other guy, because he’s not afraid to pitch his services. And they’re gonna get burned. And that’s your fault.”

    So long as you’re honest, unmanipulative and authentic, then your self-promotion gives other people a choice. If they know about your offer they can choose you, or they can choose someone else.

    If you rob them of that choice by staying silent, you’re being selfish.

    (Boy did I write this section for myself…)

    5. Marketing is for attention seeking narcissists

    “Look at me! Look mummy, I can do a headstand! Look! Look!”

    “Look at my website everyone! I made an amazing workshop, it’s amazing! Look! Look!”

    I feel that part in me that wants people to see me. I want to feel adored. Loved. Liked. I want to banish the trauma of primary school, when I struggled to fit in. When people would pick me next to last for the football game. Or when I was the only one left without a partner for the science experiment.

    Maybe if I get lots of people to look at me though my work I’ll finally feel loved.

    This one kicks my ass. It’s so insidious.

    I’m scared of to death of too many eyes being on me. It’s why I avoid public speaking, it’s why I hated performing as a musician. It’s so exposing. I feel naked. Vulnerable to their disdain.

    And yet, I want people to see my work. It feels so good when I get recognition.

    The paradox.

    The fear of being seen.

    The desire to be recognized.

    Pulling at each other, twisting me around. I probably shouldn’t write about this one. I’m still in it up to my neck in it. But at the heart I know it’s simple.

    Yes. I want your attention. I want you to look. Because I think what I’m saying could help you. And if there are a million people who would be served by my words, then I want a million people to read them.

     

    Let’s take my own medicine.

    Sometimes we can’t do it alone. We’re at some kind of juncture, we’re called to step out into the world more fully, or we want someone to help make our next big offering as successful as possible.

    You’ll recognize the feeling if this is you. It will be whispering, or shouting to you right now as you read these words. “It’s time. Reach out to someone who I just feel could help.”

    If you feel I could be that person, let’s chat.

    I offer a 6-month Liberation coaching package. This would be a good fit for you if you’re called to a new level of yourself. You want to crack out of the old, and step into the new. Clients who work with me in this way often don’t have a clear idea of why they want to do it. There isn’t an obvious tangible goal. They just feel an intuition. It’s time.

    I also offer a 3-month Launch coaching package. This is specifically for people who have a new product or offering they’re wanting to design and launch. I help guide you through the stages it requires to effectively and authentically get your thing to the people that want it. Starting where you are, and finishing when your enrollment is complete. I’m there every step of the way as an advisor, coach and thinking partner.

    You can read about some of my previous client’s experiences here.

    If you want to learn more or jump right in, email me at ewan[AT]therealizedentrepreneur[DOT]com

     

    Ewan Townhead

    , , ,

  • We’ve thrown out sin.

    It’s gone, along with religious guilt, dogma and other old dusty concepts that clash with our modern sense of freedom. It’s gone because it was a moral label from a by-gone past. Or at least, that’s what we think.

    But I’m going to tell you a story that I never expected to tell.

    That not only is sin not what they taught us it is, but that it’s a vital part of the spiritual path. Or just the creative path. The one where you become yourself, and create the work you were made for.

    Sin is not the old sin of the Catholic Church, or Bible class, or violating the Ten Commandments, or screwing your neighbour’s wife. It’s something real and vital. Something at the very root of a life of wholehearted fullness and authentic success.

    Sin is a good thing, an important thing, a powerful thing. And that’s what I never expected to say. So, this article is about sin. And not only sin, but about the greatest sin of our times.

    And it begins with shame.

    I’m ashamed

    I’m ashamed of stealing money from my parents when I was a kid. A friend and I were building an elven army from little lead figures that we painted. And they were really expensive. So we stole money.

    I’m ashamed about the way I’ve treated some of the women in my life. I’d promise them my heart, and so they’d open. And then I’d realize I’d compromised my freedom too much, and I’d leave them. And they’d get hurt.

    I’m ashamed about the way I’ve manipulate people to get what I wanted. I did that with my first business. When my business partners got in the way, I played a nasty political game to try and get rid of them. They still don’t talk to me.

    I’m ashamed about all the messes I’ve made, that I didn’t go back to clear up.

    And I’m ashamed of not going after my dreams as hard as I could. I tell people I’m here to do big things. I feel like I am. I wrote recently that I felt I should be famous. Not because I want fame, but because I want to impact the world. I feel I’m here to make a big difference.

    And I feel ashamed that I don’t live up to the magnitude of that ambition during my day. I get scared, and play online pool, or read novels, or eat sugar, or smoke pot. Because it feels safer, because it insulates me from the increasing volume of life’s call.

    And that is the modern sin. The greatest sin of our times.

    That we are not truly listening to what is asked of us.

