• She came too close.

    She presumed too much.

    She took what she needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    We violate these lines in different ways.

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

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

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

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

    “Sorry.”

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

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

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

    The alternative is to draw the line.

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

    “No.”

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

    Tell her with love.

    “No sweetie.”

    The line is drawn.

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • It began to dawn on me, the innocence of my heart.

    I was biking home from a date with a woman. It was sweet. Surprising. Confronting. I’d fallen for something in her. And then I’d got a little burned. More than my rational mind said was appropriate.

    “Dude. C’mon You don’t even know her. You’re overreacting here. Wtf?”

    But it hurt. My heart ached. I felt foolish.

    From somewhere inside, a breath came. A moment. I smiled inside and gave myself a dose of self-administered love serum. I relaxed. And then another voice spoke to me.

    “This is your super-power Ewan. You’re pure. You never doubted you were loved. Your parents wanted you so deeply. They had a lot of fun conceiving you. You have an innocent heart; you just love people. It’s powerful. And it’s also your greatest challenge.”

    I watch the cheesiest shit on TV and start quietly blubbering.

    I listen to a particular song, and my whole chest creaks and tingles and I remember times when I felt the way the song feels.

    I fall for women before I even really know them, and my heart opens, and they receive me, and sometimes I don’t notice that I’m about to get hurt. And maybe they are too.

    So I want to speak about the heart. My heart. Our heart. The most beautiful thing God ever created. It has one simple mechanism, the eternal mechanism.

    To open. Or not.

    The heart is the centre

    The place where heaven and earth meet. The only place we feel the beauty of separation and intimacy.

    And behind it all – the elusive primal memory that we’re not mortal. We come from on high, angels fallen. Not because we turned dark, but because here in this human life we find the only place where we connect with one another. We meet because meeting is gifted to us through our agonous separation.

    This is the only place where we can taste and live life. It’s different up there. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is right. Nothing is separate, nothing is together.

    But you and I sweetheart, we are mortal. We will die. We know it, and it is that urgency that drives us toward our own realization.

    “Your heart is the centre young one. That is where mortality and divinity meet. It is where your true nature is held.

    And it will break. A thousand times before it finally opens. It may take you a thousand lifetimes. It may have already taken more.

    But this is why you chose to come here. Why you chose your parents; you chose this life. Because it is the most precious gift that can ever be given.

    To love, to hurt, to merge, to break-apart, to entwine in something never before felt.”

    I’m sorry I wasn’t there more

    It hurts. I can’t help but open to her. She’s so beautiful, and unique, and soft, and loving. She beckons to me, like the mother I never had. I want to go to her. Love her. I want to suck at her nipple, and feel safe. Hold her in my arms and tell her everything’s going to be ok.

    And it hurts when she leaves me. When I’m all alone. And I return to the doubt. Maybe I’m not lovable. Maybe it was a mistake, and I have to be alone now.

    I miss her. It was the most powerful 3 years of my life. She changed me. And I’ll love her forever, she who captured my heart. A woman so beautiful, I still cry when I picture her and all we shared.

    I’m sorry dearest, that it had to end like this. But didn’t we have fun? Wasn’t it beautiful?

    And all the women I was with before her, and the ones who stand before me now. A harem of sacred women, who have taught me that which I could never know. And loved me in places I dare not see.

    Thank you. With everything I have.

    I’m sorry that I wasn’t there more.

    Yet, He knows this is the most wondrous of gifts

    “This is what you asked for my boy.”

    “Yes. I know. I prayed for it. The trial of the heart. And yet I squirm and whine. Because it’s hard. And I have to reveal myself, and sometimes I’d rather be in bed, with the covers over my chin.”

    “And isn’t that the innocent dignity that all of you have? To be scared of what you dare not fully love. Isn’t it the most wonderful of gifts? To be in human form, with the unique invitation to feel another. To make love with another. To unify the two hearts of God, into this one Heart.

    “Do you miss it J? Being here?”

