• Underneath the clench that maintains the dominant posture, lies a sea of feeling and imagery that contradicts who you believe yourself to be.

    That is why you must clench—tighten your gut, armour your heart, squeeze your asshole—because to discontinue this habit would be to plunge yourself into the underworld of the present moment, where the rest of your being—the aspects that you are thus far unable to tolerate—resides.

    It hurts to let go.

    That’s why you hold on so tight.

    Rather the reliable experience of a stiff manageability, than the disruption of a loosened body-mind. Rather the relief of floating above the sensations in a mental world of ideas, worries and dreams, than sinking down into the enormity of what you do not yet know how to embody.

    But it is through the pain that is felt, when you fill out into the fullness of the softened body-mind that you will discover the opposites of consciousness that can be woven into a posture that holds the whole.

    To find the centre—the middle of existence—you must include the extremities of the polarities upon which everything is built.

    To inhabit the heart of the human experience, you must simultaneously reach up into the heights of your foresight, and sink down into the depths of your memory.

    To inhabit the centre of this moment you must simultaneously reach forth into the world with the right hand of agentic penetration, and invite in the world with the left hand of permeable affect.

    Or at least, this is a good place to start.

    As the muscles of my stomach let go, and the floor of my torso softens, there is uncovered, a great wobbly fear—sickness, as though I have eaten a rotten meal. The sensation is of exposure, of such detailed apprehension that I can barely stand it.

    “Run!” cries the ego.

    But I have come this far, and the prospect of returning to the clench feels even worse.

    I do not know how to banish the pain, and the nausea. I do not know how to morph the tension into opening.

    So I sit. In the midst.

    How convenient it is that there is such a multitude of pain-killers. The phone in my pocket that plugs my mind into the social matrix. The cigarettes on the table that give me temporary relief from the crucible of creative tension. The habitual self-flagellation that comes from the story of all the things I am doing wrong.

    I can ingest each and every belief and story—maintaining the ignorance of one who dare not feel the realness of the moment.

    But it doesn’t work does it? It just perpetuates the lie. It simply numbs the sensation of life. It blinds us from the eye that sees the golden thread, that leads from the mind trap of striving to be accepted, toward the wholeness of soul-incarnate.

    “Please God. Show me the way.” I utter, seeking the mythical key that finally delivers me from my suffering.

    And then something softens.

    It is not the mythical key. It is the presence that I was clenching against feeling.

    I feel Him—that archetypal expression of what is divine in each of us, my own true self, the soul manifest. He is right here. Beneath the eternal spin of the narrative world. Inside the feeling of my body, in this chair, in this moment, in this world, under these stars.

    He moves, as I move. The soft undulation of a body that has been tied into conformity for too long. The sensitization of a being that feels he must deflect the harsh inputs of an urban world.

    The sudden smile, as my eyes soften, and I notice the swaying of the trees, and the shape of the houses, and the gift of the consciousness that is able to apprehend all of this.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • I 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

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  • 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

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  • The first is the one between birth and death. This life. The one you’re living right now. The unfolding of what was, through what is, into what could be.

    The second is the other life. That between death and rebirth. It’s the elusive life, because in the midst of its living, there is no concept of itself. And so we can never speak of it.

    It is where you return to. But when you return to it, you are not there to experience it.

    We do remember it though. The feel of it is there in every moment. It’s there in every cell of existence, the source of every single atom and non-atom. That which gives everything and nothing.

    It is the insidious knowing that we are not originally of this plane. That we are fallen.

    And in the broken yearning for home, we search for what we came here to discover.

    Everything that plagues us has been exquisitely designed in our second life, to live in our first life.

    But to seek the second life as the goal is to miss the point. Because our return is the only inevitability.

    To live the first life as a pursuit of the second, is to clench in anticipation of the relief of tomorrow, because we cannot give ourselves over to today.

    And today is the game. This life is the beautiful gift we gave ourselves.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • 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

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  • What is the purpose of life? What is your purpose? My purpose?

    It’s a word that is as clichéd as it is important. And one I have wrestled with as much as it has inspired me.

    So often we talk of it as a thing, an ideal we must live up to, a definition we must clarify. And once we find it, then we can get on with living it.

    I don’t think it is a thing. A thing can be found. Like a rock or the village of Ingleton. A purpose as far as I can tell, cannot be found. It is not lying in wait, out of sight, just around the next insightful corner.

    It is an encounter, a posture, a potential, that calls forth what is within you, asking you to give it, to the world outside of you.

    Here’s one story of how I think it plays out…

    Your role in the great play

    Your purpose is to fill your role in the great theatre play of life.

    It is not pre-scripted.

    The great director will not judge your performance. He hasn’t given you lines to deliver like a talking mannequin. There is no correct script you must adhere to.

    But your role is pre-shaped.

    You have been given a name, and a nature. A flavour and a feel. A history and a possible future. You cannot change these contours of the soul.

    And so it is your task to live into your role, unfolding it as you play it. Discovering it as you act it out. Sinking into the original nature of your character as you improvise in the emerging story.

    You must play out the most mysterious of contradictions. Surrendering to the director’s instruction, and creating your own self-generated narratives. You must do both.

    Listen to the whispers

    The one’s that come from beyond you. The ones that are spoken by whatever we call that which is larger than ourselves. This is the director of the play, trying to give us hints and prompts.

    Can you become quiet enough to hear them?

    These directions are not always ones you want to listen to, or follow. They don’t simply lead toward freedom and applause, they lead to the facing of those things that all your addictions are designed to turn you away from. They lead toward the speech that you have the most difficulty uttering.

    And yet it is in those dark encounters that you will truly learn your own nature. The shadowy corners that when faced, lead around the bend, into an awesome and humbling new light.

    Write your own script

    What do you want to say?

    What course does your own heart want to chart?

    It’s up to you. It has not been laid out in some kosmic blueprint. Your chosen movements are not being pulled by some unseen puppet master. You have been given a role in the great improvisation. You have been given the rare gift of spontaneity.

    You must trust the will of your heart. The desire of your own character. How do you want the story to end? And how will you choose to unfold your own plot toward the possibility of that finale?

    The journey is not pre-written. The ending cannot be known before the curtain falls, if it ever does. The point, is not to adhere to what is supposed to happen, but rather to follow the movement of the unfolding story.

    It’s a surprising, twisting and turning discovery. A delightful step, that leads to a challenging leap, that becomes an embarrassing stumble, that recovers into another delightful step.

    And they are your steps to take.

    How will you play?

    You have not been given the lead-role – I’m sorry but you haven’t. You are not the star of the show. But rest assured that is not because you have been passed over for some more impressive performer. It is that there is no lead role. No chosen star.

    This is an ensemble piece. The greatest ever created. A great sprawling epic, played out on the world’s stage, with the most shocking of twists, and the most exquisite of resolutions.

    And no-one knows the ending. Not even the director.

    How will you play?

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • He whispered to me this morning while I was making coffee. Amongst the sound of the grinding of beans, his voice spoke through my own lips.

    “This is not the way.”

    He didn’t refer to the way I was grinding the beans. I don’t think he has much to say on that subject. He was speaking to the larger grind. The grind of life.

    He meant the way I feel sorry for myself when things don’t go my way. The way I isolate myself when I feel ashamed. The way I silence myself when I feel angry.

    “This is not the way.”

    Not lounging in self-depreciating clouds of cigarette smoke and self-righteous armchair philosophy. Not maintaining my masks of professional competence and success. Not running away from love, from opportunity, because I don’t want to be tied down.

    That way leads full circle, to the source of my complaint.

    “I’m special, and no-one sees it” cries my ego.

    And the weight of his accusation mounts on the evidence table. The momentum of my writing, slowing to a dutiful march. The scores of likes on my Facebook posts, dried up in the political massacre. And more damning that all of it, the unshakable feeling that I’m off track, lost down some overgrown siding.

    I’ve fucked it up.

    That’s what the other guy says. The one who lurks in the recesses of my mind. He’s always there, the compulsive pessimist who doesn’t want to see me fall in pursuit of avarice.

    I’m running out of options. The escape routes keep bringing me back to the same room, where the walls are closing in and the rats have already scarpered.

    I sit down in the corner, light up another joint. Maybe this way I can see through the fog. Maybe I just need one more high to finally break through to the truth.

    And as the medicine takes hold I forget the question and sink down into the comfort of my dream. Until the effects inevitably wane, and I notice the walls again. They’re moving slowly enough that I don’t panic, and fast enough that I know I can’t stay here much longer.

    I reach for another chunk of hazelnut chocolate.

    “This is not the way.” He says.

    Well what is the fucking way oh great oracle? I’m pissed. The scorn is desperation, not hatred. Give me the map shit-face, I’m dying down here.

    He doesn’t answer. He just looks me full in the eye in that unwavering way he has. He loves me. That’s what makes him so infuriating.

    I pause. Something in me doesn’t run away like I’ve been doing a lot lately. I sit with him. He looks like Jesus, but he feels like me.

    Time slows down. I hear the hum of the refrigerator in the corner. The distant sounds of the world outside going about its business. I feel it, the poignancy of the moment. This moment. The one I can feel when I soften my searching. The one I can taste when I open my mouth and breathe it in.

    The one that holds the entire history of the universe, and the unknown future of all there is. Balanced, exquisitely.

    This. This is the way isn’t it?

    He doesn’t say anything, he just smiles.

    This place. The one where I keep walking, as slow as I possibly can, so that I notice just how beautiful the landscape is. The one where I choose each step, not from strategy, but from attention. The lift of my knee, the reaching of my toes, the planting of my foot, the casting of my gaze. One more step. Then one more step. Then one more step.

    What’s the way? I ask him.

    He doesn’t say anything. But I feel my heart break. Just a little, like the first crack on the surface of an egg as what is inside makes its way to what is outside.

    I’m scared. I tell him.

    He nods, in his bamboozlingly beautiful way. A nod that contains both bottomless compassion, and utter neutrality. I don’t know how he does that.

    I am scared. I’m scared of getting punched. Or laughed at. I feel just like I did when I was a little boy at Lowfield Primary School. My unconscious and innocent eccentricity met with unconscious and innocent ridicule.

    I had the wrong shoes. I cried when boys weren’t supposed to cry. I didn’t fit their society, I stood out, which wasn’t a good thing in working-class Sheffield.

    “You’re a man now.” He says.

    I don’t feel like one. I say before I think about it. I feel like a fraud.

    “That’s what makes you beautiful.” He says.

    He’s got me. Clever little fucker. He knows exactly where my weak spots are. He turns my own arguments against me. And I know exactly what he means.

    It’s the way of revelation.

    Not the kind of revelation accompanied by angels’ harps and priests and holy oppression. It’s the path that reveals. Uncovering what once was covered. Disclosing what was once locked away. Showing what was once held in shame.

    It’s not about me. It’s not some faux-vulnerability where I wash my dirty laundry on Facebook (I tried that – the high lasted as long as the social news cycle). It’s about revealing what I see.

    The world I see.

    The one that delicately surrenders itself as I look into my woman’s eyes, and see how deeply she loves me. The one that pulls the rug from under my complacency as I remember what truly fires me up. The one that brightens someone else’s down-trodden day as I tell them about mine.

     “That’s the way.” He says, and turns away to leave me to my gratitude.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • In the first part of this article I talked about shame and how we’re carrying so much of it, and that it is the root of sin. Not in some old clichéd Catholic sense, where we come from some original bad stock.

    We’re ashamed because we’re struggling to find the courage to step out and show the world just how fucking good we are.

    This is the greatest sin of our times.

    To turn away from what is asked of you – the true work you know you came here to make. To pretend it isn’t that important, or that you’re not good enough to be it. And we’re struggling to face this great sin, because the very notion of sin is something we’re no longer comfortable with.

    But just as the toothache doesn’t go away because you don’t like dentists, sin doesn’t go away because we don’t like the Church.

    And because we have banished sin, we have also banished the means to work with sin. We have forgotten that there is an ancient tradition that can guide us through this gauntlet of shame, guilt and unworthiness.

    This is the lost technology of spiritual transformation. And it is what this article is all about.

    We’re all sinners

    Not the way we were told when we were children. No, we’re all sinners because this is a time like no other. A time when the old rules really are crumbling to dust. We have more freedom than at any other time in the history of the world.

    We’re free to have sex with people we want to have sex with, without the fear of roasting forever in hell. We’re free to write and speak whatever we want without the threat of being burned at the stake. We’re free to rise above our upbringing without social castes to slam us back into place. We’ve even been freed from the industrial imperative to be efficient, safe and predictable. We’ve been freed to speak the deepest truth we have.

    This is the age of the great level playing field.

    And God is calling for all great people to come and play the new game. The one where we win when we each create our own beautifully unique puzzle piece of life. And together, we create a new picture of society.

    And when we inevitably pretend to not hear that call, we sin.

    “Who the fuck am I to start a global foundation for women leaders? I don’t even feel like a leader myself. It’s just a pipe-dream. Life is more complicated.”

    “I may have a passion for mystic muff diving, but I can’t make a living out of that! That’s crazy! I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and hope one day I’m rescued.”

    “Just because I dream of writing best-selling books, doesn’t mean I can, or am allowed. That’s for the talented people, who live of mummy and daddy’s millions.”

    It’s easier to numb out. So we do, and God’s call becomes like the buzz of the refrigerator, and we continue for years pretending it’s not there.

    But it’s not that simple is it?

    You block your ears, so you don’t hear the call. And then you don’t hear other stuff either. You don’t hear your friends telling you how talented you are. You don’t hear your lover telling you how beautiful you are.

    So you block your heart too. Because it’s too much. And then you block your balls and your pussy too.

    And then you’re a drone. Doing society’s bidding. Being a good soldier. While you quietly die inside.

    And maybe I’m being dramatic. And maybe it hasn’t got that bad yet. And maybe it never will. But what if it already has, and we haven’t noticed, because we can’t even feel how numb we are.

    And I’m numb too. I’m as big a sinner as you are.

    This is written for both of us. I’m not preaching from a position of privilege. I’m writing this because I’m calling myself out. And maybe you at the same time

    And I’m writing it because there is a way out.

    Repent, and ye shall be set free

    “When they said repent. I wonder what they meant.”
    – Leonard Cohen

    And well you might Leonard, because it’s another confusing term, like sin. But repentance is the way out. And as Robert Frost said, the best way out is through. And repentance takes you through shame, into love, into integrity, into deeper truth.

    But I get ahead of myself. What is repentance?

    Repentance usually means regret. When I repent I feel deeply sorry or remorseful.

    “I’m really sorry Mrs. Jones. I didn’t mean to crush your prize rose bed.”

    But this meaning is only half the story. Once again, we have a translation issue, though this time it’s the issue of Greek into English.

    The Greek world that was translated into ‘repentance’ in English was the world metanoia. Which means something rather different than regret. Let’s play detective for a second, because it’s going to get interesting.

    Metanoia has two elements. Meta means ‘beyond’, or ‘change’. And noia comes from noos which means ‘thought’ or ‘mind’. So it essentially means to ‘go beyond one’s thoughts’. It means to change one’s mind, change one’s way of seeing, to go beyond how you thought it was.

    This is the original meaning of repentance.

    And it is also the very subject of this article. The practice of repentance is the lost technology of spiritual transformation.

    Connect with truth, and step beyond

    Repentance is the decision to turn back toward what is asked, and engage honestly and truly. To repent is to surrender your insecurity and shame, and face what you know you are avoiding.

    Repentance is coming back into right relationship with truth. And it has four steps, which I’m going to lay out for you.

    Confession. Forgiveness. Penance. Restoration.

    Now, we’re going to run into language issues again. I’m going to use words that may have strong connotations for you. But just like Sin, and repentance itself, I’m going to invite you to cast off the meanings you were given, and feel into the primordial meanings, the original meanings, before they were distorted by time.

    Because this model of repentance represents a beautiful mapping of a natural cycle, one that is designed to deepen the bonds of what matters, and what is true. It is a process that transforms shame into guilt, into connection, into intimacy, into new action, into new depth, into new truth.

    This is not a formula. It is a dance of karma, intimacy and dignity.

    The Four Steps of Repentance

    1. Confession

    Confession is sharing the thing you don’t want to share. It’s calling your best friend and admitting that you’re really struggling. It’s telling your lover you’re feeling attraction for someone else.  It’s praying to god because you feel so lost.

    It’s the sharing of burdens, a friendly shoulder upon which to rest, as you confess your difficulty. And it works. It’s what all good therapists do for their clients, what great parents do for their children.

    It is a place to reveal our deepest secrets in safety.

    Brené says that shame can’t survive with words around it. She says shame needs 3 things to survive: secrecy, silence and judgement. And that the moment we share the object of our shame, the virus starts to whither, and the heart begins to open.

    This is sharing.  This is confession.

    This is the first step.

    I was born to do magnificent and important things in the world.

    I know it. But to confess how deeply I feel this destiny is to also uncover the deep shame I carry for not knowing how to live into that greatness. And the deep fear that I may be mistaken, and delusional.

    “You could touch a million souls” the whisper says to me.

    And it’s getting louder.

    “You’re one of the old souls that lived a thousand lives and opened a thousand hearts. You were there, when we stepped out of the Garden. You were there when we spoke on the mountain. You were there after they hanged him. Don’t you remember?”

    Am I crazy? Something tell me I shouldn’t we writing this. But it feels like a relief to get it off my back. To share it with you. To confess to you.

    2. Forgiveness

    I love you, and I forgive you. I know you’re trying your best. I know you’re a good and beautiful person. I know you don’t mean to. I love you. Everything is ok.

    This is empathy. And compassion. It’s universal love.

    Regardless of what you do, I still love you. There is nothing you can do or be that would stop me loving you. You have no choice in the matter.

    They said Jesus will forgive you all your sins, and they said it because Jesus represents the force of this universal love. And in His heart, you are always already forgiven.

    It’s what we need from others, from God. And it’s what we need from ourselves. Self-love, the first love. Because it’s all the same love. It is This Love.

    I know you. I love you. I forgive you.

    This is step 2.

    My sweetheart, I understand.

    You want to stay safe, hidden, in the dark warm folds of familiarity. Of course you do sweet man. They told you this was the way to live your life. That’s what kept you safe in the school playground when the other kids would tease you for your difference. And in another time, when they killed you for your insolence.

    You are my sweetheart and I love you. You have such pure intentions. I’m always here for you ok? I know it’s not going the way you want. The way your father wants. But you don’t have to apologize to me. You’re always already forgiven. You are always already loved.

    But thank you for telling me. I’m here whenever you need me. Always.

    3. Penance

    And. Words are not enough. Not meaning to do it, is not enough. Apology is not enough. Forgiveness, alone, is not enough.

    You must do penance.

    Penance is not punishment, or healing. It is not saying a thousand Hail-Marys.

    Penance is restorative action. It is right-action. Doing what you know in your heart is good and true. It is doing what you need to do, to bring relationship back into the moment, enlightened by a new consciousness, entwined by a new depth.

    It’s clearing up the mess you’ve made.

    Whether this is with yourself, with those around you, or with God, the intent is the same: to repair the fabric of our inter-connected relationship, and allow depth to transform us.

    This is step 3.

    I know my innocence does not excuse me from what is asked. God has called me out.

    “I love you. And my love is so strong, that I won’t stand by and let you be less than you really are.”

    He is turning up the heat. He is asking me to go and speak. He is calling for what I have to say. He is beckoning me to stand amongst those who would listen, and gift from your heart, that which I see and love.

    “You must choose to step out of what you think you know. And commit to the path you do not know. To come back to me. And love through me. With all your naked heart can bare. Do you accept your penance?”

    I do. I am afraid, but my faith is stronger. Yes my dearest Lord, I do.

    4. Restoration

    We are brought to a place of greater intimacy with ourselves. With truth. With God. With goodness itself.

    We have followed the mystic injunction, and allowed the hand of our own hearts, to steer us.

    We have restored the circle.

    We have joined hands once again. But this time the grip is warmer, stronger, and more true.

    And more joyful.

    For this is the siddhic beauty that shame invites us toward. Joy. True, and pure.

    This is the final step, before it begins again.

    Welcome back my love. I missed you. But this time we feel different. My hand rests deeper in your hand. My step moves more elegantly with your step.

    This is the path into alignment. This is the never-ending quest into our own eternal embrace. This is the place you are called to, that I am called to, that we are called to.

    This is what is asked. And you have answered.

    Shall we dance, just one more time?

    Final Thoughts

    They say that great artists steal. If one day I can with all honesty call myself a great writer, I will know I stole well, and with grace and novelty.

    And so, to stroke that potential, I confess to you now that this article, indeed all my articles are taken from the mouths of many others.

    For this particular article, I borrowed generously from a single book. It’s an amazing book by the equally amazing Barbara Brown Taylor, called On Speaking of Sin. And if any of my ideas have spoken to you, I wholeheartedly encourage you to read her work. She is a true preacher of truth.

    And I leave you with the words of another. Words that have haunted me this year. Beautiful words. Godly words perhaps. I leave you with Rumi.

    The breeze at dawn has whispers to tell you.
    Don’t go back to sleep.
    You must ask for what you really want.
    Don’t go back to sleep.
    People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two world touch.
    The door is round and open.
    Don’t go back to sleep.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • 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

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  • I was at dinner a few nights ago with a friend. We’d just spent a day with the spiritual teacher Adyashanti. We’d both been deeply moved by the experience, and by him.

    As we talked about life, love and religion, I happened to mention that I’d felt increasingly drawn to Christianity over the last couple of years. He was a little surprised, and wanted to know more.

    I want to share with you what I shared with him. It’s a story that is achingly close to my heart, and one I feel quite uncomfortable speaking about.

    Even with a close friend, I felt awkward speaking the name Jesus, aware of the cultural connotations that the word has for so many of us.

    But as I finished my story, he told me how much more permission he now felt to embrace the spiritual depth of Christianity, and let go of the old associations he had from his own upbringing. He said to me…

    “What if, by you telling this story, someone else’s estranged relationship to Christianity can be healed or reborn?”

    He was right. What if? So here’s the story of my friendship with Jesus.

    I Grew Up Atheist

    Atheism, if you didn’t know, is a contemporary religion that doesn’t have any Gods. The atheists typically don’t like the Christians. And so as a child, I didn’t have any friends who went to church or who had read the bible.

    Even at school I was protected from the Christians for the most part. We’d have the occasional shallow bible reading from Miss Bathmaker. But even as a 7 year old, I knew what she was teaching us wasn’t true.

    Growing up, Christianity was the old dusty religion that we’d replaced with something much more rational and humanistic.

    In fact, for most of my life, spirituality in general was hard for me to accept.

    Even when the work of philosopher Ken Wilber changed my life at the age of 23, it was his teachings on spirituality that I found hard to swallow. I would digest the philosophy and psychology at an alarming rate. But all the Buddha and Brahman stuff? That felt weird and alien. I didn’t know what to do with it.

    It was the practice of Chi Kung that really opened me up spiritually. I practiced it on and off for 4 years. But while I would study with my own teacher, to this day I have never read a single book on the Shaolin Arts. I didn’t want anything to do with the philosophy.

    And then, a few years ago I started feeling this curiosity for Christianity. It would come out in mild ways at first. And then 2 years ago, it got serious. I was going through one of the darkest periods of my life, and felt a call to study Christianity. I remember hours spent sitting in front of the wood burner at my dad’s country farmhouse, reading about Jesus.

    I talk to Jesus

    Not every day, but often.

    Often when I’m meditating, I’ll call forth his image. He normally stands in front, and slightly above me, a little way off. Recently he started standing slap bang right in front of me. He has a beard. He’s wearing white. He has some kind of pattern around his collar. He’s a big man. Strong.

    I’ll ask him things. I ask him for help. I ask him what God is asking of me.

    He’s so compassionate with my struggles. His heart is always so open. When I’m upset, bowing my head under the pressure, I’ll look up and he’s crying too. He feels my pain as I feel it.

    He’s ruthless with me. A few days ago he slapped me around the face. He told me to wake up. He told me to wake up and stop turning away.

    For the last 7 months he’s kept saying the same thing to me over and over.

    “You must speak.”

    No-one taught me how to do any of this. It just started happening.

    I’m not a Christian

    But I love going into old churches and cathedrals. I’ll sit in the pews and meditate. I’ll surrender to the chorus of the place, let it infiltrate me, carry me.

    A few months ago I was in London. had a few hours before my flight back and decided to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’d never been there before.

    I sat underneath the great dome and I gave myself to the place. I was taken up and out. A great expansion reaching up to the dome, and further. As my awareness floated higher, my heart was grinding itself against my ribs. A profound feeling of love. Loved by him.

    Loved by the man who changed everything, and who never wanted any temples, churches or religions to be created in his name.

    Jesus was a human warrior of the heart

    It feels quite vulnerable to write this to you.

    Not simply because of the closeness of this story and this man to my heart. But because even now, I can feel the part of me that associates Jesus with weirdos. I see in my mind’s eye a different man who ‘loves Jesus’.

    A stubborn and judgmental religious man. A nut. A bigoted evangelist. Some Bible bashing zealot who will condemn you unless you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

    Except the Jesus that man speaks of is not my Jesus.

    My Jesus was a human who lived and died. He was a brilliant thinker, and a spiritual revolutionary. He was the least zealous spiritual leader of his time. He was a man who taught that awakening is not about escaping the world of form, but embracing it.

    He was a man who bucked against his destiny. Sometimes pleading to be absolved of the responsibility he felt, and the pain he was asked to endure.

    He was a man who got angry and spoke out, condemning those who abused power for their own egoic gain.

    He was a man who taught that the heart is the center of life. He was a man that loved others with his own human heart, deeply and profoundly. He was a man that loved a woman profoundly.

    I have tears even as I write this.

    He told me once that he felt sad that the stories of him had edited out his great love, Mary, with whom he taught and entwined. The woman who was the other half of his awakening and of his teaching.

    My Jesus is not a man who will judge you if you do not do as the bible says.

    He’s laughing as I write that. That’s so very far from who he was.

    What I’ve learned from him

    As I’ve strived to bring my work into the world, there’s one thing that I’ve been continually challenged by, one trial that has faced me down in a myriad of forms. Doubt. The great doubt.

    Can I really do this?

    Am I truly worthy?

    Who am I to say this?

    I’ve walked into new territories where the maps have been sketchy at best. I’ve felt continually pulled back by the gravitational force of safety and conformity. And I’ve questioned my work, deeply, time and time and time again.

    I could not have come through all the trials I’ve faced without a faith in something larger than myself. I could not have stepped out vulnerably into the unknown without a trust in a force greater than I.

    Jesus has been a divine guide for me. A true representative of God. And a man, who lived, loved and lost. He’s always there for me if I want to ask him something.

    I just asked him what he thought of me writing this piece. He said he likes it.

    He said he likes me speaking.

    Ewan Townhead

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