    That we are turning away from the path we know we’re meant to walk.

    That we believe we’re unworthy of the great mission that burns inside our hearts.

    The original nature of sin

    I was not brought up Christian. I was never baptized. I never went to church as a kid. We had the occasional bible reading from Miss Bathmaker at school. I was brought up as an atheist, with a sprinkling of new-age.

    I thought religion was a crock of shit, until my 20s when I became interested in the work of spiritual philosopher Ken Wilber. And I got into meditation, and Buddhism, and mysticism, and Rumi. Then over the last couple of years, I’ve been drawn increasingly into the mystical teachings of Christianity. And I’ve written about the guidance I’ve found through my friend Jesus.

    Earlier this year I was reading some letters. They were private letters that my mentor Rand had generously shared with me. They were written to him, from his spiritual coach. And in one of them I discovered a discussion about sin. And I was pulled in.

    It’s such a cultural-laden word. What do you think of when you read it?

    Sin.

    Naughty little girl? Stealing. Men fucking men. Abortion. Murder. Worshipping the wrong god?

    That’s always what I thought it meant. An old, out of date word that Christians used to shame people, so they got in line. And I think that’s exactly how it’s used a lot of the time. But sin doesn’t originally mean ‘doing bad stuff’. The original meaning is something so much deeper.

    To learn why, we need to go way back in time at least 2,500 years to the original Hebrew Bible. This was the book that got turned into the Old Testament (the really old, pre-Jesus bit of the Bible). In this original Hebrew text, there were three words, that when translated into Greek, were translated into a single word, in English – ‘sin’.

    But these three original Hebrew words don’t mean ‘bad’. No, what they represent are different degrees of being out of relationship with God.

    Not evil. Not wrong.

    Out of relationship with reality.

    Missing the mark of where you’re meant to be, want to be.

    I felt a giant shiver run down my spine when I first read it. And I’ve told the story many times to friends since. And I still get a shiver each time.

    Sin is disconnecting from your own truth. Sin is violating the principles we live by, and refusing to come back into relationship with reality.

    And a lot of us are doing that. Especially with big things that really matter to us. Like living the purpose we know we came here for. And when you turn away from that truth for long enough, you start to feel something grow in the centre of your being. Something that twists and hurts.

    Deep existential shame.

    Because you know you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. This is why it starts with shame. But shame is a tricky thing.

    The inauthenticity of shame

    A couple of years ago I was staying in a friend’s apartment, and was shooting videos of myself talking about some ideas I was excited about. And the same thing kept happening.

    I’d be in full flow, excitedly talking, gesticulating, emoting. And then mid-sentence I’d slow down to almost nothing. And my head would drop. And I’d close the laptop lid. And sit there. And pretend it hadn’t happened, and go do something else.

    And on the fifth time I actually noticed it.

    “What the fuck was that?”

    I opened up the laptop again, turned on the video and started spontaneously coaching myself on what had just happened. I even moved position in my chair to play both interviewer and client.

    “Wow, so what happened for you there Ewan? That looked intense.”

    “Yeah it was. I don’t know. I was just talking, and then my gut got really tight, and I felt hot, and exposed. It was like I was getting pulled down into something.”

    I discovered the shame spiral.

    I feel ashamed about something. And then I feel ashamed about feeling ashamed. And then ashamed about feeling ashamed about feeling ashamed. Ad infinitum.

    And the weight gets ever heavier and my identity ever smaller, as I’m sucked down into the blackness of unworthiness. But this time I’d seen it. And got curious.

    What is shame?

    I looked it up. It’s an old word. It means literally a “feeling of disgrace”. I was enthralled. Dis-grace. A feeling of not having any grace. And then I clocked it. Shame is not an emotion. It’s an assessment. Something happened, and now you can’t feel your own inherent grace. You’ve lost touch with it. And so you think you don’t have any.

    “I’m worthless. I’m such a bad person. I not good for anything. I give up. It’s all fucked.”

    Shame is a shitty thing to feel, because, I would argue, it’s not an authentic experience in and of itself. The feeling is real, the somatic weight is real, and it’s pointing to something real.

    But the experience of shame is predicated on the belief that you’re inherently bad, and without grace.

    And that’s simply not true.

    Now, shame is not bad. It’s inevitable. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel it. And what it does, is show you where you’re out of alignment with your own truth. It shows you where you’re out of relationship with God.

    It shows you where you’re in sin.

    Shame is the start of the trail back out of sin, and into deeper relationship with truth.

    The invitation toward a deeper truth

    The Catholics got it right. Sin is about shame (and guilt). But not in the way they thought. The traditional teaching is that shame is a consequence of sin. Something like this…

    You sin, and so you feel shame as a consequence. Which is good. But makes you feel bad. Because a sinner should feel bad. Because sinning is bad. And maybe if you feel shitty enough, you won’t sin again. And you’ll get into heaven.

    So, when you sin, we forgive you, punish you, and then you’re saved.

    Which is a nice attempt.

    But created some damaging results.

    Chronic unworthiness. Institutional sexism. Screwing under-age choir boys.

    I’m being slightly unfair here. Because these ideas were actually revolutionary and transformed culture as we know it. The problem is that the revolution happened a couple of thousand years ago. And things have moved on rather a long way. So like I said, nice try, shitty results.

    And to understand why, we turn to the research of the brilliant writer and researcher Brené Brown. Brené makes a crucial distinction between shame and guilt.

    Guilt is “I did something bad”.

    Shame is “I am bad.”

    Guilt is about behaviour. Shame is about identity.

    And people who feel one or the other lead incredibly different lives. Her research is unequivocal in its findings. Large levels of shame in a person are highly correlated with high levels of addiction, depression, aggression, suicide and other really fun stuff. High levels of guilt are inversely correlated with those things.

    In other words. Guilt is really good for you. Shame fucks you up.

    I think shame is guilt that has no outlet toward transformation. It’s guilt that has rotted and gone bad. Or it’s guilt that has been smashed into a hard shameful truth by some religious hammer.

    Shame is an amazingly big assessment to make. Something happens that you don’t feel good about, and you extrapolate out, and make some sweeping statement about the infinite truth of your infinite existence.

    I watched porn.
    Bad people watch porn.
    That means I’m a bad person.
    And a bad person is worthless.
    I’m worthless.
    Period.

    You take a black mark and decide to tar your whole human existence with it.

    So while shame is in some sense, an inauthentic feeling, its root is not. It’s a beacon, and it’s pointing toward greater relationship with ourselves. And the journey winds through guilt.

    The great gift of guilt

    Being out of relationship with god, out of alignment with your truth is inevitable. It’s what happens when we live. And guilt is this amazing gift. It’s what we feel when the alignment slides out of whack, when we’re out of integrity with our code of truth. It’s our higher self smacking us on the ass.

    “Hey buddy. That doesn’t feel good does it? In fact, it hurts. Change direction.”

    It’s like a series of little lights, guiding us down the path of greater truth, greater goodness and greater beauty.

    But when we don’t listen to that feeling. When we don’t let it penetrate us, hold us to account and spark our discomfort, then that guilt starts to toxify. It goes stagnant, and it turns into shame.

    Shame is toxic. And it stops us from acting. Because if I am bad, then I’m powerless to do anything about it. I’m a victim of my own rotten core. Shame feels final. It’s not, but it feels like it. The gift and the power lies in embracing your sense of guilt.

    In part 2 of this article, I’ll go in depth into the basic principles of working with shame and guilt, and how to transform them into deeper truth.

    But for now. I want try and summarize the nature of sin.

    Here’s the basic recipe

    1. Sin is what happens when you get out of alignment with your own truth.

    So, sin is not smoking pot. Sin is smoking pot if you know you have a lot of important work you want to do, and you ignore your sense of integrity, and get high anyway.

    It’s sin, because you violated a deeper truth. Not because you ‘broke a commandment’.

    1. And when you enter into sin, you feel guilty.

    Not because someone said you should, or because bad people smoke pot. But because you know you’ve violated your own integrity. True guilt is yours.

    1. And if you don’t honor that sense of guilt. And take action, then it will start to rot. And the guilt turns into shame.

    Shame is a nasty fucker, who eats up a whole bunch of stuff. But is actually trying to help us by turning up the volume on our suffering.

    Because many of us are sinning. And there is one sin that is standing out. Head and shoulders above the rest.

    It’s a great sin.

    What is being asked of you?

    You have a great body of work to express. It’s yours. It’s unique. It’s precious. It’s fragile. It holds untold power. And God is asking you about it.

    What is being asked of you?

    Only you know. And you do know. Maybe it’s being shouted in your face. Maybe it’s that insistent whisper that you know is always there, and that you dampen with busyness, or television, or bravado.

    What is being asked of you?

    If you’re truly honest with yourself, you’ll likely find a place where you’re not listening. We’re all doing it. It’s the greatest sin of our times.

    There has never been a time like this. When the barriers to sharing our work with the entire world are gone. Completely. The internet and the information age have shattered the barricades of tradition and hierarchy.

    The only blocks now are yours.

    It’s your fear. Your terror of truly showing yourself. Of not wanting to fail. Of not knowing how to do it right. Of not wanting to be rejected by everyone. It’s my fear too.

    And when we don’t listen, we suffer. Because however much we practice numbing out, we know deep down that we’re more powerful than we can bare to imagine.

    And I know you’re ashamed.

    And I am too.

    And this is the invitation.

    For both of us.

    To listen to what is asked.

    And come face to face.

    With that which calls us,

    In every moment.

     

    This article is the first part in a 2 part-series. In part 2 – The Lost Technology of Spiritual Transformation – I explore an old and powerful practice that people have used for centuries to work with shame, and transmute it into greater depth and greater truth.

     

    Ewan Townhead

    , , , , ,

  • I was reading Brené Brown again the other morning as I was eating scrambled eggs with avocado.

    Brené (I don’t actually know her so as to be on a first name basis, but like to pretend I do) was talking about barriers to vulnerability.

    She was talking about masks. The masks we wear.

    The things that we put on, so that we look like the personality we think we need to be. So people like us. So we don’t rock the boat. So we fit in. So we’re not alone.

    I’m an expert, and you should listen to me

    I was trying to write something on marketing. And it wasn’t really working. I noticed an unpleasant feeling. It was familiar.

    I’d always assumed it was the effect of not finding my flow. I can’t write, so I feel contracted,

    But I realized it wasn’t. I realized it was the cause. I wasn’t in flow, because I wasn’t writing. A mask was.

    So, I put the mask centre stage and let it write. This is what it said.

    “I’m an expert. And you’re not. Listen to me, because I know. Be quiet and you may actually learn something.”

    And it’s said in this slightly bored voiced, like really you should know better, but since you don’t, I’ll grace you with my superior wisdom. Though I’m making it clear it’s begrudging. But not clear enough that you could comment on it.

    I’ve christened him Bartholomew Snooty III.

    I remember being on a personal development course years ago. The leaders had offered me a free place because I’d started an audacious business that professed to be a hub for the kind of work they were teaching.

    I thought I was better than them.

    I’d silently critique their teaching from the back of the room.

    And I ended up pissing some people off. Because I wasn’t committed, and I dropped out, and broke some promises I made. And even though I felt ashamed underneath, I covered it by looking down my nose at them, and dismissing their quaint complaints.

    And that’s how he works. He covers my insecurity with indifferent arrogance.

    Meanwhile, I’m still lonely.

    Oh! Look how vulnerable I am!

    I have another one. It’s the “I’m vulnerable” mask.

    The one where I pretend to be vulnerable. Because it’s a deep value of mine (the vulnerability not the pretending). And I think I need to be like that all the time.

    “I did this thing. It was really vulnerable. But look at me, I’m so brave to be sharing it like this with you. How good am I?”

    I remember a couple of years ago. I was having a fight with my girlfriend, and my best friend Joel was there too. And I got really upset, and started crying uncontrollably.

    Joel didn’t buy it.

    He said he understood I was upset, but it seemed like I was making a show of it.

    I froze.

    “This is a matrix moment Ewan.” He said.

    And he was right.

    It felt so real. And I was hurt, but even more, I was trying to get seen.

    And maybe that’s why I do it more often.

    Don’t see me

    Don’t look at me. Because if I show you the real me, you’ll reject me. Like you did when I was innocent, and didn’t know about masks.

    I never fitted in at school. Maybe none of us do.

    I had the wrong shoes. And no Nintendo. And brown bread sandwiches with cucumber and vegetarian pate.

    I stood out, like a weird thumb. And the other kids, with their Nike trainers wouldn’t let me join in.

    So I started fashioning some masks. So I wasn’t so lonely.

    Maybe you did too.

    And none of us realized that we were all wearing masks, and participating in an invented stage play. All secretly wanting to fit in.

    And I’m still doing it.

    “Like me! I’m really good at writing! Can I play with you?”

    I wrote that on facebook the other day. That I still felt like I was 5-years old trying to get people to be my friend.

    And lots of people said they would be my friend.

    And it was lovely. But it didn’t really change anything.

    The naked truth

    Because it’s not about winning friends. It’s about saying what I have to say. The real one, who nakedly says the things that he can’t help but care about.

    And it would be really shitty if that meant no-one likes me anymore. But even that I’d endure. If that was what my art demanded.

    Walt Whitman was like that. Most people hated what he wrote. And he didn’t get huge thanks or success. And then he died. And then everyone realized how brilliant he was, and how beautiful his writing was. And how revolutionary.

    I hope that doesn’t happen to me. That would suck.

    But I’m realizing how it’s really not about getting friends. That little 5 year old has lost his chance.

    It’s about speaking the truth.

    I can feel the masks start to melt. And as more of the naked truth starts to reverberate around my world, I realize I’m no longer in control of the plot.

    So I cross my fingers, and hope it all has a happy ending.

    And I’m stacking all my chips on this. The belief that if I keep speaking what wants to be spoken, then something will happen. And that ending will be the happiest one.

     

    Ewan Townhead

    , , ,