    “No. Because I am It. I am You. I am Here. There’s nothing to miss.

    And yes, I miss it. I miss the taste of Mary on my lips. Her Being entwining me in the love I never imagined could exist. She says she doesn’t mind that her story was lost and horribly twisted. But I feel so sad that people have forgotten that it was Our Love that changed the world.”

    “I think we’re realizing that now J. I think those of us who are treading the path you marked for us can feel that. This is not the solo path. This is the relational path, con-joined love. Divine partnership.”

    “Thank you youngster. My heart is opened by your words. And I’m so proud of you. Never forget that I love you.”

    “I do forget. I’m sorry J.”

    “I know. And you are always already forgiven my love.”

    Never stop your heart

    I know he feels what I feel, more than I do. He feels it all, and that’s why I love him. Because his anger is given without agenda. And his devotion is given without condition.

    He sees the future, he is the future. And he’s chosen me, like he’s chosen you, as the disciples of a very different world. Not one of his making. One of Our making.

    I love you.

    I don’t know you, but I love you.

    Even though I’m afraid to really tell you, I do. I love you. You, who are reading these very words. For you show me how beautiful we really are.

    Never stop.

    And I’ll promise the same.

    Let us open one another, like a Heart cracked by the fingers of God.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Brene Brown said it best.

    “You can’t get to courage without walking through vulnerability.”

    If you go up to somebody who is in the midst of taking courageous action, and you ask “how do you feel?” they probably won’t say “I feel courageous”.

    They’ll probably say: “I feel vulnerable.”

    If you wilfully decide to ‘do courage’ you’re probably posturing, which is definitely not courageous, or vulnerable.

    But, if you feel where you’re afraid to look at yourself, you’ll probably find a beautiful vulnerability that requires genuine courage to reveal.

    The One in the Arena

    In January I met with my mentor in person for the first time in London.

    After a passionate and sprawling conversation over dinner, I took him to a classic English pub in Westminster. Over a pint over ale, he asked me if I knew the ‘The Man in the Arena’ quote by Theodore Roosevelt.

    It’s a quote that I now know intimately, one that he has sprawled over a wall in his offices. But at the time, I’d never heard it.

    I’ve read it numerous times since that evening, and each and every time I do it opens my heart and brings tears to my eyes.

    For I find myself on a path that consistently asks for a greater levels of courage than I knew I possessed.

    We are each called to show our Work to the world. It is the challenge of our time: to continually bare our truth in a world where promotion is free and criticism is bundled along with it.

    “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

    The Lonely Leader of Truth

    Several years ago, two friends and I created a (now somewhat heralded) interview series called Waking Up the Workplace. We spoke with many of our heroes in the conscious business field.

    I still listen to those recordings sometimes, I learn new things every time I do.

    Last spring I was doing precisely this. It was a recording of a class taught by the man who I would later ask to mentor me.

    During that class he spoke about an author that had had a huge impact on him, a rather unknown giant of the philosophy of business called Peter Koestenbaum.

    I went out and got myself a copy of Koestenbaum’s book Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness.

    I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the beginning of my journey into the nature of courage.

    This is what Koestenbaum says…

    “To be courageous is to be prepared for the isolation of leadership. Thus to be a self-starter is to be autonomous, to have given up the helplessness and dependency that are so often fostered by the presumptive security of larger organizations. Autonomy is the ability to live in isolation and be comfortable with the feeling of aloneness. For the person who cherishes intimacy, isolation is as painful as it is fundamental to integrity, because intimacy without the courage to stand up for one’s rights is empty servitude.”

    In other words, courage is the decision to step out alone, and follow your own truth. To walk the unknown path, the one that leads to something you deeply year for, and that your mind cannot yet comprehend.

    To be courageous is to step out into the arena and show people what you’ve created.

    Seth Godin says “Here, I made this”, is one of the bravest and most vulnerable actions there is.

    And that is exactly the quest that the courageous one is entrusted with.

    To turn away from the safety of servitude, and the dependence of employment. To step out, alone, on the only path that is authentically yours; your path.

    To relinquish the right to determine what is good, and what is appropriate, and reveal what is truly in your heart.

    The Courageous Path is paved with Anxiety

    Just as you can’t get to courage without walking through vulnerability, you cannot take the path of courage without feeling the substance of the road you walk.

    “Anxiety is the key to courage, for courage is the decision to tolerate maximum amounts of anxiety.” – Peter Koustenbaum

    The path of courage is paved with anxiety.

    Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is the decision to immerse yourself in the very things that threaten your sense of safety.

    Courage is not something that strong people feel, courage is what every person feels when they embrace their vulnerability and step out into the unknown.

    I’ve become fascinated by anxiety over the last year or two. Perhaps because I’ve experienced so much of it. Perhaps because I had an unshakable sense that the way we often think about anxiety missed something huge.

    I still remember the first time I read about anxiety from an existential perspective. It was again in a book by Koestenbaum, but his notion of existential anxiety goes back to the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard.

    I covered this topic extensively in a previous piece. But I return to it, because you can’t get to the heart of courage without understanding anxiety.

     “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Soren Kierkegaard

    Anxiety, it seems, is not so much an emotion, but the existential mood of life. Its literal Latin root means the pain of passing through a narrow passage.

    What single experience is more existentially vulnerable than passing from the soft safety of our conception to the hard reality of birth? That formative moment, when before we even know how to think, we feel the reality of living. And it is anxiety.

    Yet anxiety is not a dysfunction in need of medication, or a negative emotion in need of releasing. No, no, it is the very fabric of freedom, as felt by our powerfully permeable human beingness.

    Kierkegaard continues…

    “Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self… — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.”

    Anxiety is not simply the price we pay for being creative beings, it is the actual feeling of becoming who we are. It is the emotional mood of courageous self-authorship.

    It is the immense energy of our freedom that we have not yet found the courage to claim.

    Free to Choose Your Nakedness

    The root of the word courage is very old. It comes from an ancient language we know very little about.  At its core, courage means simply ‘heart’.

    Courage for me feels like nakedness – showing my inner heart to the outside world.

    It is opening my hand, and allowing my precious creations to be set free into a world who’s embracing or rejection of them, I cannot control.

    It is the opposite of comfort. It is the opposite of safe.

    And yet it is the path that leads to realization.

    You choose to come and live this life because you have a story to tell.

    It is your story.

    It is the story that no-one else can ever know.

    Except when you realize you are already free. Free to embrace your anxiety. Free to reveal your vulnerability. Free to show your naked heart to the world. Free to realize who you really are.

    This is the heart of courage.

    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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  • It is I who am your greatest longing.

    I long for you to open yourself and receive all that is.

    For when you do so my dear, you will realize that there is only This. Only Love.

    Can you feel me when you are moved?

    Can you feel that there is no other way but to surrender yourself to the beautiful pain that is the very substance of This?

    Can you be ignorant enough to allow that which you don’t realize you know?

    Can you be big enough to feel that which is bleeding for you, in every moment?

    As I sit here, looking out over the fields of a simpler existence, I feel the sadness. Not of loss, or not having, but of that which I dare not fully allow myself to feel.

    Out there, beyond the trees is a golden sun, waiting to burn you up in its glorious fire.

    Can you allow yourself to burn in Love and release that in you which is not really alive?

    14604002_mI am so in love in with my own reflection.

    I’ve worked very hard to preen his image, and yet I hate him for it. I hate him for being something untouchable, like the stranger in the mirror. A reflection of something I invented.

    Every crumb of suffering I am fed has the same elusive imprint.

    And as I invite the taste of them in just enough, so as to follow the trail back to the one that dropped them, they lead to the same lakeside.

    The one where I’ve forgotten who I really am.

    The one where before I knew how to, I created an image in the water, and loved him so desperately.

    I cry for him, as I hate him for stealing my skin and pulling the strings of innocence.

    I curse him for doing all he can to keep his own freedom. He who has been my greatest love, and my oldest friend. So delicate.

    And yet, as I feed him I starve. And I am so very hungry. Hungry for the beauty that I am. Hungry for the space that I am asked to exhibit.

    I love you my young friend, so very dearly. You are everything I thought I wanted.

    You are nothing like me, and for that I love you unconditionally, as I offer you up.

    Remember. There is only This. Only love.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • We can think of marketing as having two different ways.

    The first way of marketing is presenting ourselves, skillfully, strategically, deliberately.

    It’s writing our persuasive website copy, designing a logo that gives just the right feel to the brand, it’s concocting our taglines that inspire and inform people.

    This is the common form of marketing. It’s important.

    The second way of marketing is revealing ourselves, transparently, vulnerably, passionately.

    It’s sharing the blog that we don’t want to share because it’s too personal, or feels inappropriate. It’s offering our naked heart, without agenda.

    This is the less common form. It’s essential.

    You could think about the first kind of marketing as being about surfaces. How do I appear to the world? What will people’s first impressions be? Will I be attractive to my ideal clients?

    Surfaces are not less important. It’s like wearing clothes, or getting a haircut.

    The second way of marketing is about the heart. It’s revealing who you really are, even though you may doubt the strategy of it. It is removing the curtains, beautiful though they may be.

    The realized entrepreneur understands both these ways of marketing. For he understands that he is both depth, and surface. She wants to be seen for her true heart, and for her true skin.

    He works hard to create surfaces that reflect his depth in powerful ways – marketing that can attract people magically.

    And she also remembers that the heart of meeting is in revealing herself, and relating to the world from chosen nakedness.

    This First Way of Marketing Is Like Makeup

    I love it when my partner wears mascara and eye-liner. It brings out her big beautiful blue eyes in such an evocatively delicate way. It draws out her natural beauty. It helps me see more of her. I love seeing her.

    And then there’s the woman whose make-up is so thick and loud, that I cannot see her true face. Her natural beauty is smeared over like a mask that she hides behind.

    Salt, I find, is a wonderful ingredient for bringing out the flavors in a dish. I taste them more. But too much and it tastes like something fake and unpleasant. Sometimes, food can be so salty, I don’t know what the natural flavors actually are, or even if there are any.

    So many people are marketing themselves with mountains of makeup and salt, while our hungry marketplace is crying out for something real, something heart-full, something truly beautiful.

    Marketing Is Simply Relating

    Marketing is a practice of relating with the world around you, not persuading the world of your worth.

    Marketing is about seeing your community, clients and customers. And being seen in return. It’s a practice of speaking and being spoken to.

    Makeup is good, and fine. Use it to bring out your attractiveness, and have those with roving eyes notice you amongst the crowd.

    But don’t hide behind it.

    The first way of marketing is an invitation, not a mask.

    What’s in your heart? What do you care about so much that you feel ashamed to shout it to the entire world?

    I want to meet you, feel you, see you.

    Know you.

    Will You Show Yourself?

    You are beautiful.

    It’s not a beauty that can be assessed according to a universal scale, or compared to the beauty of another. It’s yours. Truly and completely.

    And the more you are able to push the voice of your anxiety away, and disclose that beauty, the more the natural world will rise up to meet that beauty.

    When you reveal yourself, your true self, your true community will discover you.

    If you fake it, and manufacture your image from the form of another, you will attract people who are meant to be served by another.

    If you craft your marketing with thick makeup, trying to persuade the world that you are someone you are not, you will attract customers who relate with you as that someone you are not. And they will expect of you, the promises of that someone you are not.

    And they will not be served.

    And you will not be seen.

    Let your marketing be a full expression of who you truly are, and not a mask to divert people’s powerful gaze.

    Let them see you.

    Let those who turn away, turn away.

    Let those who come closer, come closer.

    Ewan Townhead

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