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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Depths are Here to Teach Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Surrender to the Descent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    How to Go to the Bottom of the Well

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

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

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

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

    Close your eyes.

    And trust God as you’re taken down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • 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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  • Ever since I can remember noticing my feelings and moods, I had “black spots”—hours or even days when I would “disappear” into a dark and unpleasant hole. My life would appear pointless. My happiness but a memory.

    I remember lying wrapped in my duvet at home as a teenager, unable to move, unable to consider doing anything. Even the thought of suicide seemed pointless.

    As I got older I learned about “depression”, this apparent affliction of the mind that plagued unfortunate folk and which modern medicine had little cure for.

    I never liked the word. I never thought of myself of suffering from its disease. I still don’t. Because I think the medical model is the wrong context for its definition.

    But as I’ve grown older I have come to realise that am indeed predisposed to a tendency for “blackness”. It can strike as if from nowhere and lay me out. The duration and regularity has reduced. The understanding of its nature increased. But its presence endures.

    2018 was a dark year for me.  One of the toughest in memory, and yet one where I seemed to remain “awake” in a way I had not in previous dark episodes. And so I sought answers to the question of the nature of this blackness.

    It was during a long and extended depression that the Quaker teacher and author Parker Palmer turned to help from a therapist. These words, uttered to him by that therapist, had a dramatic effect on me when I heard them.

    “Parker, you seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down onto ground on which it is safe to stand?”

    Was this a clue as to the nature of depression? It grabbed my attention. I thought about it a great deal. At the very least it gave me an alternative to the “imbalance in brain chemistry” explanation for my plight.

    It is only with the light of retrospect that I see what I went through more clearly—an underworld journey of depression.

    Down into the depths of the dark

    I am being pushed down.

    I go under, into the dark beneath of dreams and demons where I am placed face-to-face with that which I most fear—the great dragon—an initiation from which I must emerge changed.

    It is not a happy place. I am not a happy man within in. It hurts. It dissolves my crutches. It submerges me in everything I have set up my life to avoid.

    The pain is not optional. It is the ground of the underworld journey. The resistance seemingly inevitable—the understandable reaction to such an un-consensual plunge into the dark. My incompetence in the face of it all is the very reason the journey is necessary.

    I am being remoulded.

    7 Strategies to enlighten the dark path

    My challenges last year were such that my old strategies fell woefully short. I had to learn new ways to walk this journey, for that is exactly what it is—an archetypal quest that takes us down into the dark, which asks you to face what most scares you, yet simultaneously gives you what you most need, and then propels you back up through the integration of your experiences, back into the world—changed and remoulded.

    Some of the things I learned were philosophical—changes in frame that enabled me to see my plight in a light that gave me hope and trust.

    But many were practical—behaviours and practices that enabled me to walk the dark road without being crushed by the enemies of the psyche.

    So, here, in no particular order, are seven practical strategies that I learned to use.

    If you too find yourself enveloped by the darkness of depression, I hope they bring light into the darkness, and make it the sacred journey it actually is, rather than the tumbling down into the abyss of despair that it so easily manifests as.

    1.  Smile.

    Literally.

    Make your face smile, then hold it, longer than feels “authentic”. Have your emotions as you do so. It can be quite the trip.

    I remember riding my bike through Amsterdam past the museums. I set my target at the lights, 100 meters ahead. “Smile all the way there” I said to myself.

    By the time I arrived, I’d indeed been on quite a ride. I’d felt like an idiot 3 times. I’d wanted to reach out my hand and smack the tourists as I swept past. I’d giggled at the absurdity of it all. I’d felt like a fraud. And then I arrived. And I was happier.

    This is the trip. You do get happier.

    The nervous system follows the body.

    It’s not necessarily enduring. It’s not necessarily “authentic”. It’s not even necessarily fun.

    But it disrupts the insidious assumption that life is shit, and you don’t know what to do to fix it. Smiling fucks with your default depressive mode.

    And more often than you might think, after clamping on the stupid fucking smile, you look up at the sky, notice the birds are singing, and feel grateful to be alive.

    2.  Set yourself goals (yes, it works).

    Never underestimate the power of doing. Goals align your actions. Actions create results. Results make you feel better.

    At the very least, you occupy yourself and have less time to commiserate with yourself about how fucked life is.

    There’s a secret about the human mind that psychologists discovered last century. It’s not the attainment of your goals that gives you “positive emotion” (makes you feel good), it’s setting meaningful goals, and watching yourself progress toward them.

    We can endure the most miserable pain if we can see progress being made—that there is light at the end of the dark tunnel.

    A word of caution: there can be a danger with the big and audacious goals—the “I’m going to change the world” variety. You say something outrageous, people applaud, you get the initial dopamine hit of “possibility”. And then it’s all followed by the miserable confirmation that you’re definitely incapable of improving your life, when you inevitably fall short of your crazy dream.

    So small is usually the place to start. You’ve got to feel moved by a goal. But it doesn’t have to be hairy and audacious.

    “Go for a walk outside twice a week.”

    “Buy some new slippers.”

    Only set goals that carry meaning for you (when you imagine their completion it feels good), and that you’re fairly confident you can achieve (this is not about ambition, it’s about small degrees of progress.)

    Set 3 goals for the next month. Write them out on a big bit of paper with empty tick boxes next to them and pin them on your notice board.

    Sometimes I cried when I ticked off goals. “I can do this.” I said to myself as I saw that slow and humbling progress toward the light.

    3.  Move—you’re on a journey.

    Your body. In any way. Roll your shoulders. Shake off the stiffness. Dancing to 80s disco can work very well.

    Bodywork. Breathing. Walking in nature.

    You’re on a journey. The descent into the underworld is a journey older than Adam. Even though yours may be metaphoric rather than physical—the archetypal pattern is the same. You are moving from one place in life to another, through the darkness that depression forces you to confront.

    And while it may be more of a symbolic or psychological  journey—your body does not know this. It needs to feel that it is moving—that you are moving—that you are walking the path.

    So walk. Move. Walk around your living room with the curtains drawn. Walk in the woods. Travel to another city and walk its streets.

    You need to give your earthly self the physical journey it is wired to undertake. We are made to walk the land.

    4.  Confess—you’re inadequate.

    You can’t correct the spiritual course of your life—you can’t face that which the journey requires of you—without confessing your inadequacy.

    Your suffering is in part a function of your incompetence. You don’t know how to do this. This is by design. It’s not something to be ashamed of (though you will inevitably feel it is).

    The one that emerges from the underworld is the one that has faced the dragon and been changed as a consequence. That you do not know how to face the dragon is the point. You are incompetent in the face of this new challenge. And the compulsory first step is to confess your failures, your fears, your shame.

    You must speak it out. You must name your pain.

    To a friend.

    To yourself.

    To God.

    This is the vulnerability that underlies the courageous act.

    “I’m scared. I don’t know if I can make it. My whole life feels like a sham.”

    This is part of the dragon you must meet.

    Shame cannot exist with words wrapped around it. Darkness cannot exist within the light.

    You must confess. It is the truth that reveals the path of reconsolidation and re-alignment of what is most important.

    5.  Treasure and guard your insights

    There were long stretches of time, months sometimes, when I could see almost no light—no hope and positivity. The creative visionary capacity that I had come to rely on in my life was “off line” and nothing I did turned it back on.

    And so the moments when the clouds parted, and I had meaningful insights were stark in contrast to the seemingly eternal darkness. The moment, walking in the forest, when the sun shone through the clouds and I saw that my core practice was “being present to the moment”.

    It was in these rare moments of insights that I would fight back against the fog that wanted to swirl back in and block my view. I would turn on the voice recorder on my phone and diligently speak out what I was seeing, knowing that the break in the darkness would be brief.

    I would write down my insight, with as much precision as I could manage, and pin it to the board above my desk. I wrote it down, so it wouldn’t slip away like a forgotten dream.

    It felt like the “conscious me” was leaving clues for the “submerged me”.

    This is the power of words—the treasures of insight. Capture them, so they can lead you along the path that you lose sight of in the darkness that follows.

    6.  Play, play, play.

    I played Pandemic Legacy (the best board game ever made) with my family. I worked my way through a lot of PlayStation games. I goofed around with my step kids.

    My mum (in her infinite wisdom) told me I needed to play more. She sent me an email of 20 things I could do that would be fun. And I (in my infinite rebellion) did none of them, but took the hint, and made sure I had some fun in my own way.

    Without some pleasure—the colour of life—reality becomes grey, and then black.

    I remember sitting in my home office with the blinds down, reading existential poetry and feeling like it was all over. My fiancée Suuske called up to me.

    “Babe. Just come downstairs. I’m making dinner and I’ve put the PlayStation on for you.”

    I cried. And I did go downstairs. And I forgot how black the world was while I killed ghosts and found lost treasure playing The Witcher 3 (which is without doubt one of the best video games ever made).

    7.  Basic love.

    Eat food.

    Have baths and showers.

    Put on clean clothes.

    Tidy the kitchen.

    Go outside.

    Sometimes it was all I could manage to haul myself out of the malaise and get in the shower.

    The crushing weight of life was far too much to bear. I couldn’t handle the thought of what I had to do. I didn’t want today, let alone tomorrow and the rest of my life. But the next 10 minutes? That feels possible.

    “A shower. I can do that.”

    I shrink the future down into the smallest chunk I can manage. I pull off my clothes, step under the stream and wash away the dirt.

    And then as I’m drying myself it’s a little bit easier to go and make some food afterwards. And then it’s a little bit easier to get out my journal. And then it’s a little bit easier to face the rest of the day.

    It’s an underworld journey

    You are being taken down—pushed down—into the underworld.

    It’s not a malfunction to be medicated. It’s an existential initiation to pass through.

    It’s a journey into the darkness you do not know how to face.

    It’s the unknown territory that must be navigated with as much willingness as you can muster.

    Can you hear it? It is the cry of the Great Mother.

    “Come down! I want a word with you.”

    She demands that you face the demons that plague you—enlighten the dark places that terrifies you—so the repressed power they contain is returned to you in enlightened conscious form.

    I’m lying in my bed, gripped by a fear so deep I can’t get out from under it. “Oh fuuuuck. I think I might have gotten it wrong. There is no grand plan. No archetypal meaning.

    Our stories and philosophies are built on air. It’s all just a baseless construct—arbitrary ideas that we humans have woven into a story that distracts us from the truth—we’re just a random biological accident.

    It’s all a mirage—life is pointless. It has no point—no ultimate destination. I have no point.”

    With the light of retrospect, it makes perfect sense. If there is anything that characterises my nature, it’s the belief that we are here for a reason—that we are the conscious unwinding of the divine seed in the great pattern of God.

    In the depths of my despair, I had to content with the exact opposite of this faith. And not just think about it, but feel it, in every cell of my body.

    I had to face the dark truth of that possibility, and slay its treacherous intent. And as a consequence, I can now see the way we do construct baseless and arbitrary ideas to distract us from the anxious feeling of pointlessness and meaninglessness.

    But this behaviour is not the deep truth, it’s the affliction that hides the deep truth.

    The deep truth is that we are here for a reason.

    There is a deep pattern to life.

    We are the children of God.

    And we matter so much more deeply than we dare believe.

    Ewan Townhead

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