• 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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  • What extraordinary times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The collapse of what we know

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

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

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

    This is what he said.

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

    Prophetic? It has felt so for me.

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

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

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

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

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

    The great collective call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It’s time to double down on the deep work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You have been asked to embark upon a quest.

    Will you accept?

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

    Ewan Townhead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It doesn’t work.

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

    It is a practice of embodying the future self.

    The amazing transformation of the butterfly

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

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

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

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

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

    You would not.

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

    The little leaf muncher has decomposed into slime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And so it is with you and I.

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

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

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

    Imprinting the Future Self

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

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

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

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

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

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

    My spine straightens.

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

    My lips curl into a little Buddha smile.

    I involuntarily take a big juicy breath.

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

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

    The colours get richer.

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

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

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

    “Just write” future self says.

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

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

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

    “Thank you.” I say.

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

    But the smile remains.

    And the back is a little straighter.

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

    The transformative power of the future self

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Yes” he replies. “Got it?”

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

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

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

    How to meet the future self

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The practice goes like this…

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

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

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

    Happy travelling.